Methods of social therapy with various population groups. Dance therapy: description, history, essence of treatment

Dance movement therapy - what is it? Where is this taught? What does it take to get an education to become a TD therapist?

Dance movement therapy is a method of psychological correction, creative development, personal growth and health improvement for children and adults. Dance movement therapy (DMT) is a field of psychotherapy. It exists at the intersection of psychotherapy and dance art. It is nourished by such areas of knowledge as anatomy, psychophysiology, kinesiology, neuropsychology, neurological research, body-oriented therapy, art therapy, and the movement analysis method of Rudolf Laban. TDT incorporates various theories that relate to areas of knowledge about the body, movement, dance, psyche, creative process and creative expression. TDT develops its theory based on the idea of ​​psychosomatic unity - the unity of body and psyche, and has its own method of work based on communication through movement and dance.

There are no age or diagnosis restrictions for dance movement therapy. In Russia, TDT initially developed as a type of personal growth group for adults. There is a group and individual work with children and adults, with the help of which you can solve your personal problems related to relationships with other people, anxieties and fears, crisis life situations, loss of life meaning, misunderstanding of oneself. There is also family and marital dance movement therapy where family problems can be resolved. TDT is used as a preparation method married couples for parenting before childbirth, as well as for postpartum support - special groups for babies from 0 to 3 years old and their mothers. There are children's groups for preschoolers and schoolchildren, developing Creative skills, communication skills of the child, helping to prepare and adapt to school. There are unique programs for children that correct the disharmonious development of the child (such as delayed mental development, autism, minimal brain dysfunction, etc.). We are working on child-parent relationships. We work in groups and individually with people suffering from various eating disorders (anorexia, bulimia, compulsive overeating); with psychogenically caused symptoms and other somatic disorders. Group work is carried out with psychiatric patients.

Dance and movement therapy for Russia today is an innovative direction in working with various categories of people on health improvement, development and correction of psychological and physiological state. The range of applications of TDT is very wide. There are no restrictions on use either by age or by type of disorder or disorder. One of the most important points, which the dance therapist uses, is that the body does not lie, it is the only component of a person manifested in movement that has such a property.

Whatinnovative approach? This is first of all:

• The totality of the use of knowledge, skills and abilities related to various directions(psychology, therapy, physiology, art, creativity).
• Today it is no longer a secret for the enlightened that only a holistic approach to the treatment of any complexity and any type of disorder, both body and soul, gives real results.
• To be even more precise, almost all diseases are psychosomatic, i.e. Before manifesting itself at the bodily level, it appears as a mental image at the psychic level. And from this point of view, everything that is used in traditional medicine, the overwhelming majority, is hopelessly outdated.
• Until now, in our society there was a significant gap in the development of creative thinking and approach (much attention was paid to thought processes, cognitive methods to the detriment of the development of creative, creative thinking), i.e. only one predominantly hemisphere developed. A holistic and harmonious person is characterized by the development of both hemispheres.
• The most unexplored thing today, no matter how strange it sounds, is a person, especially his body, the connection between the body and the psyche.

Since ancient times, Dance has accompanied all rituals (birth, wedding, death, etc.), all holidays and celebrations, events of everyday life (hunting, fishing, etc.), and military campaigns. In dance, a person conveyed his relationship with the unknown, with nature, his connection with the Universe, with gods and spirits. Dance served as a means of spiritual and healing practice and expressed the Innermost in a person.

And TDT, after many, many centuries of treating dance as an elite art form, returns dance to its original meaning: it doesn’t matter how you move, what matters is what you sense, feel and think, what matters is what you express with your dance.

TDT is shown:

• For anyone who experiences emotional difficulties, conflicts, or is under stress.
• For those who want to develop skills in communication, self-exploration and self-understanding.
• For those for whom certain feelings or experiences are so overwhelming or overwhelming that it is difficult to find the words to express them, or for those who avoid their own feelings and cannot find the exact words to express their feelings, desires, needs .
• For those whose problems are related to physicality: body image, difficulties in movement, feelings of tension and muscle tension in different parts of the body, or anxiety about intimacy, physical contact and trust.
• For people experiencing stress or crisis in their lives, various kinds losses (death of loved ones, divorce, etc.) or dramatic changes in your life.
• For people who are concerned that their problems are not being solved for too long, that life seems to be going in circles, or experiencing a general condition that “everything in life is going wrong.”

The results of solving TDT problems are that a person:

• Begins to realize the relationship between his body and feelings, his bodily blocks and emotional state;
• Understands how to relieve tension and what needs to be done to achieve this;
• One learns to reduce this tension and thereby protect oneself from bodily pain and illness;
• Finds acceptable and desirable behavior options;
• Improves flexible behavior abilities;
• Learns the art of managing your feelings and thoughts;
• Develops abilities for trusting, harmonious relationships, finds ways to gain creative strength and access to internal resources, and much more.

The reader may have a question: “Why do I need all this?” Answer: as you know, a person strives to live more comfortably both physically and spiritually. And for this it is important to know what I want at a minimum and how to achieve it. And this is where difficulty usually arises for him. Many cannot find an answer to these questions, cannot satisfy their needs, because they do not realize the reasons for what is happening to them. And the reasons may be different. From the point of view of TDT, the reason may lie, for example, in the most early stages development, unmet needs of the body, gaps in motor development, restrained emotions or simply a lack of understanding of the body's needs, etc. And all this can be filled with the help of TDT, and often in the shortest way.

About training in Dance Movement Therapy

The training program for professional retraining in Dance and Movement Therapy has existed since 1995. This is the very first and so far the only TDT program in Russia that fully complies with the qualification standard of the European Association of Dance and Movement Therapy. This program is carried out by the "Institute of Practical Psychology and Psychoanalysis" (NOCHU VPO "IPPiP") - higher educational institution, which trains specialists in the field of psychology, clinical psychology, psychotherapy and psychoanalysis.

