Her body speaks : the experience of dance therapy for women

A qualitative, phenomenological methodology was used to explore the experience of women who had participated in dance therapy and had found it facilitative of their personal growth and healing. The participants were six women between the ages of 25 and 47 who had been involved in group and individual dance therapy within the last one to four years. The women described their experience of dance therapy during in-depth, individual interviews. Using Colaizzi's (1978) approach to phenomenological data analysis, five themes that were common to all the study participants emerged. These themes described the women's sense of spontaneity and permission to play, their sense of struggle, their sense of freedom, their sense of intimate connection, and their experience of reconnection to their bodies.Education, Faculty ofEducational and Counselling Psychology, and Special Education (ECPS), Department ofGraduat