Embracing the Healing Power of Movement: Dance Therapy's Role in Teen Eating Disorder Recovery and Body Empowerment

When control over one's body becomes the battleground, can the simple act of movement be the key to freedom and joy? Kelly, a dance movement therapist, joins me to unravel this question, sharing the profound healing that movement can offer those entangled in the struggles of eating disorders. Our conversation ventures into the heart of authentic movement—our body's inherent language—and how this form of self-expression can lead teenagers, often caught in a web of societal expectations, to a healthier relationship with themselves.

Embarking on this journey, we grapple with the complexities of embodiment, a concept far deeper than physicality alone. It's about the harmonious interplay of mind, soul, and emotions—a holistic embrace of self that eating disorders so viciously attempt to fracture. Kelly and I contemplate the crucial role embodiment plays in dismantling the objectification and control these disorders impose. We also touch on the unique challenges teenagers face in this digital age, underlining the imperative of establishing bodily safety as a cornerstone in the path to healing.

To conclude, our dialogue turns to the therapeutic implications of "emotion as motion." I share insights from the 'Be With Body' experience, an online group coaching program that nurtures a safe relationship with movement as we tackle emotional regulation. The value of dance and movement therapies unfolds through our discussion, showcasing their efficacy in addressing a spectrum of mental health issues. By integrating practices such as intuitive movement classes and mindful social media engagement into our daily lives, we open the door to a world where mental health and movement are inextricably linked. Join us as we advocate for greater body awareness and invite you to partake in this transformative practice.

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:02

Hi everyone. I'm Rajuta, host of Answer my Call. I'm a mental health therapist and owner of Mindful Group Practice, located in Pennsylvania. I work primarily with teenagers and women in my practice. I'm a mom to two teenagers, always waiting for them to answer my call. Hi Kelly, welcome to the podcast. I'm super excited to talk to you about movement and how it can be an amazing intervention for eating disorders. Since we are doing the six episode series on eating disorders, I was very much looking to different modalities, different interventions to talk about how we can help teens especially who are struggling with eating disorders. One of the things that I read on your profile was that you kind of so beautifully expressed that movement is needed to shift your lived experience of the body from control to freedom and joy, and that just sort of took me to a whole new, like joyful feeling. So could we start with you explaining what you mean by that and, you know, what can our listeners take from it?

Speaker 2: 1:42

Yeah, and thank you for having me. I'm really looking forward to this conversation and just sharing a little bit more about movement as it fits into psychotherapy.

Speaker 2: 1:54

And as a dance movement therapist, that's what I do. I bring movement into the counseling experience. So, but movement in general is our native language. We come into the world and with our first breath that is movement and it's the only language we have in the beginning and we use movement to express ourselves. We cry, we, you know, stretch, we kick, we start to crawl. You know we relate to the world and everyone else with movement too. So movement is really foundational every day in our life and as we grow, as our culture gets us more and more into the mind, you know, especially even kids as they get into technology, so soon we get further and further away from our bodies and from that just natural, authentic movement that we have.

Speaker 1: 3:01

But can we talk a little bit about sort of what you mean by authentic movement? Is it something different or do we go back into our body?

Speaker 2: 3:14

Yeah, what I mean by that is movement that is coming from within, as our guide is listening to what our body might feel, how we sense the world, and we move. And then we get feedback and the information comes back to our body to give us safety, to give us enjoyment, discomfort, and then those signals help us decide how to move from there. And so it's really a back and forth dance, if you will, of noticing and feeling your body and using that information to help you make decisions about how to move next. And I think kids naturally do that, babies naturally do that.

Speaker 2: 4:02

We cry when we're hungry, we turn away when we're full and we don't. You know, you can't force a baby to eat if they don't want to eat. But as we get older and we start to take our guide from the external world, then we start to lose the patterns of listening to our own body. So that authentic movement is more of if you, if there was nothing outside of you and you were just listening to how your internal, that interception, that internal awareness of energy, how you want to move, how would you move Like if you had that total freedom to just move how you wanted to, without the external limits or constructs or beliefs that we have from our experiences.

Speaker 1: 4:54

So as we grow older we lose that right, like that true, authentic I don't want to say voice, but kind of that inner feeling, voice that allows us to move a certain way, or you know that authentic movement that you describe. Are there ways in which we can tap into that?

