MOVING STORIES:

WORKING WITH METAPHORS IN

DRAMA AND MOVEMENT THERAPY

BY,
ANSHUMA KSHETRAPAL
DRAMA AND MOVEMENT PSYCHOTHERAPIST,
COURSE DIRECTOR, CMTAI,
ADVISORY BOARD MEMBER CMTAI,
FOUNDER, DIRECTOR, THE COLOR OF GREY CELLS
Anshuma Kshetrapal is a practicing Drama and Movement Psychotherapist registered with BADth (British
Association of Dramatherapists). She has an MA in Drama and Movement Therapy from Royal Central School of
Speech and Drama, University of London, UK, an MA in Psychosocial Clinical Studies from Ambedkar university,
Delhi and an FECAT certification from SMART, Bangalore.
She is an advisory board member for the Creative Movement Therapy Association of India (CMTAI) and isalso
their Course Director, designing curriculum and teaching in their Delhi, Bangalore and Pune courses. Having over
8 years of experience as a trauma counselor, Anshuma has worked with adults and children, in the field of mental
health with a range of settings such as clinics, hospitals, NGOs, schools and corporates in Delhi, Bangalore and
London
Her current service offerings include individual and group therapy, supervision and consultation for peers and
junior creative arts therapists, facilitating workshops in various settings and teaching in various institutes. In her
endeavour to spread awareness about the use of the arts for therapy, she founded The Color of Grey Cells, to
conduct workshops for students, therapists and clients alike because she is passionate about spreading the word
about working with the mind and body nexus, using stories, poetry, movement, role playing and visual arts.
 WHAT IS DRAMA AND MOVEMENT THERAPY?

Drama and Movement Therapy (DMT), is a non-verbal, indirect form of psychotherapy. Using the art forms of

- Drama

- Movement

- Storytelling and

- Image-based practices,

this method aims to promote self-exploration which has the capacity for self-growth and change.

Informed by

- Analytical Psychology (Carl Jung) - Developmental Psychology

- Laban Movement Analysis - Role Theories (Robert Landy and D.R. Johnson)

- Play therapy theories (DW Winnicott) - Theatre Theories from J. Gotowski, Peter Brooks, Augusto Boal and Goffman

- And Billy Lindkvist’s work with movement with touch and sound,

DMT is an oblique approach in which difficulties are revealed indirectly through metaphor and using an inner language.
• DMT works with the mind body nexus and connects psychophysiology and body soma along
with the collective unconscious and metaphors.
• It exists in the interim spaces of cognitive neuroscience and the imaginary, the artistic, felt
experience.
• It allows a more holistic context of the experience to emerge:
cultural, socio political, physiological and psychological.
• All belief systems are narrative based, postmodern thought allows us now to deconstruct
what was earlier though of as “Absolute truth” or “complete and infallible fact” into the more
fluid concept of “perception”, “opinion” and “personal experience”
DRAMA AND MOVEMENT THERAPY (SESAME)
• Each therapy session will be different according to the needs of those taking part. Dramatherapy can take place in a range of
different settings including schools, prisons, social care facilities and private workspaces. This means that dramatherapists often
find themselves working with a range of different people who have different needs. It may be that everyone in one group is
facing a similar issue, or you may all have different reasons for being there.

• The first job of the dramatherapist is to get to know you and what you are hoping to achieve through therapy. Once the
therapist has a better understanding of your expectations and needs, the session can begin.

A typical group dramatherapy session may work like this:

1. Check in – This is designed to help the dramatherapist understand how you're feeling today.

2. Warm-up – At this point the dramatherapist will want to prepare you for the session. A warm-up activity is something that
loosens the muscles and engages the imagination; an example of this is the name game where members of the group
introduce themselves by stating their name and miming an action that represents how they are feeling.

3. Bridge in – this is when we start to build the theme that the main activity will explore. We have to involve both the body
and the imagination for this.

4. The main activity – This is when the therapist will help the group explore issues through various dramatherapy
techniques.

5. Bridge Out – Reflection spaces are offered using art or verbal processing skills. One important thing to remember Is
that the role of the therapist is to facilitate the experience and personal understanding of the client, not to
interpret the material revealed.

