What is Dance Movement Therapy?

According to the American Dance Therapy Association (ADTA), Dance Movement Therapy (DMT) is “the psychotherapeutic use of movement to promote emotional, social, and physical integration of the individual”. http://www.adta.org

What does this mean?

So now that we have defined what DMT as the ADTA defines it, how can we use this as a healing tool? There are different ways to use DMT as a tool to heal. DMT can be used as a way to help process and release emotions in the body. DMT can be beneficial to someone that is unable to verbalize a specific emotion. Instead of using words to communicate and release emotions DMT uses the body’s natural movements to release and process emotions. DMT can be used to overcome emotional barriers such as a trauma. Additionally, DMT can be used to help someone identify their emotions, so they can communicate and effectively respond to situations and people.

How might we use DMT?

One of the ways we can use DMT to heal is identifying that we store emotions in our body. This awareness between our mind and body connection is essential to be aware of in DMT practices. An example of holding emotions in our bodies can be butterflies in our stomach or holding love in our hearts. Once we are able to identify the mind and body connection of emotions, we are able to begin the work of DMT.