This blog is based on a conversation with Kellyn, a dance therapist in the Chicago area who also specializes in contact improvisation. We’ve worked together before for her master’s thesis about using touch and contact improvisation as a therapeutic tool, meant to be used with clients to further their mental health. We got into a conversation the other day as a tangent from this issue we’ve discussed before, and she was talking about creating a training program for this. I bought in the idea that training in bodywork is essential for engaging in touch purposefully with clients, or could be a tremendous asset when considering touch with clients. Through our discussion, we came up with what seemed to be an agreement, that there are times and places for different types of touch in a session possibly. What follows are my thoughts on the subject, as well as some points from our conversation.
Contact improvisation tools can be very useful to teaching a client self-efficacy and self-agency, how to engage in the dance with the therapist and find their power in the dynamic. It is not a passive position by any means to engage in contact improvisation, as both movers are on equal footing, and are expected to have equal wits about themselves, and equal ability to make choices. It can be a good thing to teach a client about this, to use movement as a way to teach them that they have the ability to make choices, and to help them see those opportunities. The client needs to be at a high enough level of functioning to engage this way, and to feel their interdependence with the therapist. If they have traumatic pre verbal material that is still repressed or not processed yet, contact improvisation can prove to be too much for the client to handle in the relationship and lead to other complications in the dynamic, including too much dependence on the therapist and the touch beginning to substitute for a lack of emotional connection. Taken slowly, a high functioning client stands to benefit a lot from learning about relationship dynamics and what comes up when they make contact with another person in various ways, and it can go a long way towards increasing their options of how to be in relationship with another person. The client may be passive or active, but ideally has the agency to switch that at their own will when they feel like it. The client may be able to have many insights this way that may have eluded them before.
As a contrast, moments when a client is suffering from some past event, or processing/digesting something distressing, could be opportunities to engage in co-regulating touch that helps them process something, as a parent would do for a child. If the client is working through some trauma, a pat on the hand or a hand on the back or shoulder can be very helpful to support the client staying grounded and present. In this scenario, the client is more passive and the therapist more active. This works best when the therapist has had some bodywork training, because they have a sense of the whole person’s system, how they are engaging and bonding with the other person’s system, and what would be regulating. There’s an ability to pick up bodily cues and notice shifts in nervous system functioning, and one can tell when a client has moved through something. The client can digest something physically with the benefit of the additional touch. Of course, this happens without touch as well, but especially if the trauma is from a pre verbal time period, touch really helps the client not become overwhelmed while processing, and more able to put the pieces together mentally. The therapist’s body becomes more space for the client to use to process. This happens on a mental level anyway, as the therapist acts as a container for the client, but when one brings in a physical element, there are more possibilities. A bodywork trained therapist also has more awareness of touch boundaries and touch transference that may occur, which is very helpful to make sure any touch stays therapeutic while the client is in a passive place. If the client is psychotic or lower functioning cognitively, extreme care needs to be taken when using touch, as the odds that the client will misinterpret the touch are very high. Even when all precautions are taken to make sure the touch is safe and within boundaries and appropriate for the client, they may still misconstrue the touch and come to their own conclusions that do not line up with the reality of the therapist. So in these cases, it is likely more appropriate to avoid touch, and even to bring extra precaution about body proximity to the client, to avoid misunderstandings.
Eve Chalom 