To Dance is Human: Polyvagal-Informed Dance/Movement Therapy© for Resilience
Live | Online with the Psychedelic Society / UK
Tuesdays at 12 – 1:30pm ET / 8-9:30pm GMT
Course Description:
To dance is human, and beyond human. When we dance, we connect with a profound wisdom that has traversed through all forms of life for millennia. From the intricate movements of bees to the graceful glides of whales, and from the gentle sway of trees to the ever-changing flow of clouds, dance is a universal language. Rituals and ceremonies centered around dance have been integral to countless cultures, although many have been disrupted or concealed through colonization. Dance as ritual, ceremony, therapy, and engagement with life serves as a gateway to transformation, healing, and emergent consciousness through state-shifting.
In this course, we will immerse ourselves in the medium of our bodies, movement, and dance. Our exploration will be guided by the Polyvagal-informed Dance/Movement Therapy© (PVIDMT) framework, which intertwines Polyvagal Theory with sacred dance and movement. This approach blends client experience, mentorship, and deep immersion in both Polyvagal Theory and personal sacred dance practices.
By integrating principles from this framework, which honors both scientific and spiritual dimensions of human healing, we will delve into somatic pathways for state-shifting. Through structured somatic and movement-based practices, theoretical insights, and experiential dance, we will engage with all the ways we dance.
Course overview:
Week 1: To Dance is Human: Introduction to PVIDMT©.
- Concepts Introduced: Introduction to PVIDMT© and its relevance to dance and movement. Exploration of the foundational principles of PVIDMT©. Weight as ground, yield, place and belonging.
- Key Activities: will include Theoretical information, movement practices and conversation.
- Objective: Build a foundational understanding of PVIDMT© and its integration with sacred dance practices.
Week 2: Exploring Stateshifting: The Autonomic Nervous System (“ANS”) as a Dance.
- Concepts Introduced: Detailed exploration of the concept and practice of state-shifting and its role in ceremony, healing, therapy and restoration. Breath as emergence and neuro-physiological stateshifter.
- Key Activities will include Theoretical information, movement practices and conversation.
- Objective: Develop a practical understanding of how stateshifting is both a function of, and an ally to, the autonomic nervous system.
Week 3: Somatic Pathways to State-shifting: The Ritual and Ceremony of Healing
- Concepts Introduced: The Crossroads of science and Spirit: Pathways to stateshifting in the contexts of ritual, ceremony, restoration and healing. Spine as a portal and a pathway.
- Key Activities will include Theoretical information, movement practices and conversation.
- Objective: Foster connection to the primary portals to the body and shateshifting
Week 4: The Dance of Compassion
- Concepts Introduced: PVIDMT© as a portal to compassion; The Trilogy of Human Response; Compassion as a heart-full portal to reciprocity, dignity and global transformation.
- Key Activities will include Theoretical information, movement practices and conversation.
- Objective: Increased commitment to cultivating compassion.
About the Facilitator:
Dr. Amber Elizabeth Gray is a licensed human rights & somatic psychotherapist, innovative movement artist, board certified dance/movement therapist, master trainer and educator, Continuum teacher, with a public health and political science background.
Her life-long commitment to social justice and planetary, animal, and human rights; her passion for the natural world and everything wild; and her commitment to service have all inspired and shaped her work. An innovator in the use of somatic psychology and movement–based therapies (Dance/Movement Therapy, Yoga, Continuum) with survivors of relational, collective and social trauma; torture, war, long term oppression and human rights abuses, Amber has spent the last 40 years in service of her belief that “Every human being has the right to inhabit their body in the way they choose.”
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