Musings of a Dance/Movement Therapist

Testimonial from Mother of Child on Autism Spectrum re Octaband

I had the opportunity to observe a dear friend and colleague leading movement groups with preschoolers this past week. The children and the teachers had a great time with the Octaband.

After the class one of the mothers contacted me by email. The classroom teacher had told the mom how enthusiastic her son was about participating with the Octaband!  The mother told me that her son has had a lot of trouble adjusting to preschool and complains about going to school each day and does not like to take part in activities.

She expressed appreciation that her son was able to have the experience with the Octaband that he did, saying that when he came home from school, he couldn't stop talking about how much fun it was!

Dance movement therapy with children with autism:

The mother also asked me for insights about her son's participation in the group. I told the mom that as a dance movement therapist, I was intrigued by her son's movement, which I saw as both expressive and communicative. When he first entered the room and the children were invited to join the circle, her child turned his back to the others and did a repetitive, idiosyncratic movement with his hands near his mouth. When the teacher called him by name and invited him to join the others in the circle, he was able to do so. At one point early in the group, the teacher asked each child to lead the others in the movement. This young boy began hopping from one foot to the other, rotating in a circle. When the teacher and the other children followed his lead, he seemed to become more energetic, excited and happy, with a big smile. When the leadership passed to the next person, his attention was immediately distracted by objects on a shelf nearby.

 

My interpretation of this child's movement and behavior was that he was: (1)  clearly expressing himself through movement, although the meaning of his movement was not necessarily readily apparent. (2)  highly responsive to the medium of movement and dance. (3)  highly responsive to the individual attention, and mirroring in particular. (4) He seemed to be expressing his difficulty with transitions about being an individual and being in relationship to others.

 

I designed the Octaband as a prop to encourage individuality and group cohesion at the same time. Other movement props are good for individuality or cooperation. I would guess that her son enjoyed it specifically because it allowed him to be an individual and connected to others at the same time. Children also love the Octaband because it is very colorful, stretchy and feels good to the touch.

 

 

I recommended that the pediatrician refer her son to a dance movement therapist and that she encourage the preschool to continue to provide the creative movement classes for the children. Movement is so vital for young children whose primary mode of communication is movement - which is all of them, even though some are also verbal.

 

For more about dance movement therapy with children with autism, here is a resource provided by the ADTA (American Dance Therapy Association).

Order from Amazon through the ADTA website, and a percentage of the proceeds goes to the ADTA, whose purpose is to

"establish, maintain, and support the highest standards of professional identity and competence among dance/movement therapists by promoting education, training, practice, and research.  The Association provides avenues of communication among dance/movement therapists and those working in related fields, and increases public awareness of dance/movement therapy."

For more about dance movement therapy with children, I highly recommend Suzi Tortora's book the Dancing Dialogue: Using the Communicative Power of Movement with Young Children.

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.

Is dance too pleasurable to be taken seriously?

My dance movement therapy students at Lesley University are currently reading Trudi Schoop's Won't You Join the Dance?: A Dancer's Essay into the Treatment of Psychosis. This book is one of the classics in dance therapy, and certainly one of my favorites, one I return to repeatedly because of Schoop's succinct offerings about the mind body connection and what a good therapist needs to be. One of the students pulled the following quotation out of Schoop's 1974 book, unfortunately now out of print.

"Does the word 'dance' still connote exhibitionism, narcissism, depravity? Is dancing just too pleasurable to be taken seriously, too unscientific to be considered therapeutic?"

I think that dance has been considered just that within our culture. But I also think that this is just beginning to change as more and more young people discover the healing, integrative powers of dance. As neuroscientists continue to study the brain and the connections between mind and body within the brain, it is providing more of the scientific basis for why dance movement therapy does indeed work. Cynthia Berrol's "Neuroscience Meets Dance/Movement Therapy: Mirror neurons, the therapeutic process and empathy", The Arts in Psychotherapy 33 (2006) 302–315 offers a deeper look into this connection.

As well, Dr. David Stuart Sobel and Robert Ornstein wrote a wonderful book called Healthy Pleasures.

"Patient: I'm not feeling any better.
Doctor: Are you sure you have given up everything you enjoy?

Imagine the world without pleasure. Life would appear colorless and humorless. A baby's smile would go unappreciated. Foods would be tasteless. The beauty of a Bach concerto would fall on deaf ears. Feelings like joy, thrills, delights, ecstasy, elation and happiness would disappear. The company of others would not bring comfort and joy. The touch of a mother would not soothe, and a lover could not arouse. Interest in sex and procreation would dry up. The next generation would wait unborn.

