Presenting a rich mosaic of embodied contemporary narratives in spirituality and movement studies, this book explicitly studies the relationship between spirituality and the field of Somatic Movement Dance Education. It is the first scholarly text to focus on contemporary spirituality within the domain of dance and somatic movement studies.

Dance, Somatics and Spiritualities brings together prominent authors and practitioners in order to elucidate how a wide range of sacred narratives/spiritualities are informing pedagogy, educational and therapeutic practice. As well as providing new insights and promoting creative/artistic awareness, this seminal text de-mystifies the spiritual/sacred and brings clarity and academic visibility to this largely uncharted and often misrepresented subject.

A comprehensive account of the relationship between somatics, spirituality, and physiology.

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 refl ections 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. Williamson shares processes throughout that ease stress, depression, and anxiety.

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

This is a collection of works by internationally recognized women leading the field of dance research and spirituality across the globe. Building on current soulful research scholarship in the discipline, these authors offer extensive and detailed research into spirituality, dance, gender, religion, and somatics. Written by women dance scholars in higher education, this evocative and illuminating work highlights a growing discourse on gendered leadership in dance research. Spiritual Herstories provides new pathways and innovative research methods that respond to the educational needs of women emerging in male-centric socio-historic research traditions.