The Impact on a therapist body whilst working with children who have

experienced or witnessed domestic violence and abuse: An

autoethnographical study using Dance Movement Therapy and
creativity

First author: Boreham, Sarah. Movement Changes Life. info@movementchangeslife.com

Affiliated with CLEAR Support. info@clearsupport.net

Abstract presentation and the results will be presented

A belief that as part of any equitable society a
just system is needed for members whom find
themselves in crisis, and that creativity can be
useful as a transformative and informative
process, guides this research. Questions of how
creativity and dance movement therapy (DMT)
can be powerful whilst working with domestic
violence and abuse (DVA) will be explored.
Dance movement and the body have power and
are of value and necessary in recovery,
prevention, intervention and therapist
experience.
In introduction I will precise the statistics and
outcome measures used in cases of domestic
violence abuse interventions. I will explore the
literature and research that already exists with
domestic violence and dance movement therapy.
I will suggest that existing outcome measures
tell us little about how to work with or what
happens to a person during or after such crisis.
The aim of this research is to offer more of an
integrated voice by focusing on the therapist’s
embodiment whilst working with dance
movement therapy and creativity with children
whom have experienced and witnessed abuse.
The objectives are to look specifically at the
therapist's embodied processing of therapeutic
material and the themes which emerge from this.
Using an experiential and somatic emphasis, the
focus of the therapist's perspective has an
autoethnographical lens which will be captured
in five films of my processing as a dance
movement psychotherapist after sessions with
children whom have experience DVA. These
films will be viewed and commented on by an
academic and personal supervisor adding
another perspective and layer to the embodied
process of therapist. These comments will be
presented at the EADMT conference by poster
here in this paper and by films which will be
available to view online in a secure environment.
In summary of the results: this research finds that
different layers of embodiment and
movement/creativity exist as a result of working
with and experiencing DVS and the films show the
impact on the therapist body. The layers are
intricate, intimate and interconnected and provide
an informative and authentic pathway for the
therapist in the processing of client material.
1. Introduction
The body has a lived movement experience in
domestic violence and abuse, our experiences are
felt and remembered in our physicality. The
body’s flesh and bone is actively involved in
issues of abuse, disempowerment, immobility,
violence and silence. Freud (1923:69) named the
body as a healing model, he wrote ‘the body is
not merely a surface, it is a mental projection and
connected to the ego made up of body sensations’
(pg 69). Marcia Leventhal (2008) writes that
“physicality has a kinaesthetic memory, it guides
our responses into familiar accepted patterns,
until such time as we can release the memory by
accessing its import, working through its dynamic
and moving out of range of its vibration, when it
no longer suits our concept of self”. In this
project I seem to remember and shed my body’s
sensations and kinaesthetic memory of domestic
abuse like a snake skin, through the use of
dance/movement and creativity.
1.1 Setting the scene around DVA:
The Office of National Statistics (2015) note that
in UK 1.4 million women and 700,000 men
experience DVA. In addition, there are
significantly higher number of children of
domestic violence 4.5% as witnessing violence
between parents in a life time, these figures are

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underestimated with children normalizing their
experiences (Stanley 2011).
The National Institute of Clinical Excellence
(NICE) acknowledges cost and consequences to
health/social care budgets urging that any
intervention at all is seen as cost effective, but
interventions need to work to be so.
Recommended pathways and actions run from
sharing information, education and awareness,
policy commissioning, provision of multi-
agency involvement and interventions, specialist
services such as therapeutic work. Other factors
of attachment disorders and mental health
problems are a consequence of DVA.
Therapeutic advisories recommend work with
the primary care giver as necessary, however
there is little guidance on what sort or length of
therapy is recommended or how any recovery is
measured.
1.2 A brief definition of dance movement
therapy and how it works
Dance Movement Psychotherapy (DMP)
recognises body movement as an implicit and
expressive instrument of communication and
expression. DMP is a relational process in which
client/s and therapist engage in an empathic
creative process using movement to assist
integration of emotional, cognitive, physical,
social and spiritual aspects of self’ (ADMPUK).
