This book provides an overview of dance movement psychotherapy for young people and adults with learning disabilities. Contributors from a variety of backgrounds examine their work with clients from across the disabilities spectrum, ranging from mild to complex needs. The book chapters present theory and practice relating to the client group and subsequent therapy processes. This comprises psychotherapeutic interventions, dance movement interventions, theoretical constructs, case study material, practitioner care, and practitioner learning and development related to individual and group therapy work. The logistics of a Dance Movement Psychotherapy intervention, the intervention itself and the ripples of influence into the clients’ wider socio-cultural context are discussed. This stance speaks to current research and practice discourse in health and social care. The book champions acceptance of difference and equality in the health and social care needs for people with learning disabilities whilst emphasising the importance of dance movement psychotherapy for people with non-verbal communication. Dance Movement Psychotherapy with People with Learning Disabilities: Out of the Shadows, into the Light will provide a practical and theoretical resource for practitioners and students of dance movement psychotherapy as well as allied health professionals, service providers and carers.

This book provides an overview of dance movement psychotherapy for young people and adults with learning disabilities. Contributors from a variety of backgrounds examine their work with clients from across the disabilities spectrum, ranging from mild to complex needs. The book chapters present theory and practice relating to the client group and subsequent therapy processes. This comprises psychotherapeutic interventions, dance movement interventions, theoretical constructs, case study material, practitioner care, and practitioner learning and development related to individual and group therapy work. The logistics of a Dance Movement Psychotherapy intervention, the intervention itself and the ripples of influence into the clients’ wider socio-cultural context are discussed. This stance speaks to current research and practice discourse in health and social care. The book champions acceptance of difference and equality in the health and social care needs for people with learning disabilities whilst emphasising the importance of dance movement psychotherapy for people with non-verbal communication. Dance Movement Psychotherapy with People with Learning Disabilities: Out of the Shadows, into the Light will provide a practical and theoretical resource for practitioners and students of dance movement psychotherapy as well as allied health professionals, service providers and carers.

The first book to document the pioneering practice of Dance Movement Therapy in a variety of settings. Experienced therapists working with a range of clients reveal their working methods and techniques.

This book explores the therapeutic use of touch, focusing on an in-depth case study of work in an NHS setting with a client with learning disabilities, and situating this within a wide theoretical context. This is a unique and influential study illustrating the impact of touch in dance movement psychotherapy and laying the ground for a theory on the use of touch in Dance Movement Psychotherapy (DMP). The case study illustrates the impact of touch upon the therapeutic relationship with the use of video transcription and descriptive reflexive accounts of the session content. The case analysis sections establish the ground for a paradigm shift, and for emergent theory and methods in support of the use of touch in Dance Movement Psychotherapy and other contexts. The role touch takes is beyond its affect, which expands our understanding of its potency as an intervention. The writing is embedded in many years of practice-led-research in the field of dance and somatic practices, in particular Body-Mind Centering® and Contact Improvisation, in which touching and being touched is met with curiosity as a place of insight and revelation, beyond the bounds of taboo and social diktat. The study considers the philosophical landscape of both touch and non-touch. This book explores and reflects upon the use of touch, considering the wider context and socially imposed perceptions that would prevent touch from taking place – including philosophical and social discourses. Through telling the story of a client case, the book offers a wealth of thought-provoking content to inspire continued dialogue. Key strengths of this book are the depth, warmth and perceptiveness of the case history, and the way in which this is successfully linked with theory. Particular attention is paid to embodied cognition and exosystemic theory, the two leading developments of current thinking. With the ethical, practical and philosophical content, the book will be of interest to psychotherapists, health and social care practitioners, as well as arts in health practitioners and beneficiaries in educational programs and settings. Primary readership will be among DMP psychotherapists, body psychotherapists, drama therapists, Body Mind Centering® practitioners, arts in health practitioners, people working with clients with learning disabilities and any practitioner and researcher interested in understanding the role touch may play in the psychotherapeutic encounter.

This is a how-to book for dance and movement teachers of people with intellectual disabilities. It offers ideas and stimuli for people working in the field of disability who may not have a strong dance background, as well as dance therapists who may be inexperienced in the field.

Creative Bodies in Therapy, Performance and Community champions several diverse and innovative approaches in the professional engagement with the creative body as a catalyst for change in therapy, education, somatics and performance. With contributors from the wide-ranging fields of performance and visual arts, psychotherapy, dance and somatics, this book articulates practice-based experiences in a creative language. The readers are invited to move from the process of reading, into the experience of being in and making sense of the world through a moving body. The book meanders purposefully through practice-led embodied approaches in research that generate new knowledge, methodological frameworks that have emerged in response to the needs of different contexts, as well as offerring a window on first-hand experience as practice. The book will appeal to a wide range of practitioners and trainees in Dance Movement Psychotherapy, arts therapies, counselling and psychotherapy, somatics, community practice and performance.

This timely book explores an eco-feminist approach to dance movement psychotherapy, with an emphasis on the posthuman possibilities of differently enabled bodies and fostering social, political and environmental justice. Using the lenses of posthumanism and new materialism, this book examines the points of convergence among dance movement psychotherapy, eco-psychotherapy and critical disability studies. It maps out the experience of building care, empathy and kinship and explores ecologically informed, embodied practices and research while offering new perspectives on these practices. Structured using thematic ‘interruptions’ between chapters to anchor the reading experience and provide coherence, chapters include case study extracts as examples from the practice, spanning group work and individual therapy with autistic and learning disabled children and young people, as well as with neurotypical adult clients in private practice. Bringing together practice and research in dance movement psychotherapy along with cutting-edge theoretical perspectives of new materialism and posthumanism, the book will be of great interest to researchers and students of dance therapy, arts therapies, eco-psychotherapy and disability studies. It will also be useful to practitioners and therapists in psychotherapy and well-being services.