Dance for Liberation: A Case Study for Addressing Han through a Traditional Korean Dance-Based Psychotherapy Approach

Abstract

Dance and feminism share the epistemological understanding of the body as a site for agency, potential for change, and knowledge creation. This clinical case illustrates how a joint, indigenous dance and what are referred to as complementary and alternative medicine in the United States can enact a decolonizing psychotherapy framework for co-creating a space to access and embody cultural knowledge. Gimoo, a practice founded on traditional Korean dance and traditional Korean medicine, attends to an intergenerational trauma and resilience response, han, in a