E10 S3 | Healing Through Movement: Erica Hornthal on Dance Therapy and Emotional Well-Being

In this episode of the Sick and Seeking Podcast, I interview Erica Hornthal, a dance and movement therapist, about the powerful connection between movement and emotional expression. We explore how dance movement therapy goes beyond traditional dance, highlighting its significance in mental health and self-awareness.

Erica shares her insights on the mind-body connection, emphasizing the need for a rich movement vocabulary and the importance of giving oneself permission to move freely. Our conversation reveals movement’s therapeutic potential in processing emotions, fostering deeper self-connection, and promoting healing. We also discuss the intricate relationship between trauma and the body, advocating for a holistic approach to self-acceptance amid chronic pain.

Join us as we unpack the transformative power of movement therapy and its role in emotional healing and self-discovery.

Conversation Highlights:

• The concept that “dance movement therapy finds us, not the other way around.”
• How dance serves as a rhythmic expression of emotion, reflecting our mindset.
• The significance of embracing our individuality in movement.
• The process of emotional release through movement and creating safe spaces for expression.
• The connection between trauma and the physical body, advocating holistic approaches to healing.
• How chronic pain management can improve through body trust and awareness.

Quotes:

“Dance is just another form of expression.”

“Tears are a natural part of the healing process and should not be shamed.” 

“Trauma and somatics have to go hand in hand.”

“Your pain doesn't have to be your identity.”

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Transcript

Leslie Field (00:01.08)

Hello and welcome to the Sick and Seeking podcast. I am so excited to have with me today, Erica Hornfall, dance and movement therapist. So welcome Erica, really excited to have you.

Erica Hornthal (00:13.864)

Yeah, it's so good to see you. Thanks for having me here.

Leslie Field (00:16.408)

Well, I've been following Erica on social media and watching all the incredible things that she's doing in the world connected to movement and the body. And as you know, if you've been listening to me for a while, this is my passion, this is my wheelhouse. And I just wanna keep connecting with more people like Erica to help me better explain why it's important that we are connecting to our bodies in particular through forms of therapeutic movement. So I think maybe the place to start is just...

How did this all happen? I think you said it sort of found you.

Erica Hornthal (00:48.988)

Yeah, I do like to say that, that dance movement therapy finds us not the other way around. Because most of us are already movers, dancers, and we go into the kind of professional world looking for a way to make that happen, but not with regard to performance or teaching. And so I think a lot of creatives end up finding this route of

emotional intelligence or talking or being really good listeners and being very expressive with our emotions. And I found my way towards psychology and in that transition between the dance world and psychology met someone who happened to tell me about the field of dance movement therapy. And so it quite literally fell into my lap. I mean, I do like to believe in

fate and destiny, so I don't think it was just by coincidence, but quite literally, I found my way to the field. And yeah, I never looked back. It just resonated so deeply with me, marrying my two passions of movement and dance and helping people, listening to people and helping to support people through struggles and hardship. And that's how I got here.

Leslie Field (02:10.082)

Yes, wow, where do we go next? I think where I want to go next first is I think sometimes when people hear the word dance, they might be put off a little bit. They're like, well, I'm not a dancer. I don't know how to do choreography and certain steps and what have you. And I've always struggled with that because what you do and what I do, it's a form of dance, but it's not what maybe people are thinking.

Erica Hornthal (02:13.33)

You

Erica Hornthal (02:22.856)

Mm.

Leslie Field (02:34.338)

when we mean when we say dance. So maybe we'll just start there. What do you mean when you start to talk about dance and movement?

Erica Hornthal (02:41.382)

I think it is a challenge because as wonderful as it is that dance has made its way back into mainstream conversations, it is perpetuating the stigma of dance being performance and skill and technique, know, dancing with the stars. And so you think you can dance and then probably just because of what I'm interested in, I pull up social media and I see all these, you know,

groups of two or three people dancing in front of a camera at some dance studio. And I'm just like, well, if that's dance, I guess I'm not a dancer either. That's not really how I feel. But that voice certainly pops into my head because not only can I not do those things now, I could never do those things. The amount of skill and the expectation that we place on bodies in the dance studio I just think has just

Leslie Field (03:19.044)

Yeah.

Erica Hornthal (03:38.856)

I feel fairly confident saying it's gotten out of control. Not to say that people aren't incredibly talented. And oftentimes people will be like, you're just jealous. Yeah, there's a little bit of envy, a little bit of jealousy. But also, I realize that my body is not made to do some of those things, and especially at the age at which some of these people are doing it. So that's all to say that I resonate with that. I can totally understand why when we watch those things, myself included, I'm like, wow, I am not a dancer. But the definition that I like to use when it comes to dance is,

Leslie Field (03:42.02)

Hmm.

Leslie Field (03:49.56)

Yeah.

Erica Hornthal (04:09.008)

rhythmic body expression or movement that allows us to convey a thought, express an idea, or some emotion. And so that's not my formal definition. I borrowed that from Britannica. knowing that that is a definition of dance, that it's not just always an art form, it is not just a performance or performing art, it is a way that we express ourselves.

in this moment, it would be nice if I was like, here are the origins of the word and you know, the Latin for, right? I don't actually have that knowledge in my brain right now, but someone else can look that up. But I think we forget that, you know, dance is just another form of expression and you don't have to be a performer to identify with the word dancer. we all have rhythm inside of us. We all have things moving and flowing through us.

Leslie Field (04:44.068)

Yeah.

That's, yeah.

Leslie Field (05:02.018)

Hmm.

Erica Hornthal (05:07.472)

some better than others, some more freely than others. But dance at its very core is nonverbal communication and it is what we all do before we learn to speak. We're dancing to the rhythm of life, we're dancing to music that we hear, to our own music in our head. And I think that we've all gotten so far from that, that's another reason that we don't resonate with the word dance. We just assume it's not for me.

Leslie Field (05:33.974)

Mmm.

Erica Hornthal (05:35.696)

I'm not a dancer, I don't have any coordination, and so I'll stay in my lane. But I think we all need to be embracing more of our own individual dancers to help support our own mental health.

Leslie Field (05:40.024)

Yeah.