Purpose of the program: comprehensive professional training dance and movement therapists in accordance with the European educational standard for dance and movement therapy, ready to practice TDT in clinical, educational and creative institutions in accordance with the Code of Ethics and Code of Practice for Dance Movement Therapists adopted by the Association of Dance Movement Therapy (Russia) and the European Association of Dance Movement Therapy.

Leading experts from Russia, Europe and the USA are involved in teaching.

Upon completion of the program, a diploma of professional retraining according to the program is issued "Dance-movement psychotherapy" with the right to maintain professional activity in the field of psychological counseling.

The program includes:

• Seminars on the theory and practice of dance and movement therapy;
• Seminars on psychological counseling;
• Completion of dance therapy clinical practice;
• Supervision and personal psychotherapy.

Admission requirements:

• At least 23 years of age;
• Higher psychological education; or medical/pedagogical with retraining in psychology and/or psychotherapy;
• Experience practical work at least 2 years in the field of psychological assistance;
• Dance-movement experience, i.e. doing anything related to movement or dance.

Admission procedure:

1. Fill questionnaire and write essay.
2. Pass the Introductory course in dance and movement therapy. The course program includes: group dance-movement therapy "Basic life topics"followed by process analysis (50 academic hours); and the basics of creative dance (10 academic hours);
3. Pass an interview.

Currently there is a regional training program in Ufa. The Center for Healing Arts and Creativity, in collaboration with IPPiP and the TDT Association, conducts training seminars and courses within the framework of the requirements described above. You can take the Introductory Course "Basic Life Themes", "Creative Dance and Developmental Movement" and other programs on TDT and go through the admission procedure. All specialists are invited from IPPiP (Moscow). After each program, a corresponding document is issued.

Dance therapy As a separate direction of psychotherapy, it took shape around the 50-70s of the twentieth century (Rudestam, 1998). On the one hand, it originates from ancient rituals and traditions, and on the other, it is a “joint product” of the development of modern dance and psychotherapy.

The official definition of the American Dance Movement Therapy Association (http://www.adta.org/) states: “Dance movement therapy is a type of psychotherapy that uses movement to develop a person's social, cognitive, emotional and physical life.”

Like all areas of body therapy, dance movement therapy is based on the understanding that the body and psyche are interconnected - changes in bodily and movement patterns cause changes in the emotional, mental and behavioral spheres. Body and mind are seen as equal forces in integrated functioning. “There is such a close relationship between the muscular sequence of tension and relaxation (involved in all expressive movements) and the mental attitude that not only is the mental attitude associated with the muscular state, but also each sequence of tension and relaxation causes a specific attitude” (Schilder, 1950). The main goal of dance therapy is to encourage spontaneous expressive movements, through the implementation of which mobility develops and strength is strengthened not only on the physical, but also on the mental level (Osipova, 2000). Thus, one of the fundamental principles of dance therapy is the belief that when changing the manner and nature of a person’s movements, which reflect the traits of his personality, his feelings change both in relation to himself and to his own body. Through movement interaction, the therapist helps clients develop self-awareness, work through emotional blockages, explore alternative patterns of behavior, sharpen their perceptions of themselves and others, and induce behavioral changes that will lead to healthier functioning. Dance allows a person to express without risk everything that can and cannot be expressed in words; it facilitates access to deeply hidden fantasies and allows them to be given form, thus dance symbolically expresses human possibilities and conflicts.

Dance therapy is primarily used by people for whom movement is a way of processing information (they are sometimes called kinesthetics). To fully understand something, they need to feel it in the body and find expression for it in movement. For them, movement is a way of self-expression, self-knowledge and development (Biryukova, 1998).

These could also be people of a different type (say, auditory and visual types), who at a certain stage of their lives realized that in order to solve a problem they need to turn to their body, learn to understand its language and enter into dialogue with it.

Some therapists in this area combine the therapeutic approach with a certain type of dance (for example, flamenco or belly dance), but much more often dance movement therapy uses the style of modern or contemporary dance, since these are the directions that are associated with personal, authorial, deeply individual expression through movements .

The fundamental difference between therapy and dance school lies in the absence of a predetermined result - an image, a style, a vocabulary of movement. For dance therapy, it is more important how a person feels when he moves. The way it looks is more of a diagnostic value. The second difference is the presence of a therapist, i.e. a person with a special psychotherapeutic education combined with experience in dancing. The third difference is the relationship between verbal modality and dance. Dance therapy is always associated with establishing and deepening connections in the “body-mind” system and therefore refers to different languages ​​- both the “language” of the body, sensations, feelings, and verbal and symbolic languages. In principle, the relationship between these two modalities may be different, but the “therapeuticity” of the process largely depends on the creation of an adequate context, the possibility of comprehension and integration of experience.

The idea of ​​dance as a phenomenon that arises at the intersection of sociocultural, socio-psychological and personal coordinates allows us to define dance, taking into account its various functions, as (Shkurko, 2003):

1. A form of nonverbal catharsis. From this point of view, dance performs the following psychophysiological, psychological and psychotherapeutic functions:

The function of cathartic release of pent-up, suppressed feelings and emotions, including socially undesirable ones;

The function of motor-rhythmic expression, discharge and redistribution of excess energy;

The function of activation, energization of the body;

The function of reducing anxiety, resistance, tension, aggression;

Health function (function of psychophysical prevention);

Self-regulation function.

2. A type of nonverbal communication endowed with all the functions of communication:

The function of people knowing each other;

The function of organizing interpersonal interaction;

The function of forming and developing relationships.

3. The performance of communication functions by dance is possible due to the fact that it is a set of non-verbal signals and signs that have a spatiotemporal structure and carrying information about the psychological characteristics of the individual and the group. From this point of view, dance performs the following socio-psychological functions:

The function of expressing feelings, attitudes and relationships of the individual;

The function of creating an image of a partner and a group;

The function of understanding and mutual understanding, since it stimulates the processes of interpretation in communication;

The function of establishing and regulating relationships;

The function of self-knowledge and knowledge of others;

Relationship diagnostic function.