Speaker 2: 5:17

Yeah, and I think that's what I do in session with clients is help them find their way back to themselves, to that inner guide and just how to relate to your body in a way that it's a resource and it's a guide, rather than it being this object or something separate to control. And a lot of the messages are telling us in this world that our body is something separate. That it's. You know, we have this brain and then we have a body, but our brain is just one part of our body. It is not separate.

Speaker 1: 5:53

Isn't that true? Right, right, yeah, yeah, no, I'm really glad that you said that, because I do. I mean, I agree with you that a lot of times we don't really look at sort of mind and body as connected. It's more like the control either on your body or on your mind, but it's. Those are two separate things.

Speaker 2: 6:18

Right, and our language keeps it separate. I'm also just even saying mind body connection, as if they need to be connected when they already are, and it's more about the communication between the two that we really have to bring awareness to and develop more, because I think it's not that we've lost our authentic connection. We aren't communicating with it. So we're focused more, our attention is more on the external messages or the external feedback and information, and we're bombarded with all of that information, and so we have lost our ability to tune in, maybe, to what our body is telling us.

Speaker 1: 7:06

Yeah, I love that. First of all, I love the fact that you say in a guide and I'm going to use that if you don't mind- Please do.

Speaker 2: 7:17

I don't know that it's mine either. I don't know. Yeah, because it's definitely though.

Speaker 1: 7:22

Yeah, it's so, it's important. Yeah, it is important and it's so true because when we talk about our inner voice, it's somehow, a lot of times, is not our inner voice, it's more like someone else's voice in our head. It's how the criticism the external forces, validation, I mean all of that external stuff that kind of keeps coming constantly through social media, through parenting, through social scripts and through social connections. I really struggle with that word inner voice, so I love inner guide.

Speaker 2: 8:06

Yeah, because it's shifting the idea that a voice is what we're trying to listen for, to that the guide could be any sensation, any feeling that you have. It's not just a voice. A voice is words and language. That is, we've already put interpretation to. We've taken a sensation and then we've interpreted it into this voice. So we wanna kind of go one step backwards, into the sensation as a guide.

Speaker 1: 8:40

Yeah, yeah. And to your point about language and interpretation and the separation of mind and body, like the whole idea that mind and body are connected, and I mean you're absolutely right. It's so true that even our language reflects the disconnect.

Speaker 2: 9:00

Yeah, yeah, well, and I've always. Back in grad school, my thesis was on dialectical behavior therapy and mindfulness and how movement is a huge part of that, but it's the language has us focused on the mind and mindfulness. But really mindfulness, the behaviors, the practice is all about the body and yet our language makes it seem that our mind is in control, that our mind is the part that is important. But mindfulness is really all about going to the body. Another dance therapist, christine Caldwell, actually coined the term. Bodyfulness is really what we're doing and I love that because it really is more. Mindfulness is more than the mind. It's about going into the body.

Speaker 1: 9:53

Yeah, yeah, oh, my God, this is like an explosion in my brain right now. Because, it's so true. I mean it's so true. We talk about mindfulness, like mind is in control, but all the sensations that we want to, we do feel is in our body.

Speaker 2: 10:13

Yeah, and that's where emotions come from, and it's about feeling them, where our mind tries to interpret and then fix them. And so in dance movement therapy I help clients really try to feel into their experience versus trying to fix it.

Speaker 1: 10:36

Yeah, yeah, and that's starting within your body to create whatever expression you need to through the feelings or sensations that you feel in the body. I love that, love that. So, as kind of pulling this intervention in terms of eating disorders, can you talk to how that kind of fits in the treatment? If there is a connection, and what is the connection?

Speaker 2: 11:15

Yeah, I think I've always seen a connection.

Speaker 2: 11:19

Most of my career as a dance movement therapist has been with eating disorders and women experiencing trauma or anxiety.

Speaker 2: 11:29

Because the body is where the battle is occurring and it is that battle, we think, between mind and body, but it's a relationship to your body that is needing to be healed and embodiment and connection to your body is really that, I think, a missing piece in eating, a sort of treatment that is coming more and more into when you look at the research and treatment centers.

