Dance and Movement Therapy at the National Intrepid Center of Excellence

Liz Freeman, lead dance/movement therapist; and Kristine Keliiki, dance/movement therapist at the National Intrepid Center of Excellence (NICoE), discuss the many ways they use dance movement therapy (DMT) to help patients at the NICoE. DMT is the psychotherapeutic use of movement to promote emotional, social, cognitive, and physical parts of a person in order to improve health and well-being. This brings the body into the treatment process to address behavioral health and rehabilitative goals. Freeman and Keliiki also discuss the history of DMT, citing its birth through a dance for communication program in the Federal Psychiatric Hospital St. Elizabeth’s in the 1940s.

March 13 to 19 is Creative Arts Therapies Week. To celebrate, the NICoE created videos highlighting a day in the life of some of our creative art therapies at the NICoE. This video is part of a multipart series.