What is Dance/Movement therapy?

Dance therapy is the use of dance movements to improve the mental and physical wellbeing of a person. The dance therapist believes that the body and mind are connected, so the state of the body may affect mental and emotional health and vice versa. Dance therapists improve their clients’ wellbeing through this connection, observing movement to diagnose, remedy and prevent existing and potential health issues.

How does Dance and Movement Therapy help participants?

Body language and posture are a reflection of a person’s emotional state. Movement therapy corrects psychological and physical aberrations or inhibitions by building self- awareness through body control, working from the outside in. The dance therapist facilitates gesture and postural awareness by empathizing and mirroring the participant’s movements and thus unlocks blockages in the neuromuscular system.

Dance therapy helps those who are generally healthy as well as those with mental illnesses and with physical or mental disabilities to regain a sense of wholeness by experiencing the unity of the body, mind and spirit.

What is the difference between Dance Therapy and Dance as Therapy in a regular dance class?

There is a vast difference between dance instruction (which uses dance as therapy) and dance therapy. Dance therapists encourage authentic movement to flow from the participants and do not rely on traditional dance instruction, which is actually the opposite of what dance therapists do.

In a dance therapy session, the movement comes from the participants through guidance of body awareness, whereas ‘Dance as Therapy’ implies that any dance class has therapeutic value that encourages the mind-body connection.