By: Heather Laing
Heather Laing discovers how a UW-Madison class is training future dance/movement therapists in techniques to provide healing through movement.
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qy34LAXF-R0]
Voiceover: Dance/movement therapy is the psycho-therapeutic use of movement to work on cognitive, spiritual, emotional and neurological issues. According to Rena Kornblum, it integrates the whole of a person. Rena is a dance/movement therapist at the Hancock Center for Dance/Movement Therapy, Inc. in Madison, WI. She also teaches classes at the university, where she trains students in dance therapy techniques, some of which she uses in her violence prevention curriculum in schools.
Rena Kornblum: I use movement to work on concrete skills, like staying focused and ignoring distractions, self-settling skills, boundaries, spatial boundaries.
VO: The Hancock staff offers programming for women, children, families, sexual abuse victims and adults with developmental disabilities. The Hancock Center also holds individual sessions. It has seen clients as young as 18 months and as old as 90.
VO: In her violence prevention program in schools, Rena focuses on integrating movement to develop anti-bullying skills, anger management and empathy. She sees over 1,000 children each year, some in smaller movement groups.
RK: In the movement group, their true self can come out and they can be seen, heard, accepted. They can be accepted for having these intense feelings.
VO: Rena often uses props in dance/movement therapy classes. Fellow therapist, Mariah Meyer LeFeber, says props are a great way to physically bring people together.
VO: Rena teaches her university students different group techniques using a stretch cloth, which is a large piece of spandex sewn in a loop. She uses the cloth in her children’s movement classes.
RK: The stretch cloth became a metaphor for the skin. For the body. The group became anchors, so we were the support.
VO: Rena is constantly thinking on her feet to adapt her techniques to the group she is teaching.
RK: That’s a really significant piece of dance therapy. We’re not centering on what you do wrong. We’re centering on what you can do and how you can use that to help you.
Special thanks to: Rena Kornblum, Mariah Meyer LeFeber, and the UW-Madison Dance 231 students
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