Dance movement psychotherapy postgraduate personal statement example

Personal statement example

My undergraduate degree in Dance and Performance taught me to read movement closely, but it was a third-year module on improvisation and group process that changed what I wanted to do with that skill. For my final project I led a series of unscored group improvisations and kept a reflective log of what happened between people rather than what the movement looked like. I noticed how often a shift in weight or a change of breathing rhythm preceded someone speaking, and how the group quietly regulated itself when one person withdrew. Writing that up, using Laban's effort qualities as a descriptive vocabulary, gave me a language for something I had felt in studios for years without being able to name.

Since graduating I have worked part-time as a support worker in a supported living service for four adults with learning disabilities. Much of my communication there is non-verbal: pacing the corridor alongside someone who is agitated, matching the tempo of a rocking movement before trying to speak, noticing that one resident always turns his chair away when he is overwhelmed rather than telling anyone. The work has taught me the difference between interpreting someone's movement and staying curious about it, and how easy it is to project meaning onto behaviour to make myself more comfortable. I have also learned about boundaries, handover notes, safeguarding procedures and the value of supervision, which I now use to think about my own reactions rather than only about the people I support.

Last spring I arranged eight observation sessions with a dance movement psychotherapist running groups in an adult mental health day service. My role was to observe, set out chairs and props, and leave the room during any individual work. I said very little, which was harder than I expected. What struck me most was the therapist's restraint: long stretches where nothing appeared to be happening, warm-ups repeated week after week so that the structure itself became reliable, and a closing circle where participants named a single word for how they were leaving. In one session a woman who had not moved from her seat for three weeks tapped her foot in time with the group, and it was treated as significant without being announced. In the brief conversations afterwards the therapist talked about kinaesthetic empathy and about the discipline of noticing her own bodily responses as information. That has shaped how I read Marian Chace's emphasis on rhythmic group action and Joan Chodorow's writing on authentic movement and the imagination.

I am now taking an evening course in basic counselling skills to strengthen the verbal side of the work, and I have begun my own weekly personal therapy. I teach a community dance class for older adults, some of whom have Parkinson's, where I plan sessions around seated work, familiar music and clear repetition; it has made me realistic about physical limitation and about how much confidence a predictable structure can build. I know training will require me to be the client as well as the practitioner, and to write about my own material honestly.

What I want from postgraduate study is the theory, the clinical placement experience and, above all, the supervision to hold this work properly. I am drawn to eventual practice in adult mental health or with adults with learning disabilities, settings where words are often not the most available route. I expect the training to unsettle some of my assumptions about movement and meaning, and I am ready for that.

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