What is Dance Movement Therapy (DMT)?
DMT is defined by the European Association Dance Movement Therapy (EADMT) as ‘the therapeutic use of movement to further the emotional, cognitive, physical, spiritual and social integration of the individual.
This research paper faces the topic of education, giving visibility to the teacher’s role. Body is placed in its main dimension in order for teachers to exercise that role, highlighting the importance of presence and awareness during the same, so that they can contribute with their emotional well-being to the teaching-learning process. On the other hand, we carry out a theoretical revision of the grounding, expanding its application towards the fundamental concepts of DMT and placing it as its key axis. By applying grounding, the state of presence, here and now, is facilitated, allowing the body to become an anchor to be, act and share. This work also provides an observation adapted for the educational context. Such observation is carried out in the daily/natural environment of five female primary school teachers and performs an analysis of their physical movements. Main focus lies on the absence or presence of grounding, with the aim of designing an intervention proposal able to respond to the findings and discovered needs.
This work presents the results of the observation and the preliminary design of such proposal.
1. Design observation sheet to describe the movement analysis of five teachers
2. Carry out analysis of the movement of teachers.
3. Design a DMT intervention proposal to promote resources intrapersonal and interpersonal relationships of teachers using grounding as the axis vertebrate
Identify the presence of grounding as a way of being aware and present during their role as a teacher, in the teaching-learning process, facilitating their own emotional regulation and interaction with their students.
The observation sheet designed, allowed to obtain significant results in terms of movement patterns that arise in the classroom, identifying the points of improvement and strengths of general way for this sample.
When making the relevant correlations, it is notorious that there is a lack of awareness of themselves (their body, their self), so their ability to be present, connected in time-space has been affected, making it difficult to interact with their own being
and with the environment assertively influencing their well-being.
When making the relevant correlations, it is notorious that the teachers lack self-awareness (their body, their self), so their ability to be present, connected in time-space has been affected, hindering interaction with their own being and with the environment in an assertive way influencing their well-being.
The interactions that teachers make with their bodies generally tend to contract and adopt postures and configurations closed towards the environment and others so there is a tendency to fighting and not giving in or trusting, which is related to emotional grounding. The flow with that are normally found is driven. At the relational level, difficulties are witnessed in
tune in or tune in with others specifically with your students.
This lack of tuning could probably arise from the overload of environmental stresses, that is, the states affective of the students that are not possible to be sustained by them, among other circumstances operations such as submitting reports and preparing your work material; suggesting that it is because of that lack of rooting in one's own body.
However, paradoxically there were strengths at the relational level and it is identified that, although there are difficulties in tuning in, there is a capacity to listen to the students, especially at the group level. The lack of harmony was noticeable at the individual level.
DMT is defined by the European Association Dance Movement Therapy (EADMT) as ‘the therapeutic use of movement to further the emotional, cognitive, physical, spiritual and social integration of the individual.