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Authentic Movement and the evolution of Soul’s Body® Work

Article in Journal of Dance & Somatic Practices · October 2015

DOI: 10.1386/jdsp.7.2.339_1

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 JDSP 7 (2) pp. 339–357 Intellect Limited 2015

Journal of Dance & Somatic Practices

Volume 7 Number 2
© 2015 Intellect Ltd Article. English language. doi: 10.1386/jdsp.7.2.339_1

Tina Stromsted
Independent Practitioner

Authentic Movement
and the evolution of Soul’s
Body® Work

Abstract Keywords
As our growing community reflects on the history, lineages, and psychological, spir- Authentic Movement
itual, and artistic streams that nourish the practice of Authentic Movement, this BodySoul Rhythms®
article illuminates elements from my work with Joan Chodorow, Janet Adler, and witnessing
the BodySoul Rhythms® approach developed by Jungian Analyst Marion Woodman, empathic attunement
dancer Mary Hamilton, and voice and mask teacher Ann Skinner, specifically their Embodied Conscious
‘Dance of Three’. Applications to transference relationships in psychotherapy, the Feminine
importance of the witness, and Woodman’s focus on the healing power of imagery Embodied Alchemy
and the growth of embodied feminine consciousness are also discussed. The seeds of
one’s life path can often be found in early childhood; here we see a return to the vital
soul spark I discovered while dancing in the fields, how it flourished in Authentic
Movement, and how it continues to unfold.

Dancing in the fields

My mother tells me that I danced in her belly. As a child, I remember dancing
with joy and abandon to music in the large room in the back of our house; to
the rhythmic hum of the winter humidifier in the living room; with the trees
in the woods near the fishpond; underwater in the ocean and in the swim-
ming pool; and in the wind that blew through the rows of corn and alfalfa

339
Tina Stromsted

Figure 1: Photo by Bev Hall.

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 Authentic Movement and the evolution of Soul’s Body® Work

before harvest. Though the adults tolerated these spontaneous expressions,

their messages persisted: ‘Stop fidgeting’, they’d say. ‘Can’t you just stand
still, like a nice girl?’ (Stromsted 1998: 148).
It was during this time that my parents divorced. Tension surged through
the house, and my world split. A year later, my father married a rational disci-
plinarian who struggled with feelings; she was a pendulum swing apart from
my reactive, childlike mother. Our household shivered with the change; we all
tried to adjust. The dinner table became a stage for our divided world. Above
the table, we engaged in intellectual conversations about books, local events
and national politics. I was especially curious about what was going on under
the table, where hands fidgeted, wringing napkins and soothing knee caps,
while feet pawed unspoken hieroglyphs along the floorboards.
After clearing the table, I’d head across the street into the fields. Fresh
air bathed my face; swallows, chickadees, ravens and meadowlarks sang their
news as chipmunks and squirrels scurried along the dark ground and up the
solid, wide oaks. Tall, slim birch trees stood around the edges of the small fish
pond, extending their arms to their shadow partners reflected in the water. I’d
find the clearing at the centre of the field and begin to spin and turn, holding
the horizon line steady with my eyes as my body whirled. Blue sky, clouds,
green leafy corn stalks, sweet alfalfa and the ground under my feet brought
freedom, as family tension drained from my body into the soft, receptive
earth.
When I danced in the fields, I could smell the moistness of the soil and feel
the earth’s heartbeat. I could sense the different shapes of intelligence that
nature expresses, and how my body is a part of that larger body. A ‘shimmer’
ran through me; a life force that pulsed with spirit. Time stood still, and there
was a sense of oneness with the natural world all around and within me. In
the natural way of childhood, I had stumbled on the whirling dance practiced
by the early Sufis. Feeling free and whole, my soul restored, I’d return to the
house for more chores and homework. Nature became my primary witness.
When winter came and the roots of all things hibernated underground,
I’d head to the back room of the house to sing and sway to tunes from my
favourite records. Inevitably, my two younger sisters appeared at the door,
their noses and palms pressed against the panes of glass. Seeing them gave
me joy; I’d wave them in, inviting them to join me in the dance. Looking back,
I realize that these were my first dance therapy groups – a place to discover
and express my feelings, and to find a deeper connection to myself, my soul,
and one another in the splintering household.
Dance was medicine; nature was my deepest container and first witness.
I’d venture there to heal my spirit, feel at one with everything, and experience
myself as connected, enriched and renewed. Then I’d take that back into my
little life as a child. Later, when I was introduced to Authentic Movement, I
learned that I could have a human witness. How wonderful is that? To carry
the knowing of nature into the realm of human relationship deepens connec-
tions with the self, with the other, and with the generative life force; this is the
foundation of healing and growth.
Years later, while studying and performing dance and theatre, I realized
that my heart was not in ‘performing’. What really interested me was transfor-
mation, and how the body/psyche/spirit was involved in that. I sought the feel-
ing of connection I’d experienced in the fields. While guiding others’ dances
in my 20s, I began to focus not so much on the exactness of the students’
technique, but on the ‘shimmer’ that came and went in their soul expression,

