Authentic Movement as a Training Modality for Private Practice Clinicians

Movement Based Experiential Learning and Competency Development in Dance/Movement Therapy Graduate Education: Early Practitioner Perspectives

“…Dance/movement therapists create a safe, holding environment in which clients feel safe to lower their defenses, enter a state of receptivity and absorption (Goodman & Holroyd, 1993), express unconscious thoughts, feelings, and emotions through free association in movement (Lucchi, 2018;Musicant, 1994Musicant, , 2001, and make meaning of the dance that unfolds. Defined as "the psychotherapeutic use of movement to promote emotional, social, cognitive and physical integration of the individual, for the purpose of improving health and well-being" (American Dance Therapy Association, 2014), the moving, dancing body is paramount in dance/movement therapy.…”

“…According to Schmais (2004), open-ended directives help students use movement to explore various aspects of the psychotherapy process in DMT, such as creating a safe, holding environment, establishing a therapeutic rapport, maintaining physical and emotional boundaries, and non-verbally communicating empathy. The students develop a capacity to attend to and make sense of sensations in the body (Lucchi, 2018). They also can learn to attune to and respond to the non-verbal expression of thoughts, feelings, and needs of both self and others (Panhofer et al, 2014;Schmais, 2004).…”

Effectiveness of the BodyMind Approach® for women with depression and medically unexplained symptoms in Taiwan

“…This creative body-centered psychotherapeutic practice is one of the main aspects of DMP and is based on the concept of active imagination (Jung, 1997). Research has shown that AM helps to regulate emotions (Musicant, 1994) and express prohibited ones (Garcia-Diaz, 2018;Lucchi, 2018). The basic form of AM involves a mover with (at least) one witness, who observes, benignly and nonjudgmentally, as the mover moves spontaneously for a predetermined duration with closed eyes in the presence of the witness.…”