Healing From Trauma Through Dance Therapy

Woman dancing. ​Heal Trauma With Dance Therapy. Our Therapists can provide guidance. Try counseling and therapy in New York, New Jersey, or Connecticut today! New Haven, CT 06520 | Maplewood 07040 | Westport 06889 | Jersey ​07030

You can begin to heal the trauma you live with through dance movement therapy. Before that, let’s explore what trauma really is. Trauma is a pervasive issue. It results from exposure to an incident or series of events that are emotionally disturbing or life-threatening with lasting adverse effects on our functioning. It may also result in dysfunction in our mental, physical, social, emotional, and/or spiritual well-being. Trauma is in part what happens to us, but also our bodies and minds respond to what happens to us.

We might begin to understand our physiological response to trauma by looking at how animals commonly regulate themselves under life-threatening circumstances. Wild animals are routinely threatened by predators in the wild, yet they are able to reset and restore their functioning shortly after the attack. Humans on the other hand endure adverse and long-lasting effects from similar trauma that may last a lifetime. By design, animals have evolved to “shake off” the stress hormones that their bodies produce during the attack to allow them to run faster, fight harder, or hide better so they might survive a life-threatening attack. Humans, on the other hand, often override these natural ways of resetting the nervous system and become burdened by feelings of fear, judgment, shame, and intrusive thinking. The build-up of unreleased hormones and distressing traumatic experiences manifests in our bodies as chronic stress leading to anxiety, depression, and post-traumatic stress disorder.

DANCE MOVEMENT THERAPY is a somatic psychotherapeutic approach to further healing and connection to the self through a deepening of conscious connection between your body and mind. Through engaging in SOMATIC-BASED INTERVENTIONS such as meditations, body scans, somatic sensing, breath-work, movement improvisation, structured movement phrases, imagery, and movement explorations you can reach places within yourself that words can not.

Through dance movement, you are able to get in touch with, express, and explore emotions that may be lodged in the body. This sort of movement allows you to release the trauma imprinted in your mind, body and as a result the nervous system. Allowing for cathartic release, and adaptive processing of trauma.

Woman doing breathwork. ​Heal Trauma With Dance Therapy. Our Therapists can provide guidance. Try counseling and therapy in New York, New Jersey, or Connecticut today! New Haven, CT 06520 | Maplewood 07040 | Westport 06889 | Jersey ​07030

During VIRTUAL DANCE MOVEMENT THERAPY, you will be met where you are at in your process. All you need is your laptop, tablet, or phone to access the tele-therapy platform, a physical space that allows enough space to stretch your arms, lay down a yoga mat, or step away from your device to explore your body’s expression. Your therapist will tailor the therapeutic process to your needs and physical abilities. Begin your journey with us today.

Services Offered At Repose Therapy

At Repose Therapy, our goal is to provide the best HOLISTIC PSYCHOTHERAPY services among other evidence-based therapy services to you. We enjoy working with college students, mothers, parents, couples, and individuals who are seeking better mental wellness in their life. If you’re struggling or trying to find a way to move forward, then our DIVERSE TEAM OF THERAPISTS would be thrilled to work with you. If grief counseling isn’t the service you’re seeking, no worries. We offer other services at our ONLINE THERAPY OFFICE IN NEW YORK, CONNECTICUT, AND NEW JERSEY. Other services include EMDR THERAPY, ANXIETY TREATMENT, PTSD TREATMENT, AND TRAUMA THERAPY, THERAPY FOR COLLEGE STUDENTS, MATERNAL MENTAL HEALTH, MARRIAGE COUNSELING AND COUPLES THERAPY, THERAPY FOR TEENS, LGBTQIA+ THERAPY, ART THERAPY, DANCE MOVEMENT THERAPY

Additionally, we offer many GROUPS at our practice including an adult DBT skills group MANAGING EMOTIONS WITH DBT and Art Therapy, MINDFULNESS-BASED COGNITIVE THERAPY, EMBRACING YOUR BODY, and a Ramadan group. If you’re interested in any of our other services, please reach out, we cannot wait to work with you as you improve your well-being and begin your journey towards healing.

BlogMary Breen