E-Book of Articles - World Federation of Music Therapy

Garcia, Maria: Forms Of Expression In Common To Movement ...
This perceptive "readiness", however, depends on the general
conditions of the body. We know that in adults, many of these body
reflections linked to every perceptive act are usually split from conscious
experience. According to Stern, the language may lead to organize
experiences into discrete categories, giving priority to the perceptions from
specific sensorial channels. Also, defense mechanisms need to be separated
from body experiences to survive. Conflicts and repressed emotions affect
the tension flow and condition non-modal perception abilities.
If trainees are to become acquainted with the non-verbal context,
the training should focus on:
the recovery of a deep knowledge of the body;
the creation of a flexible tension balance, open to tone
fluctuations due to perceptive events;
the strengthening of a state of consciousness that may
observe and tolerate these fluctuations.
The Resources of Dance Therapy
The Effort-Shape System
Dance Therapy has certain theoretical and methodological resources
that may serve as a foundation for recovering non-verbal experience. The
Laban Movement Analysis is a powerful movement-observation and training
tool, adopted by most US and European Dance Therapy schools, and also by
the Association I belong to, Art Therapy Italiana. Irmgard Barthenieff, Judit
Kestenberg and Penny Lewis are a few of the authors who have studied in
further detail the implications of the Effort-Shape System in the therapeutic
field. This system was created by Rudolf Laban and is a complex model
that studies qualitative patterns as well as the space organization
patterns that may be detected in a way that transcends the individual
movements.
Even though Effort and Shape are closely intertwined, my paper will
only briefly analyze the former factor, fundamental for non-modal
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