Embodied Enactive Dance/Movement Therapy

Abstract

Dance/movement therapy may be conceptualized as an embodied and enactive form of psychotherapy. The embodied enactive approach looks at individuals as living systems characterized by plasticity and permeability (momentto-moment adaptations within the self and toward the environment), autonomy, sense-making, emergence, experience, and striving for balance. Enaction and embodiment emphasize the roles that body motion and sensorimotor experience play in the formation of concepts and abstract thinking. A theoretical framework and a perspective on professional practice in dance/movement therapy are herein offered as influenced by interdisciplinary embodied and enactive approaches deriving from cognitive sciences and phenomenology. The authors assert that dance/ movement therapy, enaction, and embodiment fruitfully contribute to one another.From its very origin, the body-mind relation, interpersonal relations, and the relatedness of the person to the environment have been central to the clinical practice of dance/movement therapy, in which movement and dance as essential Sabine C. Koch and Diana Fischman equally and jointly contributed to the article.

Wirkfaktoren der Tanz- und Bewegungstherapie. Replik auf Tschacher, Munt und Storch

“…In der tanztherapeutischen Literatur, beispielsweise bei Goodill (2006), Koch / Fischman (2011, Petzold et al (2005) …”

Attachment-Based Clinical Work with Children and Adolescents

“…Dance therapists now find support for the relationship of movement and self from philosophy, phenomenology, neuroscience, infant mental health, and embodiment and enactment research (Berrol 2006;Bloom 2006;Koch and Fischman 2011;Tortora 2004Tortora , 2006Tortora , 2010. The philosopher Sheets-Johnstone (2010, p. 2) discusses "the dynamic congruency between emotions and movement.…”

“…stating that "moving is a way of knowing" (1998, p. xv) and is at the core of our sense of agency. Dance movement therapists use the term embodiment to describe the relationship between thought, emotional experience, and the felt-body experience in interaction with the surrounding environment (Bloom 2006;Koch 2006;Koch and Fischman 2011). This perspective brings the mind and body together: "unifying perception and action, creativity and recognition, cognition and emotion.…”

Dance/Movement Therapy and Developments in Empirical Research: The First 50 Years

“…One good example of the range of this new support can be found in Koch and Fischman (2011). It is possible that the embodied approach that has been used and taught has kept the key assumptions of DMT close to body-mind parameters that are now reflected in and supported through basic research about how the brain, movement, and relationships function.…”