Musings of a Dance/Movement Therapist

Being an Embodied Practitioner

I will be the Student Luncheon Keynote Speaker at the American Mental Health Counselors Association (AMHCA) Annual Conference in Boston July 15-17, 2010. 

Being an Embodied Practitioner

As counselors, we bear witness not only to our clients’ words, but also to their affect and their way of being in the world. When we do that from a position of greater embodiment, attuning to our internal sensations may also offer clues to our clients’ experience. As well, by modeling a grounded presence in the body, we foster in our clients a kinesthetic sense of self.

Donna Newman-Bluestein, BC-DMT, LMHC has been working as a dance/movement therapist and counselor since 1978 with people of all ages from 3 to 106 with a wide range of special needs including mental illness, chronic pain, coronary artery disease and dementia. She teaches clinical supervision for dance therapy students at Lesley University, supervises practicing dance therapists, leads groups for elders and people with dementia, and provides training in nonverbal communication.

The Octaband with a Child at Bedside

Jean Basiner wrote me about a new way of using the Octaband at St. Joseph's Children Hospital in Tampa. Jean practices dance movement therapy bedside, and as the child lay in bed, she held a couple of the arms as her parents each held a couple of the arms in a standing position all around her bed. We all lifted the colorful Octaband over the child's whole body as she looked up and viewed the beautiful colors of the Octaband. We all alternated lifting it at various levels, turning and moving side to side....The child was also involved as she touched the silky material of the Octaband, lifting her fragile hands. This was a big movement piece for this child. Well, Donna, this child was Amazed. Her parent's were soooooo happy to see their child smile. I cannot explain in words the emotional effect this had on their child. This is a healing tool in our field, and it contributes to a patient's health and well being. It facilitates a healing element in the patient's body, soul, and mind. I love this tool, Donna. I carry it afar. Thank you for your invention.

Empowering Women, Dance & Music Therapy

Dance-Sunday morning at 9:10 on WRMO 93.7 FM- Put on your dancin' shoes and get ready for a show that will keep you moving. Kristé welcomes her guests; from the Libitzki Dance School, Cheryl Libitzki and from the American Dance Therapy Association, Christina Devereaux for an in depth talk about how dance can change your outlook on life.

The Designer Health Net Talk Show Weekend Program Schedule

Special Note: Not in any of the stations listening area? No problem! It’s simple, log on to www.designerhealthnet.com, click on the On Air tab, click on the station name, and follow the listen live directions because all our affiliates have live streaming!

dance anywhere®

What if the whole world paused to dance?

Beth Fein invites

dancers, artists and you

Friday, March 26, 2010

noon - San Francisco

3 pm NY - 8 pm Paris or Rome…

to stop and dance anywhere® …

at work, in class, the street, the post office,

the library, the grocery store or park....

• reconsidering dance, art, and community

• changing the world through dance and art

join in!

dance anywhere® brings everyone's atttention to their immediate environment and brings awareness to the change that dance and art brings as it converges with their day.

dance anywhere® is about shifting assumptions and heightened awareness, and generating dance anywhere and everywhere simultaneously.

The concept for dance anywhere® blurs the line that separates art and dance from our daily lives. This is art that does not need to be on a stage.

dance anywhere® is about the transformation of familiar and ordinary locations.

This is a conceptual dance created by Beth Fein - intended to heighten public awareness of all forms of dance/art. It is a validation of dance/art practice: class, training, work in the studio and rehearsal, as integral parts of dance as an art form.

for more information about Beth Fein www.bethfein.com

danceanywhere® is a public non profit art project

and free to all participants.

Participants are encouraged to take photos and video, which are then shared on the dance anywhere® website and used to inspire visual art projects.   youtube: http://www.youtube.com/danceanywherevideo

Octaband Stories

Rachel Morales wrote,

"My intern and I continue to experiment with news ways to use the octaband.

We added rainbow rings with bells and egg shakers attached to them and then slipped them on the arms of the Octaband.  My kids had a lot of fun wearing the Octaband on their ankles and bouncing, pulling, swinging and pushing using their legs and feet.  It was neat because while they were dancing with the Octaband they were making music as well.

