Finding Your Way Through Therapy
Join Steve Bisson, LMHC as he unravels the complexities of therapy and counseling. Engage in straightforward dialogues, enriched with insights from special guests sharing a like-minded perspective. Each episode presents valuable, easy-to-digest information designed to help you perceive therapy, and those who partake in it, in a grounding, relatable manner.
Finding Your Way Through Therapy
Transformative Therapy: Movement and Mental Wellness With Courtney Romanowski and Audrey Albert-King In Summer Replay
Discover the transformative power of dance movement therapy in our latest episode featuring Courtney Romanowski, our new co-host, and Audrey Albert-King, a licensed mental health counselor and board-certified dance movement therapist. Audrey brings her extensive knowledge to the table, revealing how reconnecting with our bodies and understanding nonverbal communication can revolutionize mental health care. From processing emotions through movement to the benefits of somatic therapies, you'll gain a new perspective on therapeutic practices that go beyond traditional talk therapy.
Step into the world of therapeutic movement as we discuss integrating body-centered approaches within sessions. Learn about creating a "comfort space" for clients, where subtle gestures, breathing exercises, and grounding techniques invite a deeper connection with their bodies. Audrey's insights into co-regulation and the autonomic nervous system, informed by polyvagal theory, provide valuable tools for managing anxiety, trauma, and other mental health issues. Understand how movement aids in emotional release and why it is a crucial component of holistic mental health care.
Audrey also shares her personal journey into the field, sparked by a serendipitous encounter with an art therapist that led her to embrace dance movement therapy. Her story emphasizes the importance of self-compassion and bodily awareness, offering a compelling narrative on how these principles can transform personal and professional relationships.
Find Courtney at this link: https://www.anewdirectiontherapy.com/
Find Audrey at this link: https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/therapists/audrey-albert-king-burlington-ma/433819
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Hi and welcome to Finding your Way Through Therapy. The goal of this podcast is to demystify therapy, what can happen in therapy and the wide array of conversations you can have in and about therapy Through personal experiences. Guests will talk about therapy, their experiences with it and how psychology and therapy are present in many places in their lives, with lots of authenticity and a touch of humor. Here is your host, steve Bisson.
Speaker 2:Thank you so much. I appreciate it. Merci beaucoup, and welcome to episode 126 of Finding your Way Through Therapy. If you haven't listened to episode 125 yet, please go and listen. Liz Kelly was amazing. She has a book that's going to come out 125 yet. Please go and listen. Liz Kelly was amazing. She has a book that's going to come out in March. Go back and listen, you'll hear more and she'll be back on the show.
Speaker 2:But this week is my first co-host slash, passing on to hosting, at least quarterly, if not more, to a good friend of mine who has been on the show a few times Courtney Romanowski. Courtney is someone that I consider a true friend, who has been through the thick and thin of a partial hospital with me and an IOP and that's an intensive outpatient program. I was somehow her supervisor. I don't know how that happened, but Courtney is someone who has. I always thought she would be bringing a new dynamic to Finding your Way Through Therapy and she's like I wonder if I can co-host. I'm like when do we record? So she came on right like as soon as I could and she was like my nerves. I'm like no nerves, it's just me, you and a guest who cares. So, courtney Romanowski, who will be your full host a few times a year, welcome to Finding your Way Through Therapy and welcome as a host.
Speaker 3:Thank you, steve, very nervous and excited to be here. Nothing to be nervous about. No, it's just the three of us, not listeners or people watching this video at all. It's very exciting. I appreciate your support and willingness to uh, let me give this a try and um just hope I do right by you and the podcast and your audience and and everybody. So thank you again good news I can't fire you, so yeah, and if this doesn't go well, then it's all your fault, because it was your idea.
Speaker 2:I did not train you properly. That's what I will say.
Speaker 3:No, exactly Exactly Poor supervision. So who's?
Speaker 2:here today, Courtney.