Speaker 2: 12:01

Embodiment is much more of a focus now, which is so great because they've realized that it is. We can talk and talk, and talk and you know, but that's where the eating disorder lives, is in our mind. And if we don't get out of the thoughts, out of the obsessive thoughts, you know, the mind distorts our image and experience of the body. The mind is very black and white thinking or has these negative thinking patterns around the food and body. So it's helping clients to get out of that, out of that focus in the mind and out of those thoughts and really coming back to connecting to the body, and movement is the bridge to do that. Movement is kind of the way that you can practice and feel that and get a sense of what it's like to be in the body.

Speaker 1: 12:56

So yeah, so tell me more, a little bit more about sort of the embodiment part of it.

Speaker 2: 13:03

Sure. So embodiment is all about the experience of feeling and living in your body, rather than feeling that this body is separate from you. And when we might experience our body as a separate thing, this object, the eating disorder, really starts to treat the body as a target and relate to it as something that we try to control, fix. We ignore the signals, we punish the body, we judge it, we criticize it, rather than, if you start to really be in your body, I mean, that's a lot, that's heavy, that's a lot to feel. And if you connect to my body, is me and this is me, not just a body separate. But embodiment is that I am my body. Right, we are this whole. It's not a thing, it's me, it's the whole self, including the mind, including our soul, including our emotions. The body is all of that.

Speaker 1: 14:18

So yeah, Wow, again that blew my mind Because it is. I mean, I'm thinking it's so true that when we are trying to quote, unquote, fix our body right the way I look or the way I want to present, and especially as teenagers who are going through so many changes and constant changes and trying to fit in with the narrative within social media that their body kind of is a separate entity almost for them to be able to navigate, change, quote, unquote, fix. And so, although it is sort of for their minds to kind of control their body, if they see it as one, how does that change their perspective in looking at themselves? Does that make sense?

Speaker 2: 15:19

Yeah, I think the goal is to get to that space and feeling one with your body and it's going to be this amazing experience, right. But our bodies are geared towards survival and our stress systems are the way our body is designed. Has us, if something dangerous comes, if we have something that's uncomfortable or we perceive that way, we go into different responses that take us out of the body. Really, the fight, flight, the freeze these experiences in our bodies are, you know, they're fast, they're automatic, we don't always realize we're even doing them and then those patterns become ingrained. And that's where the eating disorder can come in, because it's an oversimplified almost experience of the body. It just kind of helps you regulate and focus on something different than the discomfort and the danger that you're feeling in your body. So emotions could be that danger or whatever trauma or different experiences in our life. And so the eating disorder is a survival strategy to kind of shift our attention away and help us get through the day without experiencing that place in the body, because for a lot of people living in their body is not fun, it isn't that joy or freedom.

Speaker 2: 16:53

So the first thing is, whether it's eating disorders or anyone, the first thing of embodiment is coming to the body. Can we create safety? Can we create a way of even just experiencing sensations and knowing that that is okay, because sensations could be the danger. Any sensation might be automatically the message to the brain of get out, abort. We don't want to feel this, and so just the process of creating safety in the body is part of treatment, is part of coming into, helping teens realize that the body is a place that we need to live. And yet, as you mentioned, social media is another way of getting out and it's kind of taking you from this three-dimensional experience of the world and of yourself into a very image, kind of two-dimensional flat place and that separation again from body and sensation.

Speaker 1: 18:00

Yeah. Yeah, it is hard to be in your body at any age, but I feel like teenage years are just kind of so overwhelming in so many different ways, right.

Speaker 2: 18:13

So many mixed signals, so many changes in the body, so many hormones shifting, so much information coming at them that their body has to process, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 1: 18:27

And sometimes I feel like how did we grow up Right without social media and without so much coming at us constantly?

Speaker 2: 18:37

Yeah, we were maybe a little bit forced to be in it a little bit more, and yet there were many ways. There's always been ways for us to disconnect and avoid feeling. There's many routes Food, alcohol, drugs so many different ways. Technology does make it more complicated, I think.

Speaker 1: 19:03

Yeah, you're absolutely right. There are so many ways of getting into, or getting pulled into sort of that whirlwind of emotions, especially as a teenager, and then the consequences can be multiple. You spoke about creating safety. I'm wondering how do we, or how do you help in your practice, create safety, especially with teenagers? Was it so difficult in many ways, and then I feel like working with teenagers is the most natural and easy way, but in your practice, how do you help them create safety in their body?

