Dance therapy: description, history, essence of treatment. Dance and movement therapy

Dance and movement therapy

Dance movement therapy (DMT) is a field of psychotherapy. As a separate trend, it took shape around the 50-70s of the 20th century, first in the USA, and then in the 60-80s in Great Britain, Germany and Israel.
In the 80-90s, TDT was developed in other countries of Europe, Asia, Australia and Russia. The official year of birth of TDT in Russia can be considered 1995, when the TDT Association was created in Moscow.
It is clear that unofficially everything began much earlier.
Dance movement psychotherapy uses movement and creative expression in the context of a psychotherapeutic relationship that shifts from a purely verbal approach to a body-oriented one.

The process includes verbal and non-verbal communication, during which creatively actualizes self-expression, self-acceptance, the ability to make choices, make decisions and consciously develop, making your life more and more fulfilling, creative and meaningful. TDT is an interdisciplinary field: it exists at the intersection of psychotherapy and dance art. In addition, it is nourished by many other areas of knowledge. Among them: anatomy, physiology, psychophysiology, kinesiology, neuropsychology, a variety of theories of movement and dance, psychology, etc. - i.e. almost everything that can be attributed to the areas of knowledge about the body, movement, dance, psyche,

creative process

and creative expression.
MAIN SOURCES OF TDT It is impossible to understand the essence of TDT without referring to the main sources that feed TDT as a separate school of psychotherapy.:

In this regard, four

historical aspects
1. This is the development of science, and primarily of psychoanalytic schools associated with S. Freud’s discovery of mental reality and consideration of the psyche as the dynamics of conscious and unconscious processes in human ontogenesis. S. Freud gave impetus to the development of depth psychology, where three main schools can be distinguished:
Psychoanalysis by S. Freud

By the 40s and 50s, psychoanalytic trends had become quite strong in psychotherapy as an alternative to traditional hypnosis. Many other schools emerged that either refuted or developed these basic theories and practices - thus making invaluable contributions to the general understanding of psychological laws.

TDT was born, already relying on traditions and new psychotherapeutic schools and directions. Dance therapists (depending on their inclinations and general psychotherapeutic training and experience) could use the universal language of movement to relate and contrast their practice with any psychological concepts. TDT is a kind of meta-level that can draw parallels and combine knowledge, experience and concepts of various psychotherapeutic directions. At the same time, TDT develops its theory based on the idea of ​​psychosomatic unity.

2. The beginning of the century became the era of modernity in art: new forms, new principles were tried. The dance also went beyond the usual. Isadora Duncan is one of the most famous dance innovators in Russia. She was unique as a performer and expressed exactly those ideas that were the banner of modernist art.

She didn't leave school behind. The founding of new dance forms of dance pedagogy is associated with other names. And, first of all, it is worth highlighting the Austrian dancer, choreographer and philosopher Rudolf von Laban. He was an outstanding teacher and theorist of movement and dance.

It was R. Laban who put into practice the principle of the value of individual expression in dance. Having abandoned the usual ballet training, he developed his own approach to teaching and staging movement techniques, which made it possible to maximize the individual expression of each dancer. In addition, he created a system for recording and describing any human movement (like notes for recording music), which is currently the theoretical basis and method of analysis and diagnosis in TDT. His teaching was continued in the 60-70s by Irmgard Bartenieff, who added a special system of exercises (Bartenieff Fundamentals), harmonizing movement and teaching the correct and economical use of the body in movement. Currently, Labananalysis and Bartenieff Fundamentals are integral part

The middle name is the German dancer and choreographer Mary Wigman, the founder of dance expressionism. She was most interested in human affects. Emotional experience gave birth to bodily form and determined the quality of movement. In ballet, on the contrary, a set of certain forms serves to express different contents. Mary Wigman contributed
in dance pedagogy and choreographer's art of improvisation.

Dance improvisation is methods of spontaneous movement. When a person moves spontaneously, he expresses himself very accurately and honestly: in spontaneous movement, unconscious aspects of the personality can materialize. The unconscious can become visible, take shape, thus a person is able to reconnect with lost parts of himself, his psychological resources. And if you realize this, then the opportunity opens up for self-knowledge and gaining greater personal integrity and integration - and this is the main part and goal of the psychotherapeutic process. Those. it turned out that improvisation itself confronted dancers and teachers with the healing power of dance.

It is no coincidence that all the first dance therapists were students of R. Laban and M. Wigman or their followers.

For example, Marian Chace had her own studio. And gradually her interest shifted more and more from performing arts to the process of exploring individuality in dance improvisation. She saw her students open up and change as individuals, becoming more whole, more themselves.

