From “Basic” Moves to a Trauma-Informed Groove, A Critical Review of Shafir’s (2015) “Using Movement to Regulate Emotion: Neurophysiological Findings and their Applications in Psychotherapy’

As an emerging practitioner of Dance/Movement Therapy (D/MT) I look forward to any contribution articulating the value of the whole body in the psychotherapy context, as it has been ignored for so many years within the mind oriented field of psychology. This emphasis on the mind has always been a bit curious with the forefather of the discipline William James wanting a more humanistic, experience oriented approach to philosophy–yet much of his phenomenological work on embodiment and relational affect (phenomena like mystical experiences, telepathy, and suggestibility) have been overshadowed over the last century by more modernist theorists who privileged the individually bound, thinking, subject (doomed to the patriarchal Symbolic). 

Working at the same time as James though was the lesser known Wilhelm Reich whose ideas of muscular armour—how one expresses their character in body movement—came to shape future pathways in body psychotherapy including D/MT. D/MT is an approach applying the multi-modal mechanisms of dancemaking– motoric movement, rhythm, spatial awareness, proprioception/interoception, synchrony, attunement etc.– towards integrating the physical, emotional, cognitive, and social senses of self. It engages the somatic or lived body to transform feelings, bypassing Brocha’s area when necessary (the brain region responsible for linguistic processing) and using non-verbal communication to engage the nervous system in processing unresolved traumas. Tal Shafir extends this body-focused work with her article “Using Movement to Regulate Emotion: Neurophysiological Findings and their Applications in Psychotherapy''. Shafir writes assertively in the clinical language of the medical model, a lawyer turned D/MT, with a PhD in motor control from the University of Michigan’s School of Kinesiology currently working there at the Molecular and Behavioural Neuroscience Institute. Combining methodologies born from dance (LMA) with affective neuroscience (both methods I am curious to explore further in my own process), her research broadly asks how does movement work? and specifically this article asks, how can dance/movement work to regulate emotion in a psychotherapy context? 

Published by Frontiers in Psychology, Shafir (2016) suggests that in a therapy session “emotion regulation” can be achieved by using specific motor actions found by her team to be related to the ‘basic’ emotions (anger, sadness, fear, and happiness; there is no mention of surprise or disgust which are also often included in this category). There are allegedly over 35 000 named emotions according to some sources, and myriads of ways to visualise them and their associations to one another, but the ‘basic’ or otherwise named ‘discrete’ emotions come with a traceable lineage to Darwin in The Expression of Emotion in Man and Animals (1872) and is a view of emotions promoted by psychologists like Paul Eckman and Silvan Tomkins who have primarily dealt with coding/decoding emotion from facial expressions (which Shafir now extends to the whole body). These theorists suggest that emotions are innate and universally expressed in humans regardless of culture. They suggest a sort of neurological fingerprint for each discrete emotion in the brain–research that is now being challenged by other scientists arguing that interoception and environment actually modulate neurological activity and core affective responses (Barrett 2012, 2017). Proponents of the constructionist view suggest that our current, impoverished understanding of emotional experience is due to psychology's behaviourist turn, and also to a view of the mind that ignores phenomenology by characterising mental states as nothing but causes, aligning with the classical view where basic emotions are evoked by sensory input and expressed via predictable motor outputs. Shafir’s work with proprioceptive interventions towards achieving emotional goals does not fixate on causation but does explore qualitative correlations and change. I agree with many of the principles Shafir presents in theory, so my critical response pivots around the possible oversimplification of her theorising in practice because i) emotions cannot be “recognized” only appraised, ii) two trauma states may go unnoticed without mindful attention within this approach, iii) from my experience imposed movement patterns/themes are not ideal within a D/MT session and finally, iv) there is an overreliance on the mirror neuron theory (MNT) which is now coming under review in D/MT literature (DeSouza & Barnstaple 2019). 