Speaker 3:So today we have with us Audrey Albert King. Audrey is a licensed mental health counselor, board certified dance movement therapist and certified movement analyst. She considers herself a body-centered psychotherapist in private practice. I'm just going to share Audrey brings 30 plus years of somatic training and experience into her work. She enjoys working with individuals to listen, reconnect and trust their bodies to help guide them in their therapeutic journey. In addition, audrey facilitates dance movement therapy for people living with dementia. She's an adjunct faculty at Leslie University in Cambridge where she also serves as an off-site BCDMT student supervisor. A lifelong dancer, audrey is grateful to step into her movement practice daily to sustain a healthy, vital and meaningful life. Welcome, audrey. Thank you for being on the podcast with us today.
Speaker 4:Thanks for having me. I'm excited to be here.
Speaker 3:Yeah, yeah, I'm excited to have you, so I just wanted to share a little bit. As Steve said, I've been on the podcast a few times and have been thrilled that he has welcomed expressive arts therapy into the conversation of therapy.
Speaker 3:I too, as you know, am a dance movement therapist, and so I think it was after the last time we recorded Steve, I had this grand idea of a sort of spinoff podcast, if you will, assigning your way through expressive arts therapy. Just because I know expressive arts therapy, um, just because I know expressive arts therapies are getting better known and a little bit more accessible at least. Um, but I I know, even just from some of my own clients, that there's still some hesitations and questions about what dance therapy is or how to use music therapy. So here here we are. My hope is to, just as Steve does with his podcast, better demystify what expressive arts therapy is, who can use it, what it can be used for, all of that great stuff.
Speaker 3:So, andre is my first guest. I'm hoping we can share with folks a little bit more about what dance therapy is. I know it's a layered question to ask what is dance movement therapy, because I could ask that to a million different dance therapists and everybody would have their own answer, which is wonderful. But I'm wondering if you could share a little bit about what you do with dance therapy or different paths your career has taken so far.
Speaker 4:Yeah. So I think it's interesting about demystifying dance movement therapy because in the past few years, I would say, people especially connect with me because they're interested in trying something new. They're interested in something other than verbal or talk therapy. Either maybe it hasn't worked as well for them, or someone has said to them you know, trauma is held in the body. Why don't you seek some more body oriented therapeutic techniques? Somatic therapy has been kind of tossed around lately and so or there's a curiosity with mindfulness or bodyfulness, or how else can I use therapeutic practice to help me connect with my body? There's all this talk about mind body connection or integration, and yet it's all coming from here.
Speaker 1:So what's?
Speaker 4:happening here, and you know the body is the history holder Right. We hold our entire life history. So what's happening here, and you know the body is the history holder right, we hold our entire life history. In fact, our first couple of years we only learned through movement how to turn over how to stand up.
Speaker 4:All our learning is just movement and nonverbal communication is 70 to 93% of all communication. So I don't know if you all had this experience. I know I have. I have been in therapy, I've been in talk therapy and there's times where I don't want to say this thing, like either it's too scary or they're shame, or I think the therapist is going to just run out the door and never come back again. I might say something that I never want to come back again. So there's a lot of hesitation sometimes with being able to name a feeling or a thought, or not even being able to connect to a feeling or a thought. So sometimes going in through I see that the client has a fist or there's tension in the jaw. It might be easier to go in that way. So I've been really surprised that people are connecting me and with me and saying I'm kind of interested in this thing, I'm willing to try this, even though there's some hesitancy.
Speaker 3:Yeah, yeah, and so you know you, being in private practice now, have there been certain types of clients that have gravitated towards movement therapy more? Or I know to, you've worked with the elderly.
Speaker 4:I think you know, dance movement therapy with groups and dance movement therapy with individuals, to me are two very different things, even though related, I would say. The one thing that is for sure related is, you know, as a body centered psychotherapist, I trust my body to tell me what direction to move in with a client or group. So, even though I might be doing more verbal therapy with an individual client, their language or their movement, their gestures or their postures, right, if someone is feeling a little depressed, there might be a slight concavity, or if there's a reluctance to speak, there might be a retreating. Or maybe we call this a gesture posture merger, where there's a gesture and a posture happening at the same time. All of that is landing in my body, language, lands in my body.
Speaker 4:If someone is not breathing, I am not breathing. That's called kinesthetic awareness. And then the dance between us is kinesthetic empathy. I want to feel in my body what the client is sensing. I allow myself to sense or feel what I'm feeling in my body and that sort of leads us into this kind of nonverbal kinesthetic dance. So I allow myself, you know, without actually knowing. You know, I'm not going to try to assume that I know what they're feeling, or I know what they're going to say, because I sense something. But if I'm not breathing it's a sign for me to go hold on. You know I need to take a breath. I'm sensing something. Is there something happening? So, regardless of I'm working with an individual or a group, I respond partly from my body. My body actually feeds some stuff up my vagus nerve into my brain and then I'll.
