Moving Moving Mountains - A Dance Therapy Class
By Francesca Horsley

"We all need an opportunity to escape the stresses, to be at one with the body, mind and soul to the music, to focus on feeling and being with that feeling." This quote by "J" reveals the holistic approach of Gabrielle New's Moving Mountains programme for mental health consumers.

J was one of a number of participants with serious mental health issues who had been attending Moving Mountains - a carefully structured movement therapy class.

Gaby has been developing Mountains over the last three years as part of her job with the Community Mental Health Centre in Epsom. The programme brings together both her training as an occupational therapist, and her dance experience, particularly Butoh.

Already a dancer, Gaby took up Butoh not to perform but for her process. She found that particular exercises and images she used in her Butoh practice were very powerful on a deep emotional and psychological level. She thought that by using them as a guide, she could apply them therapeutically.

"Two particular exercises rocked my world and made me go - wow - this is really powerful stuff. One image, called the hungry ghosts, was of little squat things with big fat malnourished stomachs who lived in a dry desert and were never satiated. It's a very Japanese image, and in this mythological realm, it is where miserly people go when they die. I found it very powerful and it brought up a challenging psychological state, which was very interesting."

"There was also an exercise which used the idea that you were a mummy - and you had been mummified for a thousand years and were waking up and deeply finding yourself again. It took half an hour - and you didn't even get to sitting! It was really interesting as a transformation process - going from completely empty to filling up again."

"These sorts of exercises got me thinking about how I could bring my work as a dancer and meld that with my work as a therapist. There is nothing new about using movement therapeutically for people but this is something that I have been working on for a couple of years."

Gaby's clients have serious and disabling mentally illnesses such as schizophrenia, bi polar disorder, severe anxiety disorders and post traumatic stress disorders. They often also have issues such as poor physical health, lack of fitness and the affects of the drugs which can be demotivating and cause large weight gain.

"I work a lot with people with drug and alcohol problems - that is my specialty area. I look at how drugs and alcohol impact on their mental and physical health and the emptiness that needs filling.

Occupational therapists (OTs) are concerned with how people function in the different aspects of their lives - both mentally and physically. "You might physically be able to work but if you are depressed you can't."

"We see people in a holistic manner. We don't separate the mind from the body, from the environment, from spiritual needs - they all interact and affect each other. You have a whole person, and you look at all the different aspects of their lives and how they function and what is meaningful to them."

Moving Mountains fits well into this holistic framework. Gaby says "It is using an activity that people choose, so it is meaningful to them, and they access emotional and psychological issues through the use of well structured movement exercises."

The workshops are run on a term by term basis. Sometimes they run a one day workshop, or a six or four week course. It depends on availability of resources, tutors, time and a suitable space.

The classes are carefully planned around an introduction, a warm up, the main body of work and a cool down. For the four or six week courses people keep a journal - it can be pictures, writing, and poetry - whatever they chose.

Gaby always works with one other facilitator. Initially it was with actor, Tessa Mitchell, and later with dancers Cathy Livermore and Wilhemeena Gordon. "I would never just run something like this by myself; you need two facilitators to support the people properly."

One facilitator will always do the exercise as a role model - "to show that its ok, you can do it. The other one might run the workshop, do the music."

For the main part, they choose different themes to focus the activities and exercises. "For example often people who have mental health issues find to difficult to communicate their needs and be honest and open in their communication, so we will do exercises where people experience other ways of communicating that are safe and respected. We might do mirroring exercises, where people have the opportunity to connect deeply with another and communicate with them in a non-verbal way."

"Or we might do trust exercises where you have to run down the room blindfolded but your partner is running next to you and they tell you when to do stop at the end. It is great for people who have a lot of anxiety, fear and trust issues."

Another exercise they do is to choose an animal, and three qualities of that animal, and then they embody their movement qualities. "Say you choose a turtle - shy, slow and tough on the outside - you forget about your animal altogether - you don't want people moving like a turtle - you just get them to hold on to those three qualities and make a movement for each. Often people will chose an animal for the qualities that they like so they then get to embody these qualities."

"We will often then have layers. People will work with a partner, maybe learn each other's qualities and the movement. We might work with joining their three gestures together. Seeing your movements on someone else may help self esteem and confidence."

One of the things that underpins these sessions is that people with mental health disorders are often trapped in their heads with little connection to what's happening in the body. "So a lot of the stuff we do is dropping the mind down into the body - and Butoh works a lot with that principle."

Although Gaby's ideas came from her experience of Butoh, she works with other tools as well. This can also depend on the experiences and background of the cofacilitator.

Gaby says she doesn't focus a lot on consciously processing and analysing the experiences. "My belief is that the physical experience creates an emotive response and that can have a psychological affect.

You don't have to track it down and work out what happened. I think it is a spontaneous thing. Having the experience of being able to trust, and it went ok, changes something inside of us."

All the exercises are set up in that way. "Sometimes we have feedback and discussion where people have a chance to say how it was for them but a lot of stuff I just allow it to be; everyone's experiences are ok - there is no right or wrong with any of the exercises that we choose - if people need to sit out and just watch for a while that's ok."

As a therapist it is paramount to structure classes in safe way, but there has to be a risk factor as well. "I think often people with mental health issue are often quite scared of taking risks - in the past this may have led to bad things happening so they have learnt to keep things really safe and they are often very protective, which may make growth difficult. We set things up so there is a degree of risk but certain things are keep very safe."

The psychological and mental mountains that people have in their lives are very hard to get over - they are massive - so the idea of Moving Mountains is using movement to help melt or shift to make these mountain smaller.

Gaby says she has seen some amazing improvements. "Obviously they are getting other therapies as well but seeing the people who have been coming a few times, from their first session to their last session - is amazing. And it's fun - We have a laugh and create an environment that people feel comfortable with - it is not all serious."

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