Heard of Dance/Movement Therapy? Pass it on!

I have a few Dance/Movement Therapists that I hold up on a major pedestal. One of them is Lora Wilson Mau. Her energy, passion, and focus in the field of D/MT is contagious. As past president of the California chapter of the ADTA, she was revolutionary in organizing, motivating, and networking D/MTs to get together throughout the state. Knitting together once fragmented pieces of the chapter, Lora continues to inspire others to be better human beings, to share, give, or offer what they can. Her brilliance is not just with people, though. She also is a tremendously passionate writer.

I am re-posting from Lora Wilson Mau's blog, Moving Towards Understanding, which beautifully articulates the need for the world to know about Dance/Movement Therapy. So pass it on!

Dance/Movement Therapy Goes Viral (Please?)
February 21, 2011 by Lora Wilson Mau, MA, R-DMT
Let me put my cards on the table.

I started this blog two years ago out of a deeply felt frustration that I know is shared by many of my fellow dance/movement therapists. I know they share this frustration in some form or another because the topic and the discussion of ways to address it has been repeated – for years – in professional discussions, online forums and local and national dialogues. It is an ongoing issue for our professional community.

The frustration is this:

In the 21st century, how can it be that the profession of dance/movement therapy is not better known? Better understood? At the very least, heard of? Granted, if one is not working in the mental health or rehabilitation or wellness professions, then it is perhaps logical that the profession be an unfamiliar concept. Certainly, I have never heard of countless occupations. But, how can it be in the 21st century, over ten years since the “Decade of the Brain” concluded, that dance/movement therapy is not better understood by our colleagues whose professions involve psychology or neuroscience?

How is it that when one googles “dance therapy” on the internet, one gets more references to Brittany Spears and pole dancing or random dance classes than one gets legitimate information on the nearly 50 year old profession of dance/movement therapy?

This latest spike in frustration was inspired by the recent feature on Anderson Cooper 360 that took a close look at a day in the life of Gabrielle Gifford’s rehabilitation at the TIRR Memorial Hermann Hospital in Texas.

How is it that when Dr. Sanjay Gupta visited the hospital to get a hands on experience of a day in the life of Congresswoman Giffords’ recovery, dance/movement therapy was not included in the diverse list of therapies? Yes, music therapy was on the day’s agenda and, to Dr. Gupta’s credit, he really appreciated the power of music therapy to work “on developing … attention, memory and overall executive function.” This acknowledgement on a show as respected and widely viewed as CNN’s Anderson Cooper 360 is a real boost for our colleagues in the music therapy profession.

But dance/movement therapy was NOT on the schedule and it was not addressed by Dr. Gupta – by name. However, a quick glimpse at the video of the music therapist, Maegan Morrow, reveals that she was incorporating movement with the music to help her patients improve cognitively and learn to walk again. “Lean 2, 3, 4, Push up, 2, 3, 4…” The diverse therapies at TIRR Memorial Hermann Hospital work together to rehabilitate patients from traumatic injury… and yet the experts on using movement psychotherapeutically, who are specifically trained in connecting through movement and facilitating movement and rhythm – for whatever end goal – are not on that team?

“The brain learns best when it processes cognitive, affective and psychomotor information simultaneously.” (emphasis mine.)
Dr. Michael Merzenich
Neuroscientist

This is fundamental knowledge to neuroscientists and to anyone familiar with “brain-based learning.”

Movement is not only integral to healing psychologically, it is integral to effective rehabilitation of the brain, to learning and to brain plasticity.

Though my peers and I ask these questions – how, how, how can the world not know? – we do so, of course, acknowledging the onus is on us, the dance/movement therapists. This is precisely why I blog on DMT, why I encourage my colleagues to do the same and why I am writing a book on the topics of this blog.

To read the rest of this post from the Moving Towards Understanding blog, click here.

Music Heals.

The Dana Foundation newsletter recently released this article on How Music Helps to Heal the Injured Brain. Happy reading!

PLEASE SIGN UP FOR THIS COURSE!

The Center for Movement Education and Research

January 9,10, 2010 – Scripps College -- Claremont CA
February 13,14, 2010 – Pomona College --Claremont CA
9:00am – 5:30pm

http://www.movement-education.org/courses_alternateroute_socal.html


Course Title: Dance/Movement Therapy with Seniors —30 hrs
This dance/movement therapy theory, practice and application course will cover the specific developmental needs of seniors and the dance/movement therapy skills pertinent to working with this population age group. The course content will focus on physical, psychodynamic, psychopathological, and enculturating factors impinging on the later years of human development. Students will be exposed to various clinical concepts of dance/movement therapy viewed within a developmental framework that are pertinent to selected late adulthood populations, including clinical disorders of late adulthood and, the types of somatic transference/countertransference issues that might be encountered.

This course has been approved by the American Dance Therapy Association as meeting the Alternate Route Requirements for the R-DMT credential" and satisfies 30 hours of DMT Theory and Practice Training.


This course meets the qualifications for 30 hours of continuing education credit for MFTs and/or LCSWs as required by the California Board of Behavioral Sciences (Provider #3888). Students taking the class for continuing education are excused from the required assignments other than attendance and participation.