6. Grounding – Often a group activity to come back to the here and now.
For the main activity dramatherapists can use a range of different techniques and activities including the
following:
• Role-play
• Improvisation
• Sculpt
• Mime
• Speech
• Movement
• Acting out: In some cases your drama therapist may ask you to re-enact behaviours or situations that
have caused you problems in the past. This can be a difficult task to undertake as it can cause you to
remember and re-experience difficult emotions. The idea behind doing this is to help you learn how you
can do things differently in the future or simply understand why what happened affected you the way it
did. This is different from psychodrama.
• Use of props and masks
• The emphasis is on OBLIQUE, i.e. using the imagination to work with the arts and engage the body, to
facilitate a space for individuals who can then discover the abilities of creativity and playfulness. In so doing, the
individual can begin to explore the conscious and unconscious choices that she is making in the moment
and the linkages of these choices with her personal life, thus opening the door to self-reflection.
• Even if the individual wishes to work through a particular emotional distress or trauma event, in DMT this is
done through working with the arts, to create a safe and open environment which may not even require
revisiting of the event itself. This is a way of working with emotions and experiencing catharsis without
having to overwhelm the client with multiple retellings.
• Using the imagination and stories allows for an aesthetic distance (Landy, 1983) to be created between the
person and the emotional disturbance that can in turn allow us to work on the emotional content without
having to work with it in a very direct way. Also, because we are working with the emotion in a more objective,
distanced way we open up the possibility of “seeing the larger picture” (Hougham, 2013) rather than
consistently repeating what we already know about ourselves and the distressful events. This can then lead to
discovering the underlying, psychological thought patterns that could be a precursor to or an effect of the
trauma.
• Story-telling in this format is a projective approach. It works from a collective, archetypal
frame of reference (Jung, 1939), in that it uses stories of a community or culture to provide a
subconscious manifestation of one’s own experiences. The archetypal motifs, symbols and images
have common roots in myths, stories and fairy tales across countries and cultures, through time
and space. “The whole of mythology could be taken as a sort of projection of the
collective unconscious” (Jung, 1960, par. 325). The metaphors transcend cultural barriers and
occur universally and repeatedly.
• Another aspect is that the empathy one experiences for a story that is not their own can be a
gateway to a personal story that has not yet found a platform for expression. Thus, DMT uses
stories to use interpersonal understanding to channel self-understanding (Jennings, 1994). DMT can
work with both individuals and groups but this abovementioned effect of the work can be most
directly felt in group settings. Working with metaphors, stories and enactments can actually be a
very powerful way of bringing several narratives together and help explore a group’s
commonalities, differences and nuance, perhaps enabling dialogue and empathy.
In order to facilitate such spaces with this tool, DMT practitioners need to undergo training in the modality of using story telling
as a therapeutic tool. often the art of storytelling is used flippantly and not optimized to the needs of group even in the art therapy
context.

Stories are used as precursors to other therapeutic art modalities but if they are to be used as the main medium for the
therapeutic work then there are several skills to be kept in mind, several points of reflection to be achieved before a story can be
used and lots of research to be done about the story itself. some key things to ponder and research are:

• the background of the story, retellings and versions that best suit the group should be chosen
• the conscious and unconscious themes embedded in the story
• the cultural resonance or dissonance for the group and the therapist
• the facilitators own response to the story
• the need of the group that is being addressed (primary and secondary goals)
• the archetypal images, roles and circumstances the story brings to the room
• the appropriateness of the story for the group
• the story should provide adequate choices of roles and dualities
• the story is not intended to impart a particular moral message but instead has concepts of agency embedded in it.
Other Considerations:

• Ethics (open and safe spaces)

• Boundaries and working alliance

• Therapeutic presence

• Kinesthetic empathy

• Attunement

• Role theory

• Developmental psychology (attachment patterns)

• Mythology, archetypes, Jungian

• Body memory, trauma

CASE STUDY EXAMPLE:

• Ashiana Housing,

An organisation in London, UK, which offers specialist support to women and girls,
affected by domestic violence or forced marriage, I conducted weekly drama therapy
sessions for 17 women who had sought asylum from south east asian countries for a
period of 6 months. Out of the 24 sessions, 18 were spent working with myths, about
women, from different cultures. 10 of those sessions were spent working with the story
of Shakuntala.
CASE STUDY (CONTD.)

What did the stories help us explore:

• Objectivity
• Wish fulfillment
• Agency
• Healing archetypes
• Group building
• Trust
• empathy
• Catharsis without revisiting extreme trauma directly
• Perpetrator empathy that may allow for letting go
• Cultural resonance
• Hope for love
 THANK YOU FOR LISTENING!
For any further queries, please don’t hesitate to contact: thecolorofgreycells@gmail.com, info.anshuma@gmail.com

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