Leslie Field (05:46.148)

Can I just capture that, whatever you just said? I need to amplify that out into the world. And I really appreciate you digging right into that because even I get a little confused about like, how do I say this is a movement form, but it's like dance. So thank you for that information. And the word that often comes up for me too when I think of dance, like you said, as we think and associate with it now, because of pop culture and just where we live.

Erica Hornthal (06:04.348)

Yeah.

Leslie Field (06:13.282)

is the word discipline. And that one's really hard on my body too, like the sort of discipline. It feels very harsh. Like there are certain rules, there are certain things you must do or not do or things you must achieve. And so I just really appreciate you sharing that insight into the word itself. And.

Erica Hornthal (06:29.414)

Yeah. Yeah, I think it comes down to the goal, the goal that you have, right? My goal is to be a professional dancer. OK, then dance is going to have a very different definition than my goal is to use movement for a form of expression, right? Like, one is putting, ideally, bread on the table, and the other is just a way of being. So it's like, you know, it depends on what the goal is, right?

Leslie Field (06:33.657)

Yeah.

Leslie Field (06:44.292)

Hmm.

Leslie Field (06:51.044)

Erica Hornthal (06:55.08)

I'm learning guitar right now. Am I learning guitar to be a professional musician? No, I'm actually learning guitar, one, because it feels good, two, because I want it to be able to share music and sing, and because it's really good for my brain. So you just have to be clear with what the goals of engaging in the art form are, and then make it work for us.

Leslie Field (07:09.924)

Mmm.

Leslie Field (07:16.936)

Ooh, so juicy. I cannot wait to listen back to this. And just segueing over into some of the beautiful quotes that you shared with me and thoughts when we prepped for this, maybe moving into the mental health space. And this one's really big. You said that your state of mind is a reflection of your body. And I kind of wanted just to play with that a little bit because I know that so deeply in my body, but I want to talk about it more.

Erica Hornthal (07:44.786)

Yeah, well, we know that our body is a reflection of our mind. Like that, I'm not denying that. But we forget that the state of body also plays a role on the state of mind. And that's actually, you know, we could play the whole chicken or the egg, but I truly, I don't just believe this. Like there's research and I've studied this. Other people have studied that.

Leslie Field (08:01.239)

Yeah.

Leslie Field (08:05.731)

Mm-hmm.

Erica Hornthal (08:13.872)

It really starts with body. Body is what references, or sorry, not references, what creates mind, mental capacity. And only after that does mind then influence body. And so why I say that is because we're not born with consciousness in the way that we have, or you and I have right now. In one great respect, it's like we would remember our birth stories.

We don't, right? But our body does. Our body carries that with us. And sometimes it carries trauma, right, until we're able to really move through that and figure out, like, why am I carrying this, or where did this come from? So I think for people listening to know that when we're struggling with something mentally or emotionally, it is not just about changing our thoughts or the behaviors that are going to

Leslie Field (08:44.548)

Mm.

Erica Hornthal (09:13.158)

make permanent change. We actually have to look at how those thoughts and behaviors are wired through the brain, which is part of the body, and through movement patterns. So if I'm a very type A, very rigid, very direct, organized, sometimes could be controlling personality,

Leslie Field (09:21.612)

Okay.

Leslie Field (09:34.724)

Mm-hmm.

Erica Hornthal (09:36.444)

I'm not gonna be a loosey goosey fluid flowy person in my body. And that's not to say that one's better than the other. But if you're looking to become more flowy in your decision making and to be less rigid, then it benefits us to find that fluidity in our body because that is the origin. It will start to influence the mind. And then again, the mind will continue to influence the body.

Leslie Field (10:01.66)

Ooh, ooh. And so interesting because I understand this and I feel this, but sometimes I still have this barrier connecting to that. I don't know what's that about. mean, can we deepen into more of what you're saying?

Erica Hornthal (10:16.936)

Yeah, I mean, at the heart of it, maybe it's a bit of a power differential, right? Because the mind is like, how dare you say that I am not mind over matter, kind of ruling the roost, right? Think before you speak. we're so conditioned to be in this intellectual, mindful place. Look, for the past how many years has mindfulness been the key to mental health?

Leslie Field (10:27.448)

Yeah.

Leslie Field (10:37.316)

Yeah.

Erica Hornthal (10:45.35)

I think we're realizing like that's just another way to control the body. I prefer Christine Caldwell's term body fullness because then we're bringing like this holistic piece, right? This wholeness, this wellness, we're looking at how the body influences the mind and vice versa. So without getting like too scientific-y, know, our movement patterns, right? How we move into the world, how we engage in our environment.

What we take in through our sensations is how we develop. So we have these developmental movement patterns that are happening. how we, it's not just sitting and rolling over, but it's the things that happen internally that allow us to do those things, right? That get us to these milestones that we tend to fixate on. But this is how we're connected internally.

you know, how we're breathing, how we're connecting our upper or lower body, how we're connecting our right side to our left side, patterns when it comes to walking or stabilizing or mobilizing. These are really important to psychological development. So one of the best ways that I like to describe it is boundaries. You know, we that's kind of a catchphrase now. Everybody's me, you know, buzzword boundaries, boundaries, lack of or

Leslie Field (12:01.41)

Mm-hmm. Yep.

Erica Hornthal (12:07.816)

really strong boundaries come from how we, in a sense, of interacted with our environment early on, right? So if you think about like pushing against or being pushed, being held, being carried, standing on your own two feet, finding your ground, finding a voice, right? These are things that actually contribute to us.

having boundaries later. And so it's no coincidence that we have many of us struggle with boundaries because we never found our voice or someone carried me for a really long time. Maybe I never really understood or felt what it was like to carry myself or to stand my ground. You know, kind of pushing into something, being pushed around. These are very visceral, sensory.

Leslie Field (12:38.596)

Hmm.

Erica Hornthal (13:04.804)

somatic experiences. So again, maybe setting a boundary isn't just the words that you use, but it's embodying the sensation of what it feels like to hold a boundary with someone. And it's always achievable. It's not like, well, missed that boat, so I guess I'll just rely on my mind. These are very early developmental movement experiences that we can always go back and rewire.

Leslie Field (13:16.619)

Mmm.

Leslie Field (13:31.588)

Hmm, so interesting. Yeah, that early development and how it impacts us later in life as we're adults and what have you. And again, these are concepts I'm familiar with and it just, it feels really mind boggling that this is legit. Like this is a real thing. But as you said, it's an embodied feeling. It's a visceral feeling. And we're so in our head, even I'm in my head about this. Like the head just wants to take over that she thinks she knows everything. And what does this body really have to say that's super important, but.

