Feeling and healing: Anna Halprin’s dance as healing art

After her cancer went into spontaneous remission after her Exorcism or ‘Dark Side Dance’, Anna Halprin developed dance into movement-based expressive arts therapy as a ‘healing art’ to help other patients deal with their illnesses. Halprin’s method of using movement to cultivate somatic and sensory awareness is what Richard Shusterman would call a somaesthetics discipline, a practice that aims at somatic introspection and improvement. This article suggests that somatic practices like Halprin’s movement-based expressive arts therapy can offer alternative ways of knowing and experiencing the body, especially for those who feel estranged from their bodies due to illness or disability. Drawing from personal experiences as a disabled person experimenting with Halprin’s dance, I suggest that a somaesthetics of dance can change how ill or disabled bodies are perceived and experienced, and thus lead to integration and healing.