Speaker 4:Then I pause and respond. But working with a group, like with people with dementia, actually dance, movement therapy really serves everybody but people that don't, that have a difficult time retrieving language, so giving giving them an opportunity to use their body to communicate. So yeah, I facilitate groups with. I've done this for a long time. It's been a passion of mine to move with people in community who connect to movement, to connect to music, who come alive with music from their past, who don't worry about who's picking them up for dinner or straightening up the pillows and drawing the drapes when it's time, when the sun goes down. They're just 100% in their bodies, engaged in purposeful movement, and we're just creating something together in that time.
Speaker 4:And they're socially connecting and not isolating.
Speaker 3:So that's what was just coming to mind. For me is, you know, I, I too, sense there's there's a lot of loneliness with the people that I talk with. It is great when and I'll speak for myself when I can connect with somebody verbally and feel understood. But it's totally different to connect with movement and be, like you said, in a dance with somebody, whether it's dancing, dancing or just in a more physical conversation. There's a sense of, for me, a more connected relationship that we can't always get just by talking.
Speaker 4:Yeah, my hope, I think when you said that, right, my hope is that I think a lot of for me, a lot of clients, especially trauma. There's this idea for me, like all the rewords come to mind when I talk about dance therapy. It's like reclaiming, reconnecting, renewing. You know all those re-words and reclaiming feels very important, especially with disassociation and doing what we need to do to stay safe in the moment, re-embody, you know. So if there's a movement dialogue or dancing dialogue in the body, this idea of reclaiming a relationship with the body through creating a relationship with the therapist, that's intriguing to me. That's something that I look forward to creating in the therapeutic relationship or the therapeutic movement relationship.
Speaker 3:Yeah, yeah and something that. So so you, you offer these groups for people with dementia and then in your private practice with your individual clients and and I just want to highlight that it's at least my experience, and I'm wondering if it's yours um, if I do movement therapy with somebody in a session, it's not, it's not like they're coming in for a dance class necessarily. It doesn't have to be dance as we see on TV or in shows, it can just be this breathing, sensing, like you were saying, posture, gesture, exploration, as well as talking, maybe. And then there may be sessions where it is more movement-based. But what and again, I know it's a layered question but what if I were to come to you as an individual client for my first movement session? How could you introduce me to movement therapy?
Speaker 4:Well, usually in the consultation you know my style or what theories I use, or my, you know what has worked for them in the past, what hasn't worked for them, the conversation will come up that we might engage in. It is an invitation only modality and you know, I can see right away how people are relating to that invitation on a body level, on a facial gesture level. But you know, for me it's really subtle. I mean, there are some times where a client will come in and they'll ask for some music, like they just want to like drop it. And you know, just take a minute.
Speaker 4:You know that's kind of fun, we'll rock out or sometimes, you know, people just need, like you know, just like a moment to drop into the body or breath practice. But I try really. You know, my hand goes to my heart, I might take a, a breath. I am a body-centered person. I might need to ground. They might see me put my feet on the floor and find my sit bones and, um, you know, and I might invite them to just maybe put your hand on your heart or press, soften here. Here, you know, I might close my eyes, invite them to close their eyes. So I'm already very body centered in my own way of being a therapist. So that creates a familiar possibly I don't like to say safe space. One of my students two summers ago brought in a comfort space and I really like that. Ooh, I love that Comfort space. One of my students two summers ago brought in comfort space and I really like that.
Speaker 4:I love that comfort space and you know so. And then again I try to pick up on. I notice there's a fist, or is it okay if I make a fist or if that fist could talk? So it's not, it's. It's a subtle process of inviting the body into the session and like, yeah, and if it's not comfortable for the client we don't go there.
Speaker 3:There, but I'm still very much engaged in my body and working toward integration and also working toward integration for them somatically yeah, I loved what you said, the invitation of welcoming movement into the session.