The other exercise is dancing with a partner.  Each group member makes a choice -  how they want to wear the Octaband and then they choose a partner and that member makes a choice on how they would like to be connected to the Octaband.  The two members then go into the middle of the circle and dance with each other while the rest of the group cheers them on.  The exercise continues until every group member has a turn.

My kids had a blast with this exercise.  It really helped them maintain their focus and interact more with their peers.  They all felt so proud and happy; evidenced by their bright affects."

And, the activities department at Oak Bay Kiwanis Health Care Society, elder care facility in British Columbia, just purchased an Octaband. When asked how she heard about the Octaband, she said,

"The Oak Bay Lodge brought it over to our facility and it was a great hit.  We balanced a large ball in the middle as we sang to music. Really kept everybodies attention."

Life-Enhancing Dance for Elders with Dementia

I was thrilled to see my colleague Heather Hill and myself quoted in the March/April 2010 issue of Journal of Dementia Care in this article by occupational therapist Sarah Whyte in Edinburgh. More than seeing myself quoted, it's seeing that because of the articles we've written, Ms Whyte was convinced to try a dance group with people with dementia. Quoting me in my article in this very blog, "A Glimpse at a Dance Therapy Group with the Elderly with Dementia", Whyte says "Newman-Bluestein (2007) points out that elderly people have to move to maintain physical and emotional well-being."  Yup. That sounds like me, or as I like to say in my groups, "Use it or lose it."

And, "Newman-Bluestein (2007) writes that for those with dementia, dance therapy can spark and develop an emotional rapport between people." The caregivers of people with dementia in the nonverbal communication training I have been leading for the past 2 months at Friends Village at Woodstown NJ are observing this to be true in the dance therapy groups they've watched me lead. Residents with severe dementia kept their eyes on me for 45 minutes as I took advantage of every opportunity within the group to interact with them repeatedly. I was told that one woman who hadn't smiled in 3 weeks and another who never smiles both smiled. 

I was also so glad to see that based on Hill's article, "Out of the cupboard ... to the brightness" Whyte discovered the error in the research they'd been trying to do. Hill is quoted, "The important thing in working with dementia sufferers is the quality of the experience in the moment." Once they focused on that, they realized, "When we allowed ourselves to stop looking at a patients' behaviour purely to complete a form, we were exposed to a wealth of feelings and pleasure that our patients were demonstrating that revealed their well-being far more than any score sheet could. . . Each week during the session, we would observe patients dancing, laughing, smiling, engaging in repartee with the choreographer and with each other".

Again, Whyte writes "It was an absolute joy to have the dance groups every week, and this experience has shown us that seated dance is an invaluable activity to provide for our elders with moderate to severe dementia in an in-patient setting."

As I said in "A Glimpse..."

"Why every site for folks with dementia doesn't have a dance therapist is truly beyond me! People seem to understand instinctively that the elderly respond well to music, but they seem to miss the point that the elderly HAVE TO move to maintain physical and emotional well-being. There is no vitality without the body, and dance therapists are all about engaging people's vitality."

Interested in learning more about dance therapy? Want to know more about dance therapy with people with dementia?  Interested in finding a dance therapist?

Health Matters: Music and the Mind

Hear this wonderful interview of music therapist Barbara Reuer and neuroscientist Aniruddh Patel by David Granet.

What can music teach us about the mind and in turn what can brain science reveal about music? Though interest in music and the mind dates as far back as Plato, it's only the past decade that the field of music neuroscience has really begun in earnest. Not only does music gives us a window into how our brain functions, but it also has therapeutic benefits to our health. To help us understand these connections, our host David Granet, MD, is joined by experts Aniruddh Patel, PhD, with The Neurosciences Institute, and Barbara Reuer, PhD, with Resounding Joy⌐ for this fascinating look at music and the mind.

I met Barbara Reuer at the AMTA (American Music Therapy Association) conference in St. Louis in 2008 when she bought Octabands for her staff of music therapists. I think it's interesting that people generally think of rhythm and music as going hand in hand ~ and of course, they do. However, people don't seem to realize that rhythm is body centered, whether or not there is music or sound. In fact, there is no music if a person doesn't express their rhythm through movement, even if it's the movement of just  the mouth. 

