Dance therapy provides an outlet for energy and a safe and playful environment in which many areas of conflict can be identified and worked through, and appropriate adult roles and behavior tried out.

Dance therapy provides an outlet for energy and a safe and playful environment in which many areas of conflict can be identified and worked through, and appropriate adult roles and behavior tried out.

He [Wilhelm Reich] believed that the individual's walk, stance, and breath patterns revealed a specific character type. Reich thought chronic muscular tension indicated repression and blocked the expression of affect. An example is the tight holding of the chest area as a sign of repressed feelings of need and longing.

The 1980's witnessed a new dance genre in New York City and Los Angeles. Slam Dancing was perhaps a way for adolescent males to deal with the stressors of maturation, aggressive personal feelings, and violence in the society at large. Through dancing, the youths expressed raw power and rage while achieving euphoria, enhanced self-concept, and a healthy fatigue.

Through dance, people meet demons, ward off death, shake off sin and evil, come to terms with life crises, mediate paradoxes, resolve conflict, revitalize the past to re-create the present, enhance their self-concept and body image, attract attention, assert themselves, confront the strong, and persuade others to change their ways.

Saying the lion is kind of the beasts says something about lions and also something about kings.

The symbolism in any kind of dance allows for recall, reenactment, and reexperience of events for purposes of resisting, reducing, transforming, and escaping stress.