Musings of a Dance/Movement Therapist

Dance Therapy Is in the News

Subsequent to David Allan Harris accepting the Freedom to Create Youth Prize, an international human rights award, on behalf of the dance movement therapy work the Orphan Boys of Koindu (aka the Poimboi Veeyah Koindu, or PVK) did with Harris, Harris was interviewed live by the BBC WorldService. According to Harris, the 6 live segments aired over BBC Africa during the morning news between 5:30 and 8:00a.m. "People waking up all over the continent repeatedly heard such leads as:  'What is dance therapy?  And is it an effective form of healing for people after war?  Listen for more from David Alan Harris, who is adamant that it is....'" The news anchor also read a couple of endorsements by colleagues Harris had trained in Sierra Leone.

Harris was also interviewed live for a few minutes on a daytime talk show on Sky TV, the BBC rival, which is broadcast across the globe (or at least the Eastern Hemisphere).  He was interviewed there with Mohsen Makhmalbaf, the preeminent Irani filmmaker, who'd won the Freedom to Create Main Prize.

AND

Healing Through Dance is a weekly dance therapy support group given by Anne Krantz, Ph.D., BC-DMT through University of California San Francisco Medical Center, Cancer Resource Center, for the past 15 years. UCTV will soon premiere the following program featuring Anne Krantz: "Healing Through Dance: When the Body Speaks and the Spirit Moves"  This link provides currently scheduled air dates/times for this program, as well as different options to view it once it is uploaded (approximately 7-10 days after the premiere date, if not sooner).  This program features a presentation on the program given in August, 2009.

Dance Therapy in The New Social Worker Online

"Based on Mind-Body Connection, Dance Therapy Offers Physical, Psychic Benefits", written by Barbara Trainin Blank, appears in THE NEW SOCIAL WORKER Vol. 16, No. 4 (Fall 2009).

This article quotes a number of dance therapists and gives a good introductory look at dance movement therapy.

"There are new uses for dance/movement therapy all the time. It is offered as a health promotion service for healthy people, and as a complementary method of reducing stress in caregivers and people with chronic illness. Physically, dance therapy can provide exercise, improve mobility and muscle coordination, and reduce muscle tension. Emotionally, dance therapy is reported to improve self-awareness, self-confidence, and interpersonal interaction, and is an outlet for communicating feelings. Some say that dance may strengthen the immune system and even help prevent disease.
    Dance/movement therapists assist people to develop a nonverbal language that gives information about what is going on in their bodies. The therapist observes a person’s movements to make an assessment and design a program to help the specific condition. The frequency and level of difficulty of the therapy is tailored to the needs of participants."

Unfortunately, what the article neglects to do is to differentiate between dance as a healing art form and dance movement therapy. Dance therapists bring not only the dance, but education and experience in the field of dance movement therapy which integrates dance and psychology. It is this level of training and experience which takes the healing to a deeper level, making it an effective modality of treatment for people with psychosis, trauma and abuse histories, eating disorders, substance abuse, autism, dementia, etc.

Two Beings Playing, Baba Ram Dass

Baba Ram Dass (also known as Dr. Richard Alpert) in an interview in the late 1980's:

"ER: Welcome Ram Dass. I'd like to begin by sharing an observation. I've noticed a dramatic shift in your focus compared to your earlier writings and teachings. You now emphasize daily experiences as a path to awakening, in contrast to the traditional spiritual practices of meditation and yoga to transform consciousness that you used to emphasize. Would you comment on this?

Ram Dass: I think most of us have had the feeling that we live life in the marketplace and then we go off to the cave or to the meditation mat to replenish ourselves. I became interested in whether I could take the actual stuff of the marketplace and use it as a transformative force, which is really a tantric process.

EJR: So while you're waiting in line at the bank you can do your spiritual practice.

Ram Dass: Exactly. But you're not doing a spiritual practice that involves going away from waiting in line at the bank. What I used to do is wait in line and I'd do mantra or breathing. I'd go into my vipassana meditation. But now I'm interested in whether waiting in line at the bank can itself be the thing. I notice my impatience, notice the feeling in my feet as I am standing there, notice the different levels of reality of the people I'm looking at. Am I seeing a bank teller or am I seeing the Divine Mother as a bank teller? I allow myself to play with the moment more, still dealing with the stuff of the moment rather than going away.

EJR: How would you describe your basic message that you share with others?

