Everyone was able to see, in the face of a therapist or attempting to confide in a close, the limits of language to express a feeling, an injury or trauma. The gesture danced, then, proves to be a valuable aid to replace the spoken language.

An intuitive language or non-verbal 

The gesture danced offers first of all a student and teacher of a common language, non-verbal and non-visualized. Putting things into words in the world, the experiences and feelings is obviously essential in that it allows you to better understand intellectually experience, to contain and ownership, rather than being subjected to it. However, there are situations in which the words do not go out. Either they are too painful to make, is that we don't even know, because the intellect can barely conceptualize effectively lived, or to name precisely the feeling. The movement, here, will be substituted for the name direct-lived, with the two virtues major : a simplified expression and imaged to the experience, and using imagery. 

The dance of anger

I could for example be observed, during my hours of individual practice and as a teacher, the difficulty that can meet the women to express their anger. In the patriarchal and misogynistic to which we belong, anger is an emotion male. It makes noise, it takes up space, it sometimes leads to a loss of control. It does not correspond to the archetypal patriarchal woman – gentle, discretion, self-sacrifice for the other and be in control of his emotions. 

As well, and often in spite of themselves, women are forbidden to unconsciously any manifestation of anger, and even come to fully inhibit the emotion in them. This obviously does not prevent the anger to grow, to take up space, to provoke misunderstanding or guilt... And blow up sometimes so destructive to the individual who has not been able to the expressor literally out of him or her.  

How, then, help these women, who have no vocabulary, no intellectual tools to conceptualize and express this feeling of anger ? The danced movement has its benefits, because it gives a concrete form to this feeling unknown : visualization of the color red, dance of fire, use of renewable assets brutal and choppy... We finally proposed the same quality and authenticity of expression, but by bypassing the barriers of the mental and the limitations of the vocabulary. The other advantage of the movement is, of course, its universal significance : the red, fire, and the choppy evoke intuitively to many Europeans of our age the theme of anger. Dance connects us to a universal language. 

The gesture danced as a vector of creativity and empowerment

Dancing also helps to connect to their power of imagination and creativity. These are extremely powerful tools of re-appropriation of its environment and its own schema narrative. Using his imagination, making use of mental images, and ways of moving that sometimes date back to childhood. We allow ourselves to make something of oneself in its representation of the real. Also, it invents movements and forms, you get out of his comfort zone. We know, moreover, the virtues of creativity in all branches of art therapy. By creating, inventing, taking the hand on his mode of expression, it leaves its mark in the world and asserts its individuality.  

In dance therapy, there was also the great chance of having all the vocabulary of her body, which increases the possibilities of creation and expression. I've found as well in the dance the most beautiful tool of connection to their own inner life, in the sense that it ignores the verbal language. It allows you to contact a facet of self, more raw, more wild, less civilized by the conventions and suitable. 

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Check out the schedule of the training modules in dance therapy here.