Motion To Emotion – The Spontaneous Dance!

“Movement is a basic form of communication that provides us with opportunities for socialization, the development of community and to experience the expressing our aliveness and our innermost thoughts and feelings." - Nana Koch Move Freely… Move In Silence… Move the way you feel like.. create your own movement in solace as nobody is watching you!

Creative movements and dance are being used as a unique therapeutic healing technique called Movement Therapy. It is known to integrate mind, body, and soul through verbal and non-verbal accesses. It is a vehicle through which an individual can engage within its personal integration and growth. In simple words, this kind of therapy, use your body as an extension of your voice helping one to identify clues to your suffering that otherwise wouldn’t get noticed if one isn’t attuned to his mind and soul.

Movement therapy elegantly illustrates the relationship between motion & emotion, exploring a varied vocabulary resulting in an environment creating an aura of self-expression, acknowledgement, and communication.

This therapy is often referred to as dance therapy and has been used interchangeably all over. In conversation with a famous dancer, Arunima  Ghosh beautifully shares, “my movement therapy is based on Odissi dance style. Core to this therapy is helping move from negative influences to the positive direction through the expression of body and mind. This is achieved in conjunction with music that works as a catalyst to this therapy process. Yet again, movement therapy is not a fixed set of music and dance.” In support to the Odissi dancer, Amruta Deshpade Bhatia a yogini cum entrepreneur adds, “As children, we all are born dancers. Movement as an integral part, we are meant to move. The difference is just that as we grow, we forget the feelings, emotions, and energy that is generated by these motions.” Another best way to find the horses, one can derive motivation from any dance form, which may be freestyle or technical and that’s the beauty of movement therapy.

There are some common misconceptions about Movement Therapy. Some people think this therapy is for those who suffer from physical difficulties. Others feel this is either for those who have natural rhythm or those who are inexperienced in creative expressions. Another common misunderstanding is that this practice is for hospitals and special schools. But the truth is that MT therapists are qualified teachers or may also be trained in other aspects such as self-awareness. They can be even dance artists, classical or freestyle, who knows which kind of movement liberate you. 

Being an expressive art it opens up the energy nodes of our body (chakra journey).  Ghosh shares from her experience working with an NGO giving an elaboration as how dance blends with energy centres, “a positive balance can be achieved through neck movement influencing throat chakra (Vishadha Chakra) which is considered responsible for communication. If done correctly it helps in many ways such as coming out of fear of talking in public, better structure of sentences improves leadership qualities among others. Another practice  based on classical dance form Odissi is ‘anga bhramari’ (sitting in chowk position and rotating the upper portion of the body), closely associated with the heart chakra (love), navel chakra (power), and the sacral chakra (pleasure).”

Another important aspect of this therapy is that it helps with stress management. Movement helps in ventilating the emotions, be it positive or negative. This helps in maintaining our calm, neither getting disturbed by negative situations nor getting too excited under positive circumstances. Bhatia uses a technique by asking her learners to paint the space around them, dipping their hands with imaginary paint, dancing on music while creating their own movement. It’s a great stress buster she claims.

Movement therapy helps to make both the body and mind active. It helps in increasing the inflow of oxygen making the organs healthier. Eyes movement, hand movement, footwork, literally every part of the body is rejuvenated. 

This therapy has its own language, not limiting to just body movement but breaking the inner shackles and painting your own tarpaulin.