341
Tina Stromsted

the movement of light in the body. As I sought ways to support them – letting
their vitality come through in the dance, and reflecting those moments back
to them at the end of class – many began to tell me their life stories. I real-
ized that I wanted to better hold and understand their experiences. I began
leading groups in dance, poetry and nature at McClean Hospital in Belmont,
Massachusetts; I trained in crisis intervention, worked the suicide hotline and
provided drop-in counseling at Project Place in Boston in the mid-1970s.
These were among the seeds of my growing interest in the embodied soul.

Early influences
Dance had taught me to experience myself and others through movement,
yet I needed to embrace stillness as well. I practiced zazen meditation in the
Soto Zen Buddhist tradition, finding an inner quiet that brought nourishment
and helped me identify unconscious sources of movement in my body. Yoga
brought more fluidity, and as my investigations continued, I integrated work
with the psyche through training in Bioenergetics, Psychodrama and many
other forms of somatic work. Quiet inner focus was enriched through weekly
groups with Magda Proskauer, a wise crone and teacher of breathwork, whose
work deepened my experience with breath through sensing, imagery, move-
ment and emotion.
As my study of somatics evolved, clinical and therapeutic methods were
important influences as well. In the 1970s and 1980s, I engaged in inten-
sive studies with Myron Sharaf, a student and biographer of Wilhelm Reich,
whose work inspired generations of somatic psychotherapies; and with Stanley
Keleman, founder of the Formative Psychology approach and a leader in the
body psychotherapy movement. John Conger and Charles Harris, psycholo-
gists and Bioenergetics/Reichain analysts, integrated embodied interventions
with Jung’s depth psychology and James Masterson’s developmental work,
respectively. Jungian analyst Arnold Mindell, innovator of Process-Oriented
Psychology, drew from his background in quantum physics, shamanism and
body-sensitive work, opening clients to the wisdom of the psyche-soma
connection as expressed through unconscious body cues in the present
moment. Dick Price, co-founder of the Esalen Institute, introduced me to
Gestalt therapy, which complemented the interactive role-plays I’d studied at
the Psychodrama Institute of Boston. Jungian analytic training and personal
analysis profoundly deepened my relationship with the embodied psyche.
Since then, years of presentations and study with Allan Schore have helped
me to engage the insights of interpersonal neurobiology. These have been
further enriched by collaborations with Jungian analyst, Donald Kalsched,
whose approach integrates the developmental and archetypal dimensions of
working with early developmental trauma.
Perhaps the most powerful complement to my early movement work was
my concurrent involvement with the arts: dance, music, theatre and storytell-
ing. Dance therapist Tamara Greenberg expanded Keleman’s approach through
natural movement, explorations that deepened my graduate training in Dance
Therapy, clinical psychology and family systems theory. Trudi Schoop, a wise
and gifted mime and dancer from Switzerland and one of the grandmothers of
Dance/Movement therapy, inspired me with movement explorations that were
both uniquely personal and universal; and dance/movement therapist Norma
Canner brought her creative gifts in working with children and adults through
dance, music and theatre. My early interest in myths, fairytales and comparative

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 Authentic Movement and the evolution of Soul’s Body® Work

religion was revitalized by studies with mythologist Joseph Campbell, who

collaborated with Stanley Keleman in co-leading years of experiential seminars
on the embodied hero’s journey (Keleman 1999). Improvisation studies with
the Blake Street Hawkeyes, an innovative theatre troupe in Berkeley, engaged
creative spontaneity that enriched my interpersonal work. Vocal improvisation
studies and collaborative co-teaching with Jazz singer Rhiannon brought the
spirit of movement and song together. These, and other explorations, furthered
my engagement with the body–psyche–spirit connection.

Discovering Authentic Movement

If we can reconcile ourselves to the mysterious truth that the spirit is the
life of the body seen from within, and the body the outward manifes-
tation of the life of the spirit – the two being really one – then we can
understand why the striving to transcend the present level of conscious-
ness through acceptance of the unconscious must give the body its due.
(Jung 1928: par. 195)