Speaker 4:Yeah, and also trying we're doing yeah, and trying to create a sense of like what's happening under the interoceptive sense, like what's happening in your body, Like can you sense, because that sense of everything under the skin, what's happening in the body, is something that some people might really not have cultivated in a long time. And I don't know if you all can, but I can't think of a mental health diagnosis that doesn't have a somatic component or any symptoms that occur in the body Right, Absolutely. So being aware what does anxiety feel like for you in the body? And then you know, my hope is to help co-regulate people's nervous systems also in the session.
Speaker 4:I feel that that's really helpful so that people can learn to help regulate, so it doesn't feel as scary to talk about trauma, can I?
Speaker 2:interject here for a second. One of the things I like to do is educate people.
Speaker 4:Yeah.
Speaker 2:So I love co-regulate and I love that word and I've used it myself. But for those of us who are not familiar with co-regulate, what does that mean?
Speaker 4:Just well in terms of education, really helping people to understand that, first of all, what's happening in their body is totally normal and that their autonomic nervous system is really trying to protect them theory. I think it's really easy for people to understand that. You know they go into something we call mobilization, which is the beginning of threat, where they want to run, and then going into sort of dorsal, vagal shutdown modes of what their body needs to do to protect themselves. And you know how to what things are going to, what interventions are going to work to help them get back sort of online. And for me personally, you know, and I think there's a place for cognitive behavioral therapy and there's embodied cognitive behavioral therapy and I think it does work and reframing is really really helpful.
Speaker 4:But in those moments, you know, using touch to, you know release endorphins and oxytocin to counteract the cortisol and the adrenaline, using certain methods from polyvagal Amber Gray. I'm a big fan of Amber Gray's work. She is a polyvagal informed dance, movement therapist, sensory motor. Peter Levine's work you know he has all these under over here pressing here A lot of breath techniques that massage the vagus nerve, of breath techniques that massage the vagus nerve. For me they help regulate my nervous system.
Speaker 3:A little bit quicker. In addition to reframing, which is available for not just folks who have experienced trauma, but for anyone any one of us.
Speaker 4:Social anxiety, thoughts that are intrusive and uncomfortable.
Speaker 3:I've had a few of my own clients who have tried to negate their own trauma because it isn't what trauma is. I haven't been to war, I haven't experienced abuse, but your trauma is in the body, right, you're experiencing it, just a just a little bad thing. But but really, even even with uh, depressive symptoms, like you said, there is no diagnosis really, and not that we always have to work off of diagnoses. But our body is so much a part of um our health, our mental health, our emotional health, um, so it does at least make sense to us and hopefully we are helping to spread the word a little bit more that movement, body centered therapy, um is valuable and courtney, when you just said movement I you know, for me moving, moving stuck stuff out of the body is really important.
Speaker 3:Yeah.
Speaker 4:Yeah, you know, moving it through, even if you know like, even if the emotion comes back instantaneously, we understand we can move it through. Right and that's where, for me, the dynamics of movement and my movement practice every day is essential. And it doesn't mean that it has to be, like you know, happy. It can be like I hug muscle to bone and that feels like, you know, grief or whatever, but I'm moving it through. I don't necessarily have to know what's happening, I'm just moving it through, or I'm getting it out.
Speaker 4:So that's why I engage in a technique that practices every day, I move all emotions and dynamics like through my body and they might, like I said, like thoughts. Right, you have them, you name them. However you do it, I like to attach mine to that helicopter that has that tagline that says you know? Clam egg or all you can eat, or whatever. And you watch it. Go across the beach and then it will come back through, or the clouds, or however.
Speaker 2:For me, I like to just move it out of my body, if you don't mind me saying one of the things that I love that you know, even for me, who has courtney as a friend, has had dance movement expressive therapists on before, one of the important messages that I want to repeat, because it's worth saying, is that you know to do DMT dance movement therapy. You don't need to be always happy, go lucky and anything like that. So I think this is a great myth to debunk and I wanted to throw that out because I thought that was a very, very important part is that it doesn't have to be happy. It can be other stuff just to get it out. Like you said, squeezing the muscle and releasing it is such a great thing for most people to do. So sorry to intervene again, but just wanted to mention that for the Steve what you say is so important?
