Photo credit: Priscilla Harmel, dance/movement therapist and photographer

Nineteen years ago today, I introduced the Octaband® to the world as I launched my first website where I offered 2 sizes of the Octaband for sale, the 8-leg and the 16-leg. Today, we offer yet a third size, the 24-leg, and, in addition to the classic colors of electric pink, turquoise, and lime, we offer an 8-leg and 16-leg in velvet spandex in more muted colors reminiscent of nature: a light blue, green, and brown. We also have Octaband Links which are resistance bands with loops on the ends for holding on to and which can be used individually or in pairs.

A Sense of Belonging

What was and is most important for me was for people to feel they belonged. As much as the field of dementia care talked about memory loss, I have found the most distressing issue facing people in aged care facilities is loneliness and isolation.

Octaband History

People often ask how I came to create the Octaband®. I believe there are multiple streams that come together to cause something new to come into being. Below are 2 layers of the story.

Octaband: A Solution to Isolation

I was working in a nursing home on a unit where people had physical and cognitive challenges and were behaviorally challenging. I was having difficulty engaging the 6 to 8 people in a shared focus or sense of cohesion. No one followed directions. Some slept, others shouted, or repeated themselves. I had to interact one to one to get anything to happen at all. That was when I remembered an image I was taught in graduate school - that there are times when the leader is the hub of the wheel and the interactions are the spokes. I wondered what would happen if I created a prop which manifested that image so that I could figuratively step out of the center and be on the periphery with the others. That was around 2003, when I created the first version, not even remotely like the one eventually offered for sale.

Dance for Connection History

But behind that version of the story lies a deeper layer. In 1993, I was one of 4 dance/movement therapists hired to provide services to frail elders as part of a research project funded by the NIH to investigate the effect of dance/movement therapy on mood, social interaction, and physical functioning of nursing home residents and adult day health clients. Music therapist Michele Forinash was inspired to provide a qualitative aspect of the research study to provide a better “understanding of essential elements of the [DMT] experience.” Based on the four therapists’ narratives - which included our clinical process notes, personal reactions, and general impressions - Forinash found, with all four therapists in agreement, the "Phenomenon of Connection"; that there was an essential continuum of connectedness, both internal and external underpinning all of our work. (Forinash, M. 1996. Facets of connectedness: A Phenomenology of dance/movement therapy with the frail elderly. Unpublished.)

Until that time, while I was operating under the assumption that I was using dance to help people feel a sense of connection, that idea was not yet entirely clear. Once I recognized my intention to build connection through dance, I found my groups all the more effective at achieving that goal. At the same time, and based on my ingrained understanding of the history of the Holocaust, I understood the importance of not just group-think, but also of being able to experience oneself as an individual.

Dance is such a powerful medium because it celebrates our commonalities. We all have bodies and move them to express ourselves and communicate with one another. Our bodies' ability to express ourselves is our lowest common denominator. At the same time, dance and the Octaband celebrate our uniqueness, our individuality.

Dance for Connection and Octaband are importantly about acknowledging our mutuality, our interdependence. The different colors of the Octabands reflect our diversity. We, and the world, are better for our differences.

Happy Birthday, Octaband®