How dance therapy releases trauma from the nervous system
By Orit Krug | June 19th, 2020
Dance therapy releases trauma from the nervous system by helping you to reconnect to your body again after numbing and dissociating, perhaps for a long time.
When your nervous system is triggered and responds automatically to past traumatic experiences, it does so usually in one of four ways: fight, flight, freeze, or shut down.
If you find that this is happening more and more often in your romantic relationships, then it’s a strong indication that it may be time to release trauma from your nervous system.
How dance therapy can help with releasing trauma from the nervous system
Trauma memories are stored in our body as fragments of sensations and emotions; therefore, moving our body in new ways often stirs up this past trauma. Working with a Board-Certified Dance/Movement Therapist, who’s trained in healing trauma, will help you gently and safely connect to your body again without getting hijacked by these old memories.
As a Dance/Movement Therapist myself, I am trained to see my clients’ micro-movements and attune to their micro-body signals that tell me they may be having a fear response, as we’re moving in session together. However, instead of their nervous system hijacking their bodies physical & emotional responses, I help them regulate and remain present in their bodies and our therapeutic relationship.
This means that although they may feel the fear arise, their system won’t react in fight, flight, freeze, or shut down mode. They begin to stay connected within themselves and all their relationships, and they become in command over how their bodies respond to fear and stress.
Releasing trauma by rewiring your nervous system
The movements that you might experience through a trauma-informed and neuroscience-backed Dance Therapy program allow you to rewire your nervous system right there in the present moment of each session. This happens by expanding your window of tolerance around what currently triggers you and what feels scary to you.
The more you can feel the fear come up in your body and move through the fear, instead of reacting in survival mode, the less scary your triggers feel and the more you can stay present and connected in your romantic relationships and beyond.
In your relationship this looks like truly hearing your partner when they speak, listening without reacting defensively, speaking up instead of running out on a conflict, and wholeheartedly letting your partner’s love flow in.
Dance Therapy through play and creativity
What sets Dance Therapy apart from other therapeutic modalities are the elements of play and creative movements. These systematic and organic movement processes allow you to PHYSICALLY become a healthier, happier version of you. It’s no longer a theory that you think or talk about to your friends or therapist. It becomes real in your body, where you feel incredible shifts instead of just imagining them. Your change becomes embodied.
Plus, when you engage in play or creative movement in a healthy therapeutic relationship, you can be guided to bring your nervous system to a Sympathetic State or Mobilization state without fear (the sympathetic / mobilization state is also known as the “Fight/Flight” state).
The more you have healthy, fear-less experiences in movement and play in Dance Therapy, the quicker you can teach your body that you CAN be in an activated nervous system state without fighting or running away. As you can see in the infographic above, this means you would be able to play, have sex, be sensual, speak up, and follow through on many more healthy patterns without sabotaging or escaping your relationship.
With a trauma-informed Dance/Movement Therapist, you can also allow your body to become comfortable with gentle, minimal movements that can help you cuddle, rest, make loving eye contact, and lay calmly with your partner without fear (shown in the bottom right section of the infographic above).
In sum, the movement and play that is unique to Dance Therapy can help you become deeply comfortable and satisfied with intimacy instead of running away from it.
You deserve to find peace in your body & live freely without fear.
The latest trauma research shows that cognitive-based therapies cannot fully access trauma stored in the non-verbal brain and body. Even alternative approaches, such as EMDR and Brain-Mapping, are often not enough to fully heal trauma from the physical body or nervous system.
This makes trauma healing a very frustrating journey for many people. They end up feeling stuck, even after spending decades of therapy and gaining so much self-awareness.
If you relate, you might’ve considered giving up on your healing. You might wonder if a fully integrated healing is not possible for you.
Every human being is 100% neurophysiologically capable of healing deeply & wholly, because we all have neural pathways that can be rewired from fear and overprotection to love, joy, and openness.
But even with an effective neuroscience-backed Somatic approach, going to weekly sessions could still require many more months or years until you feel that “click” in your body that finally makes you feel WHOLE.
That’s why I run Somatic Trauma Healing Retreats where many people experience accelerated, integrated, and lasting healing in just a few days.
(Disclaimer: each attendee must go through an application process that ensures this accelerated healing is possible for them).
If this sounds like something you might be interested in, I’d love to invite you to check out my retreats! There are several options from women’s healing, plant-assisted, 1:1, and more.