Speaker 2: 19:43

Yeah, well, it's very individual, I think, depending on the person, of course, but I'd like to remind teens or anyone that I work with, that they already I mean, they're the expert they already know their body, they know it so well that some things have become automatic and they automatically are shifting out of the body to keep themselves in a regulated place, and that we just need to start realizing that, in terms of movement, we're always moving. We're already moving. So anyone that says, well, I don't want to do movement or that sounds too scary, well, we're already doing it. So, bringing just starting with where we're at in terms of helping people realize, okay, well, how do you move?

Speaker 2: 20:39

Maybe you're most comfortable like, where's the safety right now in what you're doing, and noticing how the patterns that we move through the world, the eating disorder or whatever they're doing, the technology, the social media that feels safe to them. And then we start to expand on that safety isn't always helpful or healthy. Safety can be just what they know, what they're familiar with, and so starting to redefine safety that just because it's different or you've not experienced that before, doesn't mean it's not safe. So starting to allow them to play a little bit with new things, new different ways of moving and in session that might look like bringing music that they enjoy, things that they really like, that helps them be in the body already if they're athletes, if they, if they just love cuddling up with a blanket and a couch, you know whatever makes them feel safe and then building from there.

Speaker 1: 21:49

And so, when it comes to different kinds of eating disorders, how do you help them create safety at that point? Because there's so much of that struggle between what do I do with my body and how do I? Kind of work is, in many ways, I think, controlling or feeling out of control. However, that plays out with an eating disorder, the focus is so much on the body, and so I you did mention that sort of movement and dance. Movement is kind of the bridge between sort of mind and body. How does that work with, or in your practice, right with your work with teens? How do you address that?

Speaker 2: 22:41

We begin with. As you said, eating disorders are often about the body and yet they're very much the external body. It's taking people focusing on the external what they look like, what, even measurements of calories or weight, or focus on something outside of themself, and so just beginning the communication with the body, helping them start to learn that their body is more than this external image and more than an object, and starting to really tune into sensation, is the biggest kind of place that we can start. Breath and sensation, that's the information that really tells us we're present. And then movement is kind of the way I help people feel sensation, the way that we begin to try or just play with all the different sensations that we could have and how. With an eating disorder. Depending on the type of eating disorder, their sensations or experience of their body might be, you know, different. However, most doesn't matter the type. Most women with eating disorders or teens are avoiding experiencing their body.

Speaker 2: 24:11

Yeah whatever you know. So just coming into sensation is really the first step Does?

Speaker 1: 24:21

trauma play a part when it comes to your body.

Speaker 2: 24:27

Yeah, because our body holds, you know, all of our experiences and trauma is as I said earlier. The body's goal is survival and our trauma, any negative experience, is going to create that trauma response, that's stress state, and we have the biology of our body, our nervous system kind of controls whether or not we feel safe or not. So someone who's had different amounts of trauma and different experiences will set it's like their tolerance level for certain feelings, will be at a certain level and you know, then you can become very hypervigilant. You could be very anxious around feeling anything, or you could be very disconnected and kind of more, sometimes more at the end of risk taking or not caring how you treat your body, not feeling engaged with it at all. So the behaviors might be different, but it's all in service of that safety.

Speaker 1: 25:34

Yeah, absolutely.

Speaker 2: 25:36

Yeah, and I think we ignore. Trauma is a huge thing, but I think we ignore the little micro traumas that everyone has and really more micro stress, because stress impacts our body and I think majority of us, whether we have an eating disorder or not, we're in constant stress. Our body does not actually know how to experience rest. So that is something that a lot of times is really difficult with.

Speaker 2: 26:07

My client is coming to a place of rest and it doesn't actually always mean stillness, but for a lot of times when we slow down and stop, you know that's a coping mechanism to go, go, go, and then when we slow down, we start to feel. So that is something that a lot of times I'm working with. What does it feel like to just slow down and be in your body? But then rest is also about bringing energy in and allowing yourself to be in that safe space where then we can feel okay to connect or to play or to. You know we don't do those things if we're in stress, so in the stress, state yeah and oh, wow, that is so true.

