A comparison with the Japanese traditional performing art of 'Noh'
Miyuki Kaji
Dance/movement therapy (DMT) is a psychotherapy that utilises the power of embodiment and symbolisation through dance and movement. In DMT, clients express their thoughts and feelings through their body and in turn, their experiences are sensed by their body. In this sense, DMT is a therapy made possible by the process of embodiment. In this chapter, the author will use the term ‘Embodiment’ to mean the expression of feelings and images via bodily position and movement. DMT was developed in Western countries in the 1940s. It was introduced in Japan in the 1980s and has been practiced mainly at locations like psychiatric hospitals, geriatric homes and day care centres. On the one hand, Western theories and techniques, such as the Chacian method, have contributed to the development of Japanese DMT. On the other, Japanese DMT incorporates culturally appropriate techniques that reflect Japanese-specific styles of expression, physical skills and concept of the body (Onuma, 2015). The specifics of Japanese culture include the following aspects.
There is a Japanese saying ‘Not speaking is a flower’ (it is sometimes better not to say anything). In Japan, it is considered to be polite not to verbalise everything we think or feel and instead to keep thoughts in one’s mind. Due to this tendency, Japanese clients tend to show little emotion in psychotherapy. However, this small-scale emotional expression does not mean they feel little emotion. In clinical settings, there are many occasions on which clinicians are surprised by deep feelings that clients express by modest verbalisation.
There are also Japanese-specific physical training techniques and a concept of the body that reflects a Japanese lifestyle. The traditional Japanese way of living is based on its farming culture. Traditionally, Japanese wear kimonos that can restrict one’s movement; they sit on the floor in Seiza style (folding one’s legs underneath one’s thighs, while resting the buttocks on the heels). This culturally specific movement pattern arose from the aforementioned lifestyle. One of the culturally specific movement patterns is that of internally rotating the limbs toward the centre of the body. Due to this movement pattern, Japanese have less muscle mass and the position of their pelvis is lower compared to that of Westerners. Also, the difference between most Japanese body builds and those of Westerners could encourage different movement styles in Japanese and Western culture (Yasuda, 2014; Yatabe, 2007).
Religious beliefs such as Buddhism including Zen tradition and Shintoism also affect Japanese ways of thinking. Zen and traditional Japanese arts such as the tea ceremony and flower arrangement teach us ‘Shin shin ichi nyo’ (body and mind are inseparable) (Yuasa, 1990). During Zen training and training to master Japanese traditional arts, confined movement can become meaningful. It is believed that repeating the same work or movement can allow a trainee to achieve psychological maturity. In DMT, repeating fixed choreography sometimes allows clients to develop psychological themes when clients’ deep feelings and characteristics are expressed by small movements. To establish a body-oriented therapy like DMT in Japan, it is important not only to learn from Western style DMT but also to incorporate a culturally specific healing process derived from the Japanese lifestyle and concept of the body. ‘Noh’ is a traditional Japanese performing art, which reflects Japanese physical skills and body concepts. In this chapter, the possibilities for integrating Japanese culture into DMT will be discussed by comparing the healing power of Noh and DMT.
Noh is one of the traditional performing arts that represents Japanese culture. Kanami and his son Zeami contributed sophisticated folk entertainment based on Chinese songs and dances to Noh in the late fourteenth century. Noh became an integrated musical drama consisting of ‘Mai’ (dancing), ‘Utai’ (singing a song) and ‘Hayashi’ (playing music).
Noh is performed with a mask. A direct translation of Noh into English would be ‘dance’. However, this does not fully convey the meaning of Mai. A characteristic of Mai is restricted movement. Dancers do not intentionally and actively move their body but wait for internal energy to arise and move them (Yatabe, 2007). It is important not to wilfully move the body although dancers physically can move it. The posture required to dance Mai is unique compared to some Western dance. For some of the Western style dances, such as classical ballet and social dance, dancers balance themselves by pulling their body upwards. For Mai, dancers balance themselves by pulling the centre of gravity of their body downwards by concentrating their energy in the ‘Tanden’ (the abdomen below the navel), standing with bent knees and putting both feet together. It is considered to be necessary to direct one’s centre of gravity downwards in order to integrate body and mind. While dancers widen their chest by pulling up their upper body towards the sky, their shins incline towards the earth. When moving on the stage, dancers shuffle their feet without lifting them. The only body part that is slightly lifted while walking is the toes. This walking technique is called ‘Suri Ashi’ (shuffling feet). By lowering one’s centre of gravity, dancers are enabled to create power through pushing back from inside to outside of their body. This shift of energy from the inside of the body to the outside of the body is Mai, and the way dancers walk in Noh (Yatabe, 2007). Dancers maintain the posture with a lowered centre of gravity and place their body passively on stage. Waiting for internal energy to build up creates tension in the atmosphere. As a consequence of built-up internal energy and tension in the atmosphere, dancers are pushed to dance Mai.
