Cozy landscapes in a time of subtleties: Resonance of dance in a body treatment clinic in mental health care

• Main Authors: Ingrid Bergma da Silva Oliveira, Lucivaldo da Silva Araújo
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Universidade Federal de São Carlos 2013-12-01
• Series: Cadernos de Terapia Ocupacional
• Subjects: Mental Health; Dance; Cartography
• Online Access: http://doi.editoracubo.com.br/10.4322/cto.2013.059

The quest to build cozy landscapes in times of subtleties in mental health care is based on an ethical and poetic choice to build a clinic. This study deals with research aimed at the cartography of a body treatment clinic in mental health that has used various practices in this perspective of coziness and subtleties within a Psychosocial Attendance Center (PSAC) - type II in Belém, Para state, Brazil. In the methodological path we have traveled in these practices, we would like to highlight the work with Sacred Circle Dances (SCD) in the experience of a Body Work Group involving 14 service users between 2010 and 2012. We resorted to participant observation and records in field notebook to find highlights in the intensity of meetings, especially regarding the experiments with dance. The results showed that, in Sacred Circle Dances, service users battled for their spaces, shared their stories, gave in and demanded, pulling away from any stereotype of passivity, and possible lack of motivation, or victimization In conclusion, SCD subscribe the emancipation of dancers of “expected” acting to the dance, in a territory that comprises dance together and do with others, which enriches experience and sustains differences. SCD in the daily routine of PSACs reaffirm that those centers are not a place of mental illness, but of mental health, where the relief is life and the disorder is only a part of existence. SCD are configured as a potential place of exchange.