Human beings evolved to seek enjoyment to enhance survival. What better way to assure that healthy, life-saving behaviors occur than to make them pleasurable? From eating to reproduction, from attending to the environment to caring for others, pleasure guides us to better health. Doing what feels right and feeling good are usually beneficial for health and the survival of the species.

Yet, at nearly every turn pleasure has gotten a bad name. People are almost phobic about having fun, increasingly viewing themselves as fragile, vulnerable, ready to develop cancer or heart disease at the slightest provocation. In the name of health people give up many of their life enjoyments. Compulsion, disruption, and disease lurk if we lapse. Research and thinking in medicine and psychology reflect this pathological focus on the causes and treatment of disease, while virtually ignoring acts that build health. There is a strong anti-pleasure bias in medical research with a great amount of information about health hazards of pleasure and a scarcity of details about its health-promoting effects."

Thankfully, I chose to follow the path to become a dance movement therapist many years ago, listening to my body's pleasure and pain to inform my decisions. Science is beginning to catch up.

ARTZ Artists for Alzheimer's

On NPR August 18, Robin Young interviewed John Zeisel and Sean Caulfield of ARTZ, Artists for Alzheimer's. You can hear the interview here.

In talking about their program which brings small groups of people with dementia to art museums, Zeisel said, "People become alive. People who see great art and are in front of great art and are focused and are engaged can’t also be agitated and anxious and aggressive and apathetic, the big 4 A’s of Alzheimer’s."

Zeisel analyzes an interaction between a woman with Alzheimer's and a docent, "The myth that people with Alzheimer’s have no memories is busted. The questions .... detoured that woman’s mind around whatever dysfunction there was there and got her access to those deep memories. She had, as a result of that story, a sense of who she was out of this mythological I have no memory, no self, no recognition of children, no expression. It’s all not true."

Sean Caulfield: "One reason we hear so much about people with Alzheimer’s losing their memory is because short term memory is the part of the memory that’s most affected. . .  
Society doesn’t emphasize or place a lot of value on the fact that emotional memory, artistic memory, stays with people. We are seeing in our museum program people talking about the visit 2, 3, 4 days later, which goes against the general notion of people with Alzheimer’s remembering."

Zeisel responded to Robin about yet another interaction between Caulfield and a man with Alzheimer's, looking at old photographs together. "It was Shaun’s compassion, it was the way Shaun respected him and showed him the dignity of being a person who had a job and it was the visual picture that got the detour around the brain."

Caulfield responding to Zeisel: "I think it was what led up to that moment that enabled that moment to happen. We don’t test the brain. We don’t ask people 'Do you remember that painting?' ... it’s a very safe place ... he was completely open...."

I would add to Zeisel's and Caulfield's analysis of this second interaction that the moment was enabled because of the playful way that Caulfield interacted with the man. "I think I see you in the window. You're waving. Is that you?" The man and the rest of the group spontaneously burst out laughing. While that comment came after the man began identifying the photograph and memories, I believe that the interactional field between Caulfield and the people with dementia was already open.

IMy experience tells me that people with dementia also have a "social memory". If they have repeated experiences with the same person or group, they may not remember the names of the person or exactly what they did with them, but they do remember that this is a person they enjoyed being with.

If you are interested in people with dementia as a family member or caregiver, Zeisel's I'm Still Here is a wonderful and entirely readable book. I devoured it cover to cover at the recommendation of Dr. Cameron Camp, keynote speaker at a recent Massachusetts Alzheimer's Association conference, where I also had the opportunity to present.

Scotland will be the newest country sporting an Octaband

The Astley Ainslie Hospital in Scotland just purchased an Octaband. Astley Ainslie Hospital specialises in post acute care and rehabilitation medicine services for patients with conditions such as stroke, cardiac disease and brain injury. The hospital provides care for younger stroke, amputee and general rehabilitation patients across Lothian. The brain injury and neuroscience unit also cares for patients locally, regionally and nationally.

Dance/movement therapists have a long history of working with people with stroke, cardiac disease and brain injury. Beginning at the New England Rehabilitation Hospital in Woburn, MA, there was a large Movement Therapy department where we worked with people with these challenges. Berrol, Katz, and Ooi published an article "Dance/movement therapy with older adults who have sustained neurological insult: A demonstration project." in 1997 in the American Journal of Dance Therapy, 19(2), 135-160.

Sherry Goodill wrote an excellent book, An Introduction To Medical Dance/Movement Therapy: Health Care In Motion. where you can learn more.