There has been some DMP research into the
attachment relationships that emerge after
experiences of DVA. Recovery and
effectiveness of treatment in DVA are measured
by outcomes; affective self-regulation and
improved safety in relationship are implied in
National Institute Clinical Guidelines.
Narrative voices/story of victims/witnesses’ of
abuse or professionals working with clients,
remains largely static, silent and invisible, as has
historically been the case. This paper hopes to
address this neglected area using the voice of
myself as a dance movement psychotherapist
(DMP), having experienced DVA and working
with this client group. By using an
empowerment model for therapist and client
through the use of embodied knowledge
(Boreham 2014). Performance explores and
describes different layers of the lived body of
myself as therapist, making accessible more
intricate embodied data to identify somatic
triggers, counter-transference and kinaesthetic
features in DVA.
1.3 The application of DMT to the DVA
arena: what it offers, strengths and what it
can bring in trauma and recovery.
DMP’s regularly make effective and successful
interventions with DVA clients but not much of
this has been described or evidenced. Building a
practiced based body of evidence needs
description of embodied process and has rarely
been covered. DMP is specifically useful with
DVA because it uses non-verbal/body language,
kinaesthetic empathy and somatic counter-
transference to communicate and express
experiences in domestic violence. DMP is a
relational therapeutic process which can repair
trust fractured without necessarily using verbal
language, around shame based experiences. It
provides a creative solution to the paradoxes of
developing self through relationship.
Dance/movement/creativity as transitional
phenomena help a child and adult therapist to
negotiate when interacting with the world
Winnicott (1971). It offers a holding space in the
therapist’s body, providing time to build
resilience and meaning for the experience (Brown
2006), thus providing healing and empowerment.
DMP recognises body movement as an implicit
and expressive instrument of communication.
Some DMP research has explored experiences
following experiences of domestic violence.
Christine Devereux (2008) focuses on attachment
(Bowlby 1966) using DMP, commenting on self-
regulation, impact on attachment relationships
from the victim’s perspective. However unspoken
areas in this mirror DVA in absence of focus on
the power of narrative that unfolds from the work
and a lack of the therapist’s embodied voice
(Bloom 2006).
There is recognition in psychoanalysis and
psychotherapy that using the therapist’s own
experience and bodily attention, is a powerful
source of therapeutic information. It provides
clues to physical and emotional development of
the self (Freud 1923, Orbach 2004, Allegranti
2001. The therapist’s interventions can be seen as
having ‘active continual contextual movement’
(Boreham 2012) as well as sometimes a lack of
therapist’s body.
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Therapist’s embodied experience profoundly
influence the therapeutic relationship with
victim/witness and this absence of therapist
body processing and description needs
addressing in DVA research. These questions
emerged from my clinical practice: How does
the therapist processes through movement,
where and what does the therapist hold in the
body/movement and what do they bring back to
the client?
Devereux mentions this but doesn’t elaborate or
connect subjectively. My sense of clients is of
multiple layers of experience and history held,
of the unbearable in their bodies. These bodies -
the historical body, the lived therapist’s body,
the witnessing body and the relational body
(Allegranti 2011, Finlay 2005, Merleau-Ponty
1962), describe embodied layers that require
relationship. The links between attachment and
domestic abuse sometimes assume a This project allows for mutual influence and will
predetermined state and can lead to the idea that
trauma in the body stays frozen or that
victims/witness’ of DVA lack capacity to
rebuilding healthy relationships and integrating.
Schauble (2013) describes her own auto
ethnographic focus on the therapist’s experience
in the body in relation to the traumatised client.
It focus’ on the shift in relationship with a
reciprocal mutual influence acknowledged in the
therapeutic process. Schauble finds that, the
body can be healed and re-authored through
embodied performances (Allegranti, 2012) by
providing a narrative voice for both witness and
experiencer of trauma. Research is viewed as an
integrating thread, evidencing the therapist’s felt
and lived body, sharing this as a valid source of
embodied knowledge that has not been captured
in standards of clinical outcomes measures in
domestic abuse experiences.
1.4 Theoretical influences and
attachment in DMT with Domestic
violence and abuse work.
