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 study surveys contemporary approaches to trauma within dance movement therapy/psychotherapy (DMTP). 17 qualitative English-language studies (2010–2020) were examined using qualitative and embodied arts-based research methods. Trauma was conceptualised as a multi-layered, complex phenomenon for the lived and collective body, isolation, and adaptive survival, reflecting DMTP’s understanding of experiences of individual and systemic harm, the enactive self, dissociation, neurobiology, human rights and wider context. Trauma implicated bodily, intrapsychic, relational, communal, social, economic and structural realms. Goals were safety, freedom, pleasure and agency. Dance was a flexible, multimodal, gestalt container for simple-yet-complex interventions linking inner sensing, creative exploration and enactive movement to meaning-making and cognitive and identity restructuring. Therapeutic competence, ego and relationship to power shaped DMTP’s work with individual and collective trauma. DMTP might consider how to better communicate its approach to treating trauma, relevance of therapist/lived-experience, professional and collective identities and enactive healing-justice approaches to sexual violence.
Survey of contemporary approaches to trauma within dance movement therapy/psychotherapy (DMTP). 17 qualitative English-language studies (2010–2020) were examined using qualitative and embodied arts-based research methods.
Main question: What contemporary approaches to trauma are employed within the field of DMTP?’.
Sub-questions:
(i) Can such approaches be consistently classified, for example, on the basis of conceptualisation of trauma, setting and methodological, intervention and ethical approach?
(ii) How do contemporary DMTP interventions to treat trauma relate to the elements of (a) moving, sensing, feeling, thinking and relating; and (b) the technical, expressive, communicative and performative aspects of dance?
In Dance Movement Therapy/Psychotherapy, trauma was conceptualised as a multi-layered, complex phenomenon for the lived and collective body, isolation, and adaptive survival, reflecting the profession's understanding of experiences of individual and systemic harm, the enactive self, dissociation, neurobiology, human rights and wider context.
Trauma implicated bodily, intrapsychic, relational, communal, social, economic and structural realms. Goals were safety, freedom, pleasure and agency.
Dance was a flexible, multimodal, gestalt container for simple yet-complex interventions linking inner sensing, creative exploration and enactive movement to meaning-making and cognitive and identity restructuring.
Therapeutic competence, ego and relationship to power shaped DMTP’s work with individual and collective trauma.
Future areas for research and action might include:
- improving communication of DMTP's approach to treating trauma to the wider public
- considering the relevance of dual therapist/lived experience identities and professional and collective identities
- developing enactive healing-justice approaches to sexual violence, and their place, if any, within the context of criminal, transitional or other justice systems
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.