-
Horse Coloring Page
-
Wellness
Wellness is not the mere absence of disease. It is a proactive, preventive approach designed to achieve optimum levels of health, social and emotional functioning. Wellness can also be defined as an active process through which you become aware of and make choices toward a more successful existence.
The definition of Wellness is: NOUN
1. mental and physical soundness: physical well-being, especially when maintained or achieved through good diet and regular exercise.A wellness-oriented lifestyle encourages you to adopt habits and behaviors that promote better health and an improved quality of life. It also involves the recognition that you have physical, psychological, social, and spiritual needs, with each dimension being necessary for optimal levels of functioning.
Wellness is a positive approach to living – an approach that emphasizes the whole person. It is the integration of the body, mind, and spirit; and the appreciation that everything you do, think, feel, and believe has an impact on your state of health.
Since lifestyle has been found to be the single most important factor determining your pattern of general health, it is important that you be educated to “take charge” of your daily life and to set healthy lifestyle goals. The choices you make have a dominant influence on your health ad wellness. The secret is not in medical care, but consistent self- care. While traditional medicine concentrates on alleviating or curing disease, the wellness approach encourages you to take personal responsibility for your well-being.
Remember, Wellness is an active process of becoming aware of and making choices toward a healthy and fulfilling life.
“…a state of complete physical, mental, and social well-being, and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity.” – The World Health Organization
-
Scotish & West Highland Terrier Coloring Page
-
Transference
In Dance Movement Therapy (D/MT) transference and counter transference play a crucial role in the therapy session. Understanding the differing theories of transference, where and how they take place, whether on an emotional, physical, cognitive, or neurological level is an important foundation for the effective treatment of a client. It is because transference is primarily an unconscious process that D/MT as an effective avenue into the subconscious can allow for transference actions to become consciously embodied. It is this embodiment of these subconscious processes that allows for the exploration and bringing to light transference and thus one part of ‘healing’ for the client.
In D/MT client(s) move, through posture and/or gesture in ways that is less likely to be censored. For instance, a therapist asks a question and the client hesitates and chooses their words and answers, censoring (either consciously or not) their response. It’s a cognitive process that we all do generally with little thinking or effort. The therapist asks the same questions and directs the client to respond with the hands in a gesture or a posture with a fuller body expression. I’ve noticed over the last twenty some years that people tend to respond/react to this type of direction with the same hesitation and then begin to move in ways that express something rarely captured by words. I believe this is because people are used to censoring their words but less so with the body.
A great example of this is the Stress-less classes I have taught over the years. Participants almost always identify the body as the way they know they are really stressed out. They report grinding their teeth, clenching their fists, clenching their butt muscles, as the primary resources of how they are feeling/thinking. It’s the bodies uncensored expression of what is happening internally that they notice most. In Dance Movement therapy it is what the body says that we notice most.
-
the whole of life
“You must understand the whole of life, not just one little part of it. That is why you must read, that is why you must look at the skies, that is why you must sing, and dance, and write poems, and suffer, and understand, for all that is life.” Jiddu Krishnamurti
-
Authentic movement
Authentic Movement, a process of moving one’s feelings and thoughts was originally called Movement in Depth by Dance Movement Therapy pioneer Mary Starks Whitehouse. Authentic movement grew from Whitehouse’s roots in dance, Jungian studies, and work in dance/movement therapy. Building on Jung’s method of active imagination, she saw symbolic meaning in physical action.
Authentic movement enables a direct connection to the depths of the unconscious, accessing the rich resources of intuitive wisdom expressed through the embodied word, image, sensation and of course movement.
For me authentic movement is connecting with the deep internal well of the self, the sub-consciousness. Drawing slowly one bucket at a time, of feelings, thoughts, and sensations – than pouring them out, to the external, sometimes a few drops, sometimes a cup full, on occasion a whole bucket at a time, washed over the movement floor.
How does a feeling move me? What body part has an urge to move? What thought moves me and what body part has an urge to move from that thought? How does one sensation (physical, emotional, mental) and one body part moving form/transform into a pattern of movement and a pattern of sensation? These questions are a part of the authentic movement experience for me and they don’t arise while moving but are answered nevertheless by the process.
I sit with my eyes closed, noticing my breath, noticing contractions and expansions in my body. Noticing discomfort and comfort, and then reconnecting with my breath. The mind/thinking creates images and thought patterns in response to the bodily sensations. The body begins to create movement in response to feelings and thought sensations. Letting it happen without censoring, without wondering why or where it is coming from. It just happens.
Moving with the eyes closed in my own internal space, bringing the interior to the exterior, the internal to the external. Using a minimum of sound/words (or none at all); connecting with the floor, walls, ceiling, and air; with the very molecules themselves.
Taking the internal to the external and taking that external even further by sensing others in the room, closer, further; the sound of their breath, of their movement. Perhaps even a touch, and more touch, and less touch. Trying effortlessly to maintain the self (the internal to the external) without being swayed by the connection with another. Trying effortlessly to maintain the self while connecting with the space, the walls, floor, air, molecules.
-
Watch “Finding Drama Therapy and Bringing it Home | Fatma Al-Qadfan | TEDxAUK” on YouTube
-
circle of stones
“It is undeniably easier to ignore the hardships of those who are too weak to demand their rights than to respond sensitively to their needs. To care is to accept responsibility, to dare to act in accordance with the dictum that the ruler is the strength of the helpless.” Aung San Suu Kyi
-
Why We Get Fat: Diet Trends and Food Policy
-
preach
Did St Francis preach to the birds? Whatever for? If he really liked birds he would have done better to preach to the cats. Rebecca West
CreativeTherapyTools 