Outcome measures (CORE) that focus on
victims/witness’ of DVA assume a lack of
empathy as a consequence in survivors. My
reflections whilst working with children and
adults of DVS is counter to this. My therapist
body has experienced a heightened sense of
empathy in such clients. Treating empathy and
attachment as predetermined states and
measurement limits our understanding of the
lived experience of abuse. A description of what
empathy look like in the therapist’s body when
with clients, may be much more useful in being
able to make visible (Allegrtanti 2012).
Kinaesthetic empathy is used by dance movement
psychotherapists to attune to the client’s
experiences, it assumes that experience holds
meaning for the client and can be expressed for a
resolution and to made sense of. However
embodied theory in research on affect attunment
and shared cognition (Stern 2005, Gallagher
2014) still privileges cognition and the mind as
the keeper of knowledge and solutions. My
question is what about the body and flesh? A
counter is needed to look into the embodied layers
of the therapist. This DVA research inquires into
the folds of emotional anatomy, somatic and
psychological experience, in support of emerging
research into the relational and dynamic nature of
psychosomatic phenomena in the body (Hartley
1994). This highlights potential for change and
dialogue of systems in the body holds dynamic
information stored not exclusively neurologically.
add to existing research on how trauma
profoundly affects and is healed through the body
(Schauble 2013).
In the therapy room with survivors of DVA I
witness over and over again something that can’t
be located in the mind in terms of the lived
experience, it is in the flesh, bone and
embodiment. It seems to come from a body
consciousness that isn’t generated by the mind or
language. The body engages active forces, by
mirroring experiential process of self (Sheets-
Johnstone 2009, Grosz 1994). Schore (2003)
describes the ‘reflections of the rhythms of the
child’s internal states’ as an important
intervention when working with emotional
regulation.
This DVA research investigates the layers of
movement, rhythm and the therapist’s internal
states using movement observation and lived
body analysis. By focusing on the importance of
the body in literature and treatment of DVA it
bridges the gap or lack of exploration when
describing the therapist’s lived body in working
with this population, the therapist moving
relational body as the subject is revealing and
useful.
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2. Aims, goals and objectives
The aim of this project is to focus on my
physical/embodied/somatic non verbal aspects
of domestic abuse, I will look at how domestic
violence is ‘held in my body’. This will be
explored through my dance movement therapy
experience of working therapeutically with
children and adults. Rather than focus on the
‘clients’ expressions I will explore my
emodiments/lived body experience and how this
is processed in order to ‘heal’ the client.
How DVA is felt in the moving body of myself
as therapist and experiencer of abuse, will be
investigated by describing the felt sense and
lived body. Observing, describing and
interpreting the process of my moving body will
reveal qualities that are much needed to balance
the explanatory nature of outcome measures
used in DVA guidelines. This project is about
understanding how DVA presents in my
therapist’s body and asks what a therapist
notices about triggers, pain, recovery, healing
and shifts in embodied counter-transference
after working with clients. These experiential
changes will be offered as measurements of
change, as the outcome measures that my
moving lived body holds.
3. Methodology
This research is autoethnographic methodology:
‘Autoethnography is an approach to research
that seeks to describe and systematically analyze
personal experience in order to understand
cultural experience. This approach challenges
canonical ways of doing research and
representing others and treats research as a
political, socially-just and socially-conscious
act. A researcher uses tenets of autobiography
and ethnography to do and write
autoethnography. Thus, as a method,
autoethnography is both process and product.’
(Ellis 2004, Spry 2001).
By performing autoethnography this research
hopes to balance against privileging of
rationality, typically underpinning outcome
measures within domestic violence. This project
acknowledges psychodynamic themes as a
relational process between self and other. Whilst
immersing myself in data production as an
‘interactive’ process, I will synthesize a
dialogue across moving bodies of myself, client
and the wider familial systems. By connecting
layers of research and movement/dance art
form, I am looking to illuminate the therapist
body inscriptions as physical, psychological and
intersubjective (Allegranti 2012, Laban 1966),
aiming to make visible the therapist’s process
whilst in relationship to the client (Benjamin
1998).