There is a legend that among her students there were people who were simultaneously in psychotherapy. And psychotherapists paid attention to the improvement in the condition of their patients, which was associated with classes with M. Chase.

Gradually, some psychotherapists began to refer their patients to dance improvisation classes at her studio. And in 1946, Marian Chase was officially invited to work at the psychiatric hospital. St. Elizabeth in Washington, DC, where her method was born in close collaboration with psychiatrists. Probably, this date can be considered the birthday of TDT.

3. It is worth mentioning separately about Wilhelm Reich and his teaching about muscular-emotional blocks and characteristic armor. He was one of the most talented students of S. Freud, who was the first among analysts to pay attention not only to what the patient says, but, above all, to how he says it. Reich said that unexpressed emotional experiences are not
disappears, but remains in the muscles and “gets stuck” there in the form of muscle blocks. Emotions in the form of muscle clamps, remaining unexpressed and unconscious in the body for years, form a muscular armor, or characteristic armor, which reflects the methods of psychological defenses (often pathogenic) and its character structure, formed under their influence.

V. Reich, being an analyst, proposed not just verbal analysis, but he directly influenced muscle blocks in order to release them and the emotions hidden in them, and on this basis analyze situations, relationships with people that caused these feelings and experiences.
TDT refers to this understanding of psychosomatic mechanisms formulated by W. Reich, but practically does not use his working methods.

4. It is impossible not to mention the original purpose of dance and ancient healing practices, where dance was an integral attribute, and which was completely lost in modern civilization.
Even before the advent of language, movement and gestures were the means of communication of primitive people. And in the first human communities, dance was one of the main components of community life: both an individual way of expression (fear, sadness, joy, etc.) and a way of transmitting cultural heritage. Until now, in Aboriginal tribes, instead of asking:
"What tribe are you from?" They ask: “What dance are you doing?”

The dance accompanied all rituals of passage (birth, wedding, death, etc.), all holidays and celebrations, events Everyday life(hunting, fishing, etc.), military campaigns. It was in dance that a person conveyed his relationship with the unknown and unknown, with nature, his connection with the Universe and with gods and spirits. Dance served as a means of spiritual and healing practice. And the basis of this is not an aesthetic form, but an expression of 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.

After all, the body is the only thing in a person that does not lie and can help him reveal and express himself in all his fullness and truth.

Abraham Maslow said that "...just as man has instinctual needs that are part of his biological nature, he also has higher needs; for example, the need to be significant, the need for esteem and the need for freedom of expression."

If we translate this into the language of dance therapy, it is the need to be visible, which is only possible in movement.

So, to summarize the above, dance therapists turn to the healing power of dance, to the power of creative expression in movement, and also use the achievements of modern dance pedagogy, and turn to movement research and the experience of various psychotherapeutic schools (primarily psychodynamic, existential, humanistic and transpersonal ).

BASIC PRINCIPLES AND OBJECTIVES OF TDT

1. The body and psyche are inseparably interconnected and have a constant mutual influence on each other. For a dance therapist, it is an axiom to understand that the body is a mirror of the soul, and movement is an expression of the human “I”. By making the body more flexible, we make the soul more flexible, and vice versa. Therefore, the goal of therapy is to achieve self-awareness by exploring the body's reactions and actions.

2. Dance is a communication that occurs on three levels: with oneself, with other people, and with the world. In this regard, the task will be to create a safe space, a therapeutic relationship, so that, by analyzing the relationship with the therapist, and/or with other people, if this is group work, the person can find more effective ways of interacting in his environment.
3. Holistic principle, i.e. the principle of integrity, where the triad of thoughts - feelings - behavior is considered as a single whole, and changes in one aspect entail changes in the other two.

4. The body is perceived as a process, and not as an object, object or subject. The word process emphasizes that we are not dealing with something given, static, but with something constantly changing. The essence of such a process is best reflected by one of the principles of Tao: the ability to see statics in movement and movement in statics.

We have learned to control the body, give it certain forms, appearance, restrain it, and we think that it will remain unresponsive and will not give any feedback. And then inexplicable symptoms and pain arise, a constantly felt tension in the body appears, stiffness appears, and the range of movement becomes more and more limited.

The task, following a person's process (one might say his psychosomatic Tao) of dance - the therapist helps to release and reveal the information that underlies symptoms, pain, various kinds bodily discomforts and restrictions in movement - a person learns to understand the language of his body and, thus, restores dialogue with himself. This work also develops the ability to use movement and dance to express a full range of feelings, and to find
constructive ways relationships with your feelings without denial and suppression (the latter is destructive for psychological health).