Speaker 1: 26:55

I mean, even as an adult, I end up doing that because it's like if I don't go or do one thing after the other and I slow down, then not only do I have to feel what I'm feeling in terms of stress, but now I have to actually address it.

Speaker 1: 27:14

Yeah right, and then I'm not sure if I'm going back to the list of tasks I have to do, right, like there's so much of that and I do see that in my world what teens as well, is they are going. Anyway, as a culture, we have also like structured our kids. Yes, days over, structured, over scheduled.

Speaker 2: 27:38

Yeah, they're always on the go and yet it's not free play, it's not. They don't have enough time to get bored and see what that feels like. You know what is that? Like openness, like what does that feel like, you know, when you don't have a direction? Yeah, yeah, you know. Yeah.

Speaker 1: 27:58

What do you do and?

Speaker 2: 27:59

that's what I see. It's scary.

Speaker 1: 28:01

It is and I see that with a lot of my teen clients is if I tell them you know, you have to slow down, like you've. You've taken six AB classes and you're doing volunteer work and you're out in the world doing good stuff, which is great, but what are you doing for yourself? And they look at me like all of this I'm doing for myself because I want to be something in the world when I, you know, go to college, I need to get, like all of that stuff. And it is so true that as parents, we have kind of overstructured them since they were three and now that's what they know, that's what we know.

Speaker 2: 28:47

It's how we know how to relate with them. As adults, we didn't sit down and play, and it's become our way of relating and that's, I think that's a huge piece of what in dance, movement therapy it's the movement becomes more than exercise or more than that structured like move. In this way, let me show you to move this way, because that's what, that's what is comfortable, that's what we all have been told is, you know, go for a run or even do yoga. That's very like. Do these poses. That'll make you feel better. But, as I think your first question was about the authentic, yes.

Speaker 2: 29:27

Yes, and it's like how do we get back to that? How do we allow ourselves to realize our value and our worth for just being and just opening it up to you can be and move and exist in any way and like any way you want, but we don't know how to do that.

Speaker 1: 29:51

No, I mean, it's making me think so much right now because it's so true. Like, personally, I would rather do weights than even yoga, although yoga is so structured. If you go for a class, yeah, and that's because slowing down doesn't appeal as an adult, right?

Speaker 2: 30:13

Right so.

Speaker 1: 30:15

I mean, we cannot expect that from our teens whom, as parents, we have kind of always told them to be on the go, right, yeah, oh, that makes a lot of it's making me think.

Speaker 2: 30:28

Yeah, it's a challenge, I will say my clients don't always like it, or like me, for that matter, to encourage that. But you know, it's such a new. It's like very out of the box in the way that we hear messages every day and yet we we're struggling, our teams are struggling, our culture is struggling, we're sick and we need to get back to. This is how our body is designed. The biology is that we need rest. We're supposed to be in that parasympathetic state. 80%. I tell my clients this 80% of the day we're supposed to be in that state. The sympathetic is really just for short bursts and yet that is completely opposite of how we live.

Speaker 1: 31:18

Yeah, absolutely, and I'm thinking like what you mentioned with slowing down, and especially if I'm struggling with any kind of eating disorder. I don't want to do that. I definitely don't want to do that, because the minute I do that, I'm sitting in a space that is so uncomfortable and if I'm becoming aware of my sensations, then I have to also to some degree address what I'm feeling and what those sensations mean in our body, and that can be nerve wracking and I think that's.

Speaker 2: 31:59

I would try to shift my clients to realize that they don't actually have to address it, that to first just feel it. We don't have to fix everything that we feel, but I think that is our assumption, that if we feel it, you know where energy. I like to say that emotions are energy in motion. They're really meant to move, and so, if we have an emotion, and if we feel it, it allows it to move. We don't have to do anything else, but just open ourselves up to feeling it. And that, though, is a practice that you know immediately, we want to fix the feeling. If we're feeling sad, we want to make ourselves better, and, as a parent, we want to make our kid better. If they're feeling sad and we don't, we immediately jump in how can I make it better? You know and it's the message of our culture needs to shift.