I place myself as subject producing movement
film and spoken/written research journal to
provide a case study of therapist, using my
moving lived body as experiencer, witness and
worker with domestic violence and abuse. My
autobiographical story of having experienced
domestic violence in relationship will provide a
direct experiential layer of embodied knowledge
in addition to the therapeutic layer of working
with domestic abuse. An academic supervisor
and personal supervisor are providing layers of
support, to ensure that over identification with
client material becomes visible and reflected
upon.
My personal history includes a forty five year
background in arts/dance/creative/reflective
practice sometimes to heal my own social,
physical and psychological experiences from
domestic abuse. Having taught dance for many
years, I found myself drawn to pupils from
difficult /different backgrounds, they seemed to
gain something more from dance other than the
physical and social benefits that were common to
their peers. I knew that the body and movement
could help to release pain and trauma but I began
to observe the body’s capacity to lock in also. My
dance movement therapist body has helped me to
add other layers of experience and knowledge and
this project is the first in the process of sharing
this to a wider audience, by expanding my
embodied subjective movement voice in this area.
Therapists are acutely impacted physically and
psychologically when working with and
processing clinical material from children whom
have experienced DVA. The somatic/bodily felt
senses that I as therapist may hold for the client
can be transformed, reshaped and handed back to
client in a way that is reparative and meaningful
without necessarily putting it into verbal
language, this is especially useful around
shameful emotions commonly found in domestic
violence.
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Connecting layers of research, movement/dance
art form and creative improvisation process will
encourage visibility, advocacy and finding a
voice within/out the moving body (Allegranti
2011). This inquiry will look at the bodily and
psychological themes of social justice, the
moving embodied voice and connection to the
therapist body, empowerment, boundaries in
relationship and dance movement creativity.
4. Data Analysis
Using video, written and spoken journal text and
reflections from a personal research supervisor,
the data will be analyzed using movement
observation and Kestenberg Movement Profile
(KMP). Observations descriptions and
interpretation are unstructured and themes are
identified for discussion. The video and
spoken/written text provide an auto-
ethnographic performance. “Autoethnographic
performance makes us acutely conscious of how
we “I- witness” our own reality constructions.
Interpreting culture through the self-reflections
and cultural refractions of identity” Spry quotes
(Park-Fuller 2000, p. 26)
Kestenberg Movement Profiling provides a
theoretical framework in which movement
characteristics correlate with psychological
phenomena (Levy, 1988:158). KMP develops
Laban Movement Analysis principles with a
psychoanalytical approach to development
(Anna Freud). KMP developmental stages need
mastering before progression to the next stage of
movement, there is a focus on what is called
tension flow rhythms and these can be noticed
as dominant in a persons movement patterns and
preferences.
By describing my moving relationships in the
autobiographical filmed journal and seeing my
lived body responses, I can explore my
inner/outer attitudes of the moving body as
experienced in and working with domestic
abuse.
Procedures
This research is taking place from March 2016 –
Sept 2016. Keeping an autobiographical journal
of text through films of my moving lived body
scripts, I will identify over a period of three
months triggers, psychological and somatic
responses to working with child victims of
domestic abuse. The written journal provided
themes by producing response words that are
used as markers and catalyst for the movement
films of the therapist body. The five separate
films of movement improvisation sessions take
place in a studio with a garden. They are filmed at
the midway point of therapist process during
twelve weekly therapy sessions for ten children in
my caseload.
As an extra layer of analysis an academic and
personal supervision are collaborating. And
reflections and comments from my personal
dance movement therapy research supervisor, will
be weaved into the results to add another
perspective to go some way to address a
critique/limitation of auto ethnology. It is claimed
a lack of validity is present in autoethnographic
methodology due to absence of other voices as
participants. I disagree that a subjective
perspective is invalid due to the lack of other
voices, I think what emerges in this research is
that language whom ever produces it is often not
effective in catching the qualities and expression
of experiences of the therapist or victims of
abuse.
A presentation in the form of this written paper
and filmed vignettes, provides a case study of the
embodied impact on myself as a dance movement
therapist body working with children of DVA.
5. Results
Data and results are presented in the form of
this written paper and filmed vignettes of my
embodiments and movement responses. All
data is kept on a key drive which is stored in a
locked cabinet in my personal office.
On analysis the main themes that have emerged
about the therapist body and process are: 1.