This passive attitude is also notable during the practice of techniques to master Noh. Per the creator of Noh, Zeami, training in Noh should start from learning ‘Kata’. Kata (form) is a traditional inherited movement pattern that became simplified and stylised over time. Mai consists of the combination and repetition of Kata patterns.
By constraining their body into Kata and repeating Kata, dancers train the sensitivity of their body, heighten their internal senses and master ‘Kokoro’ (mind/feeling). Defining Kokoro as the core of the ‘self’, the beginner’s ‘Karada’ (body) that cannot move as one intends can be considered as creating an ‘other’ that needs to be controlled by Kokoro. However, repeated training of Kata allows one’s body to move naturally without consciously thinking about it. In this embodied stage, it is difficult to decide whether Kokoro or Karada is the core of the self. Because of this embodiment process, Zeami teaches us to train Karada first, and then wait for Kokoro development through the training of Karada. This attitude towards body-mind training is similar to Zen training based on ‘Shin shin ichi nyo’ (body and mind are inseparable) (Yasuda, 2014; Yuasa, 1990; Zeami, 1400/2013, 1400/1976).
‘Mugen Noh’ is a Noh style in which ‘Shite’ (the main character) acts as a local person in the first half of the performance and then becomes a ghost in the second half. On stage, there is another person, ‘Waki’, who is a monk, acting alongside the Shite. At the beginning of a performance, Waki introduces the setting of the story to clarify the structure of the play. Waki, who is a traveling monk, visits a village and accidentally meets a local person portrayed by Shite. Shite shares folklore about an unfortunate past event that happened in the village. However, Shite starts acting like the main character of the folklore while he is talking, and it is difficult to differentiate the local person in the present and the main character from the folklore. The local person disappears and the monk falls into a deep sleep. The Shite who was the local person appears as a ghost from the past in the last half of the performance. It is difficult to work out if it is a dream or reality. The ghost dances and talks to the monk about his longstanding, unsolved agony. In the end, the monk sends the ghost to Nirvana. The process of the monk releasing the ghost from its haunted past and providing catharsis resembles a healing process. During the first half of the performance, Waki intervenes to let Shite recall his memories. In the last half, Waki stands still with some tension to maintain the structure and to provide a stage for Shite to express his past conflicts in the dream world.
Like Mugen Noh, there is a mixture of reality and one’s internal world in a therapy session. It is common that a client expresses their unconscious feelings by talking about his/her dreams, drawing a picture, creating a scene in a sandbox or dancing. This expression of unconscious material often helps therapeutic progress (Bosnak, 2011; Giegerich, Kawai, and Tanaka, 2013).
The relationship of Shite and Waki is sometimes considered to resemble the relationship of a client and a therapist (Morioka and Fujinawa, 1978; Yasuda, 2011). A therapist who provides a structure in which a client feels safe to express him/her self, intervenes with a client to help him/her express his/her story and observes and supports a client to face to his/her psychological themes appears similar to the role of Waki in Noh. DMT is particularly similar to Noh in that a client symbolically expresses his/her internal story through his/her body. Due to this similarity, it is possible to consider that the physical level of relationship between a client and a therapist in DMT is akin to the physicality of Shite and Waki in Mugen Noh.
