Self-Care

Sometimes you just need to take a day for self care. That is how I spent my day, at the Boston Christmas Festival in complete bliss with my Christmas socks on and singing along to the carols playing overhead.
However, things have a funny way of happening and as it turns out one of the vendors there is a choreographer who danced in Texas. He intoduced me to a friend of his who also had a booth there and long story short she is also an artist and has been involved with the Mark Morris Dancing with PD and is interested in dance/movement therapy. I hope today may have been the start of a blossoming friendship between us all.
Although note to self...get business cards so when someone asks you for one you don't look so surprised!

Spring Term

Hi everyone! Yes I have been slacking on doing posts...it seems like the middle of the term has been the busiest yet. Just a short post as I am getting ready for my first dance/movement therapy session at my internship site tomorrow, yay! Currently uploading my playlist to my Ipod. I did a brief presentation on Friday at my site introducing what DMT is and what residents can expect and had a really great turnout!

I was able to register in my classes for next term (here there is Winter term which is September-December then Spring term which is middle of January to May). My classes look like they will be just as fascinating as they were this term. I have to take

DMT Supervision II
Theories and Practice of DMT II
Psychopathology
Movement Observation I

My Theories and Practice class will take place at Perkins School for the Blind. Each student will be paired with a blind student from Perkins and we will be working with them for the term. I have been told what a great experience it is.

Must go finish getting props organized for tomorrow. DMT is a new way of working...no lesson plans! Check back later in the week to read how it went!

Privilege, Power and Oppression

I had my first weekend intensive this weekend. The class was titled Privilege,  Power and Oppression.  Very interesting course that disscussed how we as clinicians identify ourselves. It talked about how different groups experience power, privilege and oppression.  What I found to be the most interesting was all of the statistics that were discussed with regards to cost of living, education etc. I am leaving the weekend wanting to find how Canada's stats compare and if I am as surprised by them as the ones for the United States.

One more weekend to go, in November,  then the course is complete (minus the final paper). I think for that weekend I will stock up on sleep before hand!

Congratulations!

I would like to give a quick shout out to Dr. Joseph DeSouza, Rachel Bar and Dancing with Parkinson's in Toronto for being featured on CTV news tonight. I had the honour of working with Dr. DeSouza and Rachel at York University and then volunteering a couple of hours to Dancing with Parkinson's. Hoping to bring my education back to people like this at home to expand the field of dance/movement therapy into this type of research. Check out their interview below! Congratulations!

http://toronto.ctvnews.ca/video?binId=1.815897

Documents

Finding our way in this new profession can be a bit of a challenge. I am realizing how young this field is in comparison to others as new experiences arrive on my doorstep. The latest one being creating an invoice.

I just received an email requesting I send in an invoice for the time I spent programming and leading for some work I did over the summer. Hrm where to start. Of course I started with a Google search for "invoice templates for dance/movement therapy" and turned up empty handed. After a few emails back and forth I was able to know what to include.

I also checked on the ADTA website to see if there were templates for these types of documents available to members but again turned up empty handed. After discussing with my peers, I was relieved to know I wasn't the only one who found this difficult to navigate.

Hopefully there will come a time when resources such as templates for these documents will be available through Google for DMT.

What to call our time together

It's been a few days since my last post, sorry about that! I was fortunate enough to make it back to Canada to celebrate Canadian Thanksgiving with my family. Yay self-care! However, it's back to reality this week and catching up on everything.

At my internship we are drafting up the November calendar. With this arose the discussion of when I will give a trial run of a dance/movement therapy group. It has been decided that November 6 is the big day. This will give me time to give a bit of a "presentation" to the residents about what DMT is and what they can expect which will hopefully encourage participation.

The discussion with my supervisor came to a close with us trying to figure out what to name the group as on the calendar. It seems like my fellow classmates are going through this same process now at their sites too with some calling it "dance/movement therapy" and others using "movin' and groovin'". We came up with a few ideas together but it was decided in the end to ask the residents what they think it should be called so that it will draw people in.

Stay tuned for the results!

Therapeutic dance/movement vs. dance/movement therapy?

Today I realized just how many people are doing expressive arts therapy groups without even realizing it. Maybe I shouldn't say "doing" but instead say "doing something very similar to". After two full days at my internship, I have now seen the Yoga, Tai Chi and Relaxation programs that are run at my site. All of them have aspects that represent expressive arts therapy and the benefits are also similar. Both the Yoga and Tai Chi also have similarities to dance/movement therapy as well.

I have been reflecting on how I can approach my time with the clients so they do not feel as though they are doing the same activities program after program.

This has also brought me to reflect on what the difference is between therapeutic movement/dance and dance/movement therapy. I used to believe the two were more similar than different. However, I am starting to believe that they are in fact extremely different and that what I am witnessing is therapeutic movement and dance.

Both of these require more reflection and I am sure always will.