Dance therapy recognizes the therapeutic potential of the body and its unique subjective and objective nature. Movement experience plays a vital role in consciousness formation and calibration, and bodily action is a way of constructing knowledge about the world. However, expressing innate movement thinking and experiences in words can be challenging, and vocabulary is inadequate. To address this, the Movement Experience Scale (MES) was developed as a simplified tool that focuses on individual movement experience dimensions. This presentation aims to share the construction of the MES from an Asian perspective, based on presenter’s DMT and LMA training in the U.S. and 20 years of clinical experiences with Asian both in Chicago and Taiwan, through reviewing relevant literature to explore the uniqueness and importance of movement experience in dance therapy and outlining the observable bodily movement experiences' different structures. The guarding, formal, perceptual, and awareness experiences are discussed and experienced, along with the application of the MES.

Pei-Shan Tsai, NCC, BC-DMT GLCMA