In 1983, Joan Chodorow introduced me to Authentic Movement. Here, I found

the same kind of deep knowing I’d experienced in the fields, through a practice
that allowed me to explore inner and outer life along the spectrum from stillness
to movement, this time within the context of compassionate, attuned relationship.
A long-time student of pioneer dance/movement therapists Mary Whitehouse
and Trudi Schoop, Joan was a senior dance therapist, scholar and Jungian analyst,
and a leader in integrating the body in the Jungian world. This practice felt like
home to me, and in 1985 I embarked on nine years of intensive training with
Janet Adler, a senior dance therapist with a background in child development,
whose doctoral studies explored the relationship between Authentic Movement
and mystical practice. Later, I assisted Janet with workshops in California and in
Italy, and began teaching Authentic Movement. Italy has become a soul home
where for 26 years I’ve returned to facilitate international groups, often assisted
by Margareta Neuberger, who has a background in Authentic Movement, music,
theology and hospice work. I also integrate Authentic Movement in my Jungian
analytic and dance therapy/somatics practice in San Francisco, and in universities
and healing centres in other parts of the world.
Though Jung developed active imagination in 1916 (1916: 67–91; Chodorow
1997), and Tina Keller (1982; Swan 2011) and other early analysts practiced it,
‘movement as active imagination remained largely undeveloped until the 1950s,
when it was taken up by Mary Whitehouse’ (Chodorow 2007: 33, emphasis
added). Since then, Authentic Movement (as it has come to be called) is prac-
ticed by increasing numbers of people, including therapists, artists, spiritual
and healing practitioners, clients, students, parents, educators and social activ-
ists. In my view, this is the result of a growing need to embrace the wisdom of
the body and its essential role in the process of development, integrative heal-
ing, and transformation. The ‘talking cure’ is not enough, particularly where
repressed, preverbal, and/or dissociated material and traumatized affects are
concerned. These take up residence in the body, until circumstances are safe
enough to allow them to be felt, mirrored, reflected on and healed.
Though working in embodied ways has been an intrinsic part of the fields
of Dance/Movement, Somatic and Creative Arts psychotherapies for many
decades, recent developments in interpersonal neurobiology, attachment
theory, trauma work and other related disciplines have much to contribute

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Tina Stromsted

in establishing the essential role of embodied, relational processes in healing

and development (see the work of Kalsched 2010, 2013; Levine 1997; Ogden
et al. 2005, Porges 2011; Schore 2009, 2012, 2014; Sieff 2010, 2015; van der
Kolk 2014; Wilkinson 2010). As Allan Schore, a psychoanalyst and neuro-
science researcher, states:

Change does not happen when a patient is consciously reflecting on an

emotion; it happens when a patient is in the emotion and when a reso-
nating and actively involved therapist shows the patient a different way
to be with what he is feeling. There is no room for that to happen with
cognitive therapy.
(Schore and Sieff 2015: 134, original emphasis)

The attuned, containing presence of the witness/therapist in Authentic

Movement allows the mover/client safe access to early, primary-process-oriented
parts of the self. Engaging this material establishes new neuropathways in the
brain, and supports further integration and embodiment.
For me, the practice of following the moving imagination in the body was
a natural outgrowth of the work of Mary Starks Whitehouse, the originator of
Authentic Movement. A modern dancer and a pioneer of dance/movement
therapy, Mary studied with German modern dancer Mary Wigman, and
myth-inspired dancer and choreographer Martha Graham. This work was
powerfully enriched by her studies at the C.G. Jung Institute in Zurich. In
1992, dance therapist and somatics practitioner Neala Haze and I established
the Authentic Movement Institute (AMI) in Berkeley, California, in order
to further investigate this unity of psyche and body (1992–2004). We were
joined by founding faculty members Joan Chodorow and Janet Adler. Joan’s
husband, Jungian analyst Louis Stewart, also lent his expertise in active imag-
ination, play therapy, and embodied affect theory, a model he developed with
Joan and his brother Charles Stewart, a pediatrician and child psychiatrist. All
contributed their areas of expertise to the teaching and curriculum develop-
ment (Haze and Stromsted 2002; Stromsted and Haze 2007).

Figure 2: Joan Chodorow, Jacob’s Pillow Retreat, 1982. Photo copyright Pauline
Van Pelt, from Joan Chodorow’s collection.

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 Authentic Movement and the evolution of Soul’s Body® Work

Figure 3: Janet Adler, ADTA conference. Photo courtesy of Janet Adler.