Ram Dass: A lot of it is colored by the fact that I work with the Seva Foundation, a social service organization that serves people in third world countries. By going into third world countries and serving, by actually feeding and helping people, I've been led to focus a little more on how people here try to be happy by ignoring other people who are unhappy. Part of the pain of this culture is our denial of sisters and brothers and other parts of humanity, and it just doesn't work. It leads to sleeping pills and to a kind of nervous fun which isn't a deep happiness. The example I use is that image of me naked at the beach in Marin County, throwing a frisbee in the sunlight. As I was about to throw the frisbee, into my mind came the inscription over Gandhi's tomb which is, "Think of the poorest person you've ever seen and ask whether your next act will be of any use." And then the question is, do you throw the frisbee or don't you? That's a whole discourse right there. And what does it mean to be an American, what does it mean to be affluent, what is our dharma that involves the poorest person we've ever seen without looking away...and it also involves the frisbee. And that's the balance I'm trying to explore in myself. I think that people will find a tremendous joy and fulfillment in service to other human beings, and that often this is what is missing in their lives.

EJR: In your writings, you continually make the point that for service and helping to be selfless and ultimately valuable for all concerned, an openness of heart is essential as well as a downplaying of the distinction of helper and helpee.

Ram Dass: Yes, you have to look at not only what you're doing but how you're doing it, because that's the whole package. The identification with the doer is what keeps entrapping you in the dualism because if you're the doer, then whoever you're doing it to is who is being done to. It separates you. I am "helping you" and you are "being helped" at one level. At another level, we are just two beings meeting in our incarnations acknowledging each other. And that playing is what enriches the whole helping. That's where the whole helping thing becomes just a form of dance. And if it doesn't work that way, something is wrong. That is what burns people out. They think they have to do something for somebody else, and identify with what they are doing rather than with the quality of their being."

Warriors of the Heart

That is what I call my dance movement therapy students in their 2nd year internship supervision class at Lesley University. I am moved time and again by the courage these therapists-in-training display in their internship sites, working with children, adolescents and adults with histories of abuse and neglect, adults with eating disorders, substance abuse, and people with dementia.

These women demonstrate tremendous courage ~ true courage ~ as they delve within to meet their own demons, limitations, and previously unacceptable emotions, so that they may integrate them in the service of helping their clients. Kudos to all dance movement therapy students who take on this hero's work.

Octaband Provides Respite for Dementia Caregivers

"John and Sallie voice their approval of the Octaband." ~ the caption under the photo for The Gathering Place news this month.

The Gathering Place at First United Methodist Church, Conroe, Texas seeks to help both the caregiver and the care partner, providing respite for caregivers of those with Alzheimer's.  Twice monthly The Gathering Place provides the care partner a time of fun and fellowship through music, games, exercises, performances, and a luncheon.
 

David Alan Harris and Orphan Boys of Koindu Receive Freedom to Create Youth Prize

On November 25, David Alan Harris accepted an international human rights award at a gala event at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London.

The Freedom to Create --Youth Prize was awarded to the dance/movement therapy group for former boy combatants, aka Poimboi Veeyah Koindu (or PVK; Orphan Boys of Koindu in the members' native Kissi), that Harris launched and ran in Sierra Leone in 2006.
 

The Freedom to Create Prize honors individuals and groups for creative production in the arts in ways that foster human rights and social justice. "Established in 2008, the Freedom to Create Prize is a celebration of the courage and creativity of artists around the world who use their talents to build the foundations for open societies and inspire the human spirit." The Youth Prize, which comes with $25,000 to aid local advocacy and recovery efforts, recognizes PVK's youths for the way they used dancing and dramatic performance to help restore their decimated community.

Geoffrey Robertson QC, who presented the award, said during deliberations, “Here they are, enormous energy, using art to come to terms in their own way, the fact they were violated and drugged and forced to assassinate their own parents. Theirs is an outstanding use of arts to overcome the most barbaric of crimes.” This group of former child soldiers from Sierra Leone formed a theatre troupe under the guidance of David Alan Harris, a dance artist and mental health clinician specialized in torture rehabilitation. Posted to Sierra Leone by the Centre for the Victims of Torture to work with the boys, David shared with them a dance process called Rehearsing Connection, as part of their rehabilitation process.

David Alan Harris was in London to collect the award on behalf of the group, commenting, “The dozen youth members of Poimboi Veeyhay Koindu (PVK) and their adult facilitators are honoured over the awarding of the Freedom to Create Youth Prize. As former child soldiers, they have worked hard to move away from their horrific past and to find a pathway toward reconciliation with their community, so devastated by the 11-years’ war. The PVK youths are deeply grateful for the chance to create a new project that will apply the monetary award associated with the prize in a way that will continue to foster community reconciliation and healing.”