4. A sociocultural phenomenon in which social values, social attitudes are expressed, and social motives are reflected. It is from this point of view that the study of dance acquires special significance for the study of the history of human development.

5. A type of space-time art, the artistic images of which are created by means of aesthetically significant, rhythmically systematized movements and poses (Koroleva, 1977).

6. Symbol of life and worldwide movement.

The identified functions of dance reflect its complex nature and at the same time emphasize its sociocultural, socio-psychological and psychological statuses, which determine the role of dance in a person’s life and the possibilities of its use in psychotherapy.

Dance movement therapy can be part of various psychotherapeutic approaches and “work” at different levels of consciousness. In addition to the fact that dance itself is a harmonious physical practice, dance therapy can use various models of therapeutic work:

1) principles of emotional catharsis therapy (since the bodily expression of feelings is the most direct and natural way of accessing significant areas of experience);

2) model of psychoanalytic (deep) therapy (since dance allows you to understand preverbal experience and early stages of development);

3) scenario and role therapy approaches (since dance is the “highest and most perfect form of play” and a visual way of symbolization (Huizinga, 1992);

4) the views of existential therapy (when the themes of dance and “partners” in it are love, loneliness, freedom, responsibility and death).

There are three areas of application of dance therapy (Girshon, 2000):

– treatment of patients (clinical dance therapy) – in this case, dance therapy is more often used as an auxiliary therapy, along with medication, especially for clients with speech disorders. It is carried out in clinics and can last several years. It has existed in this form since the 40s of the last century;

– therapy for people with psychological problems (dance psychotherapy) is one of the types of psychotherapy, focused on solving specific needs of clients, most often using the psychodynamic model of consciousness (psychoanalysis) or the approach of analytical psychology by C. G. Jung. It can take place both in group and individual form. Also, to achieve a sustainable result, a fairly long period of time is required;

– for personal development and self-improvement. These are classes for people who do not suffer from problems, but want something more from their lives. In this case, dance becomes a means of knowing oneself, one’s special individual qualities, allows one to bring unconscious material to the light of awareness, makes it possible to expand one’s understanding of oneself, and find new ways of expression and interaction with other people.

Dance movement therapy can be carried out in group and individual form. There is also family dance therapy for working with family problems; There are children's groups for preschoolers and schoolchildren that develop creative abilities and communication skills that help them prepare and adapt to school. There are unique programs for children (parent-child groups) that correct disharmonious development (mental retardation, minimal brain dysfunction, etc.). We work in groups and individually with people suffering from various psychogenically caused functional disorders and psychosomatic diseases. Dance therapy is used as a way to prepare couples for childbirth and the role of parents, as well as for postpartum support - special groups for children from 0 to 3 years old and their mothers. We also work with people suffering from post-traumatic disorders, disabled children, and refugees.

For a person, creativity is one of the opportunities to penetrate into one’s inner world and get to know oneself. It appeals to the brightest and most sincere aspects of our soul. When we write, draw, dance or express ourselves in other forms of art, it allows us to relax, open up and be in harmony with ourselves, at least for a short time. Creativity is an effective method for healing the psyche, which today is widely used in practical psychology under the name art therapy.

Art therapy has the unique ability to bring to the surface everything hidden, hidden, unconscious.

Art therapy allows people to see their true nature reflected in their creativity and understand who they really are. It promotes a “breakthrough” of fears, complexes, and pressures, extracting them from the subconscious into consciousness. The basic principle of art therapy is that creativity in itself is healing. We are healed by the fact of creation, by the fact that we create and do something. And we don’t necessarily need to understand all the principles and mechanisms of operation of a particular method.

“Right-brain” creative activities are a kind of key to genuine experiences and to deep unconscious processes.

Art therapy has no contraindications. As a method of psychological assistance, art therapy has existed for a very long time. Among its many types, dance therapy stands out.

Dance therapy is a psychotherapeutic method based on creative self-expression and aimed at mental healing, self-knowledge and self-actualization. Self-actualization (from the Latin actualis - actual, real; self-expression) is a person’s desire for the most complete identification and development of his personal capabilities.

Dance is one of the most ancient ways used by people to express their feelings and emotions. Dance movements are a kind of means of communication. Dance is a living language, the bearer of which is man. Thoughts and feelings are conveyed through images. However, music is not a mandatory component. The origins of dance therapy can be found in ancient civilizations. Dance was used for communication even before languages ​​existed.

How does this work from a scientific point of view?

Wilhelm Reich, founder of body-oriented therapy. He said that if emotions (anger, resentment, joy, fear, etc.) are not given an outlet for a long time, they accumulate, forming a kind of muscular “shell.” Any human experience, both positive and negative, is expressed in the tension of any muscle group. There is a bioenergetic theory of a strong connection between emotional experiences and muscle tension. Dance therapy helps relieve this tension.

The main essence of dance therapy is that all a person’s mental trauma prevents him from freely expressing his emotions. Energy is spent maintaining this muscle tension. After reacting externally, it begins to circulate freely throughout all parts of the body.

Modern dance therapy aims to reduce muscle tension. It helps increase human mobility.

Group dance therapy is most effective. This technique allows group members to become more aware of their own bodies and the possibilities of using them. This awareness leads to an improvement in the physical and emotional well-being of the participants.

Dance therapists combine the fields of dance and psychology. They have an unusual perspective human development, which is based on the development of the entire body, and not just the intellect or motor abilities of the physical body.

How is dance-therapy different from dance lessons?

In dance therapy we are interested in how movement feels, not how it looks. It cannot be considered as a dance direction. This is a branch of psychology. There are no standard dance forms, making it accessible to everyone. A wide variety of dance types can be used. This method does not require special training, skills or talents. Sometimes they can even get in the way, as they set standards. Therefore, if a person has previously practiced or is engaged in dancing, he is offered to temporarily “forget” everything he knows, to abstract from his skills. Spontaneity is important here, allowing you to express yourself, understand your feelings, learn to trust and act with complete freedom. During dance therapy, it is very important to stop evaluating and criticizing yourself and your abilities.