Authentic Movement and Woodman’s BodySoul Rhythms®

When there has been a radical split, a somatic container must be
prepared to receive the psychic labor. There must be a greeting of the
spirit, a chalice to receive the wine.
(Woodman 1982: 69)

I met Marion Woodman in the late 1980s. A Jungian analyst, writer and
international speaker, her work advances the investigation and develop-
ment of embodied feminine consciousness. Marion is a well-known author
on psyche and soma, who facilitated decades of intensive workshops and
Leadership Training programmes integrating body, psyche, spirit and crea-
tive expression.
As an introverted intuitive feeling type, images and dreams are a vital
part of my inner navigational system. Having practiced and taught Authentic
Movement for many years, I wanted to take a further step to integrate the
imaginal elements of the psyche, and to continue to strengthen my authen-
tic voice and feminine standpoint. Says Marion Woodman, ‘Bodywork is soul
work. Imagination is the bridge between body and soul’ (Woodman and
Mellick 2000: 42). With Janet Adler I had investigated presymbolic dimen-
sions of the practice: experience beneath words (Adler in Haze and Stromsted
1994/1999: 112). Janet encouraged us to drop our narratives; movement explo-
rations stripped us back to our most unvarnished, visceral selves, inviting pre-
verbal experiences, new messy experiments and moments of grace when the
vibrance of the sacred came through (Adler [1987] 1999, 2002). Working with
Joan Chodorow enhanced my understanding of C. G. Jung’s map of the soul,
the active imagination process, developmental psychology, and the transfor-
mational capacities of the affects. We also shared deep values of inclusiveness
and social justice, dedicated to the advancement of tolerance and healing from
racial and ethnic hatred. Diverse perspectives are essential to help make the
world a better place (Chodorow 1991, 1997). Marion Woodman’s work helped
me continue to develop a symbolic attitude; working with metaphor was an
important ingredient. Jungian analyst and neuroscience researcher Margaret

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Tina Stromsted

Wilkinson explains that metaphor ‘lights up more centres of brain activity than
any other form of human communication’, supporting enhanced integration
between the right and left brain (Wilkinson 2013: 2). This became an impor-
tant ingredient in my studies with Marion in the 1980s, and in the BodySoul
Rhythms® work she later developed with Mary Hamilton and Ann Skinner,
culminating in my teaching BodySoul work for the past two decades.
Marion’s work with the feminine psyche also supports the development of
a more differentiated ‘masculine’ (animus) in women, further enriched through
Jung’s depth-psychology framework (Woodman 1980, 1982, 1985, 1990, 1993;
Woodman et al. 1992; Woodman and Dickson 1996; Woodman in Ryley 1998;
Kullander 2006). Like Marion, I was a father’s daughter who had had trou-
ble relating to and modelling my mother(s). Marion spoke passionately of
the phases of a woman’s life – from uninitiated Maiden, to Mother, to Adult
Woman (‘Virgin unto herself’), to Crone – and BodySoul Rhythms® work put
all of these elements together in a developmental sequence (Woodman 1995).
Integrating dance, breath, voice work, dreams, masks, ritual, theatre, music,
humour and more, Marion’s work offered a contained, depth-oriented femi-
nine initiation journey. Her teamwork with Mary and Ann also provided a
model for collaboration among women. This brought me back to the feelings
of camaraderie and joy I had experienced in my early dances with my sisters,
and brought hope for empowering the feminine in a patriarchal culture driven
by greed, power and competition.
Marion’s discovery of Authentic Movement came about by following the
active imagination process in her body to heal a kidney disorder that had
resulted from her struggles with anorexia. Renewed, and with new insights
about the body–psyche–spirit connection, she resumed her teaching with
high-school students, collaborating with dancer Mary Hamilton. Then, in
1982, at Joan Chodorow’s invitation, Marion participated in an Authentic
Movement retreat with Joan, Janet Adler, Sharon Chaiklin, Judith Bunney,
Penny Bernstein and other well-known dance therapists at Jacob’s Pillow in
Becket, Massachusetts – a mecca for dancers and home to American’s longest-
running summer dance festival. Marion’s experience there affirmed her sense

Figure 4: Marion Woodman, Ann Skinner and Mary Hamilton; Grand Bend,
Ontario, Canada. Photo by Ross Woodman.

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 Authentic Movement and the evolution of Soul’s Body® Work

Figure 5: Marion Woodman and Patricia Littlewood, Jacob’s Pillow Retreat, 1982.
Photo copyright Pauline Van Pelt, from Joan Chodorow’s collection.

of the potency of having a personal ‘witness’ while moving in response to an

inner prompting, elements fundamental to Authentic Movement practice.
Returning to her teaching, through careful attending, she noticed that,
when her attention wavered during rehearsals,

[S]omething went wrong on the floor. The energy became lax, muffled,
attenuated, an edge of fear crept in, the courageous spontaneity was
lost. I suddenly understood that perceiver and perceived were one: my
perception of a block in a body influenced the energy in the perceived
block without one word spoken. Similarly, my lack of perception (while
I thought about softening the spotlight) resulted in unconscious whorls
on the stage.
(Woodman in Stromsted 2005: 12–13)

Marion’s insights about the effects of the witness on the group mirrored a
crucial part of my own experience. After reading her books, I was fortunate
enough to take her workshop at the Jung Institute in San Francisco in 1989;
thus began decades of collaborative work together.

