Dance therapists

Dance/movement therapy (DMT) in USA/ Australia or dance movement psychotherapy (DMP) in the UK is the psychotherapeutic use of movement and dance to support intellectual, emotional, and motor functions of the body. As a modality of the creative arts therapies, DMT looks at the correlation between movement and emotion. https://adta.org/our-mission/The American Dance Therapy Association was founded in 1966 as an organization to support the emerging profession of dance/movement therapy and is the only U.S. organization dedicated to the profession of dance/movement therapy. Dance has been used therapeutically for thousands of years. It has been used as a healing ritual in the influence of fertility, birth, sickness, and death since early human history. Over the period from 1840 to 1930, a new philosophy of dance developed in Europe and the United States, defined by the idea that movement could have an effect on the mover vis-a-vis that dance was not simply an expressive art. There is a general opinion that Dance/movement as active imagination was originated by Jung in 1916, developed in the 1960s by dance therapy pioneer Mary Whitehouse. Tina Keller-Jenny and other therapists started practicing the therapy in 1940. The actual establishment of dance as a therapy and as a profession occurred in the 1950s, beginning with future American Dance Therapy Association founder Marian Chace. Marian Chace spearheaded the movement of dance in the medical community as a form of therapy. She is considered the principal founder of what is now dance therapy in the United States. In 1942, through her work, dance was first introduced to western medicine. Chace was originally a dancer, choreographer, and performer. After opening her own dance school in Washington, D.C., Chace began to realize the effects dance and movement had on her students. The reported feelings of wellbeing from her students began to attract the attention of the medical community, and some local doctors began sending patients to her classes. She was soon asked to work at St. Elizabeth’s Hospital in Washington, D.C. once psychiatrists too realized the benefits their patients were receiving from attending Chace’s dance classes. In 1966 Chace became the first president of the American Dance Therapy Association, an organization which she and several other DMT pioneers founded. According to the ADTA, dance is 'the psychotherapeutic use of movement as a process which furthers the emotional, social, cognitive, and physical integration of the individual.' The second wave of Dance Movement Therapy came around the 1970s to the 1980s and it sparked much interest from American therapists. During this time, therapists began to experiment with the psychotherapeutic applications of dance and movement. As a result of the therapists' experiments, DMT was then categorized as a form of psychotherapy. It was from this second wave that today’s Dance Movement Therapy evolved. The theory of DMT is based mainly upon the belief that body and mind interact. Both conscious and unconscious movement of the person, based on the dualist mind body premise, affects total functioning, and also reflects the individual’s personality. Therefore, the therapist-client relationship is partly based on non-verbal cues such as body language. Movement is believed to have a symbolic function and as such can aid in understanding the self. Movement improvisation allows the client to experiment with new ways of being and DMT provides a manner or channel in which the client can consciously understand early relationships with negative stimuli through non-verbal mediation by the therapist. Through the unity of the body, mind, and spirit, DMT provides a sense of wholeness to all individuals. The body refers to the 'discharging of energy through muscular-skeletal responses to stimuli received by the brain.' The mind refers to 'mental activities...such as memory, imagery, perception, attention, evaluation, reasoning and decision making.' The spirit refers to the 'subjectively experienced state of feeling in engaging in or empathically observing dancing.' Dance therapy works to improve the social skills, as well as relational dynamics among the clients that choose to participate in it to better improve their quality of life. Through this form of therapy clients will gain a deeper sense of self-awareness through a meditative process that involves movement, motion, and realization of one's body. Dance therapy is different from other forms of rehabilitative treatments because it allows creative expression and is more holistic, meaning it treats the full person: mind, body, and spirit.