“If you don’t understand relational things, you’re never going to figure out healthcare problems; you’re never going to figure out mental health problems; you’re never going to figure out social health problems; you’re never going to figure out the educational system. It’s all about relationships. If you don’t understand relational neurobiology, you’re screwed. You will tinker around the edges of solving these problems but you will never get to the core.”

Dr. Bruce Perry, “Born For Love, Why Empathy is Essential and Endangered”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M6kDeBaJi0M&t=2086s

The mental health of students and staff is the first priority for the district; nothing will be effective until that is addressed. Two ways to address it are through drama and dance.

What is mental health and emotional intelligence?

Mental health

We see ourselves as learners and enjoy learning. Our maps of the world are getting closer to the reality of the world. We can choose what we give attention to, and can make reasonable interpretations of it. 

Emotional intelligence

We know what we are feeling and why we feel it, and can apply our knowledge to others in that we can infer what and why others may be feeling what they are. We are increasing our ability to express and regulate our emotions and help others do the same.

Theories, metaphors and models

Maslow’s need hierarchy--the group before the individual. Love and belonging come before self-actualization and transcendence.

Glasser’s 5 universal needs--love and belonging come before the individual needs of freedom and power.

Fun

Power

Freedom

Love and belonging

Survival

The conclusion? Being part of a group and knowing how to be a part of a group is essential to our emotional well-being and mental health.

Trauma is stored in the body and needs to be treated by incorporating the body.

Drama and dance’s role in improving our mental and emotional health

Drama

Watching stories

Model behavior--we absorb the behavior of people we admire

Evokes and reveals feelings--we feel with characters with whom we relate.

Inspires us to be more--our spirits are stirred by extraordinary examples

Process and explore (in group)--thinking and talking helps us grow, and increases empathy

We know we’re not alone--we see character’s insides and know we’re not the only ones.

Helps us construct a reality--we experience worlds apart from ours and expand our relaitly.

Expands empathy and understanding--we learn to feel with others’ feelings.

Increases our capacity for: love and belonging, freedom, power, fun, empathy, 

Making stories

Requires attention--the key to just about everything.

Requires interpretation--our brains are meaning-making machines. Not 4, but 2+2.

Requires feeling--and owning and expressing that feeling.

Requires awareness of others--not just outsides, but insides

Requires focused practice--

Learn the satisfaction of working hard at work worth doing--Gibran’s “Work”

Requires incarnation**--key. We have to inhabit another’s skin, to be another.

Expands empathy and understanding (e.g. “I LOVE being like Skip!” Or “Ugh. So THIS is what Skip feels like.”)

How Drama and Theater Can Rewire Limiting Beliefs with Bessel van der Kolk

Meets needs: love, belonging, freedom, power, fun, self-actualization, self-transcendence

A few ideas for drama

1. Students are given roles that are unlike themselves in order to feel and relate (with their entire bodies) to others. For example, the tough kid is cast as the empathic listener; the meek kid is cast as the assertive leader. Once they feel what it feels like to be empathic or assertive, their bodies give them permission to try it out in their real lives.

2. Kids take the role of the loser, the persecuted, the outsider, to feel what THAT feels like. . 

3. Players act out a common scene until the climax. The audience is asked to determine the response and encouraged to take a role and play it out. Group discusses the merit of each response, what response is common in their school . . . 

4. Students write scripts that show empathic, kind responses to awkward situations (then maybe follow idea 3): spilling milk, getting a compliment, losing in a game, being singled out by a teacher, bumping into someone, asking someone on a date, turning someone down when they ask . . .

5. Perform scripts that show the backstory of unlikeable people, to humanize them. 

6. Play Improv games like 15 seconds, mirroring, “Yes, and”, “I’m Curious.” (from Pink’s To sell is Human)

Dance

Individual vs. group--a role for each

Receiving 

Requires attention

Requires interpretation

Models behavior

Promotes comfort with ambiguity--speaks to our nonverbal brain.

Like music, it can take us places our rational brains can’t--lift, sorrow, indescribable tears. . .

Evokes and reveals feelings--catharsis, revelation.

Encourages processing alone or with others--builds community and belonging

Producing

Requires attention

Interpretation

Practice--the incremental improvement of daily practice. “How many great dancers . . . ?”

Following the directions of the choreographer--humility/self-transcendence

Handling criticism and the toil of process

Helps us express the inexpressible

Learn the satisfaction of working hard at work worth doing

Connects us to ourselves

Dance As Therapy: Natalia Duong at TEDxStanford

Connects us to others

Dr Bronwyn Tarr Talk at Rhodes Scholar Retreat January 2016

A few ideas about dance

1. Have a class dance/movement to sync up at the beginning of the day.

2. Mirror game. See Tarr talk

3. Create a class Haka. High School Boys Honor Retiring Teacher With Moving Haka

4. Choreograph a 2 minute, autobiographical dance. Others must ‘follow’ you. See Doung talk.

Resources to explore

The Body Keeps the Score, Van der Kolk, Bessel, especially Chaps. 18 and 20

Parts of the Whole in Milwaukee

https://www.partsofthewhole.org/mission

Trauma Drama in Boston, 

https://www.statnews.com/2016/08/23/theater-trauma-teenagers/

The Possibility Project in New York, 

https://the-possibility-project.org/

Shakespeare in the Courts in Massachusetts, 

https://www.shakespeare.org/education/shakespeare-in-the-courts

and The Feast of Crispian out of Milwaukee. 

https://www.feastofcrispian.org/our-mission