Each time I prepare to lead a training to Bring Dance to Older Adults and People with Dementia, I consider what is the most important thing I would like people to leave with. I always want to teach my latest realizations and thoughts and am also faced with the challenge, not only of what I consider the priorities, but also in what order they will be most effective. Of course, I plan to teach the most important things, but the order will depend upon the participants' needs, just as they do in a DMT group with people with dementia.

The most important thing

Fifty years ago, I had a seminal experience in a continuing education class with Dr. Buryl Payne, American psychologist and physicist. In that class, I saw on biofeedback equipment, a person's brainwaves altered dependent upon whether or not people were holding hands in a circle. That led me to understand that, at least if we were holding hands, even if we were not beside the person, we were affecting others in the group. I extrapolated - rightly or wrongly - that even if we are not holding hands, we are always affecting one another. That has become the basic premise upon which I have led my groups since I began working as a DMT. Based on the results, as evidenced by my senses, that hypothesis appears to be true. Thus the following quotation in a recording of an interview of Michael Verde of Memory Bridge on "Empathy: 'to climb into someone's skin and walk around in it'.

"Imagine someone who has the confidence that who they are does not have to do with being above people; that, there's a sense in which their membership is never going to be terminated. When a person like that interacts with a person with dementia, they are able to notice things that they would not have noticed if they came in full of anxiety about their own identities. With the kind of confidence they have from themselves participating in community, they can then interact with people with dementia in such a way that the common elements in dementia start to come into their awareness."

It is such a cohort where people feel accepted without judgment in a space that we co-create, that I attempt to nurture in my trainings. That is the most important thing. If we are to provide a container where people with dementia are to feel a sense of belonging, we need to bring that confidence in our own belonging first.

Michael Verde says much, much more in that interview that I found valuable enough to have listened to twice. To entice you to listen for yourself, here is another quotation without the larger context. Michael is asked: "How do you know that spending time with people with dementia matters? How do you know that love matters?" He responds,

"My question is, I will be happy to try to bring forth evidence that love matters, if you would meet me halfway and bring forth evidence that anything at all without love matters. . . What we mean by evidence might have everything to do with whether or not we're looking through our own eyes or the eyes of something that transcends our own ego. And having someone to tell it to must be an absolute vital step in being able to let go of our caste system membership and to step into a place where we're folks and we can talk about ourselves in ways without fear of being ostracized and come to know who we are, perhaps for the very first time."

I wish I had the confidence to answer in such a way when people ask for analytical research about how I know that dancing with people with dementia matters.

I titled this issue "Wholly and Holy" because this sense of belonging I spoke about seems to me to be about knowing our place in the universe. When we feel fully, or wholly, accepted for who we are rather than what we do, our place among the people, the animals, and the plant life, at the very least we can feel a sense of ease, we can be more effective, and perhaps, on occasion, have a transcendent / spiritual / holy experience. And, lest you think I've got that one covered, as I often say, "We teach what we need to learn."

You can learn more about what I know by scheduling a training with me for your group or purchasing the manual that I co-authored with Dr. Meg Chang, The Dance of Interaction. Please note that the price of the manual is now $34.95 as publishing prices have gone up.

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