This book examines the field of dance therapy from its inception in the 1940's to the present. A detailed analysis is conducted of the theory and practice of the major pioneers. The book covers biographical reports and the influence of many dance therapy leaders. Laban Movement Analysis (LMA) is discussed as well as dance therapy in specific patient/client settings. Appended are: (1) listing of survey repondents; (2) information on the American Dance Therapy Association; and (3) the Dance Therapy questionnaire. A 34-page bibliography is included.

Seize the joy and healing power of dance! Drawing from her years of experience as a dance and movement teacher, and as cofounder of the international dance organization InterPlay, Cynthia Winton-Henry helps you overcome your embarrassment or anxiety and discover in dance a place of solace and restoration, as well as an energizing spiritual force. She taps into the spirit of dancing throughout history and in many world cultures to provide detailed exercises that will help you learn to trust your body and interpret its physical and spiritual intentions. For both newcomers and seasoned movers alike, she encourages you to embrace dance as a spiritual tool to:

The essays in this dynamic compilation are a testament to dance as a healing art. Widely interdisciplinary in nature and written by women dancers from around the world, they illustrate a rich array of dance practices, cultures, and disciplines and show how this expressive therapy can be both empowering and exhilarating. The women’s narratives all share a deep appreciation for the connection between mental, spiritual, and physical dimensions, offering dance as a transformative power of renewing and rebuilding that bond. Both personal and professional, the stories weave a vivid tapestry of lived experiences and insights, balance, and a community healed by dance.

This fascinating collection of essays contains a variety of perspectives about the use of expressive arts for facilitating physical and emotional healing. Each author within brings a fresh approach and unique experiences to their writing. Within these pages, you will find many ideas for the use of the arts and can learn how to engage the inner layers of the self that allow natural healing processes of the body and soul to flourish. When we fully engage an art modality, we find ourselves in a place in our consciousness that could be called 'healingspace,' where we feel ourselves whole and re-member ourselves as well. From psychic trauma to physical illness, dis-ease of many kinds may be addressed through the various techniques discussed here. The tools offered by some authors are population specific and age appropriate, while several authors have given us the philosophical underpinnings for it all. While the authors within represent the grassroots voices of this new and rapidly expanding field, several of them have developed their own methods for using the arts, and have thriving practices. Our approach is wholistic. Music, visual arts, movement, dance, and poetry are discussed as separate modalities and in combination with one another in a process or flow. The reader will engage in our experiences with these modalities as they have been lived. The complementary CD that accompanies this book will allows the listener to have a full sound experience of toning. If a rationale is needed for establishing arts programs in medical centers or other health facilities, it can be found here. The book offers tools for self development and for group facilitation. Those wanting to expand their healing practice through the use of the arts will find the book to be a faithful guide. Anyone wishing for a fuller understanding of how the arts may work to facilitate healing will find much food for thought within these pages.

After years of struggling with an eating disorder and the unforgiving world of ballet, Kathleen Rea found solace and healing in artistic expression that honestly communicated who she was without censor. She learned to see her body as a source of wisdom rather than something that needed to be controlled. This inspired her to develop a style of expressive arts therapy in which sensation takes the lead in the creative process, enabling the wisdom of one's body to guide recovery. The Healing Dance outlines Rea's therapeutic approach, animated with details from her powerful life story and examples.

Have you ever sat in the audience but wished you were on the stage? Or maybe you are a naturally creative person but sometimes you feel blocked or find it hard to keep going?If you ever breathed in with joy when you saw a particular colour, like the colour of the gorse or the sea, and would like to recapture that feeling and build on it, this book is for you. It will help you to become fitter in body and soul, to slow down your thinking and worrying and inhabit your body with more passion and ease.Lani O'Hanlon brings the creative and healing arts together in Dancing the Rainbow. It includes the story of how movement and dance transformed her life when she started to use dance to heal the trauma in her own body, and her book sets out to also transform the reader's life through dance. With easy to follow illustrations throughout, it uses tried and tested methods to unlock creative potential in a way that is in balance with the body's rhythm and with the rhythm of the Earth.

This book focuses on Somatic Movement Dance Therapy and the importance of self-regulation and co-regulation. The chapters attend to self-regulating different tissues through movement, breath, sound and the imagination. Throughout the book the author shares processes and practices that support participants to balance their living tissues, moving from sympathetic arousal into parasympathetic ease and release. The study of the autonomic nervous system and how to innervate the parasympathetic through breath awareness, heart-sensing and intero-ception is the central through-line in the book. Uniquely, Williamson attends to the anatomical and physiological complexity underlying the apparent simplicity of somatic movement dance practice. How to sense-perceive and move with attuned awareness of specific body tissues, such the skeletal-muscular and craniosacral system invites the reader into a deep anatomical and physiological excavation of self-regulation. The interconnectivity of fascia, and the importance of cardio-ception, breath awareness and gravity lie at the heart of this book. Sensory-perceptual awareness of the heart is foregrounded as the most important ingredient in the efficacy of practice, as well as gravi-ception, soft-tissue-rolling and fascial unwinding. Includes a collective foreword from Sarah Whatley, Daniel Deslauriers, Celeste Snowber and Karin Rugman This is a must-read practice-as-research book, for under- and postgraduate students, researchers and educators and especially important for practitioners who feel the weight and condescension of the mechanistic paradigm.