Speaker 1: 32:58

Yeah, yeah, no, you're absolutely right, and I think it is sort of that urge to to kind of address it and not sit in it, and it's also because, I think, because we are a culture on the go, it's also what's next, what's coming, let's move, let's do this, let's do that, right, and not really allowing our bodies to feel what is going on so kind of like what is our intent with it? What is our intention? And if our intention is to be able to feel then that movement, that sort of emotion as motion, I love that. What do we do with it? Right, like I understand?

Speaker 1: 33:51

you don't have to address it, I need to sit in it, and I completely agree with that. As a therapist, as a parent, I'm like wait, let me hold you, but then let's move, let's move, right, yeah.

Speaker 2: 34:05

And so holding and moving, if you're in it, that is, I like to say, you want to be with it. We don't necessarily have to sit in it, because that does imply almost like we have to be like frozen or still or like here it is and then we're overwhelmed, it's just like attacking us. But if we're meet the emotion, if we're with it, then it gives more of that holding image of like you know, when you're soothing a baby and we're just holding, we can't fix it, but we're with you and we want to do that for ourselves. We want to be with ourself and realize it's okay to feel this way and as a parent it's okay.

Speaker 2: 34:47

But they're feeling it's uncomfortable, it's stressful, it's, you know, our mind's going a mile a minute like, oh my gosh, I don't want them to feel that way, but that's because we relate, we know how hard it is and that sometimes all teams need to know is that you know how hard it is and that you're there, and so more of the holding energy of I'm with you, and that can model how they can then be with themselves versus needing to be a wet like controlling it again. Right, we're just gonna be with it, right, and that can be very active. We might need to move it and express it and Because movement is very regulatory to we, bring movement in. So if we're with the emotion and the emotion needs to move through and express that, once we express it, then generally there's a shift yeah, yeah, absolutely.

Speaker 1: 35:47

Can you talk a little bit about the different perhaps dance therapies movements that you work with with your clients? I know you do groups, things like that, so is there sort of Do you have any particular group for kids or teens who are struggling with eating disorders, or have you worked with with a group as such?

Speaker 2: 36:16

Currently I don't have a group for teens, but I have done teen groups through the run through center and through Center for families, through some other local treatment centers, and I love working one on one in my practice with teens as well, as I do offer a weekly intuitive movement class that is mostly adults, but it's something that the resources can be available to teens online.

Speaker 2: 36:49

And those same movement practices of coming into your body, creating safety, learning to move in new ways, how to express your body and use movement for just moving energy rather than exercise. That is a lot of what I do with teens and adults, and I do have a program called be with body the be with body experience, and it's more of a online group coaching program where you get modules to walk you through different movements, audio practices to get the daily movement practices. How do we create that safety? Had we then start to interact with others in the world? Had we then shift when we're not feeling like moving? Had we move? Had we Get our motivation to change and try like new things if we're really scared or stuck? And so those are some of the services that I offer.

Speaker 1: 37:53

Yeah, thank you for talking to me. Those are wonderful services and I'm going to keep in mind the authentic movement piece because I do really think that's such a key part To really also understanding our body.

Speaker 2: 38:11

so, yeah, yeah, no, I love, I was just thinking for teens as well. I just on Instagram, you know I'm. I'm on Instagram as Kelly Loverty underscore be rooted and I'll have different movement snippets for teens to check out, but or adults. But there's also other. You know there's lots of resources on tiktok and Instagram for moving your body and that's a place where you can start and go, okay, and then to seek out a dance movement therapist that can help you to really do it in therapy, in relationship, because it can be hard if it's a new thing, if it's not safe in your body.

Speaker 1: 38:56

To do it on your own can be overwhelming and can create Even more maybe fear or discomfort of moving yeah, no, I love that and will have all your information in the show notes and so you know listeners can access that. Thank you again. I really enjoyed our conversation and learned quite a bit and, like I said, I'm going to pay attention to my body and movement, yeah, so thank you again.

Speaker 2: 39:24

Great and slowing down a little slowing down, thank you. Thank you Thanks. I truly hope that you enjoyed this conversation.

Speaker 1: 39:40

My goal is to provide you with in depth discussion on topics that concern us as parents of teenagers and young adults, and provide you with resources to get started. Have a beautiful week ahead. I would love to hear from you on our Instagram page for parents of teens underscore podcast. See you back here soon.