Yoko (pseudonym) is a medium built, intelligent and elegant woman in her late 50s. Her husband did not work but indulged himself in doing whatever he wanted. Yoko worked hard to support her family. The couple had a daughter. Her husband’s physical and verbal domestic violence started 2 years prior to the initial therapy session. Around the same time, she encountered social issues in a hobby group in which she had participated for a long time. These issues wore her out. Yoko lapsed into major depression and was hospitalised in a psychiatric hospital for a half a year. She voluntarily participated in a DMT group every week while she was hospitalised. However, when the group became more expressive and emotional and depressive themes came up in the last half of a session, Yoko always left the group. She dropped out from attending counselling. She said she felt ‘heavy hearted by being forced to talk about my miserable experiences’ in counselling. She was divorced while she was hospitalised. After she was discharged, she lived with her daughter. Upon her discharge, her doctor recommended that she participate in a bi-weekly individual DMT session to obtain psychological support and to better understand herself to prevent a relapse. A session consisted of 10 minutes of verbal reporting of her life, 25 minutes of improvisational dance and 15 minutes of drawing and verbal reflection of the session. The sessions continued for 6 years. The total number of DMT sessions was 128.
In this case, Yoko had been repeating a simple dance movement like a Noh’s Kata. This Noh training-like repetition appeared to help her integrate her internal energy. She then introduced her dreams into the DMT session to heal herself. Using this case, I would like to discuss the concept of body and mind unique to Japanese DMT.
In the first sessions, Yoko chose mid-tempo instrumental music for her DMT session after discussing her music choice with the therapist. She voluntary moved with the music of her choice. Yoko walked alone, moving her arms up and down like a bird flying. Even when the therapist walked along with her, she did not react to this and continued her flying movement. The movement of her arms was linear, her torso was rigid, her body looked like a stick and her steps were weak. The use of space was limited. She maintained the same level and moved back and forth in the same spot in the room. Her repeating flying movement looked empty and simple like a young child’s dance. The therapist had the impression that there was strong resistance to expressing her feelings, coupled with ambivalent feelings about relying on others. The therapist tried to carefully intervene without being invasive. When Yoko was dancing, the therapist observed Yoko’s dance empathetically to understand her feelings expressed in her movement. The therapist also mirrored Yoko’s movement to provide feedback for Yoko to clarify her expression. The therapist avoided asking about Yoko’s past until Yoko started voluntary talking about it. Yoko’s life was stabilised by obsessively ritualising her daily routine like choice of food and steps of doing housework. Yoko’s former husband sometimes visited her. Although she felt anxious and uncomfortable in his presence, she could not decline his visit and was hospitable to him.
After several months of sessions, she added a stronger pressing-down movement with her hands while she performed her flying movement. The therapist mirrored her movement and exaggerated it. Yoko added extra strength in her hands after noticing the therapist mirrored her movement. She developed this movement into creating a wall around her, and then pushed it back. After performing the movement that looked like clarifying a boundary between the self and other, Yoko drew a picture of an angular castle. She said, ‘Life with my ex-husband was like being imprisoned in a castle without a gate or a window. I became ill because of this confinement’. A week after this session, she started to move her arms slightly more softly and more three-dimensionally. She twisted her upper body and explained, she was ‘taking off cloaks one by one and letting fresh air in’.
About 1 year later, Yoko’s feelings of not wanting her ex-husband to visit her became stronger. Also, she was exhausted from dedicating too much energy to her relationships with her daughter and friends. She complained about insomnia and exhaustion. In DMT sessions, she moved more freely and her movement became more expressive. She added a movement that looked like shaking something off to her flying movement. This movement developed into a punch. The therapist verbalised this movement as an expression of anger. Yoko admitted that she was expressing her anger. Around this time, Yoko frequently remembered her deceased mother. She started talking about her mother in DMT sessions. Her mother had been exhausted by single-handedly taking care of her large family and died when Yoko was in her 20s.
About 2 years after Yoko started DMT, Yoko and the therapist held hands like a mother and a young child and moved their arms like a wing. While Yoko walked next to the therapist, her body touched the therapist as would a child leaning on his/her mother. While walking next to the therapist, Yoko rhythmically opened and closed her mouth and held her arms in a position as if she was holding a baby. After this session, Yoko dreamt about her deceased mother. Although her mother died young, her mother in her dream was an old woman. Yoko helped her mother, whose knees were bent, to stand up by putting her arms around her mother’s body. Yoko said, ‘Wow, you worked so hard that your knees got bent’. In the next session, Yoko walked with bent knees. The therapist put her arms around Yoko, helped her to slowly stand up and lower her body down, and said, ‘I am so sorry that you need to work so hard’ like Yoko did to her mother in her dream. Yoko started crying. Yoko said, ‘I have not cried for a long time. I cannot recall when the last time I cried was’. She reported that she dreamed about yelling at her ex-husband’s relatives. She started recognising her feelings and expressing them.