Children in Sierra Leone

Most of the former boy soldiers were between five and ten years old when they were abducted and forced to watch the RUF kill their families. When nearing the last of his dance sessions with the boys, Harris asked them what they wanted to accomplish. Citing the need for forgiveness, the group created a performance, Healing and Forgiveness, for the community in which they would depict their roles in the war. Their resulting 25 minute play portrays the agony of the boys’ forced recruitment and other coerced violence, eventually asking forgiveness from the local chief, neighbours and families. One youth, who had been forced to kill his own parents, introduced the performance, explaining to the audience that Healing and Forgiveness described: “How we were forced to do things; how we were punished; and how we punished others.” Another boy spoke directly to the community: “We are your children. Please accept us back.” At the end of the performance, the group were welcomed back into their community with open arms."

 
Harris plans to travel back to Koindu, in Sierra Leone's remote Kailahun District, to join PVK in a great dance of celebration, and for a short time afterwards to work with the (now) young men who made up that collective as they establish a community support project with the Prize funds.

Loss of Geriatric Doctor, Thinker and Leader, Dr. Gene Cohen

According to a November 12, 2009 New York Times article by Bruce Weber, Dr. Gene D. Cohen was "a pioneer in the field of geriatric psychiatry who helped shift the emphasis in gerontological research from the problems of people as they age to their potential."

“He was one of the founders of geriatric psychiatry,” said Gay Hanna, executive director of the Center for Creative Aging, an organization that studies the relationship between creativity and healthy aging and that Dr. Cohen brought to George Washington (University). No one, she added, had more understanding of “phenomena happening in the brain as we age, and their effect on psychosocial and cognitive development.”

And, in the Nov 11, 2009 The Washington Post,

"Gene D. Cohen, a geriatric psychiatrist who championed the idea that people past retirement age have untapped stores of creativity and intellectually rigorous skills in their later years, died Nov. 7. Although the medical establishment tended to treat aging as a disease when he started his career, Dr. Cohen found that the later adult years can be a time of great creativity. Brains create new cells as long as people keep trying new pursuits, he reported, and people in the traditional retirement years have almost limitless capacity for intellectual growth."

Dr. Cohen wrote 2 books for the general public on aging, “The Creative Age: Awakening Human Potential in the Second Half of Life” and “The Mature Mind: The Positive Power of the Aging Brain.”

Dr. Cohen's life was proof positive that "later adult years can be a time of great creativity." He brought tremendous focus to the field of geriatrics and a clear understanding of the contributions of elders, in the face of our ageist society.

Arts in Healthcare Settings

Arts in Healthcare Seen Yielding Benefits

According to a new study by the Society for the Arts in Healthcare, Americans for the Arts, The Joint Commission and the University of Florida Center for the Arts in Healthcare documents that incorporating the arts into health-care settings has multiple benefits for patients and may reduce health-care expenses.  Up to half of health-care institutions in the U.S. incorporate arts programming into their care.  Benefits from arts programming include shorter hospital stays, less need for medication, and a boost for job satisfaction and employee retention. Philanthropy Journal, Oct 19, 2009

Octaband at AMTA American Music Therapy Conference San Diego 2010

The AMTA conference gave me a wonderful opportunity to reconnect with previous purchasers of the OctabandTM. One music therapist who works with children with autism said, "The Octaband provides such a nice kinesthetic framework." A woman who did her internship with people with Parkinson's said the folks with Parkinson's and the staff "love it." They are all motivated to keep the shaker eggs on the center circle of the Octaband. One woman reported using the Octaband with great success with people with developmental disabilities, ages 3 - 26. I was told that the music therapy department at U. Dayton love it. And Renata stopped by to tell me that the forensic unit in Patton California loves the Octaband as well.

Thanks to all for the feedback and wonderful ways you are bringing healing to folks with all sorts of challenges.

This photo shows the Octaband being used by dance movement therapist Rachel Federman Morales in Philadelphia with a middle school semi professional dance company and children at the HMS School in a performance, spring 2007.

Octaband Testimonial with Adults with Developmental Disabilities

Kimberley Smith Daly is a dance movement therapist who works with adults with multiple physical limitations due to TBI, CP, and the like, as well as with full bodied movers with developmental disabilities.

Kimberley reports after using the Octaband for a week,

"They truly enjoy using the Octoband, and I had a MARVELOUS break through with one young man who typically refuses to participate in DMT at all.  He is in his 20s and is very concerned with appearances, and typically thinks DMT is 'stupid'.  He has a significant brain injury which has left him with a great many physical limitations, and he relies on a wheelchair.  He participated the whole time, intentionally utilizing his weaker arm, and really pushed his range of motion.  His affect improved dramatically, even laughing out loud at times, and he engaged with peers and staff alike. It was amazing."