Dancing into Therapy: The Connection between Dance and Mental Wellness
As a professional dancer and developing counselor/practicum student, I am constantly noticing a deep connection between movement and mental health, one that is greater than I ever thought was possible. I was first drawn to the idea of becoming a counselor because I recognized and experienced the healing potential of movement through my work as a professional dancer, Pilates instructor, and dance educator. I became eager to develop more tools and avenues to help people heal emotionally as well as physically. I believe that the journey a dancer undergoes to find their artistic voice can be similar to the revealing process of therapy. While earning my Bachelor of Fine Arts in Modern Dance degree at Texas Christian University, I worked extensively with embodiment and learned how to find my authentic self through movement and expression. For example, when choreographing a dance piece about a past trauma, past event or relationship that holds emotion, we considered these ideas:
How do we as dancers or choreographers convey emotion in our bodies without words?
How do we genuinely create and embody a particular emotion in a performance? This goes beyond “acting out” the emotion and speaks more to whether we can truly experience the given emotion in movement and performance. To achieve this, we must work to connect our mind and body to develop an embodied awareness.
When watching a dance performance, I am usually drawn to the dancers that embody a sense of vulnerability and clear intention. You can observe what each movement is supposed to “say” or mean. This can be the way a dancer’s body looks tense to convey being anxious or scared, the way a dancer’s body moves with force and abandon to convey anger, or the way a dancer’s body moves with lightness and release to convey joy. Words are not always necessary to communicate emotion. I have had to work hard and am continuing to explore what certain emotions feel like for me and how to convey that feeling through movement. This practice has encouraged a deeper sense of self-awareness, where I can identify emotions by what they feel like rather than just naming them. The knowledge and history that our bodies hold are powerful. A deeper awareness of the body can be used to reveal deeper emotions you may not have realized you had or were capable of experiencing. Owning and internalizing these emotions and their origins can be incredibly healing.
Throughout my professional career, I have striven to authentically experience and convey emotions through my body and have encouraged my students and fellow dancers to do the same. This developmental goal is very similar to the goals I have witnessed clients creating with their therapists during my practicum observations. During session, clients work to become more aware of how emotions feel in the body, what cues their body is giving them, and how to trust their bodily intuition. Clients work to move past the surface-level, logical brain into an emotional, wiser brain. They are learning how to move away from acting and putting up a façade or barrier into truly feeling their emotions and becoming their most authentic selves.
Recently, I have been reflecting on how my identity as a dancer can transition to my work as a therapist and how I can use these explorations to help clients. I continue to learn about new connections and overlaps between the two professions every day. An exercise I encourage you to try next time you feel disconnected from your emotions is to give yourself a “body scan.” Get into a comfortable position and start your scan at your feet. Slowly and intentionally work your way up to your head. Pay attention to each part of your body. Is there tension? Is there heaviness? Is there pain? Pay attention to the sensations you feel and breathe into them. Move through this at your own pace. This is a good first step in connecting your mind and body. I feel so lucky to be a practicum student at MC+W, a practice that fosters exploration and connection between movement and therapy. Stay tuned as I continue through my counseling program and client contact experiences to gain more concrete tools and suggestions for finding holistic health.
