Dance/Movement Therapy: A Whole Person Approach to Working with Trauma and Building Resilience
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Dance/Movement Therapy: A Whole Person Approach to Working with Trauma and Building Resilience Ilene A. Serlin1 Accepted: 24 October 2020 © American Dance Therapy Association 2020
Abstract This paper explores the use of dance/movement therapy, as a Whole Person approach to working with trauma and building resilience, to effect individual and community change around the world. The arts are a particularly effective way for people who cannot express themselves verbally to find symbolic and embodied expression of their suffering and hopes for the future. Dance/movement therapy can draw on folk dance and specific cultural forms to address universal themes. The content of this paper was presented as a workshop at the American Dance Therapy Association convention in San Diego, 2015.
Introduction: How Does Art Heal? The arts heal from the basic human need to create, communicate, create coherence, and symbolize. They are symbolic representations of human experience, usually visual, kinesthetic (dance), verbal (poetry), or musical (song, music). They are transcultural, expressing archetypal symbols that are universal throughout history and across cultures. In an age of increased interconnectedness, we are challenged by natural and manmade disasters from around the globe. The clash of cultures brings misunderstandings and conflict. The arts can “help us search again not only for the meaning of life but also the purpose of our individual and collective experience…for ways we might re-create ourselves anew as a human species, so that we may end at last the cycle of violence that has marred our history “(Walsh, 2001, p. 17). The arts provide symbolic nonverbal ways to work with unspeakable trauma, natural and manmade disasters, dislocation and caregiver burnout. Building on creativity, they facilitate posttraumatic growth (Tedeschi & Calhoun, 1996; Serlin & Cannon 2004), growth through adversity (Joseph & Linley, 2008), hardiness (Maddi & Hightower, 1999), optimism and resilience (Antonovsky, 1979; Epel et al, 1998)
* Ilene A. Serlin [email protected] 1
Union Street Health Associates, 2084 Union Street, San Francisco, CA 94123, USA
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American Journal of Dance Therapy
and self-efficacy. Used to build resiliency in a Whole Person context (Serlin, 2007a, 2010a, b, c), they bring together body, speech, mind and spirit. The arts heal by improving immune functioning and reducing stress and health complaints, and help people live longer (Pennebaker, 1990). Increasingly, studies have demonstrated the relationship between stress and the body, including the relationship between negative emotions and the fight/flight response, cortisol levels, hypertension and Type A personalities (Babette, 2006; Schore, 1994). Positive emotions also impact wellness including hope, curiosity, and a positive expectation about the future. Finally, stress is not the same for all people, but is individually and subjectively mediated by perceptions, beliefs and cognitions (Serlin, 2006a). The arts provide access to mult
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