"When I'm feeling sad and lonely, I know what to do
I go out and find some music and begin to move
Dancing to the beat, makes me feel so free
In reality, that's the cure for me
It's not heresy, to feel wild and free
Dancing therapy is so good, you see
Moving to the beat, keeps me up and free
It's my therapy for anxiety
Moving in the beat, feels so good and fine
Fusion to the beat really clears my mind"

These lyrics, from International Music System's 1984 Italo disco anthem "Dancing Therapy," underscores the healing qualities of "dancing to the beat." The song's vocalist, American ballet dancer Rebecca McLain, croons about her physical response to music as "therapy for anxiety" and a cure for negative emotions—a belief that both casual ravers and therapists who specialize in dance, known as dance movement therapists, can attest to.

According to the American Dance Therapy Association, Dance Movement Therapy is "a form of expressive therapy" that "looks at the correlation between movement and emotion." For most partygoers, the relationship between these two is already well known. Resident Advisor's series Dance Floor Epiphanies, for example, contains accounts by Clara from Naples, who dubbed the dance floor a "panacea," and Joey from L.A., who felt his anxiety dissipate into peace in the middle of a Ben UFO set in a warehouse. Alyce, another contributor, found words for their gender dysphoria "through intense movement and connection" at Berghain. Such testimonies reveal that the body holds a certain wisdom that the logical mind cannot always grasp, an idea that was popularized in recent years with books like Bessel van der Kolk's The Body Keeps the Score and its investigation of how trauma can be stored somatically. Dance, and movement in general, is one way to effectively process these feelings.

Elise Mireille founded Therapy of Dance after successfully using movement to heal from her past trauma and realign her sense of self. After realizing that her career in the fashion industry was no longer fulfilling and struggling with a marijuana dependency, she knew something had to change. So she returned to a familiar foundation—her decade-long dance practice that had always been a source of support. With encouragement from her friends, she aimed to create a "new gateway drug to community"—without the drugs you'd find at a club. "It started from the need for me to dance and share with others in a healthy environment," she said. "This came about from a real place of darkness and depression." The weekly dance class and discussion group began in Berlin and has now expanded to Mireille's native New Zealand, as well as online.

Since Therapy of Dance's inception, Mireille has discovered new ways to heal herself through dance and share the practice with others. Participants consistently report feeling better about themselves physically and mentally after classes, and some have even been inspired to start talk therapy, inspired by the openness of the discussion circle that kicks off every Therapy of Dance session. This positive feedback echoes the very benefits of Dance Movement Therapy. According to a 2013 meta-analysis by The Arts in Psychotherapy, results suggested that "DMT and dance are effective for increasing quality of life and decreasing clinical symptoms such as depression and anxiety. Positive effects were also found on the increase of subjective well-being, positive mood, affect, and body image."

There are multiple ways to incorporate healing practices borrowed from DMT into a night out. Elise Mireille and three other practitioners—Zoja Smutny, Sophie Mars and Lea Nasrallah—offer their guidance on entering the venue with intention, connecting movement with emotion and strengthening social bonds.

Dancing With Intention

Zoja Smutny has historically approached dance as an art practice, completing a Masters in Solo Dance Authorship, although she has always felt its therapeutic benefits while teaching and performing for several years. Smutny began hosting virtual "Dance With Me" parties on Instagram Live during the pandemic, where she invited her audience to dance from their homes every Friday. Along with three other friends, she also started Door to Door, which brought dance performances to senior citizens in retirement homes.

To introduce a more therapeutic perspective to a night out, Smutny suggests going into a dance situation with intention, which she argues many people do without noticing. "People will say things like, 'Tonight I'm going to do my dance therapy.' If you enter that space and you say 'I'm going to have this night of release and connecting to my body,' then you're already using the dancing as a healing form."

Clubgoers can experiment with this approach by incorporating time to check in and reflect before and after raving, either by themselves or with those they trust. This is a process that Lea Nasrallah, a dance movement psychotherapist based in Ottawa, Canada, integrates into her work with people of all ages. Describing her check-in method with clients, she shares, "I invite them to really understand what's happening, instead of just saying 'I'm fine.' You're not fine, how are you really feeling today?"

Sophie Mars, a Dance Movement Therapy practitioner and founder of her own Mindful Mutations healing method, invites ravers to use their night out as a time to connect with their bodies. "This can be done simply by feeling the sensations as you move," she explains. "Closing your eyes can also help you connect more to your body and to the sensations. Although, as a trauma-informed practitioner, I know that it really scares some people to close their eyes because it can induce flashbacks. Use that with caution."

