Master of Dance Movement Therapy postgraduate personal statement example

Personal statement example

Every morning at the care home where I work, a resident I will call Mrs D taps the arm of her chair in a steady three-beat pattern while she waits for breakfast. For weeks I treated it as restlessness. Then, during a music session, I noticed she tapped the same pattern when she was content, and a faster, uneven version when the lounge became noisy. I began matching her rhythm quietly with my own hand when I sat beside her. She would sometimes slow down, look at me, and start talking. I do not want to overstate this: I am an activities assistant, not a clinician, and I logged what I saw for the senior carers rather than drawing conclusions. But it is the clearest example I have of movement carrying meaning before words arrive, and it is why I want to train as a dance movement therapist.

My first degree was in dance, with a strong practical emphasis on contemporary technique and choreography. In my final year I became more interested in who dances, and why, than in performance. My dissertation was an observational study, with ethical approval and the instructor's consent, of a weekly chair-based movement class for adults over seventy run by a local community centre. Over eight sessions I recorded how participants responded to repeated sequences compared with new material. Repetition seemed to give people confidence to add their own variations, while new sequences often produced hesitation and watching rather than moving. The study was small and descriptive, and I was careful to say so, but writing it taught me to separate observation from interpretation, a habit I know matters far more in therapeutic work.

To understand that wider context, I have read about the field rather than relying on my dance training. Laban's movement analysis, which I first met as a choreographic tool, made more sense to me once I saw how its categories of effort, such as weight and time, could describe how a person moves rather than what steps they perform. Reading about Marian Chace's work in psychiatric hospitals helped me see that the therapist's role is to meet and reflect a person's movement, not to teach them a better version of it. I am aware this reading is introductory, and I am keen to study the theory, ethics and supervised practice properly.

Since graduating I have worked full time at the care home for two years. My role involves planning group sessions, from seated exercise to reminiscence afternoons, and spending one-to-one time with residents who rarely leave their rooms. I have learned practical things: how to adapt an activity when someone's mood shifts, how to write clear, factual notes, and how to work within a team where carers, nurses and families all have different priorities. It has also shown me my limits. When residents become distressed, I follow procedures and pass on concerns; I know I lack the training to respond therapeutically, and I would like to gain it.

On Saturdays I teach a contemporary class for teenagers at a community dance studio. It is ordinary teaching, but some students arrive tense and withdrawn after difficult weeks, and I have noticed how much a structured warm-up helps them settle before anything creative happens. Outside dance I play in a recreational netball league, which keeps me grounded in movement that has nothing to do with expression, and reminds me how much people communicate through timing and space even in a game.

I am drawn to dance movement therapy because it joins the two things I have spent my adult life doing: studying movement closely and caring for people who find communication difficult. I bring a dancer's attention to the body, steady experience in a care setting and an honest sense of what I still need to learn. I am ready for the demands of clinical placements, personal reflection and supervision, and I would welcome the chance to develop into a careful, well-trained practitioner.