Safety, boundaries and being seen 2. Impact,
shame triggers and being heard 3. Self -
regulation, integration 4. Dance movement
and creativity as a process of containing,
rewriting connection and building resilience
kinaesthetic empathy.
Film 1 – The impact on therapist’s
body: safety securing the space,
ground and bones.
https://youtu.be/Rcuw_5iV4g0
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Getting to know a new place as a therapist
and in the relationships emerged early in
the process, and a striking of light is thrown
through reflection onto the floor of the
studio. My movement is pedestrian and it
reminds me of Meekum’s illumination
process occurring with clients, walking in
straight lines opening and closing doors
and cupboards doesn’t have a curious feel,
it feels like my movement has a getting to
know you or ‘potential threat’ quality about
it. Is it fight or flight, this finding things out
and inhabiting the space, doors opening
and closing, comings and going reminds
me of a feature that I have seen in
attachment in particular. I am really struck
by the sense of retreat that I notice in my
movement and my tone of voice which
seems to be hiding, it’s as if I want it to be
unseen, almost like a creature that has gone
to ground when wounded.
The space that I use is direct lines zigzag,
walking and strolling the perimeter and
patrolling the space. The flow is bound,
stretching, covering, hiding with my back
to camera but yet direct to the camera. The
camera is intersubjective seer (Allegranti
2012) and I wonder if I am replaying and
re-locating an avoidance from my own
attachment history. Am I also moving from a
sense of lack of safety from the parental
base within the counter-transference I
experience with clients of DVA .
As I move outside, I can hear birdsong and
this resonates with a capacity to find a
healing breath, a sound space is created, yet
the movement is still light and ungrounded,
suddenly my vital effort quality changes
and it takes on an attacking quality as I
walk directly to the camera, there is a
crunching of stones under my feet and I
feel angry as the memory of bones is my
felt sense, is this somatic counter-
transference a narrative imprinted through
my body, taking me from a disassociation
to a dividing…falling…dropping
quality of heavy weight to the ground,
whilst moving and recuperating.
There is something about ‘treading the path
and knowing there is a way out’ in the
almost ritualistic circling of the outside
space, my arms are weaving a figure of eight
around the sagital table plane of
communication, reminding me of Yalom’s
self reflective loop, the slow and even
sometimes fragile…. cautious movements
return to me. As the open space empowers
and my body is in my awareness. This
strongly suggests the concept in social groups
of differentiation as necessary for integration
and raises an important theme for therapists in
embodied process (Schmais 1998). How do
we define and separate our bodies in the
somatic counter-transference, to be able to
protect ourselves and help our clients? Using
KMP I see my moving away from a secure base
and coming back, in marking out the terrain and
the garden area, it has a checking back quality,
an invisible, drifting and remote quality as I
move into the distance and then return to the
safe base of camera and studio.
I finish with a spiral around myself as
‘processing therapist’ laying with a body that is
surrendering, giving my lived body to the
ground. Grounding, lying on the earth as if to
merge, sinking and being held, almost
disappearing, environment superseding the
body as object/subject. I am watching myself
on the film and a moment of felt sense runs
through me like a warm river, as I watch my
small still movement seeping into the ground. I
blend into the terrain as if wanting to be
camouflaged, my movement has a hiding,
melting, releasing, seeping quality, reminding
me of the vessels that carry blood around the
body. Blood that is red or blue that reminds me
of the porous nature of different layers of
embodiment that I as therapist sometimes
experience in working with DVA clients.
I think about ‘broken bones’ and structural
frames of the body and my perception of these
as being indestructible and protective. I think
about the anatomy and physiology of
6
 psychotherapists and the microscopic cells
within the bones, which deposit minerals
into their environment, ending in a
barricading of themselves, as if building
their own coffin (Stauffer 2010).
This resonates with the notion that
dynamically as organisms we need to hold
plasticity to breath, exist and develop
neurologically intersubjectively. So perhaps
as I ‘pour’ the stones down in front of the
camera there is a recognition within my
process that even stones and bones need to
move to heal. Personal memories now emerge
as I write of living an isolated unmoving
existence locked into the trauma of domestic
violence and the sense of powerlessness of
witnessing it. The embodied memories of
clients in my somatic counter –transference
when with them, recorded in my journal
experiential as qualities of ‘bleak, cold,
sparseness” as felt within “my rigid exhausted
bones”, as I recall the finish of one session we
both sat on the floor after a street dancing
display, exhausted and shocked, recovering
from the biting KMP rhythms of fighting.
