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.

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!

Dancing with Apples on the Road

What do you want to reach for right now in your life?

It’s amazing how many patients reach for apples. Their arms reach upward, outstretched in a single movement, as they pick an imaginary apple off an imaginary tree. I see a gentle twist in a wrist indicating pulling the stem off of a branch, I see the rounding of fingers as if to hold the apple in the palm of their hand, bringing it in to their body. Sometimes they want to bake an apple pie with the apples, or offer one to their neighbors. Patients will reach for all types of apples--red, green, Fuji, pink lady, delicious, Macintosh--and I’m amazed with the diversity of apples present within our diverse group, but then again, this is Berkeley, a Northern California utopia for foodies. Everyone knows their varietals, they get to taste them at the local artisan farmer’s markets, experiencing a myriad of tastes and textures—sweet, bitter, sour, crisp, juicy, bland, mushy—and many are aware of which fruits are in season. As we’re approaching autumn now, the season for apples, and I’d like to offer you one to provide you with an apple dance, full of nourishment.

I wonder if it’s this metaphor of apple that is so intriguing to hospital inpatients. Do they yearn for nutrition, or comfort, or childhood snack time memories? Do they crave the seeds, the core, the flesh, and the skin as a way to reach for and hold a metaphor of their own body?

I am reaching for so many things I desperately want right now.

Most of all, I want to become a certified dance / movement therapist. I feel so passionately about this work that I want to scream it from the mountaintops and shout it through the valleys. Dance with others to help them? This is the best job on earth! This work feeds my soul and speaks to my truth, my intuition of yes. Movement works. To dance is human. To dance is art. It connects us to ourselves and others, and makes us feel better. Results are often instantaneous. But dance is also an act of alchemy and is purely improvisational, one that requires many tools for working with a myriad of populations, and a ton of education.

As an alternate route student in California, I made the commitment to become Dance Therapist Registered (DTR) knowing that it is a challenging road, mostly because there is no ADTA approved graduate program in the state, so the road ahead is bound to have a few speed bumps. At times, the road is not paved, and other times, it’s smooth and conducive to cruise control. I imagine my road is now surrounded by apple orchards, full of vitality and abundance, and most of all, opportunity.
When I first began my journey to become an alternate route student, I felt isolated and disconnected from my peers. I craved human connection with others reaching for my same goal.

So I started this blog.

I began my personal blog, The Dance to DTR, in November of 2008 as an effort to put my energy, experiences, and questions out into cyberspace. My hope was that others going through the same wonders, trials, and tribulations along the road would miraculously find my needle of a blog in the vast cyber haystack, and that the blog would become a platform for what to do (or, at times, more aptly what not to do) to become a dance/ movement therapist.

But now my blog has transitioned, in its own timely dance, to become a marketing tool for the field of dance and the expressive and creative therapies. Now my goal has also transitioned to explain what dance therapy is to the world. I blog and put a link to it to send it out on Twitter. I search for others in cyberspace who have similar interests or stories and continue to write, to learn, and to reach for more.

I was doing a lot of reaching and not a lot of receiving. And then one day I received a comment on my blog from a young woman that read,

Oh my gosh, i am soo happy to have stumbled upon your blog. It is my
dream to become a dance therapist but I am really confused as to where
I should start and what I should do. Do you happen to have an outline
as to the steps you took? Would you mind if I emailed you or scheduled
a phone interview? Thank you so much for providing all this information!

Someone found my blog! It’s a miracle!

The young woman called me for information on educational opportunities for alternate route certification in the state, and, with all the bottled energy I had planned to share with everyone interested in becoming alternate route in California, I talked her ear off. I told her about my journey and my thoughts and my advice, and about the then future event the California chapter (SCCADTA) was promoting in her area. I told her to sign up for the list serves to stay abreast of events, and of course, to stay tuned to my blog.

She arrived at the SCCADTA event a few months later, introducing herself to me, and as I reached out my arms to give her a welcoming hug, I felt proud of my journey thus far, and of meeting my intention to help others.

How ‘bout them apples?

International Expressive Arts Therapy Association (IEATA) Convention

The IEATA convention is this week in Cambridge, MA. I am not able to go, but am looking forward to attending (and co-presenting!) at the American Dance Therapy Association Conference this October in Portland.

Dance therapist, Donna Newman-Bluestein, is attending and presenting at IEATA's conference and has a blog posting about it you can read here. Sounds lovely!

Great Blogs on Dance Therapy

I've been doing a lot of research about how to become a dance/movement therapist, but one of the best ways for me to learn is through direct experience.

Here are three great blogs written by dance therapists about the work:

*Somatic Revelations

*Moving Towards Understanding

*Musings of a Dance/Movement Therapist

Happy reading!

More articles on Dance/Movement Therapy!

Here's an article on dance therapy from Dance Magazine!

And a blog about everything dance therapy from a dance therapist here.