Erica Hornthal (13:38.44)

Mm-hmm.

Erica Hornthal (13:54.024)

Mm-hmm.

Erica Hornthal (13:57.671)

Thank

Leslie Field (14:00.94)

That's why we're here today to talk about that. I love how you also share that it's important we build a more robust movement vocabulary. Tell me about why it's important. You were referencing that earlier. Why do we want a more robust vocabulary?

Erica Hornthal (14:02.258)

Mm-hmm.

Erica Hornthal (14:17.256)

So we'll continue to do things that keep us comfortable, which in a sense keep us safe. And that often means repeating the same habits and patterns and behaviors over and over again, even if we know they're not good for us, because they're more familiar. And that means they feel more comfortable, which means they feel safer as opposed to the unknown, which can be scary and uncertain, et cetera. So we will very likely continue to move in the same ways, especially when

Leslie Field (14:39.908)

Mm-hmm.

Erica Hornthal (14:46.714)

I veered from that and I hurt myself. I got injured physically or emotionally, right? So the idea of creating a robust movement vocabulary is so that our body is used to moving in as many ways as possible to receive as many things as possible. that if the stress, because it will, stress is natural, if the stress starts to build, and I'm only moving in so many ways,

Leslie Field (14:49.028)

Mmm.

Yeah.

Erica Hornthal (15:14.8)

I don't give myself a lot of outs or I don't give the emotion a lot of outs versus I build in a more robust vocabulary which can look like my gait. It can look like my posture. It can be the way I turn my head, the hand that I write with, the route that I take to work in my car, on my bike or by foot.

Leslie Field (15:19.684)

you

Erica Hornthal (15:39.836)

We're building in more ways of moving, which means we're building more in routes for the emotions to move through us.

Leslie Field (15:45.7)

okay, here we go. Now we're talking about, you know, this avenue over here, not the, like we referenced earlier, the performance, the discipline, the, you know, what we were talking about, some dance forms can be the goal, but our goal, or at least what me and you really love to sit in and explore and to know about is that expression and that emotional expression. And what I really struggle with, and I guess I just want to hear from you is,

Erica Hornthal (15:51.368)

Mm.

Erica Hornthal (15:59.623)

Mm-hmm.

Leslie Field (16:13.604)

When I start to tell people that there might be lot of emotion that's present, there might be things that come up, I feel like a lot of people shy away and they don't even want to go there.

Erica Hornthal (16:25.242)

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Yeah, and then they hold on to the posture that they're in, right? Or that's when they'll start to cover their mouth or cover their eyes. It's like we're really trying to suppress and hold in the emotion that wants to come out. It's amazing what can happen when we just give ourself permission to move, to move in a way that makes us feel more...

Leslie Field (16:29.892)

Mm-hmm.

Leslie Field (16:48.879)

Mm-hmm.

Erica Hornthal (16:53.618)

comfortable or more present, right? That it's not mentally or mindfully the mind that has to give permission. It's just like the body creates the space for it, right? So we move and all of a sudden this emotion comes through and sometimes the flood gates open, right? Or that's when like a burst of anger comes out or the tears start to flow. So.

Leslie Field (16:58.637)

Yeah.

Erica Hornthal (17:20.666)

It's that's the speaking to that's like the letting the body speak there. There's no there's no right way to do it. It's just letting it happen versus the mind, you know, making the decision, right? There's always a decision. It's just like, let's just see what happens. Let's come up. It's scary because I think we're afraid of what might come out. We're afraid that we won't have control over the emotion. So if we just control the emotion, then, you know, we can dictate when and where it shows up.

Leslie Field (17:31.733)

Mm-hmm.

Erica Hornthal (17:50.542)

But then it's likely that it's always there, but we never express it because we're always afraid of it. I think people get very afraid of feeling the emotion because they haven't felt it in so long. And it just builds up this fear versus like, I always say letting go of an emotion actually starts by letting it in. So I have a lot of clients that are like, I just want to let go. I just don't want to be hateful anymore. I don't want to hate that person or I don't want to be jealous.

Leslie Field (17:53.838)

Yeah. Yeah.

Erica Hornthal (18:21.244)

Well, let's talk about that. Let's let that in. Can you move your jealousy? No, no, no, because then I'll feel more of it. Not really, right? You're actually dialoguing with it. You're having a conversation with it of sorts. It's like if you were talking to someone and you were like, have this really important topic I need to talk to them about, but I'm never gonna talk to them about it. Is it ever gonna go away? No. So you have to do the same thing with you. You're like, I'm feeling this jealousy or this rage.

Leslie Field (18:24.216)

Mmm.

Erica Hornthal (18:50.716)

But it'll go away. I'm not going to address it. It's just going to sit there. It's just going to wait until it has the time it needs to just show up uninvited. So we can make the space to actually have the dialogue. And then it gets to pass. Then it's like, OK, I gave it space. It's usually much more fleeting than people realize. They think that they're going to experience it, and then rage is just going to come out all the time. No, it's coming out all the time because you're not listening to it.

Leslie Field (19:01.698)

Mm-hmm.

Leslie Field (19:15.415)

Yeah.

Erica Hornthal (19:19.036)

dialoguing with it. The minute you start listening to it and communicating with it, it's heard. It doesn't need to suppress itself anymore.

Leslie Field (19:20.216)

Yeah.

Leslie Field (19:24.825)

Yeah.

Leslie Field (19:28.772)

I mean, absolutely. I don't know if this is something I've probably read somewhere, but just also the amount of force it takes. There's a whole energetic sort of like pushing down that your body is almost like, I don't know, bearing down on itself to hold that in. Whether you realize it or not, it could be something that feels so distant from you. Hi, raising my hand here when I decided I had no anger. Yeah, that was a fun one. And I had to work actually with my top therapist in connection with my, you could say, movement therapist.

to feel it, because when I talk about it, I was like, no, I don't have anger about this really horrible situation. And I can see how people can be really shut down because I've lived it. But it's there. It's just waiting for you to tend to it. And just as my other mentor says, escort it out, just to gently escort it out of the body. I think it's such an important piece, because what I find too is,

Erica Hornthal (20:09.65)

Yeah.