Now in the film I’m looking directly up close
to camera and reach down for hands full of
pebbles falling like rain in a torrent of tears,
hands full and empty at the same time, I kick
the stones (accessing a weighted angry
rhythm) the anger seemed to allow direct
contact with the eye of the camera and I have
a feeling of finally being alive as my body
awakens and connects! I wonder if the
camera is witnessing my vulnerability,
perhaps as you are now viewing the films.
As I sit and write now I can hear the stone
on the side of my house being chiseled
away for renovation after weathering many
storms. Perhaps the abused body and
psyche has to learn how to dialogue again
dynamically in relationship after witnessing
and experiencing DVA, it needs to re -live, it
needs to adapt and trust in the environment
again, perhaps it needs to look for reflection
again. In these films I view the camera as the
relationship with being seen when
vulnerable. Brene Brown names this as
imperative as the birth place of creativity it is
necessary for recognizing shame,
understanding our triggers and telling our
story, as a tool for resilience and change
through trauma. This leads into the most
personal of the films, film 2 where the
rawness and impact of film 1 leads into what
I view as the rawness of my psycho/somatic
triggers around DVA.
Film 2 – The historical therapist’s
body: boundaries anger consideration
contagions.
https://youtu.be/aTIckMGau-Y
Sometimes with clients of DVA I have come
out of a session feeling thirsty, itchy or feeling
intense heat or extreme cold, each of these
embodied experiences have felt like a lacking
or what I will now called a ‘contagion’, I use
this term rarely in my personal description of
movement outside of dance movement
therapy. Implied in contagion are feelings of
shame, paranoia, fear and boundary
violations, a felt sensation of the skin and self
possessed. In certain sessions I have
experienced a sense/quality of self harming
behaviour reminding me of violations of
Bick’s second skin (1968) and the second
object as cloaking, holding, protecting or
containing the body when evocative memories
and triggers emerge for a client.
For film 2, I prepared in the session five
signs from text in my journal placing them in
the movement space as follows: Abuse,
justice, power, crisis, society`, I locate them
randomly in the space to guide a layer of
socio/political embodied performances.
7

I notice and comment on film that the signs
for ‘justice’ and ‘crisis’ are near to each
other, this seems to be important. The
theme of engulfment and merging appear in
this film. As if emotion, sensation, bacteria,
affective states, cognition and empathy can
be transferred corporeally outside of space
and time. Antonin Artaud suggests a notion
of embodiment as fluid in his work;
exploring through theatre the contagious
parallels between biological and
psychological dis-ease. He dared to suggest
that group and individual bodies are
constructed and treated differently and that
as a consequence the lived body is
determined in relationship. Given Artaud’s
naming of ‘theatre of cruelty’ and his
emphasis on ‘action and effect’ through
performance and witnessing bodies, I
watch this next film holding curiosity,
although its still difficult for me to watch,
bringing up feelings of shame and
vulnerability in the bound, heavy, indirect,
slow and fractured movement.
As I am watching it on film currently my
Mirror neurons are firing in my lived
researcher body, I am witness, experiencer,
therapist and my kinaesthetic empathy
facilitates this. There is a point in it where
through the awareness that I am building
through body combing and feeling the
outlines/boundaries of my skin in space, I
discover a powerful strong rhythm state. In
Laban Movement Analysis it is direct,
strong and related in proximity to
‘nearness’, rhythm is non-verbal
communication, it bridges humans and
world (Stern 1985) and in my work as a
dance movement therapist working in
DVA, I have found sharing and moving
rhythm to be containing and empowering
whilst mobilising anger. It helps to access
and express through my movement, and
something emerges about sound and a
sensitivity around noise and trauma. I notice
in the first films a quality of ‘quietness’ that
interjects with a ragged, jagged…. stillness
intermittently, the silences! these are the
gaps that need to bridged and crossed after
experiencing DVA. In my written journal I
describe my embodied process;
“My ‘Breath sinks sliding gliding balancing
nearly falling…my eyes closed…I can barely
see... like I’m falling off the edge, I wrap my
slow movement, body stroking with the
introduction of body boundaries as breath gets
deeper and more audible. Covering face…
head in hands.. shielding view from the
camera almost like a desperate holding
quality, am I stopping something from
falling? An exploration of shifting weight and
transferring balance is occurring’.