The Dance of Three

One of the first exercises I learned from Marion was the ‘Dance of Three’.
Developed by Mary Hamilton during her work as a teacher of Modern Dance
at the University of Western Ontario (2009: 94), it was further refined in
her teamwork with Marion and Ann. In the exercise, there is a dancer and
two witnesses, one a ‘mirror’ and the other a ‘container’. As in Authentic
Movement practice, the dancer/mover follows inner promptings that guide
her movement, generally with eyes closed. The ‘mirroring witness’ moves in
synchrony with the mover, reflecting the quality of her gestures and sounds
without leading or intruding, and supporting the mover in feeling seen and

347
Tina Stromsted

heard as she deepens her authentic, embodied expression. The ‘container’

holds space for both the mover and the mirror, individually and together,
with a sense of unconditional love and acceptance. She also provides bounda-
ries that keep the dyad safely contained, extending her arms to protect them
from bumping into other triads while moving through the space. At the end
of each round, the mover shares her experience verbally and receives feedback
from her witnesses, before rotating roles. Unlike Authentic Movement prac-
tice, where movers are guided by their own inner promptings, in the Dance
of Three, each dancer’s exploration is also supported by a selection of piano
music from Chopin’s Nocturnes, which are rich with emotional nuance.
As with Authentic Movement, at the end of the exercise participants often
draw, write, or work with clay, bringing further visibility and form to the raw
material that is emerging. This often consists of repressed or underdeveloped
feelings and disruptive experiences from childhood that were not witnessed,
metabolized or repaired, but were instead stored in the body. Often the body
has been housing the seeds of new life, contained in the non-verbal emotional
centres of the brain, waiting to become available to language and conscious-
ness. Reflecting on this process, body-psychotherapist Pat Ogden states,

Interactive psychobiological regulation … provides the relational context

under which the client can safely contact, describe and eventually regu-
late inner experience … It is the patient’s experience of empowering
action in the context of safety provided by a background of the empathic
clinician’s psychobiologically attuned interactive affect regulation that
helps effect … change.
(Ogden et al. 2005: 22)

While teaching the Dance of Three, I found that it was valuable to introduce
elements from Authentic Movement practice, particularly in terms of the
‘percept language’ I’d learned from Janet Adler (adapted from her own studies
with psychologist John Weir; Haze and Stromsted 1994/1999: 114). Using ‘I’
statements to own one’s experience, this non-judgemental, non-interpretive
way of speaking provides additional clarity, safety and depth for movers and
witnesses alike. Prior to this, I’d often heard witnesses, with the best of inten-
tions, unconsciously using evaluative language like: ‘You looked a little stiff’,
‘I wish you’d kept going with that’, or even, ‘You were absolutely beautiful!’.
This last sounds affirming at first, but perhaps the mover wasn’t feeling beauti-
ful at that time, and was trying to connect with something deeper, but then
gets the take-away message that she needs to be beautiful for her witnesses.
Witnesses who were psychotherapists often made interpretations, as they’d
been trained to do in verbal psychotherapy, thinking it was helpful to the
mover. However, in some of these instances, the mover experienced a sense
of being hurt, judged or simply unseen following her movement, at a time
when she was deeply vulnerable.
I also introduced what I call ‘Re-call’, in which a witness simply reflects
back some of the words she’s heard her mover say, as well as how her part-
ner’s words/experiences have touched her (with respect to the witness’ sensa-
tions, feelings and/or images). These elements are fundamental to Authentic
Movement languaging practice. For example, if a mover says (speaking in the
present tense about her movement experience), ‘After standing for some time,
I surrender to the floor and my hair falls over my face like a waterfall’, the
witness’s ‘Re-call’ might be something like this: ‘Standing, surrender, floor,

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 Authentic Movement and the evolution of Soul’s Body® Work

waterfall: As I hear you speak, I feel a deepening in my breath, a release in my

spine and a softening sensation in my face’.
I worked with witnesses to help them develop more nuanced observa-
tional skills: tracking and describing the gestures, postures, shapes, breath-
ing patterns, quality of presence, and use of space that they observed in their
movers, and in their own bodies. I emphasized the importance of ‘holding the
container’, versus talking to other witnesses, watching other movers, or losing
awareness of inner experience (via judgements, projections or the stirring of
one’s own emotions). I also underscored an awareness of the ‘collective body’
(Jung 1927, par. 342; Adler [1987] 1994): in Authentic Movement practice,
witnesses generally sit and/or stand in a circle, creating a visible ‘container’
for the movers, sometimes ‘sprouting’ their arms while making eye contact
with other witnesses to affirm the integrity of the witness circle surrounding
the movers. Exploring possible underlying stories and motifs in the group’s
unconscious was a practice introduced by Adler ([1987] 1994), and is called
‘reading the floor’ in the language of BodySoul Rhythms®.
In both Authentic Movement and BodySoul Rhythms®, the presence of a
containing, compassionate witness contributes to healing, as the client opens
to his or her senses, to natural movement, and to the unfinished business
and unlived potentials within. What a gift to be safely held, contained and
respected during that ‘cooking’ process! The witness/therapist, in turn, is often
touched by the places her mover ventures to go; in this way, both people can
open to their deeper natures and to the divine, the third space that they share
(Stromsted 2009).

