Dr.Maria ZámHungary

ELTE UniversityBARCZI GUSZTAV FACULTY

TO BE IN THE FLOW - THE AIM OF THE DANCE THERAPY

Message of the silenceDance therapy as a self-knowledge method

Dance as an Opportunity of Self-Knowledge

• Dance therapy makes the personality the center, and leads it through experimental learning, and dance therapy focuses on connecting the self, the other, and the community, and the space to each other

The Body

• We consider the body as an information base of the events of our life. We store information in our cells. In cells our body stores every event and memory we have had since we conceived.

What dance therapy does?

• DANCE THERAPY shows every little motif of our every day life, and offers a discovery of soul and body unit. It measures where we are open and where we close ourself and how our body reacts on everything that happens to us.

• We can gain self-knowledge through dance, and moving.

• It makes us to find the first step in the road of healing

Body consciousness

• Dance is our most natural and most instinctive artistic way of expression of all. The human body always expresses itself, the body is in constant moving inside and outside too.

• We store information in our cells• Our body since we conceived have stored

every memory and events we went through.

What happens with this information?

• Dance and moving is able to clean the „rocks” that obstacle the way of the energy flow.

• „Rocks” are the embodyment of the psychic and phisical traumas

• dance is able to move these information rocks away and to create new relationships, new ties

The cerebral cortex and cells

• Perceiving, learning and the memory, the plans of our activities, the making process, the creativity and other cognitive processes are linked to the cerebral cortex, which is the center of the highest standard nerve function.

BERNHARD WALDENFELS

• „Considerding closely the problematic of the body we don’t have to forget that body is much more than a simple example as every experience is a body experience too.

• But body not like a pure mental being that can see but cannot be seen, and a pure natural thing that can’t see but can be seen – body is both hit can see and can be seen as well, and can touch and can be touched.

• Body is not out of time and space in the land of nowhere, and it is not in a given corner of time and space, but body rather belongs to Here and Now, the point of the creation of space and time. But body has the quality of an in-space-and-time corp too.”

• / Professor of philosophy at the Ruhr University, in Bochum, Germany• Bernhard Waldenfels: Sinnesschwellen. Studien zur Phänomenologie

des Fremden

Dance is an ancient way of expression

• Dance, dance rituals such as birth, fertility rituals, season and man, warriror and peace dances have followed, supported and cured the life of the people since the creation of human kind.

Rhythm in nature tribes

• • in nature tribes rhythmical dance activity has a very important

role in tribal life. • It closely relates to magic, but it is in every phase and field of

their life. They couldn’t imagine their every day life without dance:

• · they dance if they go to hunt or if they get back from hunt; • · they dance to have abundant crop; • · they dance if somebody gets sick and they would like him

to be cured; • · they dance if they are glad or sad.

Rhythm

• Rhythm is nature itself and it is natural. Rhythm is not strange for people live in nature because they live their life in the rhythm of how the world goes. Today people have to live out of rhytm, serving the expectations of the world outside that is getting to be more and more fake

Messages in the Body - Messeges Begin to Appear in Dance

• We think there is big importance of the wit of the body, the non-verbal messages, and our creative possibilities in this method. Ilnesses and symptoms are considered only to be signs, which show where we are in our life and what are the things we should change

Dance as an Oportunity

• We can create new views and relations with old experiences. We can recognise and examine our automatisms, patterns, indirect movements, postures with the help of self-expression in dance.

• Benefits of Dance Movement Therapy• Dance therapy can helps• person to increase his/her self-awareness,

self-esteem and personal autonomy. It may help to acknowledge the links between thought, feelings and actions. It can help to increase and rehearse adaptive coping behaviors.

• Dancing is one way for expressing and managing overwhelming feelings or thoughts. It can be used as a tool to help person to communicate and be interactive with other persons.

• With movement and dance a person can test the impact of him/herself on others. To realize your inner and outer reality and compare the feelings about inner (mind) and outside environment.

• By moving the person can initiate physical, emotional and/or cognitive shifts. It can help to learn new social interaction skills. Dancing is a good way to express non-verbal communication and make contact with the others.

Movement is a Dance?

• Even the smallest movements, gestures, postures, different types of body expression are dancing therapeutically important.

• Very fine movemenet is a self-express of the soul, from the age of the litle baby, from the unconscieous

For Whom is Advantages

• The complexity of the approach, the integrative dance therapy can be used in very different fields and for many people

• Furthermore it can be used for people of different age groups, for several diseases or disorders and in different contexts.

• Mainly the dance therapy used for healthy people who want to know more theirselfs

• Dance therapy is a tool for personal development

• It may be used as a relieving therapy for anyone experiencing difficulties or concerns with emotional problems, conflict or distress.

• It can be useful tool for people who want to enhance their personal communication skills, self-exploration or self-understanding.

• Dance therapy may be seen as a way of alternative communication method for people who may find some feelings or experiences too overwhelming or too difficult to communicate by words alone.

• It can help people who have problems bound up in bodily form; in distortions or concerns about their body image, in actual movement difficulties such as tension or blocked areas of the body, impaired movements or in anxieties about proximity, physical contact or trust.

• Dance therapy allows people with impairment or trauma may to acknowledge and understand personal areas of strength and weakness.

• Dance Movement Psychotherapy may be recommended as a primary service or as a complement to other forms of on-going treatment, rehabilitation or education. The therapy can be short or long term and is available for adults and children.

What are the Focuses in Dance Therapy

• exercise-centered • experience-centered • Self-recognition centered

Do We Speak?

• Linguistic communication is not a necessary condition for the dance therapy work.

• There can be understanding even without spoken language

• . Atmospheres and moods can be expressed through movement and dance, they can be shared and communicated.

Verbal and Non-verbal skills development

• Dance therapy combines verbal and nonverbal practices and can also help to develop language skills.

• Language builds on the development of other skills in dealing with the environment, such as the opportunity of preverbal communication, perception and imitation.

• Dance therapy can take this up and create situations in which these is encouraged by movement, dance, voice and sound.

How We Can Communicate

• Dance is a social and communicative phenomenon, communication and interaction are integral parts.

• In movement and dance, the experience of a common rhythm or a through improvisation developed image or an atmosphere makes the experience of a community and of being part of group possibility

Dance Is a Communication Tool

• Proximity and distance as design elements of contact, encounter or relationship can be tested and experienced.

• The use of different materials such as ropes, ribbons, balloons, scarves or masks may make indirect contacts easier or may give the opportunity to hide and cover oneselve.

Apperception

• The integrative dance therapy can stimulate perception and their integration in many ways.

• The apperception of the different senses can be exercised “center-functional” or even “experience-activated” stimulated or edged.

• The focus hereby can be:• the perception of one's body, physical

sensations, reactions and feelings (for example to realize the own body through touching or tapping or in contact with the floor)

• the apperception of the environment in form of experiences with materials or with space (for example the experience with hard and soft materials, with ropes, scarves or balls)

• finally, the perception of other people, whether therapist or therapist or other people from the environment

Self-expression

• Through improvisation, role playing, the dancing of little stories and small design tasks the possibilities of immediate self-expression are expanded.

• Secondly, the repertoire of expression can be extended in a way that emotions, feelings and ideas are expressed in movement and dance.