Erica Hornthal (20:20.402)

See you.

Leslie Field (20:25.322)

If you're holding emotion, whether maybe you realize it or not, there is that holding and then you're only living what feels like maybe part of yourself, like of the emotional spectrum. You're like, I can feel these five emotions, but those 10 over there, those are not allowed to see the light of day.

Erica Hornthal (20:40.37)

Right, right. Yeah, you're really limiting yourself to your full experience. I think that's one of the problems we have with like, I'll only let myself feel good things. I don't want to feel the bad things, which is kind of interesting to me because what we might associate as good can still be bad to someone else. I can't tell you how many people I've met where joy is not a good emotion for them. Joy is actually a really bad emotion. It's really scary because anytime they felt joy, bad things happen.

Leslie Field (20:59.908)

Mmm.

Leslie Field (21:04.228)

Yeah.

Leslie Field (21:09.187)

Yeah.

Erica Hornthal (21:10.374)

So this whole good or bad, we can't really label emotions in that way. We just have to experience them, right? This is the emotion, name it in some way, feel it, let it move through us. But yeah, to not be living our full experience, it doesn't mean that you're ever gonna be comfortable with all of them. Like I definitely have emotions that I am more familiar with, ones that I struggle with because they just don't feel as safe maybe as others do to explore.

Leslie Field (21:18.308)

Yeah.

Erica Hornthal (21:40.434)

But I'm only harming myself by not exploring those because, yes, I'm reflecting what it is that I'm carrying, but I'm harming myself just as much as others, if not more.

Leslie Field (21:53.508)

Hmm. Yeah. Well, it's something that I don't think people realize. It is a form of just like, it's harming yourself if you're not allowing for that full expression to be and just to be there. I guess what I want to just segue is, how do, you I'm listening to the podcast. I'm like, my gosh, Erica woman or Leslie even. These are the women I want to work with. How do like, how does someone show up for you? How do they usually find their way to you? And how do you work with them?

Erica Hornthal (22:24.712)

Okay, let me break that down because I'm like working with those. I won't go into too much detail, but that's a challenging question in itself. So let's start with like how people find me. You know, I think, well, early on people were finding me because I was very, I was really only offering a very niche set of skills. I started off by working with people that had dementia. And so it was very much like,

Leslie Field (22:26.788)

You

Leslie Field (22:34.42)

I know. Yeah.

Leslie Field (22:51.01)

Mmm.

Erica Hornthal (22:54.15)

Mom, dad, family member, Carrie has a lot of anxiety. They need to find a way to express themselves and they love to dance. So it was like, that wasn't necessarily why we danced, but it was a very easy inroad, right? yeah, we need more dance. We need more joy. Come work with this specific population. That, I don't wanna say it was easy, but after a while that became the easy part, because people were like, dementia, dance, Erica. Okay, so people found me pretty easily after a while.

Leslie Field (23:08.345)

Mm-hmm.

Erica Hornthal (23:25.474)

Now, and what I want to really continue working on, which I've been doing for like the last five or six years now, is working with people who are so disconnected from their bodies, but need that connection in order to start living again. So it is who I'm working with now, but it's much more of a challenge because the awareness has to be there that, I need to bring my body back online.

Leslie Field (23:41.431)

Yeah.

Leslie Field (23:50.722)

Yes, yes.

Erica Hornthal (23:51.504)

I don't want to ignore the sensations or what I'm feeling. And there has to be an awareness and a willingness to feel uncomfortable, which is, yeah, therapy in itself can be uncomfortable. So we're like, wait, we have to add another element to that? No, thank you. Oftentimes, it was people that had reached a plateau in talk therapy and wanted to go deeper, physically felt like something had not been addressed, but it wasn't getting addressed in the therapy sessions.

Leslie Field (24:01.796)

Mmm.

Erica Hornthal (24:21.832)

And then, you know, individuals who have compromised language. Just because we can't speak doesn't mean we don't have anything to say. And so we have to find a way to say them and we have to find the practitioners that are able to listen in a way that we can be heard. So that has been how people have found me. Aside from the whole, you know, there's a listing here and social media there. And then how people work with me or how I work with people is

Leslie Field (24:28.964)

Mm-hmm.

Erica Hornthal (24:51.888)

It's very dependent on the person I'm working with. It's obviously individualized. There's no particular format or a certain structure. There isn't really choreography. It's not that kind of dance. I do have some assessments, of like movement assessments that I do with everybody to give them a baseline of how it feels to be in their own body and how they're currently moving, which they may not realize.

Leslie Field (25:07.396)

Yeah.

Erica Hornthal (25:22.12)

And then it's just very organic, you know? It's very much, we can talk about things that are coming up, we can use our body to express or notice what's coming up. I can mirror people's movements, they can mirror mine. For me, I find it's a lot of the space. I have an open space that is meant to be able to move through. And although people may be very hesitant.

When they come in, I think they're surprised at how easy it is to start moving because they have the space and the permission to do so.

Leslie Field (25:53.709)

Hmm.

Yeah, no, I see what you say about space and maybe talking about permission too in a minute. even just noticing my own practice, how much space I have, you know, I used to be in studios doing these sort of different movement forms. And then now I've been at home, you know, in a smaller space, just watching how my movement changed in that space. And then now I'm back in big studios teaching and then feeling my body move in a different way. So we forget that space actually does have an impact in how we move.

Erica Hornthal (26:20.157)

Mm-hmm.

Leslie Field (26:25.794)

And what was the other piece? It was just space, but it was about permission. Talk to me about permission.

Erica Hornthal (26:34.3)

I think when it comes to body and movement, which really is an extension of body, like we don't often give ourselves permission to show up or move our bodies as we need to because other people didn't, you know? So from a pretty young age, we can be told, don't do that, don't touch that, don't say that. We can be held in a certain way that is actually safer for our caregiver than it is for us.

Leslie Field (26:50.372)

you

Erica Hornthal (27:04.102)

You know, we might be consoled in a way that feels better for them. You know, rocking or tapping or, you know, jiggling, jumping, you know, like it's really about how we comfort and soothe, right? Versus like what soothes us. There's that, you know, trick to kind of like co-regulation, right? We can soothe each other. But I think we weren't asked

or given permission to move in a way that we needed to. We were kind of, for many of us, told how to move. And so the first step to just giving yourself permission to move in a way that you need, not in a way that others need, is the first shield to come down. I have clients that come in and they're just like, I didn't think I could do this. And not physically. I'm physically able. I can jump.

