TUESDAY, MAY 24 , 2022. THE WASHINGTON POST EZ EE E5
and establish a treatment plan,” Grayson says.Outside the therapist’s office
Like me, many people have discovered the
feel-good effects of dancing outside the thera-
peutic setting.
I prefer dancing solo, with the simple goal
of letting my feelings out through movement.
But across the country, social options have
cropped up. Ecstatic Dance organizes alcohol-
and drug-free group dancing in cities around
the world including indoor and outdoor
events. It is a specifically nonverbal practice,
so beat, movement and breath is how dancers
express themselves. On Venice Beach in Los
Angeles, barefoot dancers wear headphones
to music played by a DJ at a weekly event.
The freeform 5Rhythms Dance moves prac-
titioners through five stages of movement,
focusing each stage on a different body part,
emotion or expression and can be a way to
deal with grief, anger and stress. Lucia Horan
teaches both online and in-person 5Rhythms
classes at t he Esalen Institute in Big Sur, Calif.,
and trains teachers in the practice. Although
she has taught for over two decades, Horan
found dancing helped her deal and heal from
her own set of pandemic stresses: evacuations
from devastating wildfires in California home
and two miscarriages.
She also did talk therapy, meditation, trau-
ma work, and took time in nature, but she says
the “beauty of dance is that it addresses these
quadrants of healing — the physical, the
emotional, the mental and the spiritual.”
Horan says that’s one of the keys to why dance
works for many people — but it’s also because
it forces people to focus on the present
moment, which can bring relief from worry,
grief and emotional pain.
“A lot of suffering happens when we are
thinking about the past or the future; we go
over and over those things in our mind. But
dance is a presence-based practice, so our
attention is drawn again and again to the
present moment,” Horan says.Just dance
Experts say if you don’t want to engage in a
therapeutic program and just want to try
dancing yourself at home, you don’t need any
special equipment, and you can wear whatev-
er you like.
Just clear a large enough space to allow
expansive movement (cover any sharp edges),
put on some music that you love — anything
that inspires you — and start moving. There
are no rules on what to listen to or how to
dance. And anyone can participate — Horan
says people showed up to her online classes
bedridden from cancer treatments, and all the
experts stressed that people in wheelchairs,
those unable to walk, people who are blind or
ill can still participate — because dance is for
everyone, even if that means just moving
hands or arms.
“Just meet whatever is present and move.
Dance until the dancer disappears and only
the dance remains,” Horan says. Afterward, sit
for a bit and just be still. Movement externaliz-
es and releases stress. Meditation allows the
space for integration to take place.
The pandemic has been an emotionally
difficult time, and many of us are still experi-
encing grief. Horan says dance is a way to
“listen to the truth of the body and allow it to
be explored in all its opposites — it gives us
this freedom, it gives us permission, it gives us
a way through.”Science of dance as therapy
It’s not just me — a small but growing body
of research suggests that dance may provide
more mood benefits than other types of cardio
exercise. While 30 minutes of heart-pumping
activity a day is a well-known way to strength-
en and tone muscles, bolster the aging brain
and improve mood, studies suggest t hat dance
— of almost any kind — can help reduce
anxiety (more than generic aerobic exercise)
and chronic pain. It was found to lower
depression in college students in one study.
And while research on dance therapy and
dementia is still limited, several studies sug-
gest it can improve or stabilize the quality of
life in people with Alzheimer’s disease and
have a positive effect on the “cognitive, physi-
cal, emotional and social performance” of
people with dementia.
Why does it work, beyond the benefits of any
good aerobic exercise? Dance therapy experts
say it can provide a space to express aspects of
our personality that might be buried, uncom-
fortable, or for personal or cultural reasons are
discouraged (such as anger, for women).
“We hold every experience we’ve ever had in
our body, so being able to move may release
something that we’ve been holding, tucked
away in a muscle. The muscle has the memory
of it, and when we’re moving, we can release
that,” says Angela Grayson, a clinical psycholo-
gist and president of the American Dance
Therapy Association.
Dance/movement therapy (DMT) is based
on the idea that dance can be part of the
therapeutic process, a way to communicate
nonverbally. It combines some of the well-
known, positive effects on mental health that
exercise generally provides, along with some-
thing deeper that can be especially useful
when talk therapy is not working. Inherently,
dance is about connection and expression,
says Jacelyn Biondo, a researcher at Drexel
University’s Department of Creative Arts
Therapies. “If five different people ride a bike,
it’s going to look similar, but if five different
people dance, it will vary, because they’re
expressing themselves,” she says.
Biondo, who is also a dance/movement
therapist, says she has seen dance therapy
help people struggling with depression and
anxiety. But her expertise comes from working
with patients experiencing acute symptoms of
schizophrenia in inpatient psychiatric hospi-
tals. In that context, she says dance can be a
good therapeutic tool. In a 2021 study, Biondo
and colleagues found that people experienc-
ing schizophrenia who did dance therapy had
a decrease in symptoms, including auditory
hallucinations, paranoia and delusional
thinking, when compared to a control group
of patients who did talk therapy only. They
also showed an increase in emotional expres-
sion; and a decrease in psychological distress.
Grayson says dance therapy can work for
many mental health conditions, which makes
it a useful tool for therapist in a variety of
settings. She recommends DMT for mothers
who have had traumatic births, grade-school
kids who have difficulty getting feelings out
and putting them into words, and specialized
programs for high school students. It can
benefit people in aged-care homes, prisons,
and addiction-treatment centers. “Working
with a Dance Movement therapist who is a
trained observer, you get support to help you
process what’s being expressed in the dance,DANCING FROM E1Dance — a way to ‘listento the truth of the body’PHOTOS BY STUART ISETT
Starre Vartan at her home on Bainbridge Island in Washington state. Vartan says she
regularly dances on her porch and in her garden as therapy.“Just meet whatever is present and move. Dance untilthe dancer disappears and only the dance remains.”
Lucia Horan, who teaches both online and in-person 5Rhythms classes in Big Sur, Calif.