Session: Experiential Strategies for Working with Adolescents with Eating Disorders - Part 4 - The Use of Dance/Movement Experiential Strategies In the Treatment of Adolescents with Eating Disorders (2009 Symposium: Reclaiming the Body: Attachment, Somatics, and Image (March 4-8, 2009))

Wednesday, March 4, 2009: 2:15 PM-4:00 PM

Barcelona/Casablanca (Westin Long Beach)

This presentation will be geared toward teens with eating disorders. Dance/movement therapy and storytelling techniques will be used to demonstrate how transforming idiosyncratic behaviors into expressive movements can cause disconnected experiences to ignite into meaningful expression and understanding of one's experience that can contribute to lasting change.

a. Introduction/Overview b. Group Format- Didactic 1. Explanation of format.
2. How to use format. 3. Group format- Experiential, Clinical Application & Discussion: 1. Participate in the experience led by presenter. 2. Practice facilitating the process w/ participant leaders ( time allowing

We communicate through our bodies long before we learn to talk. As we develop we add words to our communication, however, body language remains our most acute means of recognizing our needs and expressing ourselves. Difficulty in communicating the depth of one's experiences through verbal dialogue alone, may lead to an intellectual understanding, without the added physical and emotional connection associated with genuine change. This presentation builds on the basic foundation that experiential understanding begets cognitive understanding, rather then the reverse. Dance/movement therapy and storytelling techniques will be used to demonstrate how transforming idiosyncratic behaviors into expressive movements can cause disconnected experiences to ignite into meaningful expression and understanding of one's experience that can contribute to lasting change. Teens with eating disorders respond particularly well to this structure, becoming emboldened to create and choreograph their own stories without undue influence by the therapist. On a body level they are encouraged to first connect with their feelings, later translating emotional responses into insightful cognition.

Primary Presenter:

Susan Kleinman, MA, ADTR, NCC

Susan Kleinman, MA, ADTR, NCC, is dance/movement therapist for residential and outpatient services at The Renfrew Center of Florida. Ms. Kleinman is a trustee of the Marian Chace Foundation, a past president of the American Dance Therapy Association and a past Chair of The National Coalition for Creative Arts Therapies. She is a co- editor of The Renfrew Center Foundation’s Healing Through Relationship Series, and serves on the editorial board of the Journal of Creativity in Mental Health. She is a frequent presenter at national and international conferences.

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