Leslie Field (27:40.428)

Mm-mm.

Leslie Field (27:53.913)

Yeah.

Leslie Field (28:03.396)

Mm-hmm.

Erica Hornthal (28:03.624)

But I didn't think I was allowed to do this anymore. Gosh, I wasn't even allowed to do this as a kid. So what would make me think that I could do this as an adult? So being playful and energetic or giving yourself the space to lay down or sprawl out or I have a couch and I'm like, you can sit on it any way you want. You can put your shoes on it. There's no constraints as long as you are not harming yourself.

Leslie Field (28:06.34)

you

Leslie Field (28:10.423)

Hmm.

Erica Hornthal (28:32.252)

right, or a danger to me, right, or someone in the environment, you know, you're not punching holes into the wall, show up in the way that you need to. And I've had clients do that. They like, you know, sit upside down on the bed, or sorry, on the sofa. I'm like, I was never allowed to do this as a kid. This feels so good. I'm like, great, tell me more about that. What else aren't you allowed to do? What weren't you given permission to do that you really needed? So.

Leslie Field (28:39.972)

Hmm.

Erica Hornthal (28:57.402)

It's not that simple. takes a lot of time for some people to step into that because they are so conditioned to keeping themselves small and invisible. So it's not just a one session type thing, but it can be for some people. I had one, a journalist one time, I was like, I would love for you to write about dance movement therapy. And she was like, yeah, I'm interested. What, you know, tell me. And I was like, well, honestly, I think it's better to show you. Would you be interested in coming and

Leslie Field (29:05.294)

Hmm.

Leslie Field (29:10.211)

Yeah.

Erica Hornthal (29:26.716)

doing like a mock session to experience it for yourself. And she was totally on board. And the session happened, it was beautiful. And pretty much right away she was like, I knew this was gonna happen. I was like, what do you mean? She was like, I knew I was either gonna like hate the experience, you know, just like I didn't get anything from it. She was like, but I was pretty sure that I was just gonna cry right away. And she did, you know, and she was like, this is just a reflection of all the things that I keep hidden and I hold onto all the time.

Leslie Field (29:46.978)

Yeah.

Erica Hornthal (29:55.624)

All she needed was permission and space to just show up, you know, unapologetically in whatever was coming up. I didn't even really say anything. She just kind of sat in a way that brought more comfort and the floodgates opened. She just started crying. So I was like, okay, let's just, let's just be there for a moment. You know? So, yeah, me too.

Leslie Field (30:03.758)

Yeah.

Leslie Field (30:08.728)

Yeah.

Leslie Field (30:13.782)

Yeah, I know that moment well. The amount of tears, I haven't been teaching as long as you, but the amount of tears I've already witnessed in just over about the year and a half that I've been teaching is a lot. And I'll raise my hand to say I'm actually probably the person who's cried the most in different forms of therapeutic movement practices. that's why tears would never...

Erica Hornthal (30:32.328)

No.

Leslie Field (30:35.746)

They never freak me out. I never think they're weird. I always thought it was weird that I was crying so much, but now that I've done it so much, I'm like, no, this is the thing that my body just really needs to do. I can't think my way around it. I had to learn not to shame myself around it. There was a lot of shame and that I'm weak and that this is not appropriate. And so I had, again, dig into all those things that you were just mentioning about, like, what was my association with crying and et cetera, et cetera.

Erica Hornthal (30:41.768)

You

Erica Hornthal (31:04.487)

Yeah.

Leslie Field (31:05.122)

In terms of what I see about permission, it's really challenging for people to literally have the permission to move how they want to move. It feels almost counter to a lot of like we've been talking about how usually you show up to a class or to a dance or movement experience. Usually there is a sort of structure or sort of like form that you need to follow. And for people in the beginning, know,

for at least me, it's just reminding them because how I teach is music, guidance, verbal guidance, people's eyes tend to be closed most of the time and they start very slowly and it can be really challenging for people because they really get in their head about this. Am I doing this right? Is this what Leslie means? Did I hear her correctly? So I think it's interesting because we're actually inviting something that feels, it's so natural but for people it feels very counter.

Erica Hornthal (31:48.828)

Mm-hmm.

Leslie Field (32:01.932)

to what they expect.

Erica Hornthal (32:01.97)

Great.

Yeah, as you're speaking, I'm even thinking back to some of my education as dance therapist. We had movement and observation classes. And I have to say, well, I never felt pressured or...

it just felt expected in terms of like, here's an exercise and we're going to do this so that you get a sensation for what this movement pattern is. Right. And there was definitely like a, no, that's too fast. No, that's too slow. your knees aren't right. Or they need to move up a little bit. You know, like there's an alignment that has to happen here. I never necessarily, I didn't get the sensation personally that, that my body was wrong.

Leslie Field (32:31.545)

Mm-hmm.

Erica Hornthal (32:48.424)

But it was just this academic, like, this is what you need to do to accomplish and kind of get this grade. There's a format to it. There's a discipline. And so even within the field, some areas of what I experienced as a dance movement therapist, there was kind of this qualification on how a body should move in order for us to quantify it.

Leslie Field (33:14.455)

Hmm.

Erica Hornthal (33:17.626)

And so I'm very careful about how I use that in my own work because I want to use it as a guide for people, but it's not like it needs to look this way. This is the momentum or the motion we're going for. Notice your own rigidity, or notice your own resistance to the movement, as long as it's not causing harm to the structure of your body. We're not going too fast, or you're not applying too much pressure. So I recognize that too, that even in our

Leslie Field (33:27.033)

Yeah.

Leslie Field (33:30.916)

Okay.

Erica Hornthal (33:47.44)

in my schooling, there were elements of like, here's how we should move. And yet that's not how we apply it to our clients, at least not how I apply it to my clients. That's not the point of the work that I do. But yeah, we're so conditioned to it from a young age. I'm thinking about my son who's in preschool and the expectations are like, he can sit, he can pay attention, he's great in circle time. It's like.

Leslie Field (33:51.682)

Yeah.