After dancing about her dream, Yoko began sleeping well. She resumed cooking her favourite soup and jam. She expressed the desire to separate completely from her ex-husband. She started to dance with her feet grounded on the floor and pulling her centre of gravity low. Her flying movement became rhythmical and strong with flexible chest and shoulder movement. The space she used expanded. A new movement pattern, extending her arms up to the ceiling, collecting sunshine on her palms and taking care of herself, appeared. For closure, Yoko put her hands and the therapist’s hands on her chest as one might while in prayer.
In the fifth year, Yoko’s life stabilised and she was enjoying her hobbies. She was active and moving on to a new life, for example by declining her ex-husband’s visits and getting rid of her old possessions. In DMT sessions, Yoko showed negative feelings towards the therapist as if the therapist was her violent and controlling ex-husband. She came to the hospital without an appointment and accused the therapist of missing the session. She complained, ‘DMT is tiring’ and moved passive-aggressively. The therapist supported Yoko’s expression and attuned to Yoko’s movement. She also felt empathy with Yoko’s anger and powerlessness. Yoko cried and said, ‘I always put up with things, even when I was exhausted. This was the cause of my illness. It was good that I could complain about my situation to you’. After this incident, Yoko stopped pushing to devote herself so much to others.
The number of movements that looked like nurturing, and charging her energy, increased. Her movements expressed lightness, quiet strength, freedom and sadness mixed together. By then, Yoko used her entire body to perform her flying movement. Her flying movement was also slowed down. For the ending of each session, she often freely walked in the space alone or held the therapist’s hand and walked together with her. Then Yoko stopped and put her hands on the therapist’s hands to feel closeness and subtle sadness. After a while, Yoko released the tension in her body. Yoko said she could not believe how much richer her movement repertoire had become. She continued to move in a similar manner for a while, then the DMT was terminated. Around this time, she had recovered so much, that she needed almost no medication. In the last session, Yoko said, ‘I am continuing dancing in my own way’.
Yoko had difficulty in recognising and expressing her feelings. DMT appeared to be a good modality for her, because it did not require her to verbalise her feelings but instead allowed her to express them freely in a nonverbal way. Projecting her feelings onto her movement might have made her feel safe enough, so that her defence mechanisms and resistance to therapy were lowered. Yoko confined herself into the rigid and repetitious flying movement but the limitation in movement also provided her with structure and safety. The therapist carefully intervened with Yoko’s process without being disruptively invasive. The therapist encouraged her to express herself physically. Sometimes the therapist observed Yoko without moving and set up a stage for her to safely and freely expresses her feelings. The therapist accompanying Yoko’s journey to understand herself physically resembles how Waki supports Shite. When Yoko and the therapist established rapport and trust, her movement repertoire was expanded.
Once Yoko started to symbolise her experience into her movement, she reported on the dream about her deceased mother who had sacrificed herself to take care of the family. Dancing this dream was a turning point in this case. While dancing about her dream, she was Yoko and her deceased mother at the same time, like Shite is a local person and person in a folklore at the same time. Yoko also recognised repressed emotions through dancing the dream of her mother, like Shite dances in his dream-like states talking about his unfortunate past. Yoko realised that she also sacrificed herself like her mother to take care of her family. Yoko embodied her long-standing anger and sadness by dancing her dream. This experience allowed her to cry and to heal. Yoko deepened her understanding of herself and developed a rich variety of self-expression by embodying her difficulties and feelings.
After recognising her anger and sadness, Yoko slowly changed her life by prioritising her own needs. Yoko complained to the therapist out of transference. When the therapist encouraged Yoko to express her anger and accepted Yoko as she was, Yoko cried with joy that she was able to complain to others. She reflected upon her life of being overly devoted to others at her own expense and obtaining key knowledge and insight about herself. The relationship of a therapist and a client consists of respect for the client’s expressions and the mutual search for their meaning mirrors the relationship of Waki and Shite in Noh. Yoko acquired new insights and behavioural patterns through DMT sessions by embodying her internal experiences. Her determination to continuing dancing after the DMT was terminated is evidence that the embodiment of internal experience helped her heal.