Figure 6: Meg Wilbur, Dorothy Anderson and Tina Stromsted; Cambria,

California 2014. Photo courtesy of Mark Winkler.

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Tina Stromsted

Over the years, I learned to vary the music Marion had chosen for the Dance
of Three, which I found to be particularly important while teaching people
from diverse cultural backgrounds. In South Africa, Korea, Spain, Germany,
Austria, Italy, Ireland, England and here in the United States, intermingling
selections of music from a variety of cultures invited elements from the ‘cultural
unconscious’ (Henderson 1984) and broadened the scope of our work.
As BodySoul work continued to develop and more women requested
further training, I was invited to facilitate Leadership Training programmes
with Marion, Mary and Ann, along with my colleagues Meg Wilbur (a Jungian
analyst, voice teacher and playwright), and Dorothy Anderson (an artist and
communications specialist). Our team supported the evolution of the work
by leading ‘Wellsprings of Feminine Renewal’ intensives, adapting myths
and fairytales into plays that illuminated the feminine individuation journey,
integrated with other BSR elements. We currently teach an intensive course
on ‘Jung, Woodman and the Embodied Psyche’ in the Depth Psychology/
Somatics Doctoral Program at Pacifica Graduate Institute in Santa Barbara.
Though Marion has since retired from active teaching, BodySoul Work contin-
ues to flourish, as more recently formed teams offer workshops sponsored by
the Marion Woodman Foundation and through BodySoul Europe.

Applications of Authentic Movement

Authentic movement bridges clinical, artistic and spiritual practice. Individual
movers and witnesses also bring many facets of themselves: mind and body,
personal history, persona, gender, family of origin, culture and race. To better
understand and hold this wide diversity of human experience, the Authentic
Movement Institute (AMI) drew upon Joseph Henderson’s Jungian theory of
the cultural unconscious (1984). Henderson describes five cultural attitudes
that shape an individual’s way of seeing and being in the world: the social,
the religious, the aesthetic (artistic), the philosophic and the psychological. At
AMI, the artistic imagination was engaged through improvisation, choreogra-
phy, the visual arts and visualization. We explored philosophy through theory,
research, ethics and language. The social attitude was engaged through indi-
vidual and group interactions, and found applications in clinical and multidis-
ciplinary work. We observed the religious through ritual and sacred dance. The
psychological self-reflective function was embodied through the exploration
of transference/countertransference dynamics, regression, remembering and
dreams (Haze and Stromsted 2002: 55; Stromsted and Haze 2007: 60). This
was essential, as the psychological attitude has the capacity, as Henderson
says, ‘to enrich and profitably modify’ the other attitudes by bringing aware-
ness to them (1984: 14).
The AMI also integrated the conceptual contributions of Wilhelm Reich
and Trudi Schoop. Reich, an Austrian psychoanalyst whose groundbreaking
work shaped the development of body-oriented psychotherapy, bioener-
getics analysis, gestalt therapy and subsequent somatic approaches, found
that each character type had a corresponding physical attitude, expressed
in the body in terms of muscular rigidity or ‘armoring’ (1980). Schoop
(Schoop and Mitchell 1974), an early dance therapy pioneer, found a way
through dance and theatre to help people complete and release actions
of the body that had been frozen or interrupted through trauma (Haze
and Stromsted, 2002: 56; Stromsted and Haze 2007: 61–62). Their early
formulations, along with those of French psychologist Pierre Janet, depth

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 Authentic Movement and the evolution of Soul’s Body® Work