In this case, dance is not an end in itself, but only a means that allows you to look into your inner world. Classes are aimed not at the result, but at the process, while during special dance training all efforts are aimed at mastering the technique. The goal of dance therapy is to help people learn to express their emotions. And movements have only an auxiliary meaning and are used to understand the experiences that resulted in them.

For example, a person who is always in a hurry may be unconsciously afraid to slow down in order to avoid experiencing the emotion that is bothering them. A person who unconsciously limits his movements in space may have a number of restraining self-limitations in life that are not conscious, but cause discomfort. Internal tightness is always expressed in stiffness of movements.

There is constant experimentation in dance therapy; there is no right or wrong, beautiful or ugly. Everything has value, no matter what happens. Each member of the group expresses himself as he can and wants. The sooner he can relax, open up, and stop worrying about the opinions of others, the sooner he will feel that what he creates is truly unique, beautiful and valuable.

Body as a tool

In the modern world, we treat the body as a thing, without feeling any gratitude or respect for it. We have learned to control the body, give it certain shapes and appearance, restrain it, and we think that it will remain unrequited. In sports high achievements(V pole dance including) consumer attitude towards the body. We constantly torment him, endure pain, fanatically mock ourselves in order to get results. What does it receive from us in return? We are even proud of this, elevating ourselves to the rank of great martyr fighters from sports: “Look, I’m in a lot of pain, but I’m still training, I feel bad, but I’m performing! What a great guy I am!” But we don’t understand until a certain point that there are no winners in the fight with our own body! By declaring war on the body, we declare war on ourselves.. To our patient “house”, to our “ship”, which we have only one for the entire journey called life. We demand all the time, we tell him: “Give!” And we very rarely say: “Take it.” All this can become a topic for a separate conversation.

Dance therapy perceives the body as a developing process - it invites to conversation, gives it the opportunity to speak out and be heard.

Why do we choose dance therapy?

In most cases, people come to dance therapy because they do not feel their body. Loss of body contact occurs when a person:

• seeks the approval and love of his parents (while developing the “should-shouldn’t” system);
• tries to avoid or evade punishment (by developing basic clamps, blocks in the body and its movements);
• learns to survive in the world around him (thus developing different degrees of depersonalization - rejection, non-acceptance of significant parts of his personality).

The essence of the dance therapy process is to restore feeling and awareness.Like other creative arts therapies, dance therapy places great emphasis on the creative process, the surprise of encountering the unconscious directly. Dance therapists draw in space and work with the music of the body's internal rhythm.

This helps make the invisible visible, the obscure clear. It is a common dance that we do together, and it is a unique dance that everyone must do for themselves. Our bodies reflect our relationship with life.

Can the pole become a means of dance therapy?

I know of cases where pole dancing really pulled people out of years of sluggish depression and returned them the joy of life from the very first lesson. This means that pole art can be used in a way that is unusual for us - as a new means of dance therapy. With the right approach, this can become a very interesting trend in pole dancing. The goals of professional sports, such as ideal mastery of technical elements and development of motor qualities, should not be pursued here. This direction is most suitable for people who are not involved in pole dancing and other dances. As mentioned above, professionals can be seriously hampered by their experience.

Our attention should be focused on our own body. What is meant is not its form and parameters, but its sensations, desires and needs. With the help of a pole you can acquire the ability to hear and understand yourself. Pole dance therapy is suitable for girls as a means of developing femininity.

In pole dance therapy, as in other types of art therapy, the most important thing is the process itself, which should be led by a qualified dance therapist. In order to obtain such a specialty, you must have a higher psychological or medical education, or pedagogical education with retraining in psychology/psychotherapy, as well as dance and movement experience. In this case, you need experience in pole dancing. For dance therapy, for obvious reasons, knowledge of psychology is a priority, rather than choreography or sports.

Pole art gives an incomparable feeling of flight, height, breadth of movement, and also helps to acquire smoothness and softness. The pylon can also be considered as a fulcrum. With the help of pole dancing, you can discover not only the limitless possibilities of your body, but also give healing to your soul, getting rid of everyday city stress, complexes and pressures.

Learn to hear and respect your body. Have a fruitful workout :)

1. The emergence and development of dance movement therapy
2. Basic principles and goals
3. Emotions and movement
4. Working with interpersonal relationships in dance movement therapy
5. Dance-movement methods and personal growth trainings
6. Conclusion

The emergence and development of dance movement therapy

The roots of dance movement therapy go back to ancient civilizations. Perhaps people began to dance and use movement as a means of communication long before the emergence of language. Taking an excursion into history, we see that dance was one of the ways of life, communication, and human harmonization. Human history can be considered not only as a chronology of events, but also as a history of movement.

Over time in Western cultures dance from a form of social communication of self-expression turned into an art form whose purpose was to educate and entertain the public (K. Rudestam, 1998). One of the first to contribute to the revival of creative dance was the famous dancer Isadora Duncan (20th century). It is traditionally believed that a person’s mental life is most directly connected with the body, with movements. A therapy that combines work with the body, movements and emotions is dance movement therapy.

Its development was influenced by psychoanalytic theory (W. Reich, 1942; G. Sullivan, 1953), analytical psychology by C. Jung (1961). One of the main advantages of dance and movement therapy is its continuity with the traditions of ancient cultures, in terms of understanding the structure and role of movement in human life and a holistic approach to physical and mental health. K. Jung believed that the mutual penetration of bodily and mental characteristics is so deep that from the properties of the body we can not only draw far-reaching conclusions about the qualities of the soul, but also from mental characteristics we can judge the corresponding bodily forms.

