Finding Your Way: Resilience Development in Action
"Resilience Development in Action" is your dynamic guide to building unshakeable strength in life's most demanding roles. Join us as we dive deep into the intersection of mental health, leadership, and personal growth through the lens of real-world experience and professional expertise.
Each week brings a powerful focus:
- First responder resilience and mental wellness
- Trauma recovery and healing journeys
- Executive leadership and C-suite coaching
- Grief navigation and transformation
Host, Steve Bisson, LMHC, with over 20 years of experience working with first responders and mental health, brings straight-to-the-point strategies that bridge the gap between professional challenges and personal growth. Whether you're serving on the front lines, leading in the boardroom, or navigating life's toughest moments, each episode delivers actionable insights for developing resilience in real time.
From raw conversations with first responders to executive coaching breakthroughs, every episode offers practical tools for building mental strength and emotional agility. This isn't just talk – it's Resilience Development in Action.
New episodes release weekly, featuring expert interviews, solo insights, and real-world applications for immediate impact.
Finding Your Way: Resilience Development in Action
E.193 Healing Trauma Through Dance: Insights from Dance Movement Therapist Lisa Manca
What if you could heal trauma and emotional pain through movement? Join us as dance movement therapist Lisa Manca, alongside guest co-host Courtney Romanowski, unveils the transformative power of dance therapy. Lisa brings her expertise from forensic and psychiatric settings, offering unique insights into how movement can aid personal growth and healing. We tackle the challenges mental health professionals face in intense environments like prisons, revealing the unexpected benefits of dance therapy in helping individuals, including inmates, reconnect with their humanity amidst administrative hurdles.
Explore the profound connection between movement, therapy, and trauma as we discuss how specific movements can safely channel emotions and promote healing. Lisa shares how modifying posture and engaging in dance can influence emotional states, offering a therapeutic approach that sometimes surpasses verbal methods. Drawing on insights from literature like "The Body Remembers" and "The Body Keeps the Score," we delve into the neurobiological aspects of how the body retains memories and how dance therapy can facilitate emotional release and foster a sense of safety.
In our final segment, we explore the role of dance therapy workshops in workplace wellness, emphasizing the importance of maintaining personal boundaries and recognizing movement biases. Lisa and Courtney share personal anecdotes and professional challenges, shedding light on the misconceptions surrounding dance therapy, especially for young female clinicians. As we wrap up, we express our gratitude to our guests for their invaluable contributions and tease our next exciting topic on rebranding.
Reach Lisa at http://www.lisamanca.com or search for her with Somatic Therapy San Francisco
References:
American Dance Therapy Association
The Body Remembers by Babette Rothschild
The Body Keeps The Score by Bessel Van Der Kolk
Nichols, Ebony, "Moving Blind Spots: Cultural Bias in the Movement Repertoire of Dance/Movement Therapists" (2019). Expressive Therapies Capstone Theses. 150. https://digitalcommons.lesley.edu/expressive_theses/150
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Hi and welcome to Finding your Way Through Therapy. A proud member of the PsychCraft Network, 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:Ah, vous êtes là. Oh, there you are. Welcome to episode 193. If you haven't listened to episode 192, it's with Jessica Jameson. We talked about movement as well as nutrition instead of fitness and exercise, so go back and listen to it. We talked about food trauma too, which was really good. But episode 193 is going to be with Lisa Monka, with special guest co-host a good friend, obviously. You've heard her before on the show, courtney Romanowski. Happy to have her back. I'm not going to go too long, but, yeah, always happy to have Courtney. Courtney is coming on because Lisa is someone who is Lisa Manka is a dance movement therapist and uses other mental health techniques.
Speaker 2:She works with super smart professionals who feel numb after pain and tragedy to reconnect with their bodies and release the pain and feel good again. She also explores the pain and feel good again. She also explores the feelings and emotions about wanting to run away or finding distraction in order not to address them. I think we're going to have a great interview. Obviously, courtney will be there, which is always cool for me. So here's the interview.
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Speaker 2:Well, hi everyone, and welcome to episode 193. Co-host Courtney Romanowski. Hi, courtney, how are you? Hello, so happy to have her back. She didn't want to do this episode alone. She wanted me here because Lisa is so intimidating. Lisa Monka, just like Willy Wonka, as I was just told, is here. We met through Facebook and I thought Courtney would be perfect with the stuff that we were going to talk about. We're going to talk about movement and which is very important, and I know Courtney has talked about this on the podcast before. So, lisa, welcome to Finding your Way.