psychologist C. G. Jung, and somatics pioneers like Stanley Keleman,

were among the precursors of today’s trauma work, such as the Somatic
Experiencing work of Peter Levine and others (see Herman 1997; Levine
1997, 2010; Ogden et al. 2005; Ogden and Fisher 2015).
At the Institute, we invited dance/therapy and somatics colleagues to
teach Authentic Movement with specific areas of application: for more chal-
lenged populations; working with women recovering from breast cancer; and
integrating AM with Process-Oriented Psychology. It was a rich, exciting
and heartwarming experience, producing graduates from a variety of profes-
sions and countries, many of whom are now teaching in different parts of the
world, each steeped in his or her practice of the major principles of Authentic
Movement.
Since then, I have been training clinicians, health practitioners, spir-
itual teachers, educators and artists who wish to engage the body’s wisdom
in healing, growth and creative processes. Though I continue to reso-
nate deeply with the transpersonal/mystical dimension of the practice, I
also find myself drawn to learning more about the transformative proc-
ess through relational elements, attachment theory, neuroscience and
the sacred dimensions of all life, including social and planetary concerns
(Stromsted 2009, 2014; Stromsted and Sieff 2015), all of which feel deeply
integral to and nourished by Authentic Movement practice.
Authentic Movement is an integral part of my own analytic and supervi-
sion practice, where it enriches empathy, helps me attend to symptoms in the
body, and allows us to work more deeply with dream material. I work with
Jungian Candidates and interns at the Jung Institute, and analyst colleagues
internationally, collaborating with Joan Chodorow and other Jungian analysts
and dance therapy colleagues in congresses for the International Association
of Analytical Psychology. There, we invite analysts and candidates from many
cultures to engage in embodied explorations that can enrich their verbal work,
and support them in refining their observational skills, non-judgemental/non-
interpretive languaging, and sensitivity to their own bodies as the somatic
foundation of empathy and compassion in the analytic container/process.
At my Soul’s Body® Center, I continue to build on AM, BSR and other crea-
tive, embodied healing methods. I focus on attending to natural movement;
supporting the development of a conscious, embodied container; engaging the
sacred feminine and masculine, working with metaphor and dream images in
the body; investigating the somatic foundations of the transmission process of
multigenerational family patterns; exploring body symptoms; and incorporat-
ing the use of non-judgemental/non-interpretive language. I also offer work-
shops and an ongoing monthly group in Dreamdancing® (Stromsted 1984,
1998, 2010), which engages the energies, feelings and action of the dream,
helping to further embody qualities that can guide and enhance one’s life.
From the time I could read, myths, fairytales and dreams informed my
understanding of life’s challenges, depicting the natural cycles of death and
rebirth that illuminated the path. Jung called this ‘individuation’; the jour-
ney toward wholeness. The practice of Dreamdancing® draws upon this rich
resource, amplifying the feelings and actions of dreams with gestures, which
can then be strung together like beads on a necklace, in a dance that speaks
directly from the nonverbal, emotional midbrain where the images are formed
(Stromsted 1984, 2010; Wilkinson 2010). Clients can further deepen a relation-
ship with the images by stepping into a dream character, and then continuing
the dream through an active imagination process, following the movement

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Tina Stromsted

impulses, feelings and images that emerge. Community is also nourished by

Dreamdancing®: when practiced in group settings, themes and stories often
emerge from the ‘collective body’ (Jung 1927, par. 342; Adler [1987] 1994),
seeking insight and integration into daily life.
More personally, I continue to deepen my practice at home and in ongo-
ing Active Imagination seminars with Joan Chodorow (1992-present) here
in Northern California. An intimate group of dance therapists gathers each
month to integrate readings from Jungian and post-Jungian theory, develop-
mental psychology, affect theory, dance, dance/movement therapy, neuro-
science, trauma work and other elements. Taking turns presenting personal,
theoretical and case material, we then move from the sofas into the dance
studio, where we integrate and deepen our explorations through Authentic
Movement, drawing, writing, sandplay, music and more. My Authentic
Movement peer group, now in its 31st year, offers an ever-deepening and
creative ground as our relationships to self, to the deeper ‘Self’, to one another,
and to the natural world continue to grow.

Conclusion
The aim of psychoanalysis – still unfulfilled, and still only half-conscious –
is to return our souls to our bodies, to return ourselves to ourselves, and
thus to overcome the human state of self-alienation.
(Brown 1959)

Dissociation from unbearably traumatic experience ‘separates sensation, affect,

and image so that an impossible meaning is obliterated’ (Kalsched 2010: 284).
Among the many gifts of Authentic Movement and BodySoul Rhythms® prac-
tice is re-membering: putting the members back together (Stromsted 1994–
1995). This deeply embodied, integrative work helps restore links between
body experience and the brain that became estranged through trauma, neglect
or lack of use. As interpersonal neurobiology tells us (Schore 2012, 2014), new
nerve pathways form in the presence of a compassionate witness. The hold-
ing environment provided by the witness supports the mover’s exploration of
a wider range of affect tolerance, and a capacity for self-witnessing and self
regulation (Porges 2011; Schore in Seiff 2015; Siegel 1999). As Allan Schore
puts it, ‘Eventually, the face of an attuned mother [witness] will be written into
her infant’s [mover’s] right orbitofrontal cortex. This then acts as an emotion-
ally containing and comforting neurobiological guidance system when she is
not physically present’ (Schore in Seiff 2015: 117).
Over the years, I have come to see Authentic Movement as a ‘safe enough’
container, a kind of uterus from which the client/mover may be reborn, in
the presence of an outer witness or ‘good enough’ mother figure, from
the ‘symbolic mother’ of his or her own unconscious. This in turn roots him
or her in the instinctual ground of all of nature, the Great Mother. My prac-
tice has made it clear to me that containment – psychic, physical, emotional
and spiritual – is necessary in order for deep transformation to unfold. In
this ‘cocoon’, the melting of old defences, including the body-stiffening that
reflected them and held them in place, can begin to soften. At the deepest
level, a dismemberment of the individual’s previous sense of self can occur –
through alchemical processes of solutio and coagulatio – resulting in the death
of an old dispensation and the reintegration of a sense of self within the
context of human relatedness (Stromsted 2014: 50).

