Dance to Heal your Mind & Body
Living with PTSD can be an incredible battle but research is showing that Dance Movement Therapy can help.
Imagine having to live through the worst moments of your life every day in your mind. Post-traumatic stress disorder causes a person to dissociate from reality due to distressing memories of an event that has shifted the way one sees themselves. Flashbacks can be present when a person re-experiences the distressing event repeatedly in their minds. According to Brain & Behavior Research, “Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) is an anxiety disorder that some people get after seeing or living through a dangerous event. When in danger, it’s natural to feel afraid. This fear triggers many split-second changes in the body to prepare to defend against the danger or to avoid it.” There are many ways to treat PTSD, and one of those includes Dance Movement Therapy. Gleissner talks about Dance Movement Therapy as a form of expressive therapy that looks at the correlation between movement and emotion.
Dance movement therapy should be given to anyone experiencing symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder, as it helps survivors to find a new sense of self-worth and decrease symptoms of distress.
Dance Movement therapy can help people improve one’s sense of self-worth. According to The American Dance Therapy Association, Meredith Ritter and Kathryn Graff Low, who are psychologists, refer to DMT as the, “use of movement as a process which furthers physical and emotional integration of an individual.” The process of DMT entails utilizing “mirroring” (matching/echoing the person’s movement), incorporating jumping rhythms into the dance, and using their movements as metaphors to help the patient make sense of their stories. The ‘mirroring’ element of DMT helps make the patient feel less isolated and more validated by strengthening the use of empathy between therapist and client.
The survivor can access a new storyline through DMT to define themselves as a person through new attributes leading to increased self-worth. Dance Movement Therapy helps a survivor discern their traumatic memories in order to communicate their stories to the therapist. In the American Journal of Dance Movement Therapy, Keira Cristobal cites Lavine and Land saying: “Communicating through movement, individuals are able to express that which might not be expressible through words alone.” When we consider Lavine’s and Land’s point in light of what is happening in context to a trauma survivor, we can see that being able to communicate their traumatic memories through movement, they are able to start the process what their brains couldn’t fully process due to high levels of stress. According to a study done by Frontiers in Psychology, their meta-analysis shows: “…Of the total 23 studies included, ten studies with RCT and controlled trials included measures of depression (total scores or subscales). A moderate effect of DMT and dance on depression was reported.”
In addition to helping patients with increasing their sense of self-worth, DMT also helps decrease symptoms of PTSD. According to the Anxiety and Depression Association of America, some common symptoms of PTSD are: feelings of estrangement and detachment from others, an inability to experience positive emotions, irritable and aggressive behavior, reckless or self-destructive behavior, hypervigilance, exaggerated startle response, problems with concentration, restless sleep, muscle twitching, changes in blood pressure due to stress, etc.
A case study that confirms the importance of this issue is written in a research study “Dance Movement Therapy,” published in Salem Press Encyclopedia of Health, Dr. Eugenia M. Valentine, who is a professor in Psychology at Delgado Community College, argues that dance movement therapy helps increase serotonin and dopamine levels and aids in decreasing distress. Serotonin is a neurotransmitter and its role in the body is to help regulate mood, memory, sexual desire, appetite, and sleep. According to WebMD, dopamine is a neurotransmitter which your body makes and helps you feel pleasure. Your nervous system uses dopamine to send messages between nerve cells. Your brain uses four neuro pathways to spread dopamine. Too much or too little amounts of dopamine can contribute to mental health issues. According to a group of neuroscientists at Wonkwang University, the case study of subjects detailed the physical effects of serotonin and dopamine, revealing that: “…plasma serotonin concentration increased, and dopamine concentration increased in the DMT group. These results suggest that DMT may stabilize the sympathetic nervous system. Therefore, youth and adolescents that engage in DMT may benefit of the regulation of these neurotransmitters through DMT.
Keira Cristobal cites Levy saying: “According to unconscious material that is formed during proverbial states of development, bodily trauma is more easily accessed through physical expression.” Levy reveals that touch is our first emotional response while in the womb which is significant because this reveals our nervous systems’ ability to better understand traumatic memories. Recovery from PTSD requires a physical healing. The hidden assumption here is that trauma is only processed through the brain but really, trauma gets stored in the physical body. In conclusion, trauma survivors can benefit from dance movement therapy because it gives the survivors a way to communicate, increasing self-worth and it exposes the survivor to physical communication and helps ground them when emotions are heightened.
Dance Movement Therapy can help people with PTSD to manage strong emotions related to their trauma. In his video “Embodying Empathy: Dance/Movement Therapy after Unthinkable Trauma,” launched on YouTube, David Alan Harris (2014) speaks on behalf of a group of child soldiers, now in their teens, that witnessed their parents being killed in the civil war in Sierra Leone. David Harris and three of his co-facilitators made it a goal to help heal these ex-fighters from their trauma. The teens were not allowed to cry or grieve the deaths of those closest to them leading to lack of empathy and bodily trauma expressed with anger and aggression. Through DMT, David was able to help them re-enact their trauma through symbolic movements stored in their mind-body connection. Eventually, the ex-fighters were able to harness their own freewill through freedom of choice demonstrated through creative dance, not only gaining the respect of their community, winning a 2009 Freedom to Create Youth Prize, but regaining their moral sanity and mental health. Harris, who is a Dance Movement Therapist explains his opinions on his clients saying: “I view this aggressive but not violent play as the former fighter’s unconscious means of gradually coming to tolerate their own horrific memories. A truly vital step.” The instructor isn’t necessarily concerned with the technique of the dance itself, but more so the way the clients move through their memories, making it their own experience.
Vanhorn, who is trained as a Dance Movement Therapist discusses in a podcast, the clientele she has: “We can work with everybody. I think we are particularly effective either with people whom words are not the best form of how they can express themselves, so that’s everything from kids, people who are older, who have a hard time understanding or expressing themselves in words. But the other group that I think we are really good at is basically intelligent, higher functioning people.” What Vanhorn really means by this is that Dance Movement Therapy caters to any demographic of person and does not undermine the survivor’s intellect and sense of self-worth. The people who benefit from dance movement therapy is endless and does not define the survivor in any stigmatizing way. This example further illuminates the hope and potential of recovery from PTSD. Furthermore, Dance Movement Therapy can help a trauma survivor to not only decreases symptoms of PTSD but aids them in finding within themselves again, a sense of self-empowerment.
In conclusion, Dance Movement Therapy should be given to anyone experiencing symptoms of PTSD in the mental health system as it helps survivors to find a new sense of self-worth and decrease symptoms of distress. Dance Movement Therapy is growing as a form of therapy in North America. Organizations such as the American Dance Therapy Association are striving to help people in need of therapy and people wanting to pursue studying DMT. The major shifts can happen within the mental health community when we study the way the mind, body, and brain function as a whole in order to heal.