The literature identifies the following factors that contributed to the development of dance movement therapy:

After World War II, many people needed rehabilitation: physical and spiritual. Dance movement therapy contributed to this. The “First Lady” in this type of therapy was considered Marian Chace (Chace M.), who worked at St. Elizabeth in Washington, DC. She developed dance into a therapeutic modality. Working with non-verbal and mental patients, she has achieved great success. Patients who were considered hopeless became capable of group relationships and the expression of their own feelings.

Tranquilizers were discovered in the 50s. Dance movement therapy has emerged as an alternative program for the treatment of mental disorders.

Studies of nonverbal communication, including analysis of the communicative behavior of the human body (Birdwhistell, 1970).

The idea of ​​dance as communication was developed by dancer Mary Wigman: “Dance is a living language that a person speaks... Dance requires direct communication, because its carrier and mediator is the person himself, and the instrument of expression is the human body.”

In the 50s and 60s, dance also began to be used as a therapeutic modality for the treatment of emotional disorders. These are Trudy Shoop and Mary Whitehouse, Francesco Bowes and Lilian Espinak. They worked in different directions, but their common therapeutic goals were: integration of the body leading to a sense of wholeness, separation of group and individual expression of feelings, expression of emotional material including conflicts, memories and fantasies through symbolic actions.

The analytical psychology of C. Jung had a great influence on the development of dance movement therapy. “A body without a soul tells us nothing, just as – let us take the point of view of the soul – the soul cannot mean anything without a body...” C. Jung believed that artistic experiences, which he called “active imagination” , expressed, for example, in dance, can bring unconscious drives and needs out of the unconscious and make them available for cathartic release and analysis. “Soul and body are not separate entities, but one and the same life.”

Basic principles and goals of dance movement therapy.

The main goal of dance and movement therapy is to gain feeling and awareness of one’s own “I”. People turn to dance therapists because they, being alienated from the body, do not feel integrated. In our modern culture, we often treat the body as a thing, an object.

Joan Smallwood, a Jungian analyst and dance therapist, student of Mary Whitehouse and Trudy Shoop, identified three components of the therapeutic process:

1. Awareness (of body parts, breathing, feelings, images, non-verbal “double messages” (when there is dissonance between a person’s verbal and non-verbal message).

2. Increasing the expressiveness of movements (development of flexibility, spontaneity, diversity of movement elements, including factors of time, space and force of movement, defining the boundaries of one’s movement and expanding them).

3. Authentic movement (spontaneous, dance-movement improvisation, coming from an internal sensation, including the experience of experiences and feelings and leading to personality integration). Authentic movement activates those parts of the psyche that K. Jung described as parts of the unconscious. Authentic Movement as a method of dance and movement therapy, based on the analytical psychology of C. Jung, was created by Mary Whitehouse.

Dance movement therapy can serve as a bridge between the world of consciousness and the unconscious. Through dance movement therapy, the patient can use movement to express themselves more fully and to maintain their authenticity in connection with others. Unlike other bodywork approaches, dance movement therapy uses dreams, images or symbols to work with the body. Dance movement therapy is the only type of therapy that uses a lot of free space. The dance therapist works constantly with his own body, using it as a tool with which he gets acquainted with the non-verbal world of the client. Dance movement therapy, in addition to movement, also uses concepts such as weight, space, time to expand and enrich the client’s creative and expressive world.

The dance therapist concentrates on the relationship between therapist and client, client and space, and conscious and unconscious movements. Dance movement therapy comes in two forms: individual and group. In a group form, the process of dance movement therapy is based on the fact that the therapist directs the spontaneity of the participants’ movements and develops them. A typical group session includes 3 parts: warming up, its development and completion (this structure is also typical for other types of psychotherapeutic groups: psychodrama, gestalt, etc.).

Warming up helps you to join the group, better feel your state, and center yourself. The emotional states of group members are expressed and developed more fully at the bodily level, integrating thoughts, feelings and actions. As a result of the warm-up, group members typically feel relaxed, coordinated, and ready to move. Warming up also helps you begin to become aware of your feelings and thoughts and their connection to your body and movements. (For example: stretching of the shoulders and arms can develop into a pushing movement associated with the desire to push something away, an unpleasant situation or a person with whom it is associated). By repeating and intensifying the movements, the therapist helps each participant become aware of feelings through visual feedback. Motor behavior expands in dance, helping to become aware of conflicts, desires, and can contribute to the experience of negative feelings and liberation from them. Here the therapist must be very sensitive to what is happening in the group so that there is no emotional and physical overload, which leads to resistance to work. The therapist helps bring the movement process to completion (part 3 of the group process) using verbal feedback.

This stage promotes the integration of the physical, emotional and cognitive components of the structure of the self. Psychological themes, relating them to each person's personal history. One of the main topics of group work is "How to be yourself while in contact with other people."

1. In the past, dance movement therapy was used almost exclusively for people with severe disabilities. Today, it is increasingly focused on working with healthy people who have psychological difficulties, with the goal of developing self-acceptance, effective interpersonal and group interaction, self-actualization, and integration of parts of the self. Therefore, the socio-psychological aspects of dance and movement therapy are becoming increasingly interesting. There are three main areas of work for a dance therapist:
2. The body and its movements
3. Interpersonal relationships

Self-awareness

The goals of therapy in the first area are: to activate the body in order to help the patient discover fully tensions and conflicts, to develop more of the body's capabilities to experience a sense of bodily integration and coordination. In the second area, the dance therapist establishes communication through the use of rhythm and direct physical interaction. group experience allows for increased self-awareness through the visual feedback one receives through observing other people's movements. By observing how others express feelings through their bodies, a group member can begin to identify and discover their own feelings. The microcosm of the world presented in the group gives the group member the opportunity to receive and give feedback and expand the behavioral repertoire of socio-psychological roles.

In the third area, goals are grouped around the idea that mindful bodily experience promotes and deepens self-awareness. The most direct expression of individuality is possible through the body. This physical experience muscle action acts as a quick way to learn and gain experience about oneself, develops the self-concept and helps to increase self-esteem.

