Focussing on Somatic Movement Dance Therapy and the importance of self-regulation and co-regulation, chapters deal with self-regulating different tissues through movement, breath, sound and the imagination. Brings together detailed theoretical and experiential anatomy and its application in SMET practice. 227 b/w figs.

In this detailed anatomical text, Amanda Williamson shares her therapeutic practice, rooted in self-regulation, co-regulation, cardio-ception, breath awareness, soft-tissue-rolling in gravity, fascial release, and the importance of parasympathetic ease-and-release.

The book attends to key body systems in detail, and how sense-perception of living tissues increases fluid flow and supports fascial health. It is grounded in detailed experiential encounters with afferent sensing, consciously sensed motor expression, interoception, proprioception, the vagus nerve, the cranial bones and nerves, scapulae, sacrum, fascia, and the nervous system. Clients and students share qualitative reflections after sense-perceiving the state of their living tissues and easing tight tonus through self-regulatory movement.

Somatic Movement Dance Therapy pays detailed attention to applied experiential anatomy and physiology, improvisation underpinned by somatic awareness, the art of directing one’s awareness and attending gently to living breathing tissues, resting egoic mind and settling in the heart. The integral importance and compassion of the co-regulatory embodied witness is shared in this book. Amanda shares processes throughout that ease stress, depression and anxiety.

Collective foreword from Sarah Whatley, Daniel Deslauriers, Celeste Snowber and Karin Rugman.

Amanda Williamson is director of the Centre for Somatic Movement and Dance Therapy and the Association of Somatic Movement Therapies, UK and the Republic of Ireland. She is the founding editor of the journal Dance, Movement & Spiritualities.