Almost two months into my training and I know it to be taxing, exhausting and worth every minute of it!!!! It's not just the schedule (Mondays and Wednesday class starting at 8:30am and Tuesdays and Thursday clinical internship starting at 8:45am, and a few hours on Fridays) but it's also what it takes to do this kind of work.
They say in the field that to be able to help someone else sit with his/her dark stuff, you must first be able to sit with your own. That is part of this training: the self-unraveling to dig up your own dark stuff so that you can have it revealed to you, face it, practice meeting it and sit with it. It's also imperative to know what you will come up against, what triggers you, what you react to, what you will negotiate in yourself and realize that these are things you will bring into a session and to a patient. And it's okay!!! So far, I and other classmates have had our breakdowns, our non-verbal peeling back of the onion layers and we only have another year and a half to go with a second clinical placement (and how did I forget our thesis?!!!?). But hopefully, we will graduate with the knowledge that our capacities as human beings and human beings in a helping profession go far beyond a scope we ever could have imagined.
With that, I offer this quote that speaks to the beauty of the human imperfections that the DMT balances and works within.
(And now back to my paper due tomorrow).
"Regardless of their expertise, therapists should explore a range of movement structures for the purpose of enlarging their repertoire of responses, testing the ability to loosen and retain boundaries of self, working with containment of self and others, sharpening countertransference awareness, and opening themselves to experiencing the tensions, fears, and pain of others within their own viscera and musculature. Questions arise which can only be answered in exploration through movement, such as the dance therapist's possible issue of overidentification, projection of self onto patients, and use of space, strength, passivity, and energy in relation to others." --Foundations of Dance/Movement Therapy: The Life and Work of Marian Chace