5. Appeal to human creative resources as an inexhaustible source of vitality and creative energy.

Objective: development of self-esteem, self-acceptance and deep trust in oneself and in the life process, development of constant contact with one’s life resources. Here TDT addresses creative dance directly: these are moments of exploration and expression of emotional material (dreams, fantasies, memories) through symbolic movement.

WHO SEEKS A DANCE THERAPIST

These are, first of all, people, they are sometimes called kinesthetics, for whom movement is a way of processing information. To fully understand, 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.
They can all be united by the fact that at a certain moment these people may feel that they are not whole, have lost contact with themselves, or would like to change the quality of this contact. Psychologically, loss of contact with oneself is identical to loss of contact with the body.

Thus, summing up the above, we can say that TDT is indicated:

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 some feelings or experiences are too strong or so overwhelming that it is difficult to find words to say about them, or for those who avoid their own feelings and cannot find the exact words to verbalize their feelings, desires, needs.

For those whose problems are related to physicality: problems related to body image, difficulties in movement associated with a general feeling of tension and muscle tightness in different parts of the body, or anxiety about intimacy, physical contact and trust.

For people experiencing a stressful or crisis period in their lives, which is associated with various types of losses (death of loved ones, divorce, etc.) or a radical change in their lives.

For people who are worried 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.”

General goals may include:

Developing self-awareness, self-esteem and personal autonomy.

Establishing connections between your thoughts, feelings and actions.

Working through emotional blocks at the bodily level. Exploring alternative, more constructive behaviors.

Improving adaptive abilities and developing behavioral flexibility.

Expressing and managing overwhelming feelings and thoughts.

Development of communication skills.

Access to inner resources and creative forces.

Development of harmonious and trusting relationships.

WHAT CAUSES LOSS OF CONTACT WITH THE BODY?

As a child, a person seeks the approval and love of his parents, developing a system of “shoulds and shouldn’ts,” often without taking into account his own immediate needs;

He learns to survive in the world around him and, to varying degrees, rejects and cannot accept significant parts of his personality when society does not recognize them, or considers them unimportant, or does not adequately support the manifestations of individuality.

So, TDT as a field is huge. There are no age or nosology restrictions for TDT. The only limitation is the limitations of the dance therapists themselves (i.e., it depends on their specialization).

In Russia, TDT initially developed as a type of personal growth group for adults. Now the range of its application has expanded significantly. There is 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 life meaning

, misunderstanding of oneself. There is also a family TDT where you can decide family problems ; There are children's groups for preschoolers and schoolchildren that develop the child's creative abilities and communication skills, helping them prepare and adapt to school. There are unique programs for children (child-parent groups) that correct the disharmonious development of the child (such as mental retardation, minimal brain dysfunction, etc.); We work in groups and individually with people suffering from eating disorders (anorexia, bulimia, compulsive overeating); with psychogenically caused bodily symptoms and other psychosomatic disorders. 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.

Work with people suffering from post-traumatic disorders, disabled children, and refugees is beginning to develop.

TDT In Russia it is still a very new specialization. The Association of Dance Therapy (ADT) is gradually taking steps to develop this profession with the support of the American Dance Therapy Association (ADTA), the European Dance Therapy Association and the International Association of Creative Expression Therapy (IEATA).
Since 1995, there has been a training program on TDT in Moscow. In January 2005 we celebrate its tenth anniversary. Now this is a 3-year specialization in TDT at the Institute of Practical Psychology and Psychoanalysis with a state diploma of professional retraining. Irina Viktorovna Biryukova,

1. e-mail:
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 viewed 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:

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

1960s: “Human Relations Training Movement,” which promoted working with groups and developing methods for developing self-awareness.

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. modern culture We often treat the body as a thing, an object.

Unlike bodywork approaches (which we mentioned above), in dance movement therapy there is no ideal body model to achieve. The dance therapist treats 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 (the principle of client activity), his movements and develops along his own path, and the therapist follows him (i.e. non-directive style therapy).

This therapy is more interested in how movement feels than what it looks like.

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).

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.

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:

1. The body and its movements
2. Interpersonal relationships
3. 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 a basic level of 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 of 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 different purposes, in different volumes and with varying degrees of 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, strengthening of feelings and their 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 directions " new wave

"psychotherapy, works with them in their field in the body and movement.

In addition to the techniques within TDT, many techniques-formats (exercises and formats) have been developed that can be easily included in the context of many trainings.