Speaker 4:because I would not. You know, I'm not. That's a fleeting emotion for me sometimes, so you know that's, um, that is really important, you know, I mean actually, but sorry, no, keep going keep going.
Speaker 4:No, just you know, I think that that's also like a misunderstanding about dance movement therapy. Is that, you know I'm not saying that that's that release is what dance movement therapy is. You know, dance movement therapy does further all psychotherapeutic goals, cognitively, socially, emotionally, in every way. And when people go into therapy it can be a hard, long road before it gets better, for sure, just like that. But dance, often when we say the word dance it's, you know, like your favorite move at a club, or something like that but whether it's you're right, whether it's tender, whether it's hard, whether it's agonizing in, uh, in near.
Speaker 4:There's one move, there's 52 moves. There's one move called a claw hand. I love claw hand, I'm shredding in it please go to youtube to see that one you know, just expressing that and and being tender and being small and and confined and all of those things, because they're part of the human condition and you gotta also, um no, there's also room for stillness.
Speaker 3:Beautiful, yeah, in movement therapy, you know, and that's an important aspect too to explore, because you know, as we learned as dance movement therapists, even with stillness there is movement, so we can't disqualify practicing that and being with somebody to explore that stillness yeah, that brings up the felt sense, which is that interoception.
Speaker 4:That really important sense that we don't really learn about is the felt sense of of stillness, which brings up tolerating which is such an important. Whether you look at dbt or whatever that is is, can I tolerate? You know, when we're still, thoughts come in and that's one of the reasons why people are moving and busy and busy yeah still this.
Speaker 4:Uh, a psychotherapist, uh, in New York City. Her name is Lori Lynn Meter and I was attending a workshop with her and one of the things she said is can I be with myself and can I be with you and can we just be still? And that's part of that therapeutic relationship is can I just be still with you, can I be in my body while you are in your body, and can we just hold that space?
Speaker 3:so just yeah, another, maybe debunking, as steve said, I was like it's not always about moving um, but that reconnection, to use the, the rewords again, that reconnecting with, with the body, with the self, and that tolerating of what's going on, because the wonderful thing that comes from the felt sense is is there an image in the body for this sense or this whatever is happening when you are still?
Speaker 4:Is there an image that we can work with that comes out of the body? Imagery is so rich to work with because in dance movement therapy, we're looking to derive meaning from the movement or meaning from anything that's happening in the body, almost like decoding.
Speaker 3:And again I want to throw out to to folks in case there's maybe still some questions. It's not about um. You know, we hear or at least me as a dancer have heard the you know, be a tree in modern dance, right, like we're not, we're not doing that type of image work, but really what's just what's coming up for you, um?
Speaker 2:you would lose me right away if you told me to be a tree.
Speaker 3:What would you like to be, steve? Would you like to be here?
Speaker 2:I'm still learning.
Speaker 3:Give me a chance, but again, just um, I don't know. For me it feels important that so far I'm thinking dance class or even like, uh, yes, yoga can can be pulled in or you know, whatever the practitioner's background is, it is can be brought in to the session. But it is more about, like Audrey is saying, a better understanding and putting. What did you say? Decoding Audrey.
Speaker 4:Decoding, being a detective like what? What can the body? The body, like the body, is the history holder right Of our entire life. So the body holds the truth when the brain doesn't always. I don't know about you, but I have really twisted a lot of uh and internalized things and been conditioned in various ways in various environments, and for me, you know, just for me in our patriarchal, capitalistic, capitalistic, sociocultural political world you know, but the truth. The truth lies here, and so being able to tap into the wisdom of the body is helpful.
Speaker 3:Yeah, and that's. You know that carries outside of the session too. Some of my own clients have been like, oh, like, a couple of days, days after we met, I noticed this in my body and that I was able to take care. I was able to breathe a little bit more, um, or stand up a little bit taller, and even if they're like, and then the next day was crap, there was still this moment of recognizing a change, or or just a more awareness, awareness or ability to take care of oneself.
Speaker 4:Yeah, or the pattern, like the pattern. Yeah, I felt choked when this happened and I wanted to speak. I felt choked. I noticed I had to go in the other room and shake my hands. Shake my hands, shake my hands, or I noticed this. I noticed that because in my experience I'm not wanting to rid some of the these things that I don't see anything as necessarily a problem unless it really interferes with functioning. I want to integrate it.