Dance-movement methods and personal growth trainings

In personal growth and transformation trainings, TDT is used for various purposes, in different volumes and with varying degrees awareness. The purpose of this article is to clarify the place and possibilities of TDT in the context of other techniques and areas of “new psychotherapy”.

The basic techniques of TDT are woven into the fabric of the general dance session and are parallels and interpretations of well-known therapeutic techniques in the language of movement and dance. We can trace several such parallels: joining by posture and breathing in NLP, joining by posture and movement (“mirror”); exaggeration, intensification of feeling and its expression in Gestalt therapy - design, exaggeration of a certain movement during a dance session, development of a theme into action;

working with muscle blocks and sequences of complexly coordinated actions in body-oriented therapy, releasing tension, expanding the range of movements in TDT, etc. Thus, we can say that TDT, having approximately the same arsenal of techniques as other areas of the “new wave” of psychotherapy, works with them in its own field in the body and movement.

An example of this is the Dancing Path process, also known as the Five Movement Dance. Its authorship belongs to the “urban shaman” Gabriela Roth. She identified five primary rhythms of movement, which, in her opinion, are present in all cultures and are representations of ontological qualities.

1. Flowing – smooth, soft, round and fluid movements; movements of "feminine" energy.
2. Stacatto – sharp, strong and clear movements, “masculine” movements.
3. Chaos – chaotic movements.
4. Lyrical – subtle, graceful movements, “flight of a butterfly” or “falling leaf”.
5. Stillness – movement in stillness, observation of the primary impulses of movement, “pulsating statue” (5).

There is special music for this process, each stage lasts about five minutes. Before the start of the process there is a briefing, after the process there is a talk.

It is recommended to perform the “Dance of Five Movements” with your eyes closed, completely surrendering, including your whole body in each of the rhythms.

These modalities or rhythms of movement in the context of therapy and personality research are representations of personality characteristics. The client or training participant may have an aversion to certain movements. Thus, quite often middle-aged women do not accept “masculine”, sharp and strong movements. “I’m not like that, I don’t like it,” they say. At the same time, they complain about the lack of attention in the family, the inability to express their feelings, and the position of the victim. In the process of work, it turns out that it is the clear, vivid and precise expression of one’s desires that helps change the situation. The source of strength is often located where we are afraid and unfamiliar to go.

Thus, this technique can perform several functions:

Diagnostic - a person discovers “mastered and unmastered” qualities and how this picture relates to his life. He can make a conscious choice - to master a certain area of ​​his life, previously unfamiliar or even “forbidden”.

Test - if you carry out this technique at the beginning and at the end of the training, then many people clearly perceive the degree and quality of the personal changes that have occurred.

Therapeutic – in combination with other techniques of awareness and transformation, the “Path of Dance” allows a person to find ways to express himself, expand the range of reactions and forms of interaction. In addition, the movement itself, which is also filled with personal meaning, has a positive psychophysiological effect.

Dance movement therapy addresses the dynamic aspect of muscle tension patterns. The dynamic aspect of muscle tension is sometimes difficult to respond to in any other way; even deep body-oriented work does not cover this sequence of tensions. By being aware of dance, by dancing freely and consciously, one takes a step towards accepting freedom and creativity in everyday life.

The dance therapist must have great sensitivity to what is happening in order to enable people to experience emotions, express them and transform them.

Thanks to working in a dance-movement therapy group with problems of trust, awareness of personal boundaries, and other personal problems, as well as with the help of feedback: verbal and non-verbal, favorable interpersonal relationships are established. A dance and movement therapy group is a microcosm of various social situations, thanks to which clients learn to more adequately perceive themselves and others and expand the range of behavioral capabilities.

Dance, as such, went beyond the usual boundaries and gained new life in the second half of the 20th century as an element of psychotherapy.

Dance Movement Therapy (DMT) has found widespread use in many parts of this planet because it uses a universal language of movement in conjunction with various psychological concepts.

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Dance movement therapy

Stupnikova Svetlana Alexandrovna,

teacher of choreographic disciplines class

MBOUDO "Fedorovskaya School of Arts"

Fedorovsky urban settlement, Surgut district, Khanty-Mansi Autonomous Okrug-Yugra

Therapy through dance and movement

What is dance to you?

Ability to keep yourself in good health physical fitness? Good posture? Good mood? New acquaintances? Or maybe finding yourself? Meeting with yourself, with your body?

Traditionally, a person is restrained in expressing his emotions, and dance helps to relax and show sensuality. With the help of music and movements, a person has the opportunity to feel his body and learn to enjoy it. In dance, a person meets his real self.

Dance, as such, went beyond the usual boundaries and found a new life in the second half of the 20th century as an element of psychotherapy.

Dance Movement Therapy (DMT) has found widespread use in many parts of this planet because it uses a universal language of movement in conjunction with various psychological concepts.

Dance is a unique action, improvisation. In spontaneous movements, a person’s unconscious takes on a visible form. Dance helps us play out the roles we take on in life and begin to relate realistically to the situation. Dance movement therapy helps to feel and understand the cause of symptoms and pain of various kinds.

Even Wilhelm Reich, the founder of body therapy, believed that all emotional experiences that a person does not express for weeks, months, years do not disappear anywhere, but “get stuck” in the muscles in the form of muscle blocks. The body and psyche have a constant mutual influence on each other. Dance movement therapy explores the body's reactions and actions and helps to find that inner integrity that has been lost as a result of the discrepancy between feelings and actions.

Dance improvisation is the restoration of a certain dialogue with yourself, with your body. This is self-exploration. This is a way of expressing emotions, and even memories.

Dance movement therapy is an opportunity to keep the flame of your life burning brightly and illuminating the lives of loved ones.

