Dance Movement Therapy

My approach

My approach to dance movement therapy rests on the idea that movement can work as a language of its own and make visible the experiences, feelings and images that words cannot always reach. My work draws on C. G. Jung’s idea of active imagination, in which images, feelings and inner impulses rising from the unconscious are given space without trying to interpret or control them straight away. In movement, this means becoming sensitive to what the body brings forth spontaneously, and exploring that material through movement.

Another central influence on my work is Mary Starks Whitehouse’s Authentic Movement tradition, in which movement starts from listening to an inner impulse rather than from a predetermined form or performance. Whitehouse’s idea of a shift from “I am moving” towards the experience of “I am being moved” describes my own approach well. The therapist’s task is not to define the meaning of movement from the outside, but to create a safe space where the client can observe, follow and gradually understand their own bodily experience.

My background in circus, dance and improvisation also brings strong embodied observation to my work, together with the creative and playful side of movement. I pay particular attention to the relationship between body and space, to interaction and group processes, and to how movement can open new ways of connecting with one’s own experience and with other people. For me, dance movement therapy is not analysing movement from the outside. It is a process in which meanings can take shape gradually through the client’s own bodily experience.