Speaker 3:Can you say more about that?
Speaker 4:Well, you know, like, for example, like stimming, like working with parents, like that is a necessary behavior as far as I'm concerned.
Speaker 3:You know what is that.
Speaker 4:Hand movements in order to cope with a task or an environment, um leg shaking, things like that.
Speaker 3:Um I think, they're really important. They help with coping, you know yeah, oftentimes they're seen as something that needs to be stopped, whereas you're talking about integrating it and using it. Um, I just want to go back to. You mentioned nia, um, which I know is a big part of your life, but um, can you share a little bit of what nia is and how you use it for yourself?
Speaker 4:it's um, a life practice, actually 40 years old today. It was founded by debbie um. It's a global uh practice. It's a technique. There's like codified moves, but it's not really about learning the moves, it's about sensing in your body, so it's not about getting them right. There are like base moves, core moves, upper extremity moves and, as an older mover, what I'm appreciating is they're really like based on the body's way. So when you take a step forward, you lead with the heel. When you take a step back, you are on the ball of the foot. When you step to the side, you're on the whole foot. So it really works off the intelligence of the body's way.
Speaker 4:So, for me, I dance every day. I have not been injured. I also, you know, I step into the practice. The cycle one is a step in and I just say hello, body. You know, like what do you have to tell me? Today? It's, you get invitations from the instructor spiritual realm, emotional, physical, cognitive imagery and you find out what's happening inside and you get to express yourself. And again, the teacher might be doing something and I might set something in my body and I'll do it my way.
Speaker 3:And it really is. Yeah, yeah, it really is wonderful. I've taken a few classes with you and it's fun, like you said, expressive. I felt a lot of relief for myself and strength, that I haven't not just physical strength but an emotional strength, that I haven't not just physical strength but an emotional strength that I hadn't felt in a while. So it really is a wonderful experience.
Speaker 4:And you have to know how to dance.
Speaker 3:Right, right, mm-hmm, yes, and yet different from what? A dance therapy session or whatever you want to, you know is Right. So there's, yet still very important. Yeah, more therapeutic. A dance therapy session or whatever you want to, you know is right. So there's, yet still very important. Yeah, more therapeutic, more therapeutic. And so you know there's. You know, we are inviting folks to learn more about dance therapy in a therapy session. There are other ways to experience therapeutic movement in one's life, though.
Speaker 4:Right, and you know, cultural dance is healing and community dance, you know any, any, I mean dance is is the oldest healing art, oldest way of healing.
Speaker 3:And even you know, steve, I remember you mentioning you, and I know this for a fact because we're in the office together a couple of days a week. Walking with someone can also be extremely therapeutic and valuable.
Speaker 2:Right, and I definitely do that with a lot of my clients and they find it a lot more stimulating to be outside the office instead of inside. And you know, I want to just go back on one single thing, and again I just said like interrupting here, and there.
Speaker 2:One of the things I remind people is that you can go to there's a tribe out it's an island off of India who's never been contacted by the westernized culture. They have dance and they have music. You go to any urban area, whatever urban area you want to talk about across the world they have music and they have dance and I kind of remind people that that's the basic stuff for even communication, for letting go, and there's a lot of like therapeutic value into that. So I just want to throw in my little part of this conversation.
Speaker 4:Well, you're right. I mean, you know, healing is best done in community, right, community is the antidote for all that ails you, really. I mean, isolation increases any illness, right, any community is the antidote. And you know, being in community and moving to rhythm, rhythm is cohesive, rhythm is going to unite and you know, I think, that we are not meant to grieve alone, we are not meant to go through any of these things alone. And healing and community, I mean that's what ritual is for right, and ceremony and marking passage. And you know, the first thing we ever ever hear or sense in our own bodies is heartbeat, or sense in our own bodies is heartbeat, which is rhythmic, right. So being in rhythm and dancing, it's very primal.
Speaker 3:Yeah, it's the most natural thing for all of us and it saddens me that we've lost that. It's more easy or common for a lot of us to be alone. Like I was saying earlier about loneliness being such an epidemic right now.
Speaker 4:And walking with a client, walking in general. You know, the definition of movement is change and therapy is about change. Therapy is about transformation.
