Somatic Movement Dance Therapy: The Healing Art of Self-Regulation and Co-Regulation

A comprehensive account of the relationship between somatics, spirituality, and physiology.

In this detailed anatomical text, Amanda Williamson shares her therapeutic practice, rooted in self-regulation, co-regulation, cardio-ception, breath awareness, soft-tissue-rolling in gravity, fascial release, and the importance of parasympathetic ease-and-release. The book attends to key body systems in detail, and how sense-perception of living tissues increases fluid flow and supports fascial health. It is grounded in detailed experiential encounters with afferent sensing, consciously sensed motor expression, interoception, proprioception, the vagus nerve, the cranial bones and nerves, scapulae, sacrum, fascia, and the nervous system. Clients and students share qualitative refl ections after sense-perceiving the state of their living tissues and easing tight tonus through self-regulatory movement.

Somatic Movement Dance Therapy pays detailed attention to applied experiential anatomy and physiology, improvisation underpinned by somatic awareness, the art of directing one's awareness and attending gently to living breathing tissues, resting egoic mind and settling in the heart. The integral importance and compassion of the co-regulatory embodied witness is shared in this book. Williamson shares processes throughout that ease stress, depression, and anxiety.

Collective foreword from Sarah Whatley, Daniel Deslauriers, Celeste Snowber, and Karin Rugman.

Author: Amanda Williamson
Publisher: Intellect (UK)
Published: 05/01/2023
Pages: 352
Binding Type: Hardcover
Weight: 1.54lbs
Size: 9.60h x 7.00w x 0.90d
ISBN13: 9781789386905
ISBN10: 178938690X
BISAC Categories:
- Performing Arts | Dance | General
- Health & Fitness | Healing
- Health & Fitness | Alternative Therapies

About the Author
Amanda Williamson is director of the Centre for Somatic Movement and Dance Therapy and the Association of Somatic Movement Therapies, UK and the Republic of Ireland. She is the founding editor of the journal Dance, Movement & Spiritualities and an honorary professor at Coventry University (C-dare).