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  • Emotional Intelligence

    I often work with groups using lists. In movement therapy as well as psychotherapy, educational and process oriented groups lists are a great structure for groups to explore thoughts, and/or feelings. Here is a list that often comes up in groups:

    ten suggestions about feelings.
    1. Become emotionally literate. Label your feelings, rather than labeling people or situations.
    Use three word sentences beginning with “I feel”.
    Start labeling feelings; stop labeling people & situations msclip-210
    “I feel impatient.” vs “This is ridiculous.” I feel hurt and bitter”. vs. “You are an insensitive jerk.”
    “I feel afraid.” vs. “You are driving like an idiot.”
    2. Distinguish between thoughts and feelings.
    Thoughts: I feel like…& I feel as if…. & I feel that
    Feelings: I feel: (feeling word)
    3. Take more responsibility for your feelings.
    “I feel jealous.” vs. “You are making me jealous.”
    Analyze your own feelings rather than the action or motives of other people. Let your feelings help you identify your unmet emotional needs.
    4. Use your feelings to help make decisions
    “How will I feel if I do this?” “How will I feel if I don’t?”
    “How do I feel?” “What would help me feel better?”
    Ask others “How do you feel?” and “What would help you feel better?”
    5. Use feelings to set and achieve goals
    – Set feeling goals. Think about how you want to feel or how you want others to feel. (your employees, your clients, your students, your children, your partner)
    – Get feedback and track progress towards the feeling goals by periodically measuring feelings from 0-10. For example, ask clients, students, teenagers how much they feel respected from 0 to 10.
    6. Feel energized, not angry.
    Use what others call “anger” to help feel energized to take productive action.
    7. Validate other people’s feelings.
    Show empathy, understanding, and acceptance of other people’s feelings.
    8. Use feelings to help show respect for others.
    How will you feel if I do this? How will you feel if I don’t? Then listen and take their feelings into consideration.
    9. Don’t advise, command, control, criticize, judge or lecture to others.
    Instead, try to just listen with empathy and non-judgment.
    10. Avoid people who invalidate you.
    While this is not always possible, at least try to spend less time with them, or try not to let them have psychological power over you.

  • While I dance

    “While I dance

    I cannot judge,

    I cannot hate,

    I cannot separate myself from life.

    I can only be joyful and whole.

    That is why I dance.” Hans Bos

  • Effects of dance therapy and ballroom dances on physical and mental illnesses: A systematic review

    A great article on DMT and wellness. From the abstract: “Dance (movement) therapy had a positive impact for patients with breast cancer, improving quality of life, shoulder range of motion and body image. In patients with depression psychological distress was reduced by dance therapy. Ballroom dances improved balance and coordination in patients with Parkinson’s disease and disease-specific quality of life in patients with heart failure. Dance (movement) therapy and ballroom dances seem beneficial for patients with breast cancer, depression, Parkinson’s disease, diabetes and heart failure. However, further good quality research is needed to gain more profound insight into the efficacy of these treatment options.” Access to the portal that has the entire article here.

  • Watch “Cutting Edge: Treating Depression Safely and Successfully” on YouTube

  • People read emotions using the whole body, not just facial expressions.

    Interesting linked story from USA-NPR. “A new study suggests that people actually don’t use (those kinds of) extreme facial expressions to judge how a person is feeling. Instead, surprisingly, people rely on body cues.”


    This, of course is not a surprise to Dance Movement Therapists. 🙂 We are trained to assess peoples feelings based on among other things, their whole body.

    This story reminded me of a quote from W.B. Yeats; ““We only believe those thoughts which have been conceived not in the brain but in the whole body.”

    In the context of this story I guess it would be: “We only believe those emotions expressed by the whole body and not just the face” Richardb

  • Deep inside us

    I am a Creative Arts & Dance Movement Psychotherapist and I have worked in clinical and non-clinical settings with children, adolescents, and adults. I think that what E.E. Cummings once said sums up one of my objectives when working with patients/clients:

    “We do not believe in ourselves until someone reveals that deep inside us something is valuable, worth listening to, worthy of our trust, sacred to our touch. Once we believe in ourselves we can risk curiosity, wonder, spontaneous delight or any experience that reveals the human spirit.”

  • Barn Swallow Coloring Page

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  • Dance Movement Therapy and Children

    Dance Movement Therapist (DMT) practice in a wide variety of settings. One example is DMT’s who work with children and their care givers (such as parents) in a safe, structured and creative environment. In this type of setting DMT’s observe interactions such as how and when a child moves toward and away from their care giver. A DMT might use the Kestenberg Movement Profile (KMP) to observe the natural developmental based rhythms, attunements and clashes of the child and care giver as they play and interact. For instance, a child may have a gradual rhythm and moves slowly into activities and the care giver may have a more aggressive/biting rhythm. A cash of rhythms occurs when the care giver pushes the child into activities at the care giver’s rhythm and not the child’s. The result is the child will often resist the care giver and the more the care giver pushes the more the child resists.

    One successful outcome of this situation is to teach the care giver how to attune to the natural physical, mental and emotional rhythms of the child. When the care giver attunes to the child, the child begins to attune to the care giver and instead if resisting each other’s rhythms they begin to “move” together.

  • Basset Hound Coloring Page

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  • Watch “Geri Chavis – author of “Poetry and Story Therapy: The Healing Power of Creative Expression”” on YouTube