Speaker 2:And I also think that when you talk about that sorry to interrupt again- no problem.
Speaker 2:You know, I think that when you talk about loneliness, one of the what I hear from people anyway is well, I'm an introvert, I need to be alone, and I say, well, singularly being alone is wrong. Singularly just spending time with other people is also wrong. It's kind of a you know, some people need more people, some people need less. So isolation is sometimes excused as I'm an introvert and I kind of remind people that you can be an introvert. I'm an introvert. Most people don't believe me, but I truly am an introvert. But you know, I do go see people, I do talk in groups and I do enjoy that, but I know I need to resource myself after that. So it's important to think about community as part of who we are as a whole, and not just going community or isolation and finding the middle.
Speaker 4:Sorry to put in my CBT a little bit here, no, I mean, you know, in in movement, in movement analysis, we have a theme called exertion, recuperation. In DBT it's opposite action, right, so you know? And again there is a spectrum, right, You're right, it's not all or nothing.
Speaker 3:Yes, we need that dance, that change, that movement to really take care of ourselves. So, audrey, would you mind if I ask if you have used CMT for yourself, if motion therapy has been part of your experience?
Speaker 4:Yeah, it sure has. Yeah, I don't know, I'm not really sure where I would be without it. I stumbled upon it just per chance. I was in my own treatment and the art therapist said hey, audrey, you've danced your whole life and you know you've had these issues and you know, have you ever considered dance movement therapy? And I was like well, like I had the full Oprah aha moment, like church bells fire, like, and you know she, you know told me about Leslie University and I like couldn't wait to go to the open house and, um, I'm 46 years old, I already have a master, have you know? I'm 46 years old and you know I go to the open house and they're talking about using movement and art and all these things to heal and my body's going you know, and then they pair you up with someone, and the person I'm talking to you know she's talking about Wicked the Musical and the whole way there.
Speaker 4:I had it in my car because of my daughter and, like we, you know, we had to do a hairspray intervention to get her off Wicked. And so right away, I'm like I have like this best friend who we're bonded with, and I'm like, look at that, like well, that's crazy, you know. And my husband had said, you know, like you need to find a different job. And like I ran to the car and I like put everybody on speakerphone and I'm like going back to school. Yeah yeah.
Speaker 4:Immediately and you know there's some people who you know. There's a lot of reflection that one does. Going through expressive therapy, dance movement therapy program and the first papers I began to receive back, I was, oh my God, this person sees me like they're almost like welcoming my flaws. Like they're almost like welcoming my flaws. They're almost like telling me I need to be in the world because I am, I don't know, not okay. They're almost, I felt, a welcoming. There was nothing I had to prove. I could start unveiling all the stuff that I had worked my whole life to put there. There was a disarmoring and the more I took a risk and the more I disarmored, the more I don't know what happened, but I began to transform and then I was like I'm going to see a dance room therapist.
Speaker 4:Like there's something here and my life a hundred percent changed, a hundred percent%. I began to build a new relationship to my body. There was something called self-compassion that, before any of the buzz self-compassion stuff came out, there was a forgiving of myself. There was, oh, this critic can actually like be quieted. Like there's something called self-love. Like is that a real thing.
Speaker 4:So everything really changed and I thought people need to know about this. People need to know that they're okay, that they don't have to work so hard to try to fix themselves like there's actually nothing to fix, like I need to share this knowledge. It's okay to go in and in and in and not try to stay out here. Yeah, yeah. And coincidentally, in my movement, in understanding what I was learning, I was like why am I so comfortable out here? And every time I tried to come in here, there was like no room for myself and I'm like there's no room. I like to be out here. So you know, the things that one can learn through movement and metaphor are just like no going back for me once I went in and Jennifer Tantia, in her paper about somatic intelligence, talks about the body being the bridge between the conscious and the unconscious.
Speaker 4:Intelligent talks about the body being the bridge between the conscious and the unconscious, and so, for me, learning things through my body bottom up versus top down was like I could spend 100 years and never really get it. Get it and therefore, navigating change and transformation to healing became easier.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I, you know, I just even just from from school moving in class, my tendency, movement wise, is to be quick, but what is called in movement, quick and direct, right, which also tends to be how I interact with folks quick and direct, let's go, let's go, um, and so it's.
