[Adta] Response to Heather, Lora re: neuroscience

[Jenn Frank]

What a great discussion we've got going here!  
   
  Lora, thank you for your initiation, and Heather for your response.  I wanted to include your post, but I'm afraid it will get "scrubbed" for being too long, so I'll attempt to respond "sans serif" (I just learned that that means- without feet" in web-design land)
   
  I have become quite a neuro-phile as of late, and I've been wondering, like Heather, why we feel the need to somehow prove something to the neuroscientists.  (If that is what you meant, Heather?). We do have so much more to offer in research styles, etc...do we have to jump on the bandwagon?  
   
  Well...It couldn't hurt, could it?
   
  It makes me furious that some guy (okay, a really smart guy whose worked on this stuff for decades) comes up with the word, "mirror neurons" when Dance Therapists have been using the term, "mirroring" for fifty years!!!  Something is wrong with this picture.
   
  I think we owe ourselves, as progressive, intelligent and creative professionals, the opportunity to find a way into this world to make ourselves known; not because we already know this stuff, but because we can add to it! 
   
  Neuroscience is still studying the movement within the brain (attachment, as it is processed inside the brain, etc...). We're already using the clinical application of movement of the body.  
   
  Proprioceptive memory is our greatest asset as dance therapists, and they haven't even touched it yet!  Let's find a way to work together!  I think that we'll all benefit from it...
   
  OKay.  Off my soapbox.  Anyone else?
   
  ~Jenn
   
   
  Heather wrote:
   
  While the above in some way makes our task of being validated in the
eyes of "science", I found this an incredibly liberating concept a) in
taking away the mantle of authority and "reality" from the accepted
"scientific" view (basically it's just one of many ways to view the world),
b) it did show me what I was up against but c) it helped me get some
idea of where to put my efforts in terms of establishing dance therapy.
  There are of course no easy answers - we're up against a mammoth for
sure - but I don't feel intimidated by it now and I don't feel the need
to try and conform to its particular standards.

Having said all that, I realise of course the realities of trying to
get our work accepted in settings which don't subscribe to our values,
the goals we set in our work and even our worldviews.

I am interested in your response about not just dancing but also
learning about neuroscience etc. - and please don't take this as a criticism
for I'm sure I've said similar things too in the past - Yet why should
neuroscience be more worthy or weighty than dance?  In our hearts and
among our fellow dance therapists, we know it's not - but when the
headlights of society's reality beams on us, as you say, like an animal
facing a car's headlights at night, we become disoriented and lose our
sense of where we are...and therefore get flattened!

Yes let's learn about neuroscience, as we do about anatomy, but not as
a justification to give to our  colleagues.  It is useful to know some
of this language, to be realistic, as way to establish some credentials
to competency - and a starting point for communication perhaps.  But
if we wish to retain the essence of what our work is about, we are going
to have to find ways to stand up for our language and our ways of
working.  And let's face it, we will never ever - unless we totally
transform dance therapy - be sufficient for a scientifical model.  Let's just
accept that - and move on.  And do we want to be anyway???




              Jennifer Frank Tantia, MS, ADTR, LCAT
   








       
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