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Embodied Enactive Dance/Movement Therapy

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Abstract

Dance/movement therapy may be conceptualized as an embodied and enactive form of psychotherapy. The embodied enactive approach looks at individuals as living systems characterized by plasticity and permeability (moment-to-moment adaptations within the self and toward the environment), autonomy, sense-making, emergence, experience, and striving for balance. Enaction and embodiment emphasize the roles that body motion and sensorimotor experience play in the formation of concepts and abstract thinking. A theoretical framework and a perspective on professional practice in dance/movement therapy are herein offered as influenced by interdisciplinary embodied and enactive approaches deriving from cognitive sciences and phenomenology. The authors assert that dance/movement therapy, enaction, and embodiment fruitfully contribute to one another.

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Acknowledgements

We would like to thank Hanne De Jaegher, Sharon Chaiklin, Patrizia Pallaro, Beate Becker, and the anonymous reviewers for their helpful comments on this manuscript. We would like to thank modern technology, which enabled this intercontinental work. And most importantly, we would like to thank our families who had to bear many short weekends because of this joint writing project.

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  1. Institute of Psychology, University of Heidelberg, Hauptstr. 47-51, 69117, Heidelberg, Germany

    Sabine C. Koch

  2. Programa de Entrenamiento en Danza Movimiento Terapia de Buenos Aires–Brecha, Quesada 3468 C 1430 AXB, Buenos Aires, Argentina

    Diana Fischman

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  1. Sabine C. Koch
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Sabine C. Koch and Diana Fischman equally and jointly contributed to the article.

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Koch, S.C., Fischman, D. Embodied Enactive Dance/Movement Therapy. Am J Dance Ther 33, 57–72 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10465-011-9108-4

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