Leslie Field (33:57.572)

Mm-hmm.

Erica Hornthal (34:13.38)

Okay, that's great. And yeah, when they get to play and have free time, like, you know, that's the easy part. But after we've sat them down and made them, you know, disciplined them, that free time gets harder and harder, you know? So for us adults that have been conditioned to that for a long time, it's really hard to just like let it go and improv, you know, or free associate what the body needs or wants in those moments.

Leslie Field (34:26.819)

Yeah.

Hmm.

Erica Hornthal (34:41.852)

And it takes a certain space to feel safe enough to do that in too.

Leslie Field (34:45.696)

Absolutely, the safe, the safety and feeling safe enough. We can never, at least I say, we can never guarantee safety for everybody in every space, but safe enough. And that's a big one. I think that maybe is a great pivot over to trauma because I'm sure this is a big part of what you do or what you see or what you're helping people maybe navigate. Talk to me. I'm writing book reports as we speak actually about the body keeps the score.

Erica Hornthal (34:53.287)

Right.

Leslie Field (35:12.496)

and another Peter Levine book, I think Waking the Tiger, I'm about to write that book report, talk to me about how do you work with people when maybe you know trauma is present or even when they might not even realize that there is a traumatic imprint in their body.

Erica Hornthal (35:28.732)

Yeah, that happens actually quite a bit. Like I don't, I don't present myself as a trauma expert and yet working in movement and somatics, especially in lieu of what we know now, you know, the body keeps the score. It really does naturally find its way to the surface. So I'll have clients say, know, like, I never really talked about this, but, and I'm like, wow, that's pretty significant. And yet that's not quote why you're here. You know? So like, yeah, we should unpack that. you know,

Leslie Field (35:39.449)

Yeah.

Leslie Field (35:45.027)

Yeah.

Leslie Field (35:52.771)

Yeah.

Erica Hornthal (35:58.248)

Trauma, 100%, they say, changes our brain. When we're changing our brain, we're changing our body. mean, our brain is in our body. And it's changing all of the wirings. It's changing how we cope or manage what emotions feel safe to express and what don't, how we continue to survive or thrive. So trauma and somatics, I think, are

Leslie Field (36:03.428)

Mm-hmm.

Erica Hornthal (36:27.304)

they have to go hand in hand. If you want to rewire or move through a traumatic experience, if you're not incorporating body in some way, I think you'll keep revisiting that trauma. So...

that doesn't have to look any one way in particular, doesn't have to be somatic experiencing, it doesn't have to be dance movement therapy. I think it just requires an awareness of how your body is showing up in these times of trigger and overwhelm, you know, when faced with the aftermath of trauma. And so yeah, I work on a lot.

Leslie Field (37:02.02)

Yeah.

Erica Hornthal (37:09.436)

just kind of so happens with people that have experienced some type of trauma. And this day and age, mean, really we're all experiencing trauma because there's so much vicarious trauma that's happening. You can witness, not to say that you are traumatized, but a lot of us are witnessing traumatic stories through social media. We're hearing about it on the news. We're reading it about it in articles. It's really hard to escape.

Leslie Field (37:32.365)

Yeah.

Erica Hornthal (37:39.322)

not that we need to escape it, but it's hard not to be present to some trauma that's happening in the world and it doesn't affect everybody the same way, you know, as we know like trauma is not what happens to you but how you respond to it so...

It's, yeah, just think it's vital. It's really important that we go back to where the trauma happened, which is in the body. Even though the mind, going back to what we started with our conversation with, right, is like it originates here, then it becomes mind. But it's so instantaneous, and we're so not aware of how our body's showing up, it's really hard to make that connection.

Leslie Field (38:04.259)

Yeah.

Leslie Field (38:21.816)

Mm-hmm, yeah. I wanna segue from now this talking about trauma, although actually medical trauma is a real thing, but just maybe bringing it to, you talked about working with people who had dementia, and I think listeners might wanna hear about how do you make this connection back? Okay, we're talking about movement, we're talking about feeling our emotions, but maybe someone who's navigating a really challenging

Erica Hornthal (38:25.352)

you

Leslie Field (38:51.204)

health condition, a new diagnosis or a diagnosis they've been living with for years. I know personally, because I have that person, finding that connection is really, really challenging and really scary. So I just want to hear maybe a little bit more about, you know, how do you work with people who have lost trust in their body, the instincts or the responses there, or the messages their body's giving to them? I'd love to hear your thoughts.

Erica Hornthal (39:17.288)

Yeah, that's a great question because I think the narrative for a lot of us is my body failed me. My body betrayed me. Especially if someone's feeling and thinking that they're doing quote everything right. I led a healthy lifestyle, I this, I did that. At the end of the day, yes, there are things, there are...

Leslie Field (39:25.092)

Yeah.

Erica Hornthal (39:40.904)

pieces to our genetics, right? There's environmental factors. There are things that are very much out of our control when we feel like we've done everything to control, you know, for that. So I find sitting in the, you know, that it failed me, betrayed.

Leslie Field (39:50.361)

Yeah.

Erica Hornthal (40:01.116)

We can absolutely address those feelings and sensations. At the end of the day, it is so important that we find ways to safely connect.

to our body. Because when we're talking about those things, oftentimes it just continues to perpetuate the disconnect, the hate that I have for it, the lack of trust that I have for it. So it's not just, OK, well, how do we trust again? What do you need to trust your body? There are physical things that we can do to start regaining and feeling.

Leslie Field (40:19.139)

Yeah.

Erica Hornthal (40:34.618)

trust within our being, within our bones, within our muscles. So some of the things that I talk about or actually do with my clients pretty early on, especially when it comes to trauma work, is stabilization, mobilization, regulation, you know, so just learning to work with the state of our nervous system, right? What are some soothing rhythms that we've known from very early on, you know, so taking a hand over your heart and

Leslie Field (40:56.228)

Mm-hmm.

Erica Hornthal (41:04.532)

either patting it gently or rubbing it gently, noticing which one feels better for you. That's trust.

You identify what feels good to your body and you can trust that that's what your body needs. So we're not looking at these big, you know, what is my, what am I supposed to be eating or drinking or how much sleep do I need? It's just like, what feels good? What feels nourishing to my body? What doesn't? So to me, that's one very quick, like that's body trust. The body is like, trust that this is what I need. Things that are already happening, you know, and we're in a state of overwhelm, right? Like you might notice where we're wiggling.