Speaker 3:Hi. Well, thank you for having me today Appreciate it.
Speaker 2:It's our pleasure. I mean, you ran from a yoga class to be here, so we really appreciate it. You know I came from a yoga class called a session, but anyway.
Speaker 3:It was yoga for someone else, huh.
Speaker 2:I was contorting my sentences, so that's how I see it. Maybe that's Pilates, maybe I'm getting it all wrong, but you know, I got to know you a little bit before the interview. We looked at your website and everything else, but hey, I wouldn't know more about you. My audience doesn't know about you, so tell us about yourself.
Speaker 3:Yeah. So like Courtney, I did dance therapy. I'm a board certified dance therapist and licensed professional clinical counselor out here in San Francisco and I've been working. I don't even want to say how long I've been working, but it's almost 20 years now and I really enjoy using movement to help us heal psychologically. I've worked in forensic settings so prison settings, inpatient psych and then most recently in private practice.
Speaker 2:Wow, I worked in forensic settings for many years. I still work with my first responders, so happy that you have that experience. It was my first experience out of school.
Speaker 3:And it's almost like you know where you think I'm 23, I can do anything kind of thing, and then you find out oh, I know I can't do everything, but the experience was really good. I learned how to set boundaries really well. I learned a lot as a first experience. I just think that you know I wouldn't go back in terms of it's a lot. It takes a lot out of you to work in those settings and I appreciate the people that are able to make a career out of it.
Speaker 4:Who did you work with in those settings? The?
Speaker 3:incarcerated. I actually worked in inpatient psych. So here in California at the time they had a psychiatric hospital on prison grounds and it was inpatient psych, it was intermediate psychiatric care. And then we had another one in a different prison that was, let's see, it was the more acute care. So one prison had the acute psych hospital and then another one had the intermediate psych and I worked in the intermediate psych hospital and that was we got clients from all over, or I should say patients from all over. So all of the prisons in the men's prisons in California sent their psych patients over to us.
Speaker 4:And did you and I know we'll get into this a little bit more as we are talking but did you do dance, movement therapy with them?
Speaker 3:I did.
Speaker 4:Wow.
Speaker 3:I did and it was. It was quite an experience, Like as a therapist, right, If you get people to trust you I don't want to say they'll do anything, but you can lead them to a lot of different places and I was really appreciative of how those men allowed me to to enter their world and also to kind of followed me into. Okay, we're going to do some movement. This is strange, this is not what we normally do in a prison setting and I'm going to do it anyways.
Speaker 3:And that was really great and those men were so creative and so smart and the system was what wore me down, as it wears down everyone, but the actual patients were really wonderful.
Speaker 4:Yeah, wow, yeah. What a getting thrown right into the professional world right out of school.
Speaker 3:Great, didn't know, didn't know. Better, right, I can do it.
Speaker 2:That was one of my first jobs too, actually in the county jail out here. So when I got my master's, they're like great, you can do all the evals for suicide watches. It was great.
Speaker 3:That's not heavy at all.
Speaker 2:Not a size, pretty easy stuff. But I remember people say why didn't you like working in jails? I said actually the inmates weren't that bad. What was really bad is working with the administration. And he said, actually the inmates weren't that bad. What was really bad is working with the administration. And what you talked about, those pressures, was unreal. I joked around that they called me for an extraction. They have to bring in the therapist to do an eval. Sorry if I'm taking over for a second, but I thought you didn't know, the story.
Speaker 3:No, it's good to hear fellow therapists that have had the experience.
Speaker 2:Yeah. So they call me up, they go come on in quickly, we need the evaluation, okay. So I get to the second door, they make me wait and wait and then the guy who's doing the and again nothing against janitors, literally the janitor who's not an inmate, it's an employee of the state comes in. He says I gotta come in. You they let him in, but not me. Like you gotta wait. So I always told people like mental health was right below the bucket of slush in that jail.
Speaker 3:Sure.
Speaker 4:Wow.
Speaker 3:So I think that it's hard because a lot of our and we can get on systems, I can go on systems forever but a lot of our mental health care, even on the county level right, has shifted towards oh, we're going to throw a charge at this person and then they're going to get the care in the jails or in the prison systems. So consequently, as you may know, the jails and the prisons are doing services they were never set up to do right. And then we're also it's just such a juxtaposition and maybe it feels like a little bit oxymoronic where you're trying to help people heal and then, once they heal, you send them back out to the environment where they got sick, and that was really tough. For me it's like okay, we got you stabilized, now we're going to throw you back to the prison where you were. Before that you were kind of unstable and it was really tough that part of it was really really hard.