352
 Authentic Movement and the evolution of Soul’s Body® Work

Alchemy – a forerunner of modern chemistry and medicine – is a model

of Authentic Movement in that it has the capacity to transform the unwanted,
uncomfortable material of everyday life into something meaningful, thus
helping us find the ‘gold’ in the shadow. Just as the early alchemists sought
balance, harmony and transformation – the gold in matter, the eternal in
the temporal – Authentic Movement practice offers a pathway to discover-
ing the inherent healing power of the Self as it seeks expression through
the cellular intelligence of the body. Just as Authentic Movement practice
can help people inhabit themselves and bring them back into contact with
their instinctual wisdom, alchemy is a practice that balances the material/
embodied dimension with the spiritual dimension: its practitioners under-
went profound development, accessing mystical states that enlarged their
world-view while maintaining their connection with the foundations of
natural life.
In fact, as distinguished from the aims of the Christian Church of their
day, which sought to diminish the powers of nature and made bodily
instincts sinful, the alchemists’ aim was to study nature and to learn from its
profoundly transformative capacities. Their ancient map of the transforma-
tive process has further enriched my understanding of Authentic Movement,
BodySoul Rhythms® and other Somatic and creative arts practices, informing
the ‘Embodied Alchemy’ explorations I facilitate with analysts, therapists and
graduate students.
A more evolved awareness of self makes possible a more sensitive and
nuanced relationship with one’s environment – interpersonally, politically and
ecologically. The body plays a central role in this; for with a more vital, felt
sense of one’s own embodied experience, one cannot help but resonate with
the life force that animates all living beings. Instead of fleeing to spirit when
feelings in the body are too uncomfortable to bear – thus passing them from
generation to generation through unconscious trauma patterns – one can find
a spiritual home in the body (Stromsted 2014). ‘Shimmer’ extends, and the
seeds from my dances in the fields continue to grow.

Figure 7: Tina Stromsted, Tuscany, Italy Studio. Photo courtesy of Margareta

Neuberger.

353
Tina Stromsted

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Suggested citation
Stromsted, T. (2015), ‘Authentic Movement and the evolution of Soul’s Body®
Work’, Journal of Dance & Somatic Practices, 7: 2, pp. 339–357, doi: 10.1386/
jdsp.7.2.339_1

Contributor details
Tina Stromsted (Ph.D., LMFT, LPCC, BC-DMT) is a Jungian Psychoanalyst,
Board Certified Dance/Movement therapist, and Somatic psychotherapist
with 40 years of experience as a clinician, trainer, and educator. With a back-
ground in theatre and dance, she was co-founder and faculty member of the
Authentic Movement Institute in Berkeley, and has held multiple roles at the
California Institute of Integral Studies: core faculty in Somatic Psychology,
adjunct faculty in Expressive Arts Therapies and founding faculty member of
the Women’s Spirituality Program. As the developer of Soul’s Body® Center
she integrates Jungian psychology, Authentic Movement, BodySoul work,
dreamwork, creative arts therapies, eco-psychology, elements of neuro-
science, alchemy and attachment theory. Her numerous articles and book
chapters explore the integration of body, brain, psyche and soul in healing
and transformation. Dr. Stromsted’s interest in the cross-cultural dimensions
of the healing process has led her to teach at universities and healing centers
in many parts of the world.
Currently she teaches at the C.G. Jung Institute of San Francisco, in the
Somatic Studies specialization in the Depth Psychology Doctoral programme
at Pacifica Graduate Institute, and is a core faculty member for the Marion
Woodman Foundation. Her private practice is in San Francisco.
Website: www.AuthenticMovement-BodySoul.com
E-mail: Tina@AuthenticMovement-BodySoul.com

Tina Stromsted has asserted her right under the Copyright, Designs and
Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as the author of this work in the format that
was submitted to Intellect Ltd.

357
 intellect
www.intellectbooks.com

Scene
ISSN: 2044-3714 | Online ISSN: 2044-3722
3 issues per volume | Volume 1, 2013

Scene is dedicated to a critical examination of space and scenic production. Central Editors
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