Dance, Tai Chi and psychotherapy might seem like very different practices.
One belongs to the world of artistic expression. Another comes from a Chinese martial art tradition. The third is a form of psychological therapy.
Yet, in my experience, they have something important in common: they all invite us to pay attention to the lived experience of being in a body.
This connection has fascinated me for many years. Dance, psychotherapy and Tai Chi have each been part of my life in different ways, and my understanding of one has continually influenced how I approach the others.
I don’t see them as interchangeable. They are distinct disciplines, with different histories, purposes and theoretical foundations.
But there is an interesting area of overlap.
The body is part of our psychological experience
We often talk about thoughts and feelings as though they happen separately from the body.
We might say:
“I’m anxious.”
“I’m holding a lot of tension.”
“I feel uncomfortable around that person.”
“Something doesn’t feel right.”
These are psychological experiences, but they are also bodily experiences.
Anxiety might show up as a tight chest, a restless body or a feeling of needing to escape. Sadness might be experienced as heaviness or tiredness. Anger can bring heat, muscular tension and a desire to move.
Sometimes the body communicates something before we have words for it.
This is one of the reasons I am interested in embodied psychotherapy. Rather than treating the body as simply a vehicle carrying the mind around, an embodied approach recognises that our experience of ourselves is lived through the body.
What does embodiment mean?
Embodiment has become a familiar word in wellbeing and therapeutic circles, but it can sometimes be difficult to pin down.
For me, it means paying attention to how experience is actually lived and felt in the body.
That might include noticing:
- physical sensations
- posture and muscle tension
- breathing
- impulses to move or become still
- gestures and patterns of movement
- changes in energy
- the way we occupy space
- what happens in our body when we are with another person.
This doesn’t mean that every physical sensation has a hidden psychological meaning. Nor does it mean that movement is automatically therapeutic.
Rather, the body provides another way of knowing about ourselves.
And sometimes that knowledge is difficult to put into words.
What does dance contribute?
Dance has taught me to think about movement as more than physical action.
We communicate through movement all the time. We move towards and away from people. We make ourselves bigger or smaller. We turn towards someone or turn away. We hesitate, reach, withdraw, pause and change direction.
Much of this happens without conscious planning.
In Dance Movement Psychotherapy, movement can therefore become part of the therapeutic conversation.
The movement itself isn’t necessarily the treatment. Rather, it can provide another way of exploring experience, alongside talking, reflection and the therapeutic relationship.
This is particularly important when something is difficult to articulate.
A person might know that they feel trapped, for example, without knowing exactly why. Exploring what trapped feels like in the body, or what movement might express that experience, can sometimes open up a different kind of understanding.
And importantly, you don’t need to be a dancer.
Dance Movement Psychotherapy isn’t about performing, learning choreography or producing aesthetically pleasing movement. It is about exploring experience through movement and the body within a therapeutic relationship.
What does Tai Chi contribute?
Tai Chi offers something rather different.
It isn’t psychotherapy, and I would never suggest that it should be treated as a substitute for psychotherapy.
Tai Chi is a traditional Chinese internal martial art, with its own principles, philosophy and methods of practice.
Yet its emphasis on slow, attentive movement provides a powerful opportunity to develop bodily awareness.
In Tai Chi, we pay attention to things such as weight, balance, alignment, breathing, direction, rhythm and the relationship between movement and stillness.
We learn to notice what is happening rather than simply trying to make something happen.
That quality of attention interests me enormously.
A movement that looks very simple from the outside can feel quite different from the inside.
You might notice that one side of your body feels different from the other. You might become aware of unnecessary tension. You might discover that you are holding your breath. You might notice what happens when you slow down rather than pushing through.
Over time, this can develop a different relationship with the body: one based less on judgement and more on curiosity.
Where Tai Chi and psychotherapy meet
This is where my particular interest lies.
I am not interested in claiming that Tai Chi is therapy. It isn’t.
Nor am I suggesting that practising Tai Chi automatically produces psychological change.
Instead, I am interested in what happens when we take seriously the embodied awareness that both practices can cultivate, while respecting the very different purposes of each.
In psychotherapy, becoming aware of a bodily sensation can sometimes help us recognise an emotion, an impulse, a memory or a familiar pattern.
In Tai Chi, becoming aware of sensation can help us refine movement, balance and attention.
The context is different, but there is a shared invitation:
notice what is happening.
And then perhaps:
stay with it for a moment.
That sounds simple, but it can be surprisingly significant.
From doing to noticing
Much of everyday life encourages us to operate automatically.
We walk somewhere while thinking about something else. We eat while looking at a screen. We sit with our shoulders tense without noticing. We continue doing something because it is what we have always done.
Movement practices can interrupt that automaticity.
Tai Chi slows movement down enough for us to notice it.
Dance can bring attention to qualities of movement and expression.
Embodied psychotherapy can help us become curious about what our bodily experience might be communicating within the context of our wider lives.
None of these requires us to analyse every sensation.
Sometimes the value is simply in noticing.
The relationship between psyche and soma
In Dance Movement Psychotherapy, we often talk about the relationship between psyche and soma — mind and body.
I find this language useful because it reminds us that psychological and bodily experience are deeply interconnected, without suggesting that one can simply be reduced to the other.
Our bodies are shaped by our experiences, our relationships and our environments.
And our bodily experiences can, in turn, influence how we think, feel and relate to the world.
This is particularly relevant when working with experiences that are difficult to put into words, including trauma, anxiety, chronic stress and significant life changes.
An embodied approach doesn’t mean ignoring thoughts or language. It means making room for the body as part of the conversation.
Why this matters to my practice
This is why Dance Movement Psychotherapy and Tai Chi sit alongside one another so naturally in my professional life.
My psychotherapy practice and my Tai Chi and Qi Gong practice are separate. They have different purposes, boundaries and professional contexts.
But the way I understand the body has been shaped by both.
Tai Chi has deepened my appreciation of attention, balance, weight, flow and the experience of movement from within.
Dance has taught me about expression, relationship, creativity and communication beyond words.
Psychotherapy has given me a framework for understanding how these experiences can become part of a meaningful therapeutic process.
Each has something to teach me about the others.
The overlap is not the same as equivalence
This distinction matters.
There is a temptation, particularly in the wellbeing world, to put everything under the heading of mind-body practice and assume that all approaches are essentially doing the same thing.
I don’t think they are.
Tai Chi is not Dance Movement Psychotherapy.
Dance Movement Psychotherapy is not Tai Chi.
And neither is simply a relaxation technique.
They come from different traditions and have different aims.
What interests me is not proving that they are the same. It is exploring where their principles meet, where they differ, and what each can teach us about embodied experience.
That space between disciplines is where much of my own thinking happens.
A continuing conversation
Perhaps the simplest way I can describe the relationship is this:
Dance asks: How can movement express and communicate experience?
Tai Chi asks: What happens when we become deeply attentive to movement?
Embodied psychotherapy asks: What might we discover when bodily experience becomes part of our psychological exploration?
There is no single answer to these questions.
But together they have profoundly influenced how I understand the relationship between movement, emotion and psychological wellbeing.
And this is an area I intend to keep exploring — both in my clinical practice and in my academic and professional writing.