Healing Through Oriental Dance: Part 2, Emotional Healing

1. Part 1 addresses the benefits of Oriental dance for recovering from injuries, surgeries, or other physical conditions.
2. Part 2, which is this article, discusses how the dance can help with emotional healing.

There's a limit to what psychiatrists and counselors can do when working with patients who have deep emotional issues. Although drug therapy and talk therapy can be very helpful, these professionals are most effective when they can help patients unlock inner tools to heal themselves.

Movement, particularly if repetitive, can sometimes help release inner tensions. The zar is an ancient ritual from the Middle East that is used to perform a cathartic sort of emotional healing or "exorcism" on behalf of someone, usually a woman, who has been possessed. Although technically forbidden by Islam, it continues to be an essential part of some cultures. It appears mostly in Egypt, Sudan, Somalia, and Ethiopia. In Tunisia, it is called stambali. The accompaniment to the zar consists of strong drum rhythms, each being specific to a certain spirit. A critical part of the zar is finding the rhythm required to drive out the particular spirit possessing the individual. Sometimes the zar leader sacrifices a chicken, pigeon, sheep, or other animal as part of the ritual.

Of course, most of us don't have access to zar experts or sacrificial sheep, so we need to seek alternative ways of using movement to heal. Just plain belly dancing can play a role in releasing our barriers to emotional health. Dancers have reported that their art form has helped them to either recover or prevent relapses from emotional struggles tied to:

• Breast cancer surgery.
• Bulimia.
• Rape and/or sexual abuse.

So far as I know, there has not been any academic research on the subject of Oriental dance in particular as a tool for emotional healing, although the counseling profession does recognize dance therapy (not specifically tied to Oriental dance) as a valid area of specialty. Still, you generally don't have to look very far to hear anecdotal stories about how specific individuals have found healing through Oriental dance.

Real People, Real Benefits

Rape And Sexual Abuse

Lucy Lipschitz, whose web site addresses how belly dancing has helped her emotional recovery from rape and threatened murder, reports, "Over the years, as I have danced, I am slowly getting over basic issues about having a woman’s body." She had been stalked by a man who found her "irresistible", and afterward she was shocked to find she wasn't believed because she was a female. The horror of that experience led her to self-destructive behavior such as drugs and illicit sex. She initially took up belly dancing when still a teen-ager, and at the same time fell into a wild lifestyle. The dance became her passion, her only reason to live. In fact, she made it through some suicidal episodes by clinging to her classes and the occasional performance opportunity. Life then took her in other directions for a time, but 20 years after wandering away from belly dancing, she came back to it. By then, she had managed to overcome her self-destructive lifestyle through the help of a 12-step program, and was successfully embracing a new life of sobriety. The dance taught her to love her body, and helped her understand that every size is a good size. She now reports, "The more I dance, the more centered I am."

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