It now seems significant that the therapist
body being seen and heard is an important
part in accessing anger, as if to bring the
body/self back into the world to. As if to
reintegrate and connect after the isolating
experience of domestic violence. On the film I
see myself noticing the sensations and sounds
of the environment
Film 3 - the witnessing body, movement
and voice as my witness
https://youtu.be/JBkO4-8z18U
This film seemed the most whole of all the
pieces of my therapist body processing, it
seemed to come out of a connection to
something authentic, almost like Yalom’s
‘plugging into source’. There isn’t a lot of
research on how movement connects with the
voice or singing, but Newman 1999 talks
about the integrating exploration of
‘investigating the environment of Inner and
Outer Experience’ and my moving not only
synchronizes with voice, singing but also
8
language seems to emerge in the process,
almost following the sensory development
cycle of sound in the womb, movement and
then language. The pathways that my body
traces are full of ‘spherical space and
spherical sound’. The sound and flow of my
whole embodiment seem to be weaving,
guiding and gathering, as if instructing what
it is I need from the environment. It feels
like self-regulation, as I watch my
movement figure of eight, as continuous,
connected and able to swing back into place. During the last movements of the film it
This holistic expression in my process is of strikes me that I have found and chosen to
note and seems to lift me up, allowing grow wings and it’s metaphor is rich in
support in my feelings of anger and empowerment, self awareness, regulation
embodiment of panic around the ‘Justice’ and freedom, it sings and moves in an
and ‘Crisis’ labels. Here emerges the authentic humanistic way. It reminds me of
connection between the need to make visible the myth of the Shoshone butterflies, that
a body and voice in the social injustices of were once pebbles into which the breath of
domestic violence and abuse. The life is blown, they and the therapist’s body,
vulnerability of the therapist is being seen in shape shifting with other and environment.
order to build resilience.
Film 5 – Language and verbal
This film makes the greatest impact when reflecions of my therapist process
viewed so in this paper I have resisted the
urge to use a lengthy language analysis. https://youtu.be/7losR_MHBso

Ethics
Film 4 – exploring the relational body
with dance movement creativity
“My interpretation is my exercise of power,
https://youtu.be/x8Xuap9_yX4 my decisions have consequences and I am
Connecting creatively to other/object, after accountable for my conclusions.”
integration and development of movement (Ramazanoglu & Holland, 2004:161).
and voice, allows the unfolding story of the
client or therapists needs to be expressed
In independent autoethnographical
corporeally. The movement process in this
research ethics are difficult. The
film becomes lighter and shows more of a
inclusion of embodied subjectivity and
shifting, mutual, playful quality. I explore
the kinaesphere, moving with feathers and personal experience are included as a
valid source of knowledge for research.
scarves in a more gentle and varied way.
The charity that I work for do not
Qualities involving touch emerge by
exploring in a renewed and regenerative currently have an ethics committee for
research. I sought advice from
way themes of boundaries, support,
ADMPUK to guide this project and their
attachments and object relations. These
seems to becoming meaningful and advisories were helpful. I made the
decision to omit any detail of my own
important to myself as moving processing
personal events or relationships involved
therapist and leads me into film 5 which is
a verbal reflection on film. in my experiences of domestic abuse. I
have been reflective on the the use of
material used from the clients I work
with to protect their anonymity.

9

6. Conclusion
In conclusion I have only undertaken
a small percentage of the possible data
analysis the five films of the therapist
embodied process, the data is rich and
various in content and interpretation.
The autoethnographcal focus contains a
focus from myself and a personal
supervision aspect. This research would
benefit from further analysis and further
development is being extended out to
other therapists/academics and
professionals to participate by viewing
the film and possibly inviting
movement, written or verbal responses
to the films and paper.
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