Course Objectives:
1) Students will develop an understanding of the developmental needs, tasks and challenges presented when working with various senior populations.
2) Students will develop a basic understanding of dance/movement therapy assessment and application of dance/movement therapy interventions as they apply to various senior populations.
3) Students will learn interventions through which to facilitate an individual or group dance/movement session for various senior populations.
4) Students will be able to design and facilitate a dance/movement therapy session for seniors that is developmentally sound and takes into account the unique developmental, physical, emotional, psychological and cognitive needs of seniors.
5) Students will conclude the class with a beginning level awareness of dance/movement therapy processes and techniques utilized in working with seniors.

Locations:
Scripps College
Richardson Dance Studio
1030 Columbia Ave
Claremont, CA 91711
Pomona College
Pendleton Dance Center, Studio 16
210 East 2nd Street
Claremont, CA 91711

Course Fee: $750.00

Course Instructor: Gabrielle Kaufman MA, BC-DMT, NCC
is a CMER faculty member, dance/movement therapist and counselor with close to twenty years experience in the helping profession. She has taught creative movement to preschoolers and elementary school students, has used DMT with the elderly, Holocaust survivors, adults with mental illness, individuals with eating disorders and body image issues, with teens at high risk and other individuals suffering from anxiety and depression.
Currently, she is the coordinator of the New Moms Connect Program of Jewish Family Service of Los Angeles. She has run several programs for high risk children and teens in both English and Spanish languages, taught classes to parents of newborns and toddlers, and runs support groups for single parents, women with eating disorders and women with perinatal mood disorders and with seniors. She is a coordinator with Postpartum Support International and has a private practice in Los Angeles.

For Information and Application Contact:
Judy Gantz-CMER Director
POB 2001
Sebastopol, CA 95473

(310) 477-9535

High Probability of Survival with Children who have Cancer

Since I've been thesis-thesis-thesising lately, I apologize for not updating my blog as much as usual.

Today, I'd like to offer a post I read on the Art Therapy blog regarding a study in Germany on children with cancer and their high probability of survivial. Here's the original article, too.

This research is exciting for the fields of creative and expressive arts therapies, since it highlights aspects of the role of music therapy, positive effects of parent accompaniment, and the importance of quality of life in the hospital.

Arts in Healthcare

From Musings of a Dance/Movement Therapist blog:

Arts in Healthcare Seen Yielding Benefits
According to a new study by the Society for the Arts in Healthcare, Americans for the Arts, The Joint Commission and the University of Florida Center for the Arts in Healthcare documents that incorporating the arts into health-care settings has multiple benefits for patients and may reduce health-care expenses. Up to half of health-care institutions in the U.S. incorporate arts programming into their care. Benefits from arts programming include shorter hospital stays, less need for medication, and a boost for job satisfaction and employee retention. Philanthropy Journal, Oct 19, 2009

SotoMotion Performance Lab in San Francisco

I am definitely going to try to get my booty to Performance Lab this fall. G Hoffman Soto, on faculty at the Tamalpa Institute, is pure genious. In his classes in the past, I have learned so much about myself, not only anatomically and physiologically, but at a deep and embodied level. I hear my heart beat, feel my blood like warm jelly spreading throughout my fingers and toes. I feel powerful, I feel strong. Alive. For anyone interested in expressive arts or creative arts therapies, Soto creates and fosters a safe environment to explore the self, your relationship with others, and the world, its a blending of dance class meets improvisation meets drama therapy. It is truly a mystifying and enlivening experience to attend Performance Lab. Hope to see you there!

IMPROVISATION AND THE PERFORMANCE LAB

Improvisation is a powerful metaphor for life. Studying improvisation provides a vehicle to understanding who we are in the present moment, and to develop ourselves through being awake and present in the moment. To improvise you have to be able to put aside your everyday mind and open up to a state of mind that exists in the now. You have to give over to the bodymind, the movement, and the present moment.

Movement, and a strong embodied physical presence, anchors and centers us in our bodies and in the present. The process is supported with awareness work to assist us in developing a strong kinesthetic base. From the embodied state we can begin to shape and change ourselves and our material both as artists and as human beings. Our personal history lives in the body and through the body we can access this energy and channel it into our creative life.
Improvisation comes very close to mirroring life. It is an art form that has the potential to be a direct reflection and practice of being. When improvising one has to be present and respond in a way that keeps this moment, and what is happening in the moment, alive.
The second part of the Performance Lab process is Movement Exploration. Movement Exploration is a development and refinement of the material that arises from the Improvisation process. M E allows us to recycle and rework our material, to shape and deepen it, and ourselves, in this model.

The Lab provides an environment for participants to develop skills for ones personal creative process through performance. The process moves through awareness, expanded artistic expression, and creativity for personal growth and embodiment that leads to transformation through the Movement Theater model.
The work unfolds in solo, duets, trios and ensemble configurations. The voice and spoken word layer and texture the work to give it a dynamic range of expression and creativity. The spoken word includes improvised text, as well as, developing our personal stories and myths.
The Performance Lab is for performers, actors, dancers, teachers, therapists, coaches, housewives and everybody and anybody who wants to develop themselves as artists, performers and human beings.

