Full Circle Fridays|Week 4: Dance Therapy

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Like we heard on this week’s Mindful Monday, trauma often squelches our soul of things like creativity, childhood dreams, and the ability to visualize wants and desires at all.  Then on Wellspring Wednesday, we dove into what Developmental Trauma is (trauma during the first few childhood years of life) and how it trains your brain with all kinds of coping skills that were useful as an abused child but are maladaptive mechanisms now as adults.  Often times, these two are linked. 

If you used to love to paint, ride horses, play pretend with your dolls, run around on the playground, or make puppet shows, you may be also able to remember when those things (or at least the desire to do them) came to a halt.  This may come back to the age when your trauma started.  A “timeline trauma” as I call it, may have cut your life into two parts – before and after trauma.  If you were a child full of hopes and dreams and play and fun, then something happened like a parent died or you were sexually abused, you may have collapsed inside yourself.  All the sudden, you didn’t have room for play because your brain was trying to make sense of what had happened. 

If you grew up with Attachment or Developmental trauma, the joy that kids of what we call “good enough” homes had may have never been afforded to you.  You may have grown up afraid of playing, letting loose, running around carefree at the playground, talking to kids you just met, laughing loudly.  Your trauma brain may have been always trying to keep you small in an effort to keep you from being in harm’s way.  Alternately, your emotions may not have been allowed to develop in your childhood trauma.  Maybe you never realized you wanted to play or run or be loud or jump on trampolines because you were busy being hypervigilant to the anger levels in the home to try to calm any violence about to break out.  Maybe your longing wasn’t to run and play because it was busy knowing when to run and hide.  Maybe you couldn’t ever imagine leaving the home to ride bikes with the neighborhood kids because you had to make sure your alcoholic mother was safe. 

Now you are here, as an adult, out of your childhood trauma, yet you still have those sensations in your body – that being loud, having fun, being silly, falling down or messing up, running free, or jumping in a pile of leaves isn’t safe.  Or maybe you feel out of your depth because you actually never were able to do those things. 

So the resource today I want to share is an option – and maybe just the type of thing you need to jump start your inner child healing.  Dance Therapy (also called Dance Movement Therapy or DMT) is a therapeutic modality that activates kinesthetic, rational, musical, and emotional brain functions.  This type of movement means you are using your body, mind, and emotions all together to accomplish something fun and also healing.

The ability to express yourself, as a trauma survivor, can often be awkward if not completely painful.  We also know that many of us struggle with the mind/body connection due to our trauma.  Not only is dance good exercise (which releases all those happy hormones), but also a release of energy can help you sleep better, regulate your heart rate variability, and balance your emotions.  What’s different about dance therapy is that a DMT therapist will be walking you through the movements (that can be traditional dance to yoga flows) with their designed instructions.  This uses fluid movements to actually allow your emotions to speak through your body, flowing out of your while expressing your inner being through your physical vessel.  The therapeutic side of it comes from the DMT therapist as they read your body language and the emotions that are coming out of you.  The therapist may mirror your movements, give you props to use to express yourself when words aren’t available, cue creative visualizations, offer you kind suggestions to move your emotions through, and keep you in a safe environment so you can feel the freedom to move.  The non-verbal communication with your DMT therapist builds trust and security. 

This is not a dance class.  Although in your healing journey - dancing, karaoke, ice skating with friends, skydiving – those are all great things, but this is actual therapy.  It’s a modality, a resource beyond talk therapy.  Not that you can’t find healing going out dancing with a lover – but this is dancing with a therapist to work on self-expression, emotional regulation, releasing stress and pain from your body caused by your trauma, “unstucking” things that are trapped inside where words aren’t there. 

Motion is very rehabilitative, and a creative expression of yourself is powerful to realign your mind, body, and soul.  Kinetic therapies integrate your authentic self as you can come back to the you who was meant to be before any trauma wounded your inner child.  This also is a self-reflective therapy as you work in a space where maybe you feel self-conscious or have held onto a stoic rigidity in order to protect yourself.  Dance therapy may teach you to trust yourself and uncover deeper self-awareness. 

I invite you to try this sometime.  Simply search for DMT facilities in your area.  If you have more questions or comments, I’d love to hear from you.  Just click on my website in the show notes and select the “Connect” tab to shoot me a message.   Let’s try something new.  Let’s let our inner child dance.