Body as a Feared Place: DMT and the Treatment of Eating Disorders

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Course Description: This course provides an in-depth exploration of dance/movement therapy as a collaborative treatment modality in eating disorder recovery. Students will learn the historical, cultural, and racial origins of “body image dissatisfaction” and how dance/movement therapy can be a connective experience. Students will learn how eating disorders thrive in an environment of fear, body avoidance, and relief-seeking behaviors. The body’s fear response system will be explored from neurobiological perspectives as well as DMT theory and experientials. Modern-day eating disorders will be explored from symptom clusters (listed in the DSM-5), medical texts, dance/movement therapy journals, and creative writing from people with lived experience. Skills from Exposure/Response Prevention therapy will be taught to increase tolerance for bodily sensations associated with digestion. Students will have the opportunity to engage in imaginal food exposures as well as taste food for exposures (if they choose) to simulate the lived experience of the client. The “Subjective Units of Discomfort Scale” will be taught as a body tracking tool. Ethical considerations when utilizing D/MT with clients recovering from an eating disorder will be reviewed. Dance/movement therapy will be applied as a method to build body trust, instill courage, and restore aliveness through a mindful, embodied, improvisational, and playful approach. Forming an embodied relationship to fear allows participants to increase their body threshold for body discomfort. This course provides students with education on the history of body image dissatisfaction, symptomology of eating disorders, treatment strategies, and how to ethically implement dance/movement therapy as a part of a larger treatment team.