Speaker 2:The community which it was really tough.
Speaker 3:That part of it was really really hard for the community, which is also unstable, which caused you to be here in the first place, right, right, so that that's always like heartbreaking because it was like I never worried about them. You know, like you know, in private practice there's constantly the thing of like, okay, is this person stable enough? It's on me as a mental health provider to make sure that they're stable in the community, that they don't need a higher level of care. I never worried these guys had the highest level of care. Like it was the most inpatient of inpatients.
Speaker 3:Like but, on the other hand, it was like they're being released into environments that made them sick.
Speaker 2:I want to know a little bit more because you know for some people some people don't know about dance, dance therapy, but you being bringing up dance therapy in jail, that must have also helped with some of the psychological trauma some of these people unfortunately go through. Uh, can you tell us a little more about all that? Or?
Speaker 3:yeah, yeah. So I want to be cautious, not to like um, I'll speak in generalities, right, because we want to make sure, like I can't give individual cases, but I think in general, when people go to prison, and especially men, there's an emphasis on bulking up or you know certain kinds of movement, and I think dance therapy allows people to be softer and exercise these parts of themselves which, if you think about a prison setting, you're constantly like one, you're always watching your back, right. So there's like this sixth sense of what's behind me, what's going on. One you're always watching your back, right? So there's like this sixth sense of what's behind me, what's going on. And then there's also just the you need to look tough, you don't want to look like a target, all of these things, and I think that cuts people off from their humanity in a way. If you only move in a certain way, that becomes your identity, and I think if your identity is I don't want to be a target you cut yourself off from a lot. If your identity is.
Speaker 2:I don't want to be a target. You cut yourself off from a lot and I think it's also takes you like literally. I think that humanity is lost not only on inmates, but I think even for ourselves. When we work in that environment, we almost lose our humanity.
Speaker 3:Absolutely, and I think, being very young in that environment, there was a lot of focus on well, and also dance therapy. Everyone thought it was scandalous. It was also like what I looked like, what I was doing oh my god, they're moving their hips, you know like and it just felt the lack of education around what dance therapy was and what it brought, as well as the scrutiny that you get being a young clinician and a young female in the prison setting quite a bit. So I think that you know my solution. My solution was okay, I'm wearing a 2XL hoodie over whatever I put on. Nobody's complaining about what I'm wearing because I have basically like a muumuu or something over me at all times because I don't want that kind of attention, and but it does.
Speaker 3:Even that is like. You can't appear as yourself, right? You're appearing as a version. That is like can you dress down? Pretend you're not a female, pretend you're not attractive. If you're attractive, pretend all these things in order to fit into a very stifling setting.
Speaker 4:So I've had this conversation a few times with folks, both off camera and for the podcast. I've been honored to be able to interview a couple other dance therapists and we are in this profession that, if you don't know what it is, the words can sound very loaded Dance movement therapy, Like okay. So if I don't know what those things are, what am I walking into? So like when you walked, when you had this first job, and you're like, well, I'm going to do dance movement therapy with you guys, what did that look like?
Speaker 3:So we went from we'll get a little technical here, but I'll explain. So we went from a model which is a group model, right? So I think since the beginning of time, human beings have got together in a circle and danced or listened to music or been around a fire or and you know, we don't want to say that dance therapist invented that, because that would be just wrong. So, the idea of a circle so you can see everyone in the group, we usually do some kind of movement warm-up and, as you know, courtney, as a dance therapist, the dance part of it I like to explain, it is not we're teaching a certain dance, not we're doing a certain dance, it's the dance therapist has a training to observe movement, right, you want to be able to see what's happening, to put the movement in their body. That's the other part and then to think of what would an appropriate movement intervention may be. So would you like an example? I don't know if people give examples on this podcast I think it's important, and I mean you.
Speaker 2:I think that what you got my my audience, who is actually very open and have had high hopes when they had courtney and talk about dance movement therapy. But I also work with a lot of first responders who go what the hell is that? So maybe it would be helpful to have some examples. Sorry to jump in here, coy.
Speaker 3:So I have to give, well, a couple of examples. So, like in the prison safe, I had someone who was like directing energy and was like punching forward I'm doing a punching motion. For those of you that can't see me, that might not be an energy I would want then, or a movement I would want directed at other people. As a dance therapist, in my head one, I have to keep moving. If I stop moving, my group falls apart a lot of the time, especially if you have more psychotic people that aren't going to do it on their own right. They're just like oh, you stop moving, everyone stops moving, Classic. Try and do it sometime. If you go to a dance class, watch the dance, the instructor stops moving and everyone will stop.
