Dance/Movement Therapy
THEORY III

This course has been approved by the American Dance Therapy Association as
meeting requirements for the Alternate Route R-DMT credential and satisfies 45 hours of
DMT Theory & Practice Training. (A prerequisite for alternate route training course enrollment
and credit is the satisfactory completion of 90 hours of dance/movement therapy theory
and practice coursework.  Students not wishing alternate route training credit may
take the course without the prerequisite requirement.).

This course meets the qualifications for 45 hours of continuing education credit for MFTs
and/or LCSWs as required by the California Board of Behavioral Sciences (Provider #3888).

Course Description:

A sense of self is created over the span of a person’s lifetime and this sense of self
is an evolving subjective and changing psychological organization.  It initially develops
within the context of the intersubjective relationship established by a child with his or her
primary caregiver or caregivers.   The caregiver or caregivers also transmit the world view
of the culture or cultures to which they belong and pass this cultural worldview onto the
child as the sense of self is developing. 
 
This course will focus on the role that embodied and enacted experience play in the construction
of a person’s sense of self, the internalization of his or her cultural worldview or worldviews and
the establishment and maintenance of intersubjective relationships.
 
Given the importance of an internalized sense of self and the cultural worldview structures
formulated within intersubjective relational experiences and, potentially explored within
dance/movement therapy sessions and groups whose members may hold different worldviews,
the dynamic need for cultural awareness and sensitivity in the dance/movement therapy
experience and relationship will be addressed.

Course Objectives:

1) Students will develop an understanding of how a cultural worldview influences the
kind of “self” (body self, body image and psychological self) the person develops.

2) Students will develop an understanding of how a cultural world view determines
the norms of social behavior deemed appropriate to a particular culture.

3) Students will develop an understanding of how a cultural worldview influences
the way a person thinks about healing.

4) Students will learn how benign regression has the potential to facilitate a creative
potential space in dance/movement therapy sessions that can lead to self transformation.

5) Students will begin to understand how the dance/movement therapist provides particular
developmental functions and developmentally based interventions that enable a client to
acquire increased emotional self-regulation and self-coherence.

6) Students will develop an understanding of the imperative need for cultural awareness
and sensitivity in the dance/movement therapy experience and relationship.