While talking about being one with the Tao, Lao Tsu said, “Accept what is in front of you without wanting the situation to be other than it is.” If we add to that “yes, accept what is, and then work with it,” then we have an idea of what Improvisation can be.

The Performance Lab is movement theater model that creates a space to explore, improvise, express and create in movement, voice and spoken word. The class works through both improvisation and developing material. Participants will work in solo, duet, trio and ensemble configurations and is open to all levels of experience. The class has both advanced and more beginning students. Soto believes that we all learn from each other regardless of our experience.

G Hoffman Soto has been teaching, performing and studying movement since 1968. He has been developing this body of work for over 25 years. Soto has taught internationally since 1979 throughout Europe, Japan, Lebanon, New Zealand, Australia and Hong Kong. He has been associated with Anna Halprin, the San Francisco Dancers’ Workshop and Tamalpa Institute since 1973 and has a wide background in Post Modern Dance, various movement and awareness studies, Martial Arts and Body Work. Soto subscribes to the theory that creativity goes to the very core of what it means to be human. “When we are involved in the creative process we are anchoring ourselves in our humanness.”

When: Monday evenings 7pm to 9:30pm, beginning November 16 until December 14. The final class will be a student studio performance.

Where: Mary Sano Dance Studio at 245 5th Street #314, San Francisco between Howard and Folsom.

Costs: $125 with a $10 discount if paid in full by evening of the first class. For further information, questions and or to send deposits of $50 and reservations please contact:

GH Soto
Tel # 415 342 4899
e mail: sotomotion@me.com
Visit the web site at www.sotomotion.com

Self Portraits and Healing

William Utermohlen’s self-portraits reveal his descent into dementia over the span of nearly four decades. The accompanying NY Times article can be read here.

In my expressive arts therapy (movement, drawing, writing) training with Anna and Daria Halprin at the Tamalpa Institute, self portraits are introduced as an integral part of the life/art process, at the beginning of the training and at the end.
How we paint or draw ourselves is a creative and symbolic process which can create a dialogue between our psyche and soul. "...the drawing...can contain and express our suffering in ways which help us be with it and move on, finding a healthy way to reintegrate, or live differently with, our wounding experiences" (Halprin, D, p. 179).

Utermohlen's self portraits from 1996-2000:

Becoming an Embodied Therapist Workshop with Susan Kleinman

Becoming An Embodied Therapist workshop
Read the news straight from the Hope Blog here.

BECOMING AN EMBODIED THERAPIST:
ACCESSING THE LANGUAGE OF THE BODY IN EATING DISORDER TREATMENT
Wednesday December 9, 2009
9am - Noon
Hancock Center for Dance/Movement Therapy

Earn 3 CEU's
Workshop Cost: $60.00

This workshop offers the opportunity for mental health professionals to discover and trust their innate ability to "attend" empathically, respond authenticcally, and translate non-verbal experiences into cognitive insights. Experiential body/mind exercises based on dance/ movement therapy principles will be used along with didactic presentation, to integrate a more embodied approach into traditional psychotherapy theory and practice.
Participants will learn how these embodied methods can be used to treat individuals with eating disorders with a special focus on how to:

- Be more fully present and congruent.
- Facilitate a somatic state of readiness.
- Utilize treatment techniques based on mind/body congruity to deal with issues
underlying eating disorders.
- Track the process of therapy so as to not become lost in the experience of attending.
Workshop Presenter Susan Kleinman, MA, BC-DMT, NCC, is the dance/movement therapist for residential and outpatient services at The Renfrew Center of Florida. Ms. Kleinman is a trustee of the Marian Chace Foundation, past president of the American Dance Therapy Association, and a past Chair of The National Coalition for Creative Arts Therapies. She is co-editor of The Renfrew Center Foundation's Healing Through Relationship Series, and serves on the editorial board of the Journal for Creativity in Mental Health. She is the American Dance Therapy Association Recipient of the 2009 Outstanding Achievement Award.

Breath Made Visible, a film about Anna Halprin

Anna Halprin, post-modern dancer, pioneer, innovator, teacher, co-founder of the Tamalpa Institute (the school of which I just completed my MA coursework through!), shares her life and creative life/art process in this film by a French filmmaker and former student of Halprin's.


I highly recommend you check out the trailer for the film RIGHT NOW.

American Dance Therapy Association Conference

And the countdown begins!!!

The American Dance Therapy Association conference is next week, October 8-11th in Portland, Oregon.



I will be co-presenting with the fabulous Lora Wilson Mau, DTR, and Ty Tedmon-Jones, ADTR on the topic of BLOGGING! This is where it all began, folks. We are so thrilled to be presenting such a great topic. I've learned so much about blogging, Twitter, and marketing since my first post November of 2008. Hope you all can join us in the dance across the world wide web presentation.

If you are able to come to the conference, it promises to be an educational time filled with fun and a huge dance party on Saturday night.

Hope to see you there!