Speaker 3:I have to keep moving and have to keep doing the movement. But maybe I would modify it. Maybe I would like have them punch downwards, right, so that the energy is not directed towards another person, but they still want to get maybe that aggressive energy out and instead of saying no, no, punching is bad, how can I make a movement intervention that would work well for the person to, you know, release or discharge some of that without, you know, harming someone else? Another example I like to give is you know, when you're depressed right, let's all do this for a second actually so take like a fist to your chest and imagine just someone punching you in, like so yeah, and then just sit like that for a moment and notice like how does it feel? Like, can you do a lot of movement there?
Speaker 4:You can't even do a lot of breathing there.
Speaker 3:Right, you can't do a lot of breathing, right, shake it off, take it out, whatever you need to do.
Speaker 3:But from that place right I think of people with depression, I see that a lot and I saw that a lot in hospitals Like that would be maybe a movement characteristic, I would see, or a movement posture, a body posture, and from there we want to not just like bust them out of it because that would be too much.
Speaker 3:We there, we want to not just like bust them out of it because that would be too much. We can't just impose a completely different movement on it. It would be a really rough transition but we can start to think of subtle ways we can get them to change their body movement and change how they feel. Right, and I love this example because almost immediately you can feel like, oh gosh, this doesn't feel good, right. And now, if you take that same posture and if it were a dance therapy class where I was trying to get people to learn about dance therapy, I'd have them walk around and be like what's the experience of walking around like that? So by changing how we move, we change how we feel and that changes our thoughts as well.
Speaker 2:I really like that and you know you're educating me. Like I said, I'm very interested in this stuff, so really enjoy it. But you know, one of the things that we talked about you know a little earlier and you we've talked about pre interview is you know, I really don't know the relationship of dance, movement, therapy and trauma. I mean, to me it seems like apples and celery, frankly. So I like I'm not playing dumb, I promise I really don't know. So please help me out here because I want to understand it, because I believe in it. Don't get me wrong, I just don't understand it.
Speaker 3:Right. So there's been a lot more research over the years. I think what dance therapists have known all along is that the body keeps kind of records of what has happened to us throughout life, whether it's physical or psychological, right? I actually did my my thesis on the body image of rape survivors and I was very curious as to you know, if I'm having you move your body, does that elicit the feelings or the trauma or what happens? Right? And for the most part that was not the case. It was like, okay, when I'm moving like this, it just reminds me of an exercise class, right? So the generic dance movement therapy warmup did not get into the trauma.
Speaker 3:But you could find the specific trigger, like body trigger, if the person was able to tell you or let you know when their body started to respond in a certain way. It might have been a phrase that somebody said when an assault happened. It could have been a, you know, a certain type of pressure or contact that could cause that. So the body keeps that memory of the assault that happened and by working with the body we can release it a lot better than the verbal, like talking, right, and then a couple of resources. So there's a book called the Body Remembers by Babette Rothschild. That's a great book, that's a resource. And then Bessel van der Kolk's book, the Body Keeps the Score, which has gained popularity over the past 10 years, I would say, or past eight years.
Speaker 3:And those talk about, like, the underpinnings, the neurobiological, all those underpinnings of why dance therapy is effective. And I think it's good to notice that, like our hippocampus, that part of the brain that lays down when this thing happened, kind of goes offline when there's a ton of cortisol. So in that case and you know I'm not a, I'm not huge on neuroanatomy, so forgive me if I don't get it exactly right You're not able to tell if something is happening in the past or happening right now. So that's accounts for your PTSD and people getting flooded when they hear a certain noise or a certain sensation happens, and that I think using the body to lay more context or to find a feeling of safety is where dance therapy really excels. And again, it's not dance per se, it's more pedestrian body movement walking around. Where do you feel that in your body? What would you like to do with this feeling, like all of these things walking people through?
Speaker 3:That was a very succinct explanation, but I hope it got to where you were going. Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 4:no, I thought it was really wonderful, yeah, and now, of course, I forgot where I was going. Oh, I think you were talking earlier about the role as the dance movement therapist. A lot of our quote unquote job is to witness, right and to, you know, feel in our bodies, at least my interpretation of what I do, feel in my body, what I'm witnessing, so that if the patient, the client, the person maybe doesn't recognize it yet, that I can somehow, you know, this is what I'm feeling in my body when I see you sitting back, you know, slumped over I don't know, just kind of like yes, so making that connection for them.