Mars also recommends becoming mindful of the body and its surroundings, which can be as simple as feeling your feet move along the ground and stomping them to accentuate the sensation. "You can feel more connected to the present moment and you can also feel supported by the ground," Mars suggests. "Have that sense of support and less that you're just lost in space."

Shaking It Out

There can often be a sense of uniformity in the way that people choose to dance at a club. But letting the body lead the movements rather than the mind can be liberating. This idea around liberation of movement was popularized recently with ecstatic dance—a practice, often more ritualistic and ceremonial in nature, that encourages participants to move freely. Trying new dance moves can lead to much-needed physical release in typically stressed areas such as the hips and shoulders. What's more, it can also unlock specific emotions in relation to past events and energetically shake them out. As Smutny puts it, "move the cells around, move the story around."

She suggests trying to repeat certain movements for at least two minutes. "Repetition is very good for the body because it needs a moment to understand what you're doing," she explains. Shaking movements have become popular in new age-adjacent dance settings and exercise classes to loosen up the body and relieve emotions. "When you have tension, or when you have a bad experience, it is usually stored in your belly, your heart, your hips and it's the fascia [or connective tissue] that holds onto it," Smutny explains. Most trauma-informed bodyworkers integrate this idea into their practice to assist clients in recovering memories or emotions through massage, touch or encouraging certain types of movement.

While many of us find our clubbing experiences to be therapeutic or even religious in nature, they are not a replacement for therapy alongside a licensed professional. So if you happen to unlock difficult or traumatic memories on a night out, be sure to reach out to someone who is able to help you process them.

Other high energy movements, like jumping, can produce what Lea Nasrallah refers to as "happy hormones," or serotonin and adrenaline. "If you're not on drugs, if you're just happy from your own physical hormones, you'll have a nice feeling afterwards. It is because you've just had a therapeutic mass experience in a club," says Nasrallah. "[The production of these hormones] also distracts you from your pain for a period of time, which is also really important," adds Sophie Mars.

Leaning Into Vulnerability

The communal aspect of going out is one of its many allures. Connecting to your body and jumping around the room is beneficial on its own, but this experience is amplified alongside other people. One obstacle to a shared therapeutic dance experience is social anxiety, big and small. Comparing our own movements to others, for example, can make it difficult to feel more at ease in a crowd. Yet ironically, engaging more with the bodily experience of dance can help those who are self-conscious feel more connected to others.

Sophie Mars, whose clients often work with her one-on-one to feel more confident on the dance floor, shares that this fear arises because people are often scared of being seen authentically for their true selves. She continues, "You can't hide yourself in movement, it always says something about your personality which I think is pretty interesting." Vulnerability becomes essential when it comes to viewing movement as medicine. If dancing is connected to our feelings, then a fear of moving in a certain way could point to a similar fear of expressing ourselves emotionally.

"Dance does ask you to be vulnerable," Zoja Smutny asserts,"I think that's why people are resistant to it. They would rather go to the yoga practice because they feel confident in that. But when you move, your body is telling you what to do. You're going with your body. As soon as you start dancing you're a little bit like, "Is this okay? What do I look like?" You have to be vulnerable, but being vulnerable is not a popular thing in the world."

Mirroring and Empathy

"It's scientifically proven that people who move or mirror one another's movements feel more empathy for one another" Mars explains. This is all happening on a neurochemical level. "Shared movement in a group can activate your social connection chemicals such as oxytocin, which again creates happiness because you feel more connected to others."

Lea Nasrallah also describes the process of attunement, an aspect of mirroring, something we naturally do as humans. In mirroring someone's movements, we're matching their energy, which is responsible for these feelings of empathy. As a dance movement therapist, Nasrallah often will attune with patients to bring them to a level where they feel more at ease. "If I feel they're overwhelmed, I meet them at this high, overwhelming level and then I bring them down with things like breathwork or other practices that help bring them inward." For example, if someone has their hands on their head in frustration and is speaking quickly, she'd touch their shoulders and begin to respond to them at their faster rate of speech before slowing it down, and then encouraging them to take deeper breaths and connect more mindfully to their surroundings. Nasrallah encourages people to use this method in their real life, as it can help de-escalate problems with others or soothe themselves if they're anxious or feeling an oncoming panic attack.

If dance can be a way to reconnect to ourselves, our bodies, our emotions and to others, then dance also reconnects us to our humanity, something that Zoja Smutny believes we're moving further away from due to isolation, remote work and the increased use of technology and social media. "Dance brings you back to your humanity—you have a spine, you have a pelvis, you have a heartbeat, you have a rhythm. There's a bigger story to you than just speaking language. Dance connects you to your feelings." There may be a cliche of going out as escapism, but with a bit of intention and a few new tools, the dance floor can also be a cathartic space to deepen self-awareness and strengthen bonds with others.