Shafir offers that psychotherapists trying to modulate the mood of their clients ought not neglect the whole body. She writes that “theories of emotion, the mirror neuron system, and specific brain activations during motor observation and imagery, motor behaviour, its observations and imagination can affect one's emotional state” (p. 5). Her recommended interventions sound ‘basic’ as, “by guiding them to move in a certain way, the therapist helps the client to evoke, process, and regulate specific emotions (p.1)”. One specific example is that by suggesting the client move with head erect, gaze directed forward, back straightened, and chest raised and expanded, the therapist can help the client to experience and increase feelings of self-confidence and pride (p. 3). This is an alluring premise, however, to suggest that emotions like pride are universally expressed (which Eckman aimed to show by taking his research to different tribal communities) and detectable (his work was also the basis for Fox Network’s primetime crime drama Lie to Me), ignores mounting evidence as to the construction of our emotional experience and the numerous studies that have been unable to replicate Eckman’s findings (Barrett 2017). Thinking we can detect someone else's emotions can have serious implications socially and within the legal system. It seems emotions are anything but basic. With this in mind, moving towards the language of emotion appraisal instead of emotion recognition feels important when operating from a trauma-informed and culturally aware place, where kinesthetic empathy (sensing what someone else could be feeling) can be employed without harmful projections, assumptions, and interpretations about what they are actually experiencing. Simply put, cultural concepts of emotional expression and where we are when we feel the physical changes associated with emotion will inform the way we appraise them cognitively and the way we appraise them in others (Barrett 2017). In other words, there are no external universal signifiers that are failproof in identifying specific emotions, though at times it sounds like Shafir is suggesting this, in her references to “the hopeless, lethargic…. Helpless, slumped posture” of a depressed client. 

Despite desiring a shift in language from ‘basic’ emotions that can be recognized to complex states that can be appraised, I welcome Shafir’s use of LMA, a qualitative method for observing and rating movement which is one of the most widely accepted systems in use today. Shafir’s model of emotion regulation through movement does rely heavily on the therapist as a “regulator” of emotion, and does not delve deeply enough into the power dynamics within the traditional therapist/client relationship. Support for theories of emotional co-regulation have been in trend, with mainstream attention on everything from transitional objects like fidget spinners to emotional support animals, though all relational exchanges such as this including the therapeutic relationship, often ignore two major trauma states beyond fight, flight and freeze–attach and submit. As D/MT trauma therapist Amber Elizabeth Gray finds, co-regulation is always still self-regulation (Gray 2021), so psychotherapists working from a trauma-informed place must remain mindful of patterns like unhealthy attachment, transference, and submission/suppression in lieu of more integrated/holistic self-led processing. I extend then that overreliance on the therapist to manipulate proprioception to “evoke, process, and regulate specific emotions” could lead to insecure attachment and possible ego diffusion/submission states. Instead, a sensorimotor approach to D/MT cultivates interoceptive sensing and transparent learning around nervous system responses which might resolve this. In a sensorimotor approach (developed by Dr Pat Ogden) the movement already present is worked with during a session, not imposed by the therapist as Shafir is presenting (even if that means relative stillness attending to subtle movements in the body like yield, push, reach, pull patterns of the arms, hands, torso etc). Shafir’s approach stems from a more kinetic philosophy, following Laban’s concept of Space Harmony. In (an admittedly simplistic) summary, Laban’s Space Harmony is the idea that more diverse repertoires and greater ranges of movement expressed externally will create a more harmonic state internally. These movement-first approaches lean towards recreational classes, which may have therapeutic outcomes, but do not always adhere to a psychotherapeutic contract. From personal experience, though I may use a common session structure of a 5 stage arch: warm-up, release, theme, centering, and closure, I am primarily holding space to receive the clients impulse to move–where my aim is not to impose a theme, but for them to locate their moving desire, with the aim of embodying it and completing any incomplete motor plans that may have been interrupted during a major traumatic event, or dysregulated states that may have been left ‘switched on’ over the course of many adverse experiences as they become redirected and stored in the body (see Ogden & Fisher 2019, Van der Kolk 2015, Siegel 2001). We may remain seated and not outwardly “dance” at all that day, for example. This does not mean that motor activation is not happening. Research in embodied cognition tells us that even imagined activity is motor activity (Cox 2016). Shafir quotes research from Grezes and Decety (2001) who agree, saying “during motor imagery the motor system is activated similar to motor activation during motor execution ” (p. 2). If accurate, this has wonderful applications for those in any helping profession working with immobilised clients or with those in palliative care settings. Using imagination and imagined movement may help to elevate mood in lieu of actual movement and facilitate a sense of flourishing even in illness situations (I borrow the concept of flourishing in illness situations from music therapist Tia DeNora).

