JUNGIAN DANCE THERAPY
We allow ourselves to be danced by compelling inner images and feelings in our body. A mover and a witness primarily concerned with exploring and understanding the inner experience of the mover. The movement process develops an increasingly balanced relationship between images and bodily felt sensations originating in the unconscious or individual soul as connected to the world soul of the collective, and the conscious awareness we utilize in everyday choices. The development of this essence requires the capacity to bear the tension of the opposites with discrimination, and to open fully to the unconscious while maintaining a strong conscious standpoint. When we are "moved" and moving consciously in this way and surrender to something that cannot be explained, psychophysical connections are made available to consciousness. This deep guidance weaves into the larger context of Jungian analysis and develops an increasingly balanced relationship to both realms, listening and response, fluctuations of attention, each realm constellating and enriching the other. This sets one off on a path towards wholeness, an awareness of larger totality simply because of entering into communication with the inner self.
The witness recognizes and holds awareness of the moments that the mover is "being moved". Remembering what the body was doing, associating images, affect, or emotional tone, experiences of entrainment, finding unity in the darkness of the unconscious and facilitating "what the unconscious is telling us that we did not already know". Encouraging opportunities for transformation. When an untransformed primal effect from preverbal infantile processes arises we are working at a body-mind level without image or awareness. Instinct, affect, and sensory perception can come together in a body sensation and bring forth memories or images that can help interpret these opportunities. Dance seems to be among the most direct ways to reach these experiences that represent stages of developing consciousness from birth to approximately 16 months. If being seen and being held seems insatiable in our desires throughout life, for example, this is a way to turn that experience into inner gold with kind, gentle lessons we can consciously choose. Our culture in this wave of humans seems stuck in unconscious patterns of scarcity that contribute to the abuse of nature and threaten our survival. We are in a pandemic that stems from the myth of Pan worshipping "never grow up, never grow old" infantile behavior that needs to be taken care of by someone else, like mother earth. We can accept responsibility in this way and do our inner work daily as one that can contribute to the benefit of all.
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