I so look forward to the day that neuroscientists research how movement affects the mind, and the mind affects movement in dance. In fact, I am totally bummed out that I can't make the international conference, 'Kinesthetic Empathy: Concepts and Contexts' on 22 and 23 April 2010 in the UK which will bring together researchers and practitioners in neuroscience, dance, film, music, and contemporary embodied practices, to explore the nature and role of kinesthetic empathy.

The aim of the conference is to open up dialogues between different practices and theoretical approaches. It will celebrate the growing interest in kinesthesia, empathy and kinesthetic empathy as pivotal concepts across different disciplines and media, reflecting current concern with ‘affect’ as an object of enquiry, interrogation of notions of presence, embodiment and the senses, re-examination of phenomenology, and widespread interest in neuroscientific investigation (notably in the 'mirror neuron' system).

Body Awareness

As I prepare for the next training session in Nonverbal Communication for Caregivers of People with Dementia at Friends Village in Woodstown, NJ, I am finding some of my old favorite quotations. Here is one about body awareness from George Dowling's 1998 The Massage Book.

"Most of us are, in actual fact, largely cut off from the body; ordinarily we are in contact with only a fraction of its inner richness. And it is exactly about this that you must do something. Change the manner and degree to which you are aware of your own body, and you will radically change. . . Far more than we realize, the very feel and texture of our lives is shaped by the way we live and experience our bodies. 

How does one go about increasing his awareness of his own body? There are many ways, fortunately. I have mine; you will have yours . . .

Let's look first at a few ideas about the body. Take them on a purely intellectual level, and, far from helping, they will only get in your way. Take them, however, as signposts for feeling, as ideas to be lived -  and you may discover in them a key to many things within yourself.

~ You are your body. . . another familiar way of putting it is that mind and body are one and the same. Our emotions, our outer perceptions, our spiritual life, and even our conceptual understanding of the world around us all begin and end within this intimate shadowy mass which is our being. Our body, its possibilities of movement, and its relation to gravity and the earth are the background from which everything else must emerge. To come to terms with this on a real emotional level is perhaps the most important kind of self-encounter a person can have. As Alexander Lowen puts it: 'When the ego roots itself in the body, an individual gains insight into himself. The deeper the roots, the  deeper the insight.'"

Martha Graham to Agnes DeMille

"There is a vitality, a life force, a quickening that is translated through you into action, and because there is only one of you in all time, this expression is unique. If you block it, it will never exist through any other medium and be lost. The world will not have it. It is not your business to determine how good it is; Not how valuable it is; Nor how it compares with other expressions. It is your business to keep it yours, clearly and directly. To keep the channel open. You do not even have to believe in yourself or your work. You have to keep open and aware directly to the urges that motivate you. Keep the channel open. No artist is pleased. There is no satisfaction whatever at any time. There is only a queer, divine dissatisfaction; A blessed unrest that keeps us marching and makes us more alive than others."

1992, Agnes de Mille, Martha: The Life and Work of Martha Graham

Trudi Schoop, Dance Therapist Extraordinaire

I just found some of my favorite quotes from dance/movement therapist Trudi Schoop:

from "Motion and Emotion", Trudi Schoop, AJDT 22(2) 2000 (that is, the American Journal of Dance Therapy).

p.100, “I don’t want to tranquilize: I want to incite - so that we both become totally involved - intensely preoccupied with living.”

p.101, “And however we use dance in our practice, it must relate to our human quality. We must trust and abide by our humanity. For I believe that our ‘work’ is our personal philosophy, and our exciting vocation.”

“I sometimes wonder if we are not a little bit insecure about our young form of therapy and that we therefore tend to lean too heavily on the well-established professions, letting ourselves be pressured into looking with their eyes on our treatment. We are young, but whatever we will find out - and I believe that we will find out plenty - will come from the power of dance itself. We cannot rely on other theories. Theories can quickly become unyielding models, and dance defies the confinement of another discipline.”