Another question I have about Shafir’s approach is that it may attend to proprioception without equal attention to interoception, which is a key mechanism in appraising emotion according to Barrett (2007, 2016). Shafir begins with the agreeable premise that quantitative changes in motor behaviour, i.e, increased intensity and/or duration of muscular activity produces changes in autonomic nervous system activation both elevating mood and contributing to the reduction of stress, anxiety, and depression. She goes on to state that qualitative changes such as “facial expressions, postures, and whole body movements enhance their corresponding affects” (p. 2) and she hypothesises that this mechanism is likely based on proprioceptive input to the brain regarding the state of the body.  She suggests that there are “existing associations in the brain between certain proprioceptive inputs and specific emotions'' (p. 2). I feel this in my own body, but am not sure my concepts rather than my proprioception are the primary mechanism. For example, when I participate in a GAGA class online facilitators often encourage participants to fake smiles and I admit that this muscle activation usually does shift my mood, supporting her argument. However, outward expressions do not always equate with inward experiences. A genuine smile, for example, engages the facial muscles zygomatic major and the orbicularis oculi, while a fake or Duchenne smile as they have come to be known from Eckman’s studies do not. So, interestingly this suggests something different is happening when we express due to a genuine inner feeling (Winkielman et al. 2001) versus when just mimicking someone. In a psychotherapy context, clients may want to just please or appease the therapist in a session going along with the motions so regulation of mood may appear to be achieved temporarily, but may not come with lasting change or relief, and in a worse case scenario over time lead to submission states. The subtle differences between mirroring, mimicking and imitation are due for future research within D/MT and the almost interchangeable use of these terms in the article is sometimes distracting.

On that note, Shafir turns to mirror neurons to validate her theories on motion-emotion interactions. She says while some clients may feel unsettled being mirrored, “studies have shown that most people feel more positive about someone who imitates them… and findings suggest the reason is observing mimicry triggers reward-related processing centres in the brain” (p. 3). Though many practitioners have embraced the concept of mirror neurons, Barnstaple & DeSouza (2019) find that attributing higher-order processes such as emotional “understanding” to a minority of specific cells in an area of the cortex is misguided. They write that mirroring is a complex, humanistic practice that can be challenging to empirically define, and the technique of ‘mirroring’ is often conflated with the mechanisms of mirror neurons. Mirroring in D/MT is both imitative and sometimes non-goal directed, which suggests that if we invoke the activation of individually defined and specially-tuned neurons as the basis for this technique which were identified as goal-oriented, they would necessarily have to exclude mirror neurons. According to the original research, “Activity in these cells is not exhibited in cases of pantomime (lacking an object to grasp) nor in the observation of objects alone (lacking hand movement)” (Rizzolatti et al 1996). 

To conclude, despite my hesitations around the oversimplification of her approach in practice, and the need for more detailed research on ‘mirroring’ in D/MT, an important contribution Shafir does make is suggesting that kinesthetic empathy is a learnable, improvable skill (and similar to what Barrett is calling emotional intelligence). It has also been found that arts experience modulates the ability to appraise expressivity (whether someone is faking emotional expression in movement or not), which may also signal that dance and dancemaking function well in service of building emotional intelligence. This is interesting for future research within dance studies more broadly. Are dancers better at appraising genuine emotional expression as some researchers suggest? (Christensen et al 2020) If so, more dancers might consider a career in the helping professions and discover applications for dance that reach outside the domains of performance. In an increasingly disconnected and dissociated society, how might dancers use their embodied skills and sedimented knowledge(s) to nurture physical health, mental wellness and social connection?

Works Cited 

Barrett, Lisa Feldman. How Emotions Are Made: The New Science of the Mind and Brain. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2016. 

Barrett, Lisa Feldman, et al. “The Experience of Emotion.” Annual Review of Psychology, vol. 58, Jan. 2007, pp. 373–403, doi:10.1146/annurev.psych.58.110405.085709.

Christensen JF, Azevedo RT, Tsakiris M. “Emotion matters: Different psychophysiological responses to expressive and non-expressive full-body movements”. Acta Psychol (Amst). 2021 Jan;212:103215. doi: 10.1016/j.actpsy.2020.103215. Epub 2020 Dec 11. PMID: 33316458.

Cox, Arnie. Music and Embodied Cognition: Listening, Moving, Feeling, and Thinking. Indiana     University Press, 2017. 

DeSouza, Joseph & Barnstaple, Rebecca. (2019). Looking in the mirror: Limits of Mirror Neuron Theory (MNT) and applications for Dance/Movement Therapy (DMT). 10.13140/RG.2.2.10012.54409. 

Hoyt, Lauren. “About.” American Dance Therapy Association, https://www.adta.org/about. 

Rizzolatti, Giacomo et al. “Premotor Cortex and the Recognition of Motor Actions.” Brain research. Cognitive brain research 3.2 (1996): 131–141. Web.

Shafir, T. (2016). Using Movement to Regulate Emotion: Neurophysiological Findings and Their Application in Psychotherapy. [Perspective]. Frontiers in Psychology, 7(1451). doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2016.01451

Siegel, Daniel J. The Developing Mind: How Relationships and the Brain Interact to Shape Who We Are. Guilford Press, 2001. 

Winkielman P. et al. (2001) “Mind at ease puts a smile on the face: Psychophysiological evidence that processing facilitation elicits positive affect”. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, v.81 (6) , p.989.