Dance movement therapy(TDT) - directionpsychotherapy , in which dance And movement used as a process that promotes the emotional and physical integration of the individual

History of development of TDT

The transition of dance into a therapeutic modality is most often associated with the name of an American dance teacher and dancerMarion Chase . She noticed personality changes in her classes in students who were more interested in expressing feelings in dance than in the dance technique itself. And so Chase began to turn more to freedom of movement, thereby discovering the psychological benefits that dance offered. At first she worked with children and teenagers in her own studio and in special schools. Then her work impressed psychologists and psychiatrists, and patients began to be sent to her.

In 1946, Chase was invited to try her methods on hospitalized psychiatric patientsat St. Elizabeth's Hospital (Washington, DC). This date is considered the birthday of dance and movement therapy. Chase has worked with regressive, non-verbal andpsychotic sick. Patients who were considered hopeless were able to engage in group interaction during dance therapy sessions and learned to express their feelings, which then allowed them to move on to more traditional verbal types of psychotherapy. Thanks to this, M. Chase's work received national recognition.

In 1966 it was foundedAmerican Dance Therapy Association (ADTA) , and this date is considered to be the beginning of the development of TDT as an independent discipline.

In Russia, dance and movement therapy appeared in the 1990s and initially developed as a type of personal growth group for adults and creative development for children. At the end of 1995, aDance and Movement Therapy Association , which works with the active support of the American Dance Therapy Association (ADTA),European Association of TDT And International Association for Creative Expression Therapy (IEATA) .

Description of the method

In their work, dance and movement therapists rely on a number of principles:

1. Body and psyche inseparable and have a constant mutual influence on each other.
2. Dance is a communication that occurs on three levels: with oneself, with other people and with the world.
3. Triad thoughts - feelings - behavior - a single whole and changes in one aspect entail changes in the other two (the principle of integrity).
4. The body is perceived as a process, and not as an object, an object or a subject.
5. Appeal to human creative resources as an inexhaustible source of vitality and creative energy.

Goals

1. Expanding the scope of awareness of one’s own body, its features and capabilities.
2. Developing deep self-trust and increasing self-esteem by developing a more positive body image.
3. Improving social skills in the safe space of a therapeutic relationship.
4. Integration of internal experience - establishing connections between feelings, thoughts and movement.
5. Creating a deep group experience.

Types of dance movement therapy

There are three groups of approaches in dance therapy:

1. Clinical dance therapy is an adjuvant type of therapy that is used in clinics along with drug treatment and can last several years. It is especially effective for patients with speech impairments and problems in interpersonal communications. Dance therapy has existed in this form since the 1940s.
2. Dance therapy for people with psychological problems (dance psychotherapy) - focused on solving specific client needs. The work can take place both in group and individual forms, and requires quite a lot of time to achieve a sustainable result. Most often, this approach uses the psychodynamic model of consciousness (psychoanalysis) or the approach of analytical psychology by C. G. Jung.
3. Dance and movement therapy, carried out for the purpose of personal development, is a class for people who do not suffer from problems, but want something more in their lives. In this case, dance becomes a way of recognizing oneself and one’s special individual qualities. It helps you understand the body's hidden stories, expand your self-image, and find new ways to express yourself and interact with others.

This division into groups is quite arbitrary, but it reflects the requirements for the education of a dance therapist and the real limitations of the use of techniques.

TDT is always based on direct experience, so dance psychotherapy techniques can be used internally different directions psychotherapy:

• emotional response therapy;
• psychoanalytic (deep) therapy;
• script and role-playing therapy;
• existentially - humanistic therapy;
• transpersonal therapy.

Basic principles of dance movement therapy.

Improving movements - The best way improvement. Why? There are the following reasons:

1. Nervous system busy mainly with movement.

2. The quality of movement is easily discernible.

3. The experience of movement is the richest.

4. The ability to move is essential for self-esteem.

5. All muscular activity is movement.

6. Movements reflect the state of the nervous system.

7. Movement is the basis of consciousness.

8. Breathing is movement.

9. The basis of habit is movement.

The main task dance-movement therapy - gaining feeling and awareness of one's own “I”. People turn to because they, being alienated from the body, do not feel integrated. In modern culture, we often treat the body as a thing, an object. In dance movement therapy we teach to treat the body as an evolving process. And another important difference between dance movement therapy and various approaches to working with the body is that here the client explores himself, his movements and develops along his own path. This therapy is more interested in how movement feels than what it looks like.
Joan Smallwood, Jungian analyst and dance therapist, student of Mary Whitehouse and Trudy Shoop, highlightedthree components of the therapeutic process:

1. Awareness (of body parts, breathing, feelings, images, non-verbal double messages, when there is dissonance between a person’s verbal and non-verbal message).
2. Increasing the expressiveness of movements (development of flexibility, spontaneity, diversity of movement elements, including factors of time, space and force of movement, defining the boundaries of one’s movement and expanding them).
3. Authentic movement (spontaneous, dance-motor improvisation, coming from an internal sensation, including the experience of experiences and feelings and leading to personality integration). Authentic movement activates those parts of the psyche that C. Jung described as parts of the unconscious, due to which unexpressed emotions that were blocked in the body are revealed.

Dance, psychotherapy and dance movement therapy:

differences and commonality

In the last few years, among many hobbies, there is one that cannot but rejoice - this is a passion for dance. It’s as if permission has come to realize a long-standing dream and a real need of many people - finally you can, you can dance without having a professional career in art or sports in mind, you can, simply because you want to.
And in general, our time is characterized by an explosion of mass dance, an increase in the role of everyday dances in the structure of mass cult. Dance has become an organic part of our lives. It is leisure and sport, it is entertainment and relaxation.

The combination of words is also increasingly used -dance movement therapy. Used in different options: dance therapy, dance therapy, dance therapy, etc.

Several different “understandings” can be distinguished:

1. medical - Dance therapy as a type of physical education, therapeutic exercises or shaping. Dance professionals also include such techniques as Pilates, Alexander and Feldenkrais techniques, or the still little-known BMC (body-mind centering).
2. New Age - ecstatic dance, meditation dance, etc. 3.psychological- dance techniques in the context of personal development training or individual therapy.