Speaker 3:Yeah, we're using our body as a source of information, right. As a therapist and it depends how finely tuned you get. Like I have gotten to the point you know less so over online stuff. But sometimes people would walk in and I would be like I am angry and I'm like I wasn't angry two minutes ago.
Speaker 3:And then like I don't know if, as a therapist, you've ever had this happen. You're like I'm angry, what's happening? And then, two minutes into the conversation, the client's like I'm really upset, frustrated about blah, blah, blah. And I'm like, oh, I picked up this thing. Yeah, that's a very subtle example, but I think we use our bodies as a way to empathize, right, if we think about mirror neurons, the same neurons fire when we witness something, like when we watch someone's movement, as when we do the movement ourselves.
Speaker 3:Like I watch you throwing a baseball, courtney, and it's like this I'm throwing a baseball, but but, the other part of it is, if you can get into your body which dance therapists can, and kind of replicate movement and mirror movement, then we get another like, I would say, a kinesthetic, like a bodily empathy that maybe you know other therapists have less access to.
Speaker 2:Well, I certainly don't have access to that. So it's always good to hear that what it does, because, again, it's not ignorance on purpose, it's I don't know.
Speaker 3:I think you know, and it's okay to not know. I appreciate like when people want to like to be very frank with you. When I got into the field, it was. I was like there's art therapy in the world, there to be very frank with you. When I got into the field, it was. I was like there's art therapy in the world, there's music therapy. There must be dance therapy, right? So I typed it into Google.
Speaker 3:And that's how I found my future profession.
Speaker 3:So I found the American Dance Therapy Association.
Speaker 3:I was like I still don't know what this is but I'm going to apply for grad school and that tells you a little bit about my personality, where this is a big whim and that tells you a little bit about my personality, where this is a big whim and I'm going to go for it and I ended up loving it.
Speaker 3:But even truly like up until the first semester, I'm like I'm not exactly sure how dance therapy works and it also feels like it's a little bit nebulous or a little hazy, right, because you know we like really concrete things, but dance as an art form isn't concrete. We're watching something, we're moving. It's not like I produced a piece of music or a piece of art and I think that's also a little bit of the part that gets hard to translate is, hey, this movement thing, yeah, I get that it helps, but what's the concrete thing that I see and that can be hard to define or explain? I feel like over time I've gotten a lot better vocabulary and I've gotten so used to going between, you know, psychological language and the dance therapy language that I can give a pretty good representation. That takes time too.
Speaker 4:Absolutely, absolutely. And then you know when you're partnering dance movement therapy with trauma work. You know from my experiences, you know trauma is hazy in itself as well, for each person.
Speaker 3:So yeah, and I think you know the words I use with you guys. You're therapists, right, but I'm not going to go to a client necessarily and be like we're working on your hippocampus and laying down new memories and yeah, it's too much.
Speaker 3:It's too much. It's like slow down, breathe. What are you feeling? Where do you feel that? Like just getting them connected, and it's a lot softer and it's a lot less intellectual than how we're talking about it right this moment and I think that that's the other part too is when you deal with a lot of trauma and dance therapy stuff.
Speaker 2:I mean, for me, you know, one of my first visits to my therapist was because of trauma stuff that went on in my life, and one of the standard questions here on our podcast is to ask if someone's been in therapy before. So, lisa, have you ever been in therapy yourself?
Speaker 3:Absolutely so. I've been in therapy for many years. Most recently I've done more attachment work and I think that has been helpful, you know. So I found Diane Poole Heller's work and we could talk a little bit more about her work. But she did somatic experiencing with Peter Levine for many years and then she kind of branched off and did you know, attachment work, helping adults repattern their attachment, like even today. If you go read psychology today and it's like you have an anxious attachment and you read about anxious attachment, it's like you're screwed. Studies say that you can't fix this. Sorry, your mom or dad was inattentive. Sorry, your mom or dad was inattentive or very in flux with how they were as a caregiver, and that's not very hopeful. Nor is it true. But I guarantee you you can go read it and it's like, well, 30 percent or some 30 percent of anxious attached people can't find someone or like you find all this stuff.
Speaker 3:But um, Diane's work is really hopeful and it talks a lot about how you can move towards secure attachment, and all of us want to move towards secure attachment. Our attachment adaptations are there because that was the smartest way we could figure out as a baby, as a child, to get our needs met. And once we feel secure, we will not need and not secure, completely secure. But when we move towards secure, we will not need that same, those same adaptations, those same behaviors that you see that we thought, hey, this worked in the past when I was really little. I need to keep doing this in order to get the attention Well, I like that and you're right.