Yoko repeated the flying movement from the first session to the last. Obsession with the same movement can be viewed as a resistance to a treatment, because it limits the development of expression and strengthens defence mechanisms resisting processing of emotional material. In this case Yoko’s initial flying movement was simple and non-characteristic. However, Yoko concentrated on performing the same flying movement. The therapist did not think that the repetition of the movement was meaningless, so she did not try to encourage Yoko to change her movement. Instead, the therapist supported the repetitious movement. The flying movement changed its quality as the sessions progressed. The quality of the flying movement had changed from rigid and flat movement to strong and dimensional movement, and further to a light and flexible movement. This change in the movement quality represented changes in Yoko’s internal world. The flying movement did not simply represent flying but it was a channel to express her internal world at the time. As previously mentioned, traditional Japanese arts and Zen training include repetition of a particular type of simple movement or activities to achieve physical and psychological growth. When body and mind become one and inseparable, a trainee can naturally embody his/her feelings. It could also be true for DMT to use a simple repetitious movement to foster the growth of body and mind if clients are willing to concentrate on the repetitive movement.
As therapy progressed, Yoko’s ungrounded and weak feet became grounded and strong. Also, her centre of gravity settled in her lower body. Locating the centre of gravity in the lower body, maintaining bent knees and remaining strongly grounded to the earth even when walking or jumping is a unique characteristic of Asian dances, including Noh and Japanese dance. Maintaining one’s centre of gravity in the lower part of one’s body can limit movement of the lower limbs and whole body movement. On the other hand, this lower centre of gravity provides strength and stability. Yoko’s body slowly changed to utilise a silent strength to push against gravity and the space around her like a Noh master. Towards termination, Yoko stood still and concentrated on sensing the environment around her. She enjoyed sensing movement arising in her body. What she was doing looked like choosing to stand still and contain her movement internally, instead of stopping her movement. After standing still for a while, Yoko relaxed her body and made relieving vocal sounds. This gave the therapist the impression, that Yoko enjoyed standing still and containing her movement internally. This incident could be evidence that mindfulness and internally embodying what she was sensing were meaningful to Yoko. Restrained movement in Mai (dance) of Noh is also meaningful. In the Noh’s theory, it is considered that choosing to contain one’s movement within one’s body, instead of moving to express oneself, can provide a different experience and an alternative way to express oneself.
Self-expression and non-verbal communication through dance/movement are considered to be important elements of treatment in many DMT techniques. To achieve dance/movement with this healing power, Western techniques often require expressive and possibly dynamic movement. For example, the theory and technique of Marian Chace, one of the founders of DMT, introduced clarifying expressional movement and then developed the movement further. At the same time, there is a Chacian technique, empathic reflection, that may focus on a client’s subtle movement. In empathic reflection, a therapist mirrors a client’s posture and movement. It is important that a therapist not only pick up a client’s overt movement but also looks for underlying subtle movement (Chaiklin and Schmais, 1993). In clinical experiences with Japanese clients, the author has the impression that interventions involving the therapist clarifying and/or developing a client’s movement makes the quality of the movement change and can stop the client’s internal development process. This tendency is particularly true when a client has a strong defence mechanism against recognising and expressing his/her feelings and when clients utilise subtle movement to connect with his/her feelings. The author thinks that a technique like empathic reflection, particularly focusing on underlying subtle movement, is important when working with Japanese clients. In a clinical setting, what a talkative client says sometimes sounds empty. Fluent and dynamic physical movement with wide variations can be empty like the words of a talkative person and the movement might not represent a client’s internal world. As Yoko’s case depicted, choosing to limit movement or concentrating on a simple repetitive movement can foster an experience of connection to one’s deep internal world.
For Japanese clients, not only are dynamic movement and clear self-expression meaningful in DMT, but also stillness and silence. The characteristic posture of holding one’s abdomen as a centre of gravity as in Noh generates subtle movements including stillness. Those subtle movements, stillness and simple and repetitive movement patterns are also meaningful in DMT for Japanese clients. Non-dynamic movement, a repetitive movement pattern and mindfulness of own body and internal movement could also be meaningful for non-Japanese clients. For future DMT training, therapists themselves need to experience not only dynamic and active movement but also subtle movement and stillness, as in Noh training, where one senses internal movement and waits for it to mature. When a therapist experiences the embodiment of his/her mind through subtle movement, he/she would be better able to observe and support their clients’ own subtle movements and even stillness.
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