The potential for dance to have a therapeutic effect is very high, but is not the goal. Uniquenessprofessional dance and movement psychotherapyis that it is a conscious, purposeful and structured process.

How dance and dance therapy “treat”

The therapeutic mechanisms themselves in dance and dance therapy naturally overlap, but are not identical, and in some cases they are opposite. Two basic therapeutic mechanisms that exist in dance (and not only in dance) are its ability to be an expression of various human feelings and changes in the bodily, motor character of the individual when learning new movements.

Reaction , catharsis through reliving and awareness of emotionally significant moments of the past is a fairly common (and naturally contested) mechanism of depth and body-oriented therapy. In dance practice, there are two implementations of this mechanism:

Dance as a psycho-emotional release;

Dance as creative (symbolic and holistic) self-expression.

The first method more reflects ordinary and narrow medical approaches, but certainly adequately describes the processes of standard social functioning dance (disco, etc.). The second is more related to dance-as-art and its potential to combine physical, emotional, intellectual and spiritual processes into a single action.

Psycho-emotional releaseA fairly simple and costly (in terms of deep changes) method, a typical example of which in the therapeutic field is trance dancing. It draws on the orgiastic nature of dance. Self-expression - the field of expressive arts is an extensive and quite complex process that requires “entering” the material and mastering it. This could be working with a specific dance image that has a special emotional significance for the dancer.

Another basic mechanism is retraining . If violations are caused by problems and missed (dissociated) stages of development in the past or arrested development in the present, then retraining is an adequate mechanism for restoring the continuity and integrity of development. It can appear as:

a) rebuilding and transformation of dysfunctional patterns (working with posture, focus of attention in movement, etc.);

b) gaining new experience(for example, mastering new qualities of movement). Naturally, this division is conditional, and in the real process the mechanisms overlap and support each other. However, it makes sense to know, identify and use these mechanisms in a real process - creative, educational or therapeutic.

It should also be taken into account that specific dance movements and styles present a certain set of qualities that are characteristic of them. Therefore, “not all dances are equally useful,” rather, they are “useful” in different ways. And each direction has its own " back side" - what exactly this dance direction cannot teach, as well as a set of qualities that must be “rejected” in order for the dance to correspond to the style.

Many dance therapists combine a therapeutic approach and a specific dance direction (for example, flamenco or belly dance), but much more often in TDT the style of modern or contemporary dance is used, since these are the directions that are associated with a personal, authorial, deeply individual statement in dance.

Dance and Dance Therapy: Boundaries

The fundamental difference between therapy and most dance styles lies in the absence of a predetermined result - an image, a style, a vocabulary of movement. So even in dance improvisation the laws of composition (or their violation) are important, and in the context of a dance therapy session we may not pay attention to this at all. For dance therapy, it is more important WHAT a person feels when he moves. HOW it looks has, rather, diagnostic value.

The second difference is the presence of a dance therapist, i.e. a person who has a special (not purely dance, and not only psychotherapeutic) education. At the current level of development, even the presence of choreographic experience and psychological education can only be a starting point in becoming a dance therapist. One of the illusions is that Dance Therapy is an “easy” type of psychological work. In fact, this is a superficial view that can only lead to superficial results and profanation.

Some knowledge of psychology and dance, at best, can lead to what is called “creative dance”, i.e. creative dance. It is a process of creative development through dance and movement and is not directly related to the teaching of any dance skills. Creative dance can be part of dance therapy, but the context of dance therapy is broader.

The third difference is the relationship between verbal and dance modality. Dance therapy is always associated with establishing and deepening connections in the “body-mind” system and, therefore, addresses different languages: both to the “languages” of the body, sensations, feelings, and to verbal and symbolic languages. In principle, the relationship between these two modalities may be different, but the “therapeutic” nature of the process largely depends on the creation of an adequate context, the possibility of comprehension and integration of experience.

The very context of dance therapy, its positioning, is another difference. In other words, people can come to dance classes with not very conscious “therapeutic” needs and satisfy them, but these problems are sometimes easier to solve directly, through dance therapy. It is possible that this discrepancy between unconscious goals and technical dance training will lead to the opposite effect - rejection of the dance itself; as often happens in childhood, when the natural need for movement is too structured, adjusted to alien standards, when dance becomes only a technique and its ability to deal with the integrity and development of the integrity of the human being is forgotten. And when this is forgotten, dance remains an unfulfilled and even frightening, pipe dream.

Dance therapy and psychotherapy: position

There are different ideas about the place of dance movement therapy in the rich and diverse world of modern psychotherapy. Some consider it part of art therapy, understanding “art” as art in the broad sense of the word. But then we have terms for psychodrama, music therapy, dance therapy, but there is no special term to refer directly to “art therapy”, where “art” is fine art.

Dance therapy is stilla separate direction, requiring specific training and education, although in the real therapeutic process the techniques of dance therapy, the bodily approach and any areas of expressive art therapy are perfectly combined and complement each other. One of the modern trends in the development of psychotherapy is the development of a multimodal approach. And the boundaries that I spoke about need to be outlined only so that the unity of these approaches does not become an indiscriminate mixture.

Dance therapy techniques can be used within different areas of psychotherapy, since they are not an expression of a specific view of the nature of human consciousness, but rather create the opportunity to access and integrate various structures and layers of the body-mind system.

“So what kind of dance do I need to do for it to be therapy?” - they asked me on one talk show. The formulation of the question itself is interesting. It reflects a typical “mythology” (according to R. Barth) modern society when therapy is a procedure of taking the “right pill”. This “mythology” cannot deal with the real process of dance - living, ambiguous, unfolding in time. A process in which subject and object, author and work, process and result, living and life are One. A process in which the emphasis moves from results and goals toquality of stayprecisely this moment, and, therefore, the whole life, which consists of “these moments.”