Dance movement therapy: how to learn and change ourselves through movement
Health / / December 19, 2019
It is impossible not to be able to dance. It's the same as not to be able to run or jump. Yes, you may not be able to dance the rumba or salsa, but you can dance. It is not necessary to learn. This is the natural activity of the body.
People dancing around a fire long before invented the first dance styles. Year-old kid dancing to the music - crouch, spinning around him, waving pens. They never learned to dance, they already know how to do. Same as you.
Why is it important to dance
The dance is able to influence not only on the body. It can change your thoughts, attitudes toward themselves and others.
Have you ever noticed that all emotions are reflected immediately on the body, and body position affects how you feel? Here is a great story of a social psychologist Amy Cuddy about it.
Amy Cuddyour body language determines what we think of ourselves. It depends not only from others, but from ourselves. The body is changing consciousness.
Moreover, the behavior of the body is directly related to thinking, feelings and sensations. In the book of Moshe Feldenkrais "
Awareness Through Movement: Twelve lessons learned"Referred to the inextricable link between the muscle contractions and feelings.Behavior - is the mobilization of the muscles, sensation, feeling and thinking. Theoretically, each of the components can be used as the core. But muscles play such an important role that, if we exclude their patterns in the motor cortex, the remaining components of the action disintegrate.
Moshe Feldenkrais, engineer, psychologist, founder of the system of human development through movement.
Feldenkrais notes that the motor cortex of the brain responsible for the reduction of muscles of the body, is in close proximity to the structures that control thinking and feeling. Due to this arrangement, as well as the diffusion process and dissemination in the brain, changes in the motor part cause changes in thinking and feeling.
In addition, the body is able to memorize the positions at which spends most of the time. If you often experience negative emotions, they are frozen in the body and converted into movement patterns. If you are constantly experiencing fear, uncertainty, shyness, you shrink, retract his shoulders, slouch. Muscles are responsible for the situation, get used constantly be in tension. To relax them, you have to make a conscious effort.
A vicious circle - the emotions form the muscle clamps, constant tension fuels the emotions, and you already can not just get rid of this situation.
The good news is that in this way you can not only get a negative habit, but also to fix it.
Moshe FeldenkraisFundamental shift pattern based identity integration would destroy the whole relationship. In such circumstances, it is easier to change the thinking and feelings: the habit has lost its main support, the change has been made possible.
The body can not lie
We are so much emphasis on verbal communication, while 60 to 80% of the information is transmitted non-verbally. So, all the muscle clamps directly affect how we are perceived by others. You can lie to the words, but the body does not lie, and the surrounding read it.
Much worse when you start to lie to themselves without realizing it. Prevents you from social attitudes and fear learned in the deep childhood - all this creates a picture of yourself, create mental blocks and limiting your potential.
To understand what prevents you to live, and get rid of this, it is useful dance - present authentic movement, without the learned patterns and templates.
Natural dance for self-knowledge
body movements show who you are and what you think about yourself and the natural dance tells your story.
Why not just go to the dance? Any dance - it's great if it brings you pleasure. Moreover, by changing patterns of muscle, you can change your character. You can choose any dance direction.
But all dance styles, there is one significant disadvantage compared to authentic movement - they do not tell you about it.
Moshe FeldenkraisWe can observe how natural practices are gradually giving way to the purchased methods. Society in general denies the individual the right to use the natural method, forcing him to learn the accepted mode of action, and only then allow it to work.
Natural method reveals your personality and allows you to get to their problems. This is the moment when the movement is converted into psychotherapy and the method of self-knowledge.
How to learn and change ourselves through movement
There is a special branch of psychotherapy - a dance-movement therapy (DMT). And authentic (natural) movement - part of it.
If your city has a TDT or courses of authentic movement, go in with the professionals. If this is not possible, and you want to try, tell me how to get started.
analysis of dance
In the authentic dance it is important to take care of their emotional state, to see how the movement reflected in the feelings. It's kind of meditationWhich requires full concentration.
You can start with some experience or focus on your feelings to the person with regard to work, hobbies, anything. The idea is to generate traffic.
You can make out session on several levels:
- Concentration on internal sensations.
- Selection of bright emotions and movement.
- If there is some kind of special move, you concentrate on it, repeat it, strengthening the emotions that it evokes.
Let us examine an example. You start moving with the idea of a relationship with a man, notice a sharp chopping motion of his hands from the top down. You repeat this movement, making sure that what emotions it evokes - acceptance, rejection, anger.
You pull out the hidden emotions of the subconscious. In addition, living the emotion in the dance, you release repressed emotions that can affect your life - creates fear, to keep ahead of the traffic.
If you are not yet ready for a session with another person, you can record your dance on camera, and then analyze it.
steam therapy
More interesting and more efficient classes are held in pairs, where one man dances, and the second is watching. This basic structure authentic movement consisting of moving and witness.
A witness has several functions:
- It provides security. During the dance, everything is permitted - you can look around in the mirror, only up or down, move with eyes closed. You can move jumping, crawling on the floor, to move in sharply different directions. It is clear that in such circumstances, you might stumble upon something, fall or bump into objects standing nearby. Therefore, one of the functions of a witness - to protect you from danger.
- It gives feedback. While driving you can dive into the unconscious, the emotions and feelings and not to trace any connection or incidental emotions. The witness must be sensitive and not lose concentration on your driving to after the session, he was able to describe what happened, what feelings arise in response to your dance.
In this case, the witness should not make specific judgments about your movement or some parts of the dance. After the session you will be able to discuss dance.
Suppose you say you felt, or were at the time when moving slowly crawling on the floor and ask the witness, what associations or feelings of the movement caused him. Together, you can create a more accurate picture of what is happening. Someone else's vision whereby ye may interesting thoughts.
Just do not make a witness a man who is not ready. You may come to the criticism, misunderstanding, lack of empathy and concentration.
Suitable for authentic movement
This practice is not for everyone. On the one hand, this is not a dance in the general sense of the word, but rather a movement in psychotherapy. On the other - it is a dance in its original form - expression of emotions through the plastic, the disclosure itself in motion.
Authentic Movement is suitable:
- Those who are poor command of his body.
- People who want to learn more about yourself, remove mental blocks, live emotions, driven inward.
- Dancers who want to express their emotions in the dance, and not live someone else's, to discover new ways of plastic expression.
You do not need the ability to dance to sit on twine, perfect sense of rhythm, athletic build, knowledge and skills. All that you need - your body, emotions and music. Turn on the music, the sound of drums, metronome, or listen to the silence. Make some moves and let the emotions and feelings guide your body. Dance.