Dance/Movement Therapy: A Whole Person Approach to Working with Trauma and Building Resilience

Abstract

This paper explores the use of dance/movement therapy, as a Whole Person approach to working with trauma and building resilience, to effect individual and community change around the world. The arts are a particularly effective way for people who cannot express themselves verbally to find symbolic and embodied expression of their suffering and hopes for the future. Dance/movement therapy can draw on folk dance and specific cultural forms to address universal themes. The content of this paper was presented as a workshop at the American Dance Therapy Association convention in San Diego, 2015.