1. These are exercises such as “continuum” (in its diverse Russian variants), “authentic movement”, contact improvisation, “pedestrian dance”, “body jazz” by Gabriela Roth and many others.
2. 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.
3. Flowing – smooth, soft, round and fluid movements; movements of "feminine" energy.
4. Stacatto – sharp, strong and clear movements, “masculine” movements.
5. Chaos – chaotic movements.

Lyrical – subtle, graceful movements, “flight of a butterfly” or “falling leaf”.

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.

Conclusion

Dance movement therapy allows you to work out the dynamic aspect of patterns muscle tension. 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, a person 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 yourself, 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 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 movement therapy appeared in the 1990s and initially developed as a type of personal growth groups 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 disorders 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 requests. 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 your movements is the best way to improve. 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, one is taught 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 becoming emotionally aware significant moments of the past is a fairly general (and naturally contested) mechanism of deep and body-oriented therapy. In dance practice, there are two implementations of this mechanism:

Dance as a psycho-emotional release;

Dance as a 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 area 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 disorders 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 certain direction of dance (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, but 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 the establishment and deepening of connections in the “body-consciousness” 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 to designate psychodrama, music therapy, dance therapy, but there is no special term left to designate “art therapy” itself, 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 modern trends The development of psychotherapy is precisely 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.”

Since ancient times, people have used dance as a tool for relationships. People danced during all significant events, in their anticipation and in glory of what happened. This happened behind the doors of the woman in labor and near her deathbed. With the development of civilization, dancing has become a subject of art for humans. They were assigned a strict place, and the occasions for dancing were limited to the limits of decency. But human nature has a love for dance, and then dance therapy was invented.

The basics of this science were laid down by famous psychologists. Among them are such as Freud, Adler, Jung. This science was propagated by A. Duncan, M. Wigman, Rudolf von Laban.

The first dance therapist in the world is considered to be the American dancer Marion Chace. She worked in the 30s of the last century. Her work was based on strict training in the rules different dances. However, the woman noticed that people were dancing more relaxed and were giving in to the invented movements with more enthusiasm. Their body relaxes, and a smile plays on their faces. She began to base her lessons on combining spontaneous dance and traditional movements.

To help emotions get out, a person must dance.

In 1966, the first dance association of America was founded. In the 90s, a movement that was popular in the West at that time came to us.

Dance movement therapy: theory and practice

Dance therapy has a positive effect on people who are unable to express emotions and suffer from this. Classes with dance therapists are conducted both individually and in groups. The course teacher must have a background in psychology and dance. The principle of working in a group is simple - those present receive a task, complete it and share their impressions with each other.

The benefits of dance therapy are threefold:

Health, blood supply and physical fitness are normalized;
A person, feeling himself in a new hypostasis, gains greater strength;
Learns using body language.

Classes help:

Group dance therapy

The difference between teaching in group dance therapy is that the people who come to the group become one part of the whole process. They look like a round dance or improvisation in a group. Particular attention is paid to the synchronicity of gestures and movements, the unity of students’ experiences. The groups are divided into pairs, where one of the partners plays the chosen role, and the second tries, with the help of body movements, to force him to abandon his position. Many students complain that new faces appear in groups and familiar ones disappear. But this helps those who remain learn to quickly adapt to changes and find mutual understanding with new people.

Dance therapists try to teach people to understand a partner through his movements, to look for the true background of his actions and actions. Conversations in the group give way to dancing, where each of those listened to expresses their thoughts with the help of dance steps. If group members are inclined to talk today, classes are held in the form of a monologue followed by discussion. If they want to dance more than talk today, the teacher follows the wishes of the group.

Dance therapy - exercises

There are several exercises that all dance therapists use in their lessons. If you are unable to visit dance groups, take advantage of their achievements in independent studies. So, exercises for dance therapy:

Dance individual parts bodies.

Turn on the music and dance. First with one hand, then with the other, then with each leg separately and so on. Be sure to “dance” with your face – lips, eyes, forehead muscles. As you dance, remember what feelings you had at what moment. Write them down in a notepad.

We move as best we can.

Now whichever one you like best, dance to it as you see fit. Change the motive to the opposite one and move to it. Write down how your mood changed depending on the change in dance and music.

Music style.

Select musical works V different styles. Try to exclude those that you don't like. Play in a row and dance, choosing movements spontaneously. Record your attitude towards each style and write down your feelings.

In front of the mirror.

Dance while looking at yourself in the mirror. How does the person dancing on the other side of the reflective surface make you feel?

Change your clothes.

Try putting on a costume show for yourself. According to each musical style, dress up and dance.

Are you a tiger or a rabbit?

Pretend you are an animal and move like the character you are portraying. Now explain why you chose a tiger, a rabbit or a kitten.