Speaker 3:It's been an exploration for me to slow down, not just in movement, but in, in trying to talk a little bit slower and and and. Not because it's better for me to do that, but because it's just it could open me up and it could give me a different experience. Um, there are times to be quick and direct. There are times to slow down a little bit and explore indirectly what is going on around me. Um, so, movement jargon, but it does. There's the patterns of what our body is doing and what we, how we are relating to one another, how we're relating to ourselves, how we're moving through the world.
Speaker 4:Um, it all connects and yeah, it's great that you say that, because the thing about again, about integration, about patterns, is we is, is it brings us to the world of choice, which is what I hope to help provide my clients with this option, this yielding this right, like so we can, this awareness that you talked about before. We can lean into our patterns and choices. We can decide we want to expand them. Sometimes they can be limiting, sometimes they can be limiting, sometimes they can be protecting, sometimes they can be comforting or sometimes we can choose to go out there and they know this is not serving me right now. I want to expand, I want to, you know, and this brings us into, can bring us into biases and all these things of how these don't necessarily serve us as a therapist for all of our clients, and that's a whole other conversation, but really important and fascinating. But patterns conditioning choice awareness.
Speaker 2:And I know when I make a referral to Courtney I'm going to describe you as quick and direct, but also kind. I think that could be a good tagline right there. Just want to throw that out.
Speaker 4:It came to me because I was quoting Amber Gray before is that she has this quote. I might not get exactly right, but it's something like everybody deserves to live in a peaceable body, or no, everybody deserves to live in their body in the way they see fit.
Speaker 3:And.
Speaker 4:I think that that's one of the things that we strive to do is help people make that an accessible thing.
Speaker 2:And I don't want to be interrupting, but we've had so much fun. We're getting close to the hour already, so you know I'll let you complete the interview, courtney, but you know to help you out here, like we're going already close to an hour went by really fast.
Speaker 3:Really really good. This has been wonderful, Audrey. I think my maybe we could wrap up with how do you want to encourage folks to maybe think about dance movement therapy as a maybe think about dance movement therapy as an option for them?
Speaker 4:Well, I think this idea of living in a peaceable body, you know, not having peace in the mind, whatever that means living with discomfort, living with ease, not being able to completely function and it doesn't have to be dysfunction, just not functioning in the way one would desire what is living in this? A peaceable body? You know, the mind is in the body. So you know, um, christine caldwell wrote a book called Bodyful. This idea of bodyful versus mindful, dare I say, I don't know. I don't know what I'm creating in terms of people outside.
Speaker 4:But this idea of being bodyful, this idea of creating relationship with the body and living peaceably with one self, cannot be done from here. If there's an interest, and oh, this is a yucky feeling in my body, or my heart's racing, or I want to retreat, I want to hide, I don't want to be in this situation, or every time I go to say this, this happens in my body. Be curious. There's nothing wrong, there's nothing to fix, but be curious about these things. It's, you know, the body can be a scary place for a lot of us, but curiosity helps.
Speaker 3:Wonderful invitation. That's wonderful, and there is a website, the American Dance Therapy Association, adtaorg, I believe, that has a database if folks want to look up their nearest dance movement therapist, and there are also videos as to what DMT is and other resources on the website. Andrea, is there a way for folks to reach you if they're interested?
Speaker 4:I mean, they can also put in dance, movement therapy and psychology today too which is important. I'm at info at AudreyAlbertKingcom.
Speaker 3:Wonderful, wonderful. Thank you again very, very much. I always love talking with you. A lot of great info. Hopefully we are on our way to demystifying dance, movement therapy and, uh, the other expressive modalities. Hey, first, first episode of a guest host down. Uh, thank you very, very much. Feeling lighter today already well.
Speaker 2:I want to thank you aud, audrey and Courtney did a wonderful job, so I can't wait to have you do this all on your own and me not interrupting constantly. Thank you so much, audrey, and, um, you know, hopefully people will go and reach out and you know the education was so important for everyone. So this completes episode 126 of finding your way through therapy for episode 127. We are going to have Hayden Duggan, who is the director of Onsite, which is a place in Massachusetts to help firefighter, police, emts, paramedics to get treatment in an intensive outpatient format, which is really beneficial, and I hope you join me then.
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