Speaker 2:I mean, well, I don't read the internet too much because pop psychology has really ruined our field, if you ask me, because everyone's narcissistic and everyone's neurodivergent and everyone is, and I'm done with that stuff. But that's just my podcast. I can say whatever I want. But you talked a little bit of the attachment stuff and I know one of the things we talked pre-interview is we talked about dynamic attachment, repatterning, repatterning sorry second language. Can you tell me more about that?
Speaker 3:Because I don't even know what that is, frankly. Yeah, so that's Diane Pohlheller's system for working with adult attachment, right? So say somebody comes to you and they're like I'm having so much trouble in dating, I know, I get really anxious, I can't tell, like I'm just want this person to like me so badly. But I don't know how I feel when another person enters the picture. I get really fixated on them, right? That sounds like someone with an anxious attachment style or, and it might even be I'm still using pretty psych terms so it might even be more like I can never get a relationship that feels like it's working. Or I go on all these dates, what am I doing wrong?
Speaker 3:And if we can kind of look at those things and how to help this person feel so, with anxious attachment, the work is going to be to keep a sense of yourself Again, be a body, bodily sensations being engaged in the body. When there are other people present, somebody with more avoidant attachment, it might be like, hey, you actually might need people. You know you can't just be over here. You're a lone wolf self and try and date. That doesn't work, right, can you learn to you know, tolerate and eventually enjoy the presence of others and find it. You know it's not a scary place, you don't have to rely just on yourself all the time. But she has specific work that really engages people and kind of repatterns the nervous system and that way of going towards or away or coping when in relationship.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I've always had trouble understanding the whole attachment thing too, and when I remember, even in class when we would read about it, it sounded so like oh my God, how am I going to help anyone with these type of patterns of attachment? So I appreciate this explanation. It makes a whole lot of sense to me, thank you.
Speaker 3:Well, everyone has an attachment, adaptation right, and we all have pockets of each one.
Speaker 4:Not you, not you. Steve is special.
Speaker 2:That's what my mom says.
Speaker 1:anyway, you're the exception that proves who Got it Got it.
Speaker 3:So, and we all have pockets right. If somebody gets in a relationship where the other person is super anxious, they might end up being the avoidant one and they're like wait, wait, I never play this role, you know, and we have pockets of secure and sometimes it's easier for people to find secure attachment in friendship or even you know, like helping someone feel bodily what a secure attachment feels like.
Speaker 3:That's such powerful work, right, even if it's like my dog. I feel securely attached to my dog and somebody might be skeptical but it's like no, you can bring up those feelings and then what you, once you know what that is in your body, you can look for it in other places and at least you have the tools to recognize it. But I agree like this they would say things like when you're in school, right, and be like well, you, uh, you know, just the having the safe therapeutic presence is gonna to help with attachment, and it does to a degree. But it's good to have an actual system and actual way of engaging that helps people address that.
Speaker 4:So interesting.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean I, I, you know. All I can think of is when I talk about attachment with my clients and I'm not. Again, you talk about neuro, neuropsychology and everything else. I talk about creating new patterns in your brain so you can get to that point. And yes, it takes time and it's messy, and all that because the hardest part about attachment and getting used to it is to know that if you want it to happen overnight, I always tell people I'm not your guy so I can't do it. You want some work and you want to do it and it's going to be hard, then do it and that's how your neural pathways start changing, because we have neuroplasticity, and that way you can change from your midbrain, your monkey brain, whatever you want to call it, and reacting that way to more of a cerebral cortex reaction so that it can create a better for lack of a better word secure attachment.
Speaker 3:Right, and I think that's the part that's really like. You know, my dance therapy training and then like the somatic experiencing and then just being in the body, right, if you can get a sense of safety, then the prefrontal cortex comes back online. That's cerebral like oh, I can think about this now, but before then it's just like there's a lizard running the show back there. You know, your little lizard brain is running the show and it's really hard. So I think that's one of the beauties is getting people embodied really does help work with trauma, whether it's developmental trauma and the attachment work, or whether it's developmental trauma and the attachment work, or whether it's other kinds of psychological trauma, and using dance therapy, you know, having conversations like this, um always, you know, makes me feel like how could, how could we not use dance, movement therapy for trauma?
Speaker 4:because, like, yeah, it's, it's all in the body, it is?
Speaker 3:and I think what's um, you know how we talked about a little bit earlier, about how you know movement right, as therapists, we have our own tools as dance therapists, our felt sense like, oh, when I did what this client did, this is what I felt and I'm going to give that and reflect it back to them. I think one of the interesting parts and I want to bring this up is, just as dance therapists, we have to look at where our movement bias is to what feels good, just like as therapists in the field, right?