Try to move to the music the way you imagine doing something. For example, washing or ironing clothes. Take your regular activities as a template - brushing your teeth, eating, shaving, etc. Change movements, experiment.

Professional dance.

Play music videos or TV shows with lots of music and professional dancing. Copy their movements and steps. How does this make you feel?

Place a reproduction of the painting in front of you. Try to express her mood through dance.

We dance like others.

Remember how your friends dance. Reproduce their movements. How did this make you feel?

Sitting position.

Sit on the floor and move to the music while sitting.

Lying position.

Now stretch out on the bed or floor and continue dancing to the music.

Imagination.

Turn on some music, close your eyes, and try to imagine how you would like to move to it.

"Partner".

Take a toy, chair or umbrella as your partner. Whatever comes to your mind and doesn’t interfere with your movement will be suitable as a “partner” for dancing.

And so on until you can hold objects in your hands, armpits and between your legs.

Who needs dance therapy?

People who feel disharmony between body and spirit turn to dance therapists. This feeling arises from an early age, when the child does not feel the love of his parents and people around him, when he is haunted by a feeling of guilt for his actions, when he independently has to learn to survive in the world around him. Including if in adolescence the person felt dissatisfied with his body. This feeling does not disappear over the years. A person seeks and finds in dance therapy awareness of himself, body and personality.

The whole process is built on the struggle of opposites or the achievements of what was considered unattainable. In addition, a person, discovering new possibilities in himself, learns to think creatively. He views himself from different points of view, begins to look at things realistically, and correctly evaluate actions and misdeeds.

Dance therapists enable students to feel the rhythm of music and express inner feelings through body movements. They evoke from the hidden corners of every person’s soul those experiences and problems that have never found solutions. They help find answers to questions that people have been looking for in vain for years.

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Illness is just a result, an external indicator of our emotions and experiences. It makes no sense to treat her with pills. The physical state depends solely on the mental state.
The urban rhythm of life leads to muscle tension.

One of the best and effective means relieving muscle tension - This dance. =)

The body relaxes - the psyche relaxes too, suppressed emotions are released, energy flows freely through the channels of the body, improving health and general condition.

Dance improvisation - these are ways of spontaneous movement where we can express ourselves and our feelings. A person gains the opportunity to know himself from the inside and feel the integrity of the physical and mental.

In therapeutic dance, it is not necessary to have dance skills; it is important to feel and express yourself in dance. You need to dance not only with your body, but also with your soul, with your eyes, smiling inside.

Tasks:

• Follow an internal process to release and uncover the information that underlies symptoms, pain, bodily discomfort and movement restrictions.
• Learn to understand your body language and use dance moves for full expression of feelings.
• Development of self-esteem, self-acceptance, trust in yourself and in life.

Dance improvisation helps:

1. Resolve internal emotional conflicts, free yourself from stress.
2. Express feelings for which there are no words.
3. Free your body from muscle tension and gain ease of movement.
4. Gain access to inner resources and creative forces.

The essence of dance therapy is to express your condition or problem with movement. “Live” a mood, conflict, feeling, sensation in dance, and this means going halfway to recovery.

By creating our dance, we create a space in which we transform, acting out our experiences. By “dancing” our state, we free ourselves from muscle tension that prevents us from living life to the fullest.

The body is capable of recovering, you just need to learn how to handle it correctly, to be able to “negotiate.” Diseases of the body are caused by psychological blocks that are felt on the physical level.

Distrust of one’s own body, dislike of one’s physical appearance, inability to perceive one’s spiritual and physical “I” as a single whole—dozens of others arise from these problems.

Dance frees people from their complexes, teaches them to be friends with their body and understand its language. But first you need to dance your “dance of the soul”, and only then move on to classical rhythms.

The goal of dance therapy is to remove the limitations of the individual.

The physical expression of emotional health is graceful movement, good muscle tone, good contact with the people around you and with the ground under your feet, clear eyes and a soft, pleasant voice.

Dance is a spontaneous transformation inner world into movement, in the process of which creativity and the potential to change old ways of life are awakened.

Dance improvisation technique.

Standing, feel your body as a single whole, “enter a state.” Track areas of discomfort or those that do not fit into the overall feeling of the body. Focus on them and let your body make some movement. Any. The main thing is that the mind does not interfere with its assessments of “right or wrong,” “beautiful or not.” Surrender to the sensations and move the way your body wants.

Finish when you feel complete. Usually the body stops on its own. There is no need to manage this process. Also work by working through psychological problems or dancing themes.

Improvisation to music is the expression of bodily sensations evoked by music.