Musings of a Dance/Movement Therapist

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

OZU Young for Old Program

The OZU Young for Old Program is a series of pantomime performances created by Rob List for senior citizens centers in the Netherlands. Each year a team of young players is selected to tour a different region with SPROOKS, a light comic program of dance and mime designed to appeal to the older eye. After each performance the teams spend time with the senior citizens in informal inter-generational conversation. This program is funded by a number of foundations that support socially engaged projects.

Check out the photographs that portray this work so beautifully. A group of dancers in Boston, not quite as young, hope to do something similar in the Boston area. Will post more as I know more.

The Metaphor of Dance in Getting Our Bodies Back

One of my favorite books which I have my dance movement therapy students and supervisees read is Caldwell, C., (1996). Getting our bodies back: Recovery, healing and transformation through body-centered psychotherapy. Boston: Shambhala. If you go first to the ADTA website and click on Shop Amazon & Support ADTA, you'll also be giving a percentage of the sale to the ADTA, a very worthwhile cause in furthering the field of mind body medicine.

Here are a couple of quotations using the metaphor of dance:

“The art of life then lies in going with this flow rather than trying to control it. Happiness arises not out of pushing away pain and pushing the pleasure button. That makes us into addicts, and causes untold suffering. Happiness comes when we dance with the flow, when we participate with whatever arises. So we come upon the radical idea that happiness is not about how many good times we’ve had and bummers we haven’t had, but from being willing to greet life as it occurs, to meet it and respond in its gush and flow. We don’t attach ourselves to the contents of life, but we celebrate the very process of being alive.” (p. 57)

“We are born onto a dance floor called experience. Life is our partner. If we try to take control and lead, life will step on our toes. If we remain still and limp, life will give up and go find a new partner. Either way, we suffer in the absence of the greatest relationship we can ever know.” (p. 58)

I find so much wisdom in this book ~ it's the book that I wish I'd written. Thanks to Christine Caldwell for writing it.

The Body Is More than a Vessel

I'm attempting to organize my papers, a grueling task, and just found the following letter to the editor which I wrote and was published in the December 12, 1995 Newton TAB.

"This letter is in support of my statement at the PTA meeting, Nov. 14, that what I want for our children as people and citizens is for them to be responsible for their health. I believe we do our children a great disservice by not teaching them about, and through, the medium of the kinesthetic sense. Because we learned to breathe, sit up, crawl, move, and stand without teaching, we didn't know that these were subjects worthy of studying. These bodies we move through are worth of being studied, both from the inside and out. Children should be studying how the human body moves and functions, and discovering their responsibilities in creating and maintaining optimal health. This includes mental health, as well as physical health.

I want our children to become citizens who live together cooperatively, to make the world a better place. It is not enough to prepare our children to go on for further schooling, so that they can get 'good' jobs, and amass more individual wealth.

I want them to be aware not only of themselves, but of those around them; to be able to recognize where there is need, and to feel within themselves the power to have a part in resolving that need. Our children will need to know a sense of personal responsibility, to know their rightful place in a society which they will have the power to affect. They will need to know the effects of their actions, whether in ejecting noxious emissions, or degrading another being, whether human, animal or plant. They will need to know, not only how to be independent, but how to be interdependent.

I believe that we, in our society, have been very selfish. We want no part of someone else's pain. The American dream has been to rise up out of individual poverty, moving up through the economic class system to a position of great wealth and power. Perhaps, it is time to dream a new dream.

My dream is based on the creative movement teachings of Barbara Mettler in Tucson, Arizona. At the entrance to her dance studio, the Tucson Creative Dance Center, built by Frank Lloyd Wright, are the Zuni words, 'We dance not only for ourselves, but for the good of the people.'

Mettler's very first movement problem is, 'Find a space where you have enough room to move, and where everyone has an equal amount of space.' That problem alone could take the next millennium to solve. Imagine the genuine respect for each individual within that configuration.

In our society, we have thus far looked to solve problems only after they have become big. One of the biggest crises facing our government right now is the staggering cost of health care for our elderly and our poor. (This was in 1995!) Our nation's health bill is currently $800 billion. And we still want to fix people with a pill, surgery or even psychotherapy, after they have become ill. 

I believe children need to be educated about how to be well. Our holistic health care providers already know how. Through attention to the kinesthetic sense, children can learn to become more aware of their emotions and alternative ways of communicating, including assertiveness skills. Children can learn to manage their stress without reliance upon tobacco, drugs or alcohol. Children can learn to nurture a healthy body image and eliminate eating disorders. By having learning grounded in the body through the medium of dance, children will learn respect and responsibility for their bodies, which are their first homes, and from there can learn more respect and responsibility for their environmental homes.

To the extent that we want to enhance our students' self-esteem we must understand that there is no self without the body. Our bodies are not merely containers in which our minds are stored.

The Newton schools already have an excellent pilot program in health education at Day Middle School. We need a comprehensive health education program for K-12. It is time for our schools to stop contributing to and begin to heal our societal mind/body split."

Focusing-Oriented Arts Therapy

Focusing-Oriented Arts Therapy is a creative synthesis of Eugene Gendlin’s Focusing with art/expressive arts therapy. It is based on over thirty years of clinical work and was developed by Laury Rappaport, Ph.D, ATR-BC, REAT.

The Mission of the Focusing and Expressive Arts Institute (FEAI)is to expand awareness, education, and training in Focusing -Oriented Art Therapy and Focusing-Oriented Expressive Arts Therapies (including art therapy, dance-movement, music, drama therapy, etc.). The FEAI works in collaboration with The Focusing Institute, New York. Related programs in both Focusing and art/expressive arts therapies are also offered.

The FEAI seeks to bring Focusing-Oriented Arts Therapies into the world in order to increase mindful awareness, compassion, kindness, and listening; access innate wisdom and creative intelligence; promote peaceful conflict resolution, enhance relationships, and build community.

You can order Focusing-Oriented Art Therapy: Accessing the Body’s Wisdom and Creative Intelligence on Amazon, and if you go through ADTA, a percentage of the profits goes to the American Dance Therapy Association.

Play Is Forever

Generations United, a wonderful resource for intergenerational programming, has a fact sheet about play highlighting the importance of play for children and older adults. Thankfully, there are people who recognize the value of play. 

The Octaband is being used for intergenerational play with great success. People of all ages love the colors, the yummy soft material, and the stretchiness. But I think most of all, people love feeling themselves both an individual and an integral part of a group. That is what led me to create the Octaband. I was looking for a way to engage people with profound dementia in play ~ and it works.

 

Laughter: A Serious Therapy

Caryl Derenfeld, a Certified Laughter Yoga instructor, counsels it's the act of laughing — not humor — that produces physiological benefits in Wisdom to Age Well, Vol. 2 No. 4.

Mindfulness: Foundation for Teaching and Learning, Cambridge, MA

Daniel Siegel will be providing the Keynote Address, From Me to We: A New Look at Resilience and Well-Being, Friday, March 19, 2010, 7:30 - 9:00 p.m. at MIT, Kresge Auditorium. The cost of $35 includes Dr. Siegel's new book Mindsight: The New Science of Personal Transformation, Bantam, 2009.

This keynote address will be followed by a Saturday Sunday Conference for Educators, Counselors and Administrators March 20-21 at Lesley University, University Hall.

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."