Speaker 3:You asked if I went to therapy. Yes, absolutely I went to therapy, because if I didn't, we would, you know, I wouldn't know where the things are that trigger me, and when somebody's talking about something, all of a sudden I'm like why do I feel like crying?
Speaker 3:you know, nobody wants to be bombarded with that, and I think there's some really great work I think it's ebony mitchell has done some work I might be wrong on the name about dance therapist movement bias, and they've created a group called black magic. And especially this, um, you know being black history month and also, like with current political climate, I think it's good to. Um, you know being black history month and also, like with current political climate, I think it's good to highlight, you know, bipoc work, or especially in our field, um, and just if I may, and to make it really simple, right. So say, I, as a white woman, have only done ballet, jazz and tap all my life. And then I'm like I'm gonna go into this place with a different ethnicity and different cultural background and, oh my god, they're moving their hips. Salsa feels very sexual to me, oh my god. Right, so there's something where we have to acknowledge our own bias towards.
Speaker 3:Oh, this is how I, when I observe this kind of movement, this is how I interpret it, that's my bias and also in my body, I like to move a certain way and when my client does this movement, I want to move away from it, not because there's anything wrong with what my client's movement is, but I have a preference for something else. So I think it's just important to to mention that like, yeah, how could we not be using dance movement therapy? And also there's some little blind spots here and there that as a as a professional, we're working on and hopefully are thoughtful about. Like, okay, you know, I've never moved in this kind of way. Can I get curious and maybe part of us as dance therapists, not just getting dance therapy or getting therapy is going out, and us as dance therapists, not just getting dance therapy or getting therapy is going out and taking a dance class that makes us move differently that enriches our movement repertoire so that whoever comes in, you're not like I've never tried to move like that.
Speaker 3:Oh, this is awkward. And then you get lost in your own awkwardness and aren't present with the client.
Speaker 4:Does that make sense? Makes a lot of sense, steve, do you get that?
Speaker 2:I got it. I mean you talked about earlier like you said, I stayed curious around these things because the white male bias doesn't need to always be there and certainly getting to know and be curious and learning stuff. And yes, you talked about political climate and all that. I think that once in a while as you know, we're three Caucasian people here we need to be able to challenge our thought process and be able to look at things differently, because we don't have all the answers and unfortunately, for the longest time, that's how that was perceived.
Speaker 3:So and we have a great deal of power as therapists. Like we don't talk about it explicitly as much, but that's why all the rules are in place, that's why the confidentiality is in place, that's why, like the very obvious rule, but like people obviously weren't doing it Like, don't sleep with your clients, don't be friends with your clients, because it muddies things up, right. That's why these things are in place, because we do have a great deal of power and and knowing how we wield that power especially if we're of a different skin color or you know a different gender then our, our clients, is really important to know and I think it's all important stuff.
Speaker 2:and I mean, you know, like when you thought, when you said peter levin and I know him and I've seen him speak and he's quite interesting person, so when you talk about the body, remembers, I can't remember the author that you mentioned.
Speaker 3:So Babette Rothschild, and then the body keeps. The score is Bessel yeah.
Speaker 2:I met Bessel too, and that's not appropriate for this podcast for me to talk about my experience with him, but he wrote an excellent book. I'll say that.
Speaker 3:Yeah, isn't that kind of how we have to look at some of these things with nuance, right? This person wrote an excellent book. I've had X, y, z experience and I you know that I have to like leave this out of it. You know, and I think it's good to to be willing to not say this is either. This person is either good or bad. We can take the book and the other parts maybe we need to leave because we have feelings about them or how they presented themselves. Wasn't what we're in alignment with, right? Oh, I wanted to correct myself. I think I talked about the dance therapist movement bias. It's actually Ebony Nichols.
Speaker 3:I want to make sure I get her name right, because I don't want to screw that up.
Speaker 4:Yeah, I was searching for the name in my brain.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I was like Mitchell, but that's not correct and I want to make sure I got the right name, especially for her.
Speaker 4:Thank you, Lisa.
Speaker 2:Well, I was really frustrated. Thank you very much for fixing it.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I know, I know you probably knew all the dance therapist names.
Speaker 2:I secretly, do I secretly?
Speaker 3:do? I secretly looked them up on the side, got your Google out.
Speaker 2:I don't have my Google on the other side. I've been just fact checking you since the beginning. Well, you know, it would be interesting to hear more about what you know like. I know that we all do things as therapists that are pretty unique and I like to showcase that when we do my, we do our podcast. Can you tell me more about the stuff that you're putting out in the world right now?
Speaker 3:Yeah, so I actually have my private practice and you can find that under my name it's lisamoncacom. And then I have also I'm starting to do workshops for schools, like dance therapy workshops, and for institutions, like companies, and I think it's great for, like, a wellness perspective and especially if they're looking for ways to get their employees embodied and feeling better and work on workplace retention. That's another thing. Like you have to have employees that recognize when they're burnt out, but if they're not aware of their bodies, they're not going to recognize that. So I'm doing more dance therapy workshops than ever and obviously when we do a dance therapy workshop, it's not therapy per se. We're using dance therapy techniques, but it doesn't count as therapy because you don't want to have therapy with Joanne from HR and then go back and that would be really awkward. So it's more of a wellness approach than anything, right, that would be very awkward. It's like oh, I know all about Joanne's stuff now.
Speaker 1:Let me tell you, and you're like, we don't want those dynamics in the workplace.
Speaker 3:We want to keep people's privacy, so it's using dance therapy techniques. I call them dance therapy workshops, but for different companies and schools, and I've really been appreciating doing that.
Speaker 2:Great, and how would we reach you for any of these things?
Speaker 3:My website's probably the best, so lisamoncacom, and my last name is spelled M, as in Mary A, and it's a Nancy C, as in Charlie A.
Speaker 4:Perfect. It's a great website.
Speaker 3:I checked it out, oh good, good, I'm glad you like I've been blogging. Oh my gosh, so much blogging good for you my blogs. Be like one of the three people. It will make you very happy, but no, I I didn't read the blogs.
Speaker 2:I'll be honest. I did see your website quickly and I thought it was really good and it's awesome that you're putting that stuff out there. I think the hardest part is to realize that. You know, I had this conversation with another therapist recently. I'm not in competition with any therapist in this career, in this world, because we all have different gifts that we can bring, and you know, truly that's what I appreciate of all the therapists and I really appreciate what you do.
Speaker 3:Thank you, yeah, and I think likewise it's always good to have the mindset of, I think, maybe where you can tell a younger therapist from an older therapist older therapist is like I'm not for you, that's okay.
Speaker 3:Right and letting clients go, and I appreciate that you guys doing therapy podcasts and especially in a thoughtful way, because you know we got so much stuff, we got TikTok, we got Insta. You know we got so much stuff, we got TikTok, we got Insta. You know like everyone's spouting psychological knowledge and it's good to have sources for people to go to that are actually, you know, thoughtful and trying to get experts and you know being smart about who you're putting on and I really appreciate that. So thank you.
Speaker 3:Well, probably one of the first times this year I've been called smart, so thank you. I appreciate that always. You know it's january, that's pretty good hey, february is february oh february. Sorry you missed january.
Speaker 2:Maybe next month too and I'll break a wall for my, my audience, for a second. We are actually it's going to be released in February and we are like oh yeah, in. February. So I'm breaking a wall here. I just want oh before the wall went down. Okay, when we're done with the interview, I'm going to do a an orientation test with you because I'm very concerned right now and for all our therapist friends. Listening to this, I know.
Speaker 3:I know my name is still Lisa, though I got it. No, you pick. I know my name's still Lisa, though I got it. Whatever month it is, no you pick, go ahead.
Speaker 2:On that happy note, I need to look at how we get us I don't know how it works in San Francisco and call the authorities to get hospitalized. But otherwise you can go to our website. She'll be available there.
Speaker 3:Okay, thank you.
Speaker 2:But, lisa, thank you. I really appreciate Courtney, always good.
Speaker 4:Yeah, loved being on again, lisa, it was wonderful meeting you.
Speaker 3:Yeah, you too take care well, that completes episode 193.
Speaker 2:Courtney romanowski again, just a great co-host, thank you. More importantly, lisa monka. Thank you so much. I hope you go check her out. Um, lisa monkacom. I'll put in the show notes and it was a great interview. I hope you guys enjoyed it and I'll see you for the next episode where we're going to talk about the rebranding.
Speaker 1:Please like, subscribe and follow this podcast on your favorite platform. A glowing review is always helpful and, as a reminder, this podcast is for informational, educational and entertainment purposes only. If you're struggling with a mental health or substance abuse issue, please reach out to a professional counselor for consultation. If you are in a mental health crisis, call 988 for assistance. This number is available in the United States and Canada.
