Exploring the Intersection Between Facial Movement, Physiology, and Emotional Regulation: Developing a Method for Children

For children in therapy, emotional regulation is frequently a focus of treatment. Identifying, understanding, and managing emotions are all key tasks in one’s development. Developing these skills at a young age has proven to be beneficial for one’s overall wellbeing. Approaching emotional regulation through a dance/movement therapy lens requires a focus on not only one’s cognitive perception of emotion but one’s physical sensation of emotion. Dr. Paul Ekman’s Facial Action Coding System provides a means of systematically creating the sensation of emotion. An individual can experience a physiological response by creating universally identified facial expressions. This thesis introduces a method for children utilizing Dr. Paul Ekman’s Facial Action Coding System to elicit emotion and explore how one experiences and understands their feelings. The intervention was tested in a session with a child in a mental health center. The case study demonstrates the therapeutic benefits of eliciting emotion and the strengths of approaching emotion from an embodied perspective