Self Expression and Communication

The idea behind dance therapy is to create a dance that will unlock unconscious feelings, and also to use the person’s newfound body awareness as a way to influence his or her emotional state (Burger 139). In Helping People: A Guide to Careers in Mental Health, the author stated that the relationship between the mind and body and its influence on a person’s emotional state is “that bodily movements reflect personality. The mind and body are part of the same system and they are in constant state of interaction. The inner emotional state is expressed through visible body movement. Whatever the body is experiencing influences the inner emotional state” (Burger 140). The connection between the body and mind is very strong. The theory is that if the mind (the center of the emotional state) can affect the way the body functions and feels, then the body can influence how a person feels and thinks. But a person first has to unlock the unconscious emotions and be able to communicate them. It helps autistic children to unlock communication skills. They are able to use their feelings to dance a message to their therapist, teacher, or parent.

In addition to self-expression, creative dance is a form of communication and a way for children to learn communication skills. Autistic children can learn many levels of communication. If the child dances with the teacher or therapist, then he or she learns to form a relationship and communicate with that one person. If the child is part of a group, he or she learns how to be a member of a group and how to interact with several people at one time. In Helping People: A Guide to Careers in Mental Health, the focus of communication as an outlet for emotions is explained:

In dance therapy, movement becomes the primary means for communication just as words are the primary basis for communication in psychotherapy. The central concept basic to dance therapy is that the human body reflects and mirrors the personality of the person. The body becomes the physical representation of the person’s inner feelings (Burger 138).

The dance that a child performs shows the inner personality and feelings and, essentially, communicates those feelings to the teacher or therapist. The dance the child creates is based on what he or she feels. The way he/she moves shows their personality and inner thoughts about how to deal with situations. For a therapist to help their patient, they need to understand the feelings and personality of that patient. Dance therapy provides a way for therapists to establish the necessary communication to learn the feelings and personality of their patients.

Children also benefit greatly by the emotional outlet creative dance offers. The main concept of dance therapy is self-expression. Self-expression is defined “as giving vent to feelings that may be random or uncontrolled and reflects the way a person feels at the moment” (Bergmann, “Creative Dance” 162). Creative dance gives a child a way to cope with situations. A child has to adapt to the space around him or her when dancing and to cope and adapt to new environments. “It is this interaction between self and spatial environments, observable in these personal characteristic movement patterns, which display how the child is relating, adapting and responding to their environment. In this way the child becomes the catalyst of the therapeutic intervention” (Dance Therapy). The child is the method of how he or she learns to cope and adapt to new situations and environments. They learn the skills to do this by adapting to the music being played, and, therefore, adapt their ideas and movement to connect to the music.