Leslie Field (41:16.548)

Hmm.

Leslie Field (41:34.212)

Hmm.

Erica Hornthal (41:41.386)

we're jittery, we're rocking back and forth, or we're swaying side to side. That's trusting in a sense that that's the rhythm of my body right now and that's actually what I need to lean into. So, you know, things like hugging a pillow really close or leaning against the wall for support. I try to really focus on the visceral...

Leslie Field (41:52.492)

Hmm.

Erica Hornthal (42:05.148)

body sensory piece as opposed to like the processing piece in that moment. Cause that's what's gonna create a sense of collaboration and connection to the body, which is already there, right? The same thing with pain. Like I get a lot of clients that have chronic pain and it's like, how am I supposed to connect to my body when my body is the source of my pain, right? And realizing that like, while your pain is present in your body,

Leslie Field (42:09.271)

Okay.

Leslie Field (42:13.803)

Mmm.

Leslie Field (42:18.062)

Yeah.

Leslie Field (42:22.168)

Yes.

Leslie Field (42:27.076)

Yeah.

Erica Hornthal (42:32.784)

It's a signal that your body's giving off, right? And that one, we can find a way to safely pay attention to it or connect to it, but we can also find a way to connect to the parts of our body that aren't in pain or that may be neutral, you know? So kind of like circumventing the problem and going to the other parts that need and require love and nurturing, because it's not all bad.

Leslie Field (42:46.413)

Yes.

Leslie Field (42:55.268)

Yeah.

Erica Hornthal (42:57.928)

It's not all, you know, it might not all be in pain. It can be consuming. It can be absolutely draining and feel like the pain is everywhere. So that was a long-winded answer, but I think just like finding the inroad to finding trust in a way that it's already there.

Leslie Field (42:58.222)

Mm-hmm.

Leslie Field (43:02.498)

Yeah. Yeah.

Leslie Field (43:15.49)

Hmm. Yeah, no, I think that's really important and really beautiful. And the chronic pain piece, I haven't worked with a lot of people with chronic pain, but I have had one student and she would tell me kind of exactly that when we'd go into the sort of way that I teach and guide bodies, that the pain was still there, but she would talk about how it could take like a back seat and that she had access to all these other parts, like you were saying, of herself and the pain wasn't so front and center all the time. And...

That was a really beautiful thing because we know that different forms of therapeutic movement and dance therapy can do that. And so to actually have a client who told me that this was her experience was like, okay, I'm going to keep doing this because this is definitely having a powerful impact on people.

Erica Hornthal (43:57.394)

Yeah.

Erica Hornthal (44:01.328)

It depends what our identity is too. Some of us, we are tied to an identity that is.

Leslie Field (44:03.117)

Hmm.

Erica Hornthal (44:07.342)

around a disease, a disorder, pain, a symptom. So for me to say, you know, we're gonna eliminate your chronic pain, right? And they're like, well, I don't know who I am without my chronic pain, right? This is who I am. I've built a brand around this, you know, or this is how I identify myself. We're asking someone to basically take away their identity, which is not helpful and not the purpose, you know? So we're trying to create perspective of like, who are you? Who are you without this?

Leslie Field (44:09.699)

Yes.

Leslie Field (44:18.284)

Yeah.

Leslie Field (44:22.242)

Yep.

Leslie Field (44:30.5)

Mm-hmm.

Erica Hornthal (44:37.36)

Can you be safe for yourself without identifying in this way? And so working with clients where it's like, my pain doesn't have to be my identity, or I don't want it to be my identity anymore, then let's rewrite that. Who are you? What do you want to be? What do you want your body to feel? I'm not going to say that the pain goes away, but your association to it does. Like you said, that client that, I'm going to give it a back seat, and I'm going to let other stuff come through. And then it's like,

Leslie Field (44:49.892)

Mmm.

Erica Hornthal (45:07.274)

Maybe, you know, I'm creative. I'm funny. I have pain. I am not my pain. You know, it becomes a sensation, not an identity.

Leslie Field (45:14.038)

Yeah.

Leslie Field (45:17.732)

I love that so much because I struggle a lot with, again, hi, I created a whole podcast called Sick and Seeking because I really struggle with my relationship to my body, to my condition, illnesses, diagnoses, what you want to speak about. And on this journey that has come up time and time again about how you identify with your diagnosis, how you identify with your disease or autoimmune condition.

Erica Hornthal (45:26.76)

You

Leslie Field (45:44.732)

And it's this really interesting fine line where I don't want it to define me. I don't want it just people look at me and be like, there's Leslie. She has chronic kidney disease and Hashimoto's and what's going on with her. And but there's also this thing where like I need to have a relationship with it, but like not have it all consuming. And it's a very weird place to be in. But I just love how you talk about like that. It doesn't have to be all of me.

But it can sometimes. Sometimes it feels like, my god, all I can think about is my kidneys and what's happening to them or what have you. And so this was just a really great moment to remind myself like that. It's just a part of me. I'm also a somatic practitioner who teaches embodied movement. And I'm also a wife. I'm also a dog mom. I think it's a really important thing to remember, especially when we're really hard things in our bodies.

Erica Hornthal (46:33.584)

Mm-hmm, yeah, and I know it's not that easy for everybody, know, especially if we're in a new diagnosis or in a terminal diagnosis or I guess this reminds me of a very early on conversation I had when I was a early practitioner, but I was also like starting to see some students and people were kind of interviewing me for my, you know, my...

Leslie Field (46:49.476)

Mm-hmm.

Erica Hornthal (46:53.128)

journey and I had a class I had a student a dance therapy student asked me she was like what is it like to work with terminal illness and I was like I don't I think you have the wrong person I was like I don't work with terminal illness and she was like well Alzheimer's is terminal I was like I never thought of it that way

Leslie Field (46:54.627)

Yeah.

Leslie Field (47:11.938)

Mm-hmm.

Erica Hornthal (47:14.024)

Like I just didn't think of it that way because for me, I didn't have clients that were dying from Alzheimer's. They were dying from complications of it or half of them were in their hundreds and they were just dying from old age, right? But they had Alzheimer's or they had markers for Alzheimer's. So maybe that's kind of where that, I don't know, that...

Leslie Field (47:23.394)

Yeah.

Yeah.

Erica Hornthal (47:35.886)

little seed kind of got planted for me because I was like I didn't label them as terminal. I wasn't you know helping to ease their burden on their journey out. It was like they're living breathing they're looking to communicate and we're looking to improve quality of life because we don't know how long they'll be here. Again some of them were in their 50s some of them were in their hundreds and have been living with the disease for 30 plus years. So yeah you know even now I know that word terminal is really hard to hear.

Leslie Field (47:46.18)

Mm-hmm.

Leslie Field (47:59.577)

Yeah.

Erica Hornthal (48:05.942)

but seeing how people change that word for themselves, right? Because we just, don't always know how long a terminal is. But I just thought it was so interesting when someone said, what's it like to work with terminal illness? And I was like, I think it was also because my clients didn't know it.

Leslie Field (48:19.31)

Yeah.

Erica Hornthal (48:22.47)

My clients didn't come in with Alzheimer's saying, I have a terminal disease. They didn't even know they had the disease. It was at the point where they were just in the moment living life without the awareness that they had this disease. it's very, yeah, it's just a different perspective and I know not everybody's gonna feel that way, but that's definitely been my experience so far.

Leslie Field (48:27.353)

Yeah.

Leslie Field (48:40.772)

That is really, really interesting about how we, yeah, self-identify what that means. I really appreciate you bringing that up. And I think it would be really great to talk about if anybody watches one of my promotional clips, they'll see this beautiful picture of your book behind you, Body Aware. You're an author. I know that you've also created, I think, a set of cards. Talk to me about, I know you have this book. I know there's another book that's coming.

Talk to me about being an author and the different things that you do outside of just, not just being a dance and movement therapist, but all the things that you, I mean, that's enough, but all the things you're writing and creating, yeah.

Erica Hornthal (49:17.48)

I know what mean. Right. Right. So talk about identities. I have a very hard time identifying. I mean, as we got on this podcast, you're like, what are your titles? You know, I was like, I, I, Sure. I'll put that out there. I have a very hard time identifying as author because I think,

Leslie Field (49:29.792)

Hahaha

Erica Hornthal (49:37.608)

I never thought of myself as a writer. It was never a goal for me to publish a book and put it out there. Honestly, it has always come from meeting needs of my clients and I guess in a sense meeting my own needs after a while. But it happened through COVID. I was like, gosh, what am I going to do if I don't ever meet with someone in person? I have these workbooks or handouts that I give people. I should collate it. So I made this little workbook.

became like, this is kind of my own personal philosophy and I want people to know about dance movement therapy. I was always interested in advocacy. was like, what would that look like to put it in a book? And I had someone else telling me, you should write, you should write. I was like, I don't know what to do. Like, write a book? What? I can barely write a 60 page thesis. I'm supposed to write 300 pages? What? So I just allowed it to happen organically, which it kind of did. And it's allowed me to meet my clients in another way. So yeah, BodyAware was very much like,

Leslie Field (50:12.078)

Yeah.

Leslie Field (50:28.002)

You

Erica Hornthal (50:37.418)

If I can't meet with someone in person or I don't work with them because I work locally and they're halfway around the world You know, what is this philosophy? What is dance movement therapy? And what is my own spin on it? The cards were very much meeting a need for my local community, which we had had a horrific mass shooting just a few miles down the road and during the crisis counseling That I was

I was able to provide very briefly. I realized this is a resource that people need. They don't need to talk about it. They need to move through. They need to allow, they need to shake it off. They need to twirl it out. They need to ground themselves and nobody was really able to do that with them in the moment. I just wanted like, here, take this home. Here's your mental first aid kit, right?

Leslie Field (51:13.697)

Yeah.

Leslie Field (51:24.824)

Yeah.

Erica Hornthal (51:28.744)

And then this next project was just going to come out next summer. It was, hearing the question over and over again, well, OK, thanks, but how do I listen? I know I need to listen. You're giving me ways to be more aware of my body. But I need some step by step. So I was like,

Leslie Field (51:38.712)

Mmm.

Erica Hornthal (51:46.002)

gosh, what if I created a day-to-day guide, one thing someone could do every single day to help reconnect to their felt experience? And so that's what this next project will be. It's literally a 365-day guide to get out of your head and back into your body. So.

Leslie Field (51:55.812)

you

Leslie Field (52:03.706)

yeah.

Erica Hornthal (52:05.222)

That's kind of, yeah, where it's evolved. And now I'm noticing I kind of have the bug where I'm like, I have to release something else now. But luckily I have people in my life that are like, one thing at a time. Don't put the cart before the horse. Like when there's a need for it, you'll figure that out. I'm not, beyond that, I'm not working on anything else right now. Yeah.

Leslie Field (52:13.89)

Hahaha

Leslie Field (52:19.193)

Yeah.

Leslie Field (52:27.968)

Wow, well that seems like a lot in itself. And my goodness, if this is not us blasting it from, I don't know, as far as wide as we can to help people get more out of their head and into their body, I don't know what else we can do today to do that. And everything we're talking about is such a felt experience. I always laugh because I'm like, here we are talking about something that, yeah, there is talking, like you said, in the work that you do. There's a component for you. But a lot of it is about.

feeling and sensing and noticing and experiencing. So just this is that invite guys. There's so much more there outside of the brain if we could just move some of that energy and attention into the body. So if people wanted to find you, how could they reach out to you on social media, your website, et cetera.

Erica Hornthal (53:16.476)

Yeah, I tend to hang around on Instagram. My handle is the therapist who moves you. It's just that.

periods between each word or my website ericahornthal.com and I always encourage people to message me, email me, my phone number is listed, you could call me and leave me a message. I really love to take those connections off of the internet or out of email and actually have conversations with people even you know regardless of if you're looking for services just to you know have a community, have connection and further the conversation of like how

continue to do this work.

Leslie Field (53:53.86)

Wonderful. Well, we'll be sharing all of that in our show notes. And just want to say it was a pleasure speaking with you today, Erica, my fellow therapeutic movement and dance therapist. Just so wonderful to have you here with us today.

Erica Hornthal (53:58.14)

Mm-hmm.

Erica Hornthal (54:09.734)

Yeah, thanks again so much. It was a pleasure.