Conscious Dance Practices/Integral Dance

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Integral Dance (created by Alexander Girshon) is a dance leading toward greater wholeness. It helps to maintain a deep connection with oneself (at the level of body and consciousness), connects us with others in a special way, helps to feel our belonging to the world (to nature and art), and to something greater that is difficult to express in words (the spiritual level). Moreover, these connections are dynamic in nature.

“Integral Dance arose from the desire to embody in practice the dance as a path to wholeness, and from the understanding that such a path is more than therapy. I like the phrase: Good therapy ends, but dance is endless.

Therapeutic goals, as I see them, are purposeful, situational, clearly defined — but dance can accompany the entire human life.

A dance that can accompany a whole human life, with everything that it contains — that is Integral Dance.”

— A. Girshon

The Core Principles of Integral Dance

1. Body and consciousness are inseparable

Every expression of a living person, no matter how they present themselves, always has a bodily representation. Everything we experience, think, and decide is embodied. The brain is a part of the body — this is a simple yet essential understanding.

When a person presents themselves, tells their story, or expresses their feelings, we always look at how this manifests on the bodily level — through facial expressions, small gestures, shifts of posture, changes in muscle tone, or vocal intonation.

2. A human being is a process, not an object

It is essential to see a person as a developing multidimensional process.

The first conclusion from this principle: every situation that exists here and now has a certain history — a person has gone through particular stages, phases, and episodes of development. The second conclusion: this situation will continue, this story is not finished.

In a certain sense, this coincides with the existential understanding of a person as an unfinished project.

We ask: What continues to move? What continues to change? What process is unfolding?

3. In everything, one can see a dance and partners for movement

This third principle arises from the previous question: What is this process? And here we arrive at dance.

If we understand dance as a multidimensional, coordinated process, it becomes important to find the appropriate place for any experience.

For example: “This situation doesn’t suit me because some part of me is not in the place where I could accept it.”

Or: “The position I’m in limits me and doesn’t allow me to embrace what is happening.”

From a holistic, integral point of view, we cannot discard anything. In this sense, we understand dance in a truly broad way, and we can consider any situation in life as a dance, and its participants as partners in movement.

Four Levels of Integration in Integral Dance

Dance with oneself

The core values of Integral Dance are freedom, creativity, wholeness, and care (first and foremost — self-care).

Listening to one’s own rhythm, listening to one’s deep desire, listening to one’s authenticity — these are the qualities a person learns.

And naturally, when a person learns to care for themselves, they begin to build relationships with others in a qualitatively different way.

True self-care is the ability to be free and to create.

Dance with another

At the most basic level, every person has a deep sense of being: “I exist, and I have the right to exist.”

I exist, and that is enough.

From here — if I exist, I can feel, and I can act. I have the right to feel and the right to act.

The next circle of integration is connection with the Other.

There can be no integration that is purely individual.

It cannot be that I am whole by myself, but in relationship with others I immediately lose this state.

If a person is truly whole, this extends to the quality of their relationships with others — in which, if one wishes, one can always see partners for movement.

Dance with the world

This means that I have my own place in the world, and I am at peace with it — my place in society, in culture, and in nature.

It means that I have a certain connection with nature — one that feels right for me.

These can be very simple things: for example, a person enjoys walking in the park and intuitively knows when it’s time to go there.

Or perhaps they feel a deep connection with a certain element or force of nature.

Connection with the world also manifests as connection with culture — in the sense that I truly understand which culture influences me, which culture I belong to, and why my tastes and preferences are what they are.

This is what integration means: what I do in society corresponds to my inner sense of self, and there is no strong contradiction between them.

There may be compromises or crises that I go through, but strategically I am in my right place in this world.

Dance with eternity

Most people who practice dance note that at times they encounter an inner experience that is difficult to express in words — as if part of it cannot be verbalized and lies beyond our consciousness.

If a person has experienced a powerful, vivid state through dance, it needs to be integrated — to find its place and meaning.

What place does it occupy? Where can it be of use, and what nourishes it in return?

Integral Dance provides space for this sacred side of the dance experience, creating a field for calm and clear understanding — where it leads and why it is needed.

Main Tools of Integral Dance

• Integral Dance-Movement Therapy
• Integral Somatics
• Integral Performance and Improvisation
• Dance as a Spiritual Practice

The foundation of Integral Dance is built upon several different schools of improvisation and improvisational performance on one hand, and body-centered therapy on the other. Dance therapy itself treats movement as a language of communication between therapist and client. Establishing non-verbal therapeutic relationships is the essence of classical dance therapy.

Another cornerstone of Integral Dance is Authentic Movement. Interestingly, Authentic Movement is both a separate discipline and, at the same time, already carries a sense of integrality. It can serve as a therapeutic tool, it can be a personal practice—sometimes for stress management, sometimes to support creativity, sometimes to address personal challenges, and sometimes simply because the process itself is valuable. It is also a spiritual practice. At least in the form practiced by Janet Adler, the Discipline of Authentic Movement is a modern mystical practice. Both aspects—the therapeutic and the spiritual—are explored in A. Girshon’s book Stories Told by the Body.

A significant body of knowledge emerged after classical dance-movement therapy, particularly in the 1970s–1990s, through somatic techniques. These, on one hand, share much with dance-movement approaches but are positioned under a different label. Somatic therapists often have separate professional associations, use somewhat different tools, and draw on a distinct knowledge base. Yet the foundations and goals are very similar. The somatic approach has significantly enriched the understanding of dance, movement, and human development. It also integrates well with discoveries in neuroscience—a field that must be incorporated today. Naturally, dance therapy and psychotherapy in general strive to understand and integrate this knowledge, relating it to practical therapeutic techniques.

Additionally, there are practices not focused on creativity or therapy per se, but rather on dance as ritual or prayer—dance as a form of spiritual practice.

Thus, Integral Dance draws on many foundations: improvisation, therapy itself, authentic movement, dance as a spiritual practice, and somatic or body-oriented approaches. Integral Dance is a process that helps us understand how all these elements relate to one another. By combining these forms of knowledge, we can more clearly and accurately—and most importantly, while staying connected to ourselves and our intentions—use Integral Dance for self-discovery, personal development, and enhancing our engagement with life.

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