Dance Movement Therapy

Dance / Movement Therapy is defined by the American Dance Therapy Association as “the psychotherapeutic use of movement as a process which furthers the emotional, social, cognitive, and physical integration of the individual."

For over fifty years, dance / movement therapists have been pioneers in the in-depth understanding of how the body and mind interact in health and in illness, be it an illness of the mind which is embodied or an illness of the body that impacts mental functioning and spirit. Whether the issue is the will to live, a search for meaning or motility, or the ability to feel love for life, for dance / movement therapists healing has always meant mobilizing resources from that place within where body and mind are one.

Today's dance / movement therapists are graduates of master's degree programs that integrate dancers' special knowledge of body, movement and expressive spirit with the healing skills of counseling, psychotherapy and rehabilitation. We help a wide range of people, from children with autism to seniors in their declining years, from people with mental illnesses to people who have lost touch with their inner truth, from people with spinal cord injuries to people who just have never felt quite at home in their bodies. When words alone are not enough, dance / movement therapists are there to help!

- definition from the American Dance Therapy Association