Dance Movement Psychotherapy (DMP) is a form of psychotherapy that works with the whole person — including thoughts, feelings, the body and the ways we relate to ourselves and others.
If you’ve never heard of Dance Movement Psychotherapy before, you’re certainly not alone. People sometimes hear the word dance and imagine that they need to be able to dance, perform or move in a particular way. You don’t. DMP isn’t about learning to dance, and there is no right or wrong way to move.
At its heart, DMP is about exploring experience through the body as well as through words.
Why include the body in psychotherapy?
We often think of ourselves as having a mind that thinks and a body that carries us around. In reality, our experiences are much less separate than that.
Emotions can affect our breathing, posture, muscle tension, energy and movement. We might notice our heart racing when we’re anxious, our shoulders tightening when we’re under pressure, or a heaviness in our body when we’re low.
Sometimes we know something is wrong physically before we have words for what we’re feeling.
Our bodies can also develop ways of responding to situations based on our past experiences. We might automatically become tense, withdraw, become very still, rush to make things better for someone else, or find ourselves unable to say what we really think.
These responses can make sense in the context of our lives, even when they are no longer helping us.
DMP provides an opportunity to become curious about these patterns rather than simply trying to change them.
What happens in Dance Movement Psychotherapy?
DMP isn’t a set of exercises that you have to learn. There isn’t a particular sequence of movements, and you won’t be asked to perform.
Movement in therapy might be very small.
It could be noticing how you’re sitting in your chair, becoming aware of your feet on the floor, changing your position, making a gesture, exploring a particular movement, drawing, using an image, or allowing your body to respond to something you’re talking about.
Sometimes movement can help us express something that is difficult to put into words. Sometimes simply noticing a sensation or impulse can tell us something about what is happening inside.
And sometimes we don’t move at all.
Stillness is part of movement too.
The important thing isn’t the movement itself. It’s what we notice through the experience and how we make sense of it together.
When words aren’t quite enough
Talking can be a powerful way of understanding ourselves, but not everything we experience is immediately available in words.
You might know that you feel uncomfortable without knowing why. You might understand something intellectually but still find yourself reacting in the same way. Or you may have spent years explaining your experiences while remaining disconnected from how they actually feel.
Working with the body can offer another route into these experiences.
Rather than trying to force something into words, we can slow down and notice what is happening. What do you feel? Where do you feel it? Does it change when you breathe, move, become still or pay attention?
There is no requirement to find an explanation.
Sometimes noticing is the beginning of understanding.
A collaborative approach
DMP is psychotherapy, so the therapeutic relationship remains central.
I don’t interpret your movements or tell you what they mean. Instead, we explore your experience together with curiosity.
My role is to help create a space where you can notice what is happening, make connections, experiment with different possibilities and develop your own understanding.
This is particularly important because the same movement can mean completely different things to different people. There is no universal dictionary of body language.
What matters is your experience of your own body.
My approach to Dance Movement Psychotherapy
Dance Movement Psychotherapists work from a range of therapeutic approaches. My own practice is humanistic and integrative, informed by embodied and somatic perspectives.
This means that I don’t have a fixed formula for how therapy should work.
We might spend much of a session talking. At other times, it might be useful to pause and notice what is happening physically, or to explore something through movement or another creative approach.
I work with what you bring and what emerges between us.
For me, embodiment isn’t about adding movement to talking therapy. It is about recognising that our embodied experience is already part of everything we do.
Do I need to be able to dance?
No.
You don’t need any dance experience, physical fitness or particular ability to take part in Dance Movement Psychotherapy.
You don’t even have to move very much.
The word dance can make DMP sound more active or performative than it actually is. In therapy, movement might be subtle, ordinary or barely visible. It might be a change in posture, a gesture, a shift of weight or simply noticing an impulse to move.
The focus is not on how you look.
There is no performance and no judgement.
Who might find DMP helpful?
People come to Dance Movement Psychotherapy for many different reasons.
You might be experiencing:
- low mood or anxiety
- difficulty understanding or expressing your feelings
- self-doubt or low self-esteem
- difficulty setting boundaries or speaking up
- patterns of people-pleasing
- the effects of difficult or traumatic experiences
- feeling disconnected from yourself or your body
- a sense of being stuck in patterns that no longer work for you
- a desire to understand yourself in a different way
You don’t need to identify with any particular diagnosis or have a specific reason for wanting an embodied approach.
Sometimes people simply have a sense that the way they’ve been trying to cope isn’t working anymore.
DMP isn’t for everyone
An embodied approach isn’t necessarily what everyone wants from therapy.
You may prefer a more structured or skills-based approach, or you may simply feel more comfortable keeping movement out of your therapy. That’s completely valid.
Finding a therapist and approach that feels right for you is important.
If you’re curious about what DMP might be like, you don’t need to decide before making contact. We can talk about your questions and what you’re looking for, and the consultation session gives us an opportunity to see whether working together feels appropriate.
The body doesn’t have to be fixed
One of the things I value most about embodied psychotherapy is that it isn’t about treating the body as a problem to solve.
Our bodies have carried us through everything we have experienced.
Sometimes they hold tension, protective patterns, emotions or memories. Sometimes they give us information that we have learned to ignore. And sometimes simply reconnecting with bodily experience can help us discover needs, boundaries and possibilities that have been difficult to recognise through thinking alone.
Therapy can offer a space to become curious about this relationship.
Not to become a different person, but to develop a different relationship with yourself.
A different way of being heard
Dance Movement Psychotherapy offers another way of approaching psychological experience — one that makes room for both words and the body.
You don’t have to know how to dance.
You don’t have to know what you feel.
You don’t have to know what you need.
You can begin simply by noticing what is here, and we can explore it together.
If you’d like to know more about how I work, you can read Working Together or About Me, or get in touch with any questions.