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

It is the persistence of dance in helping people to resist, reduce, and escape stress since early humanity that attests to its efficacy.

In the interweave of mind and body, dance is a mode that allows people to work through difficulties, anticipate the future, recollect the past, and confront the present.

In the United States and other countries, there has been a decline in public and private support of the arts, including dance. Awareness that dance is not just entertainment but also a form of education and healing may reverse the trend.

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.

Among its many uses, dance/movement therapy aims to help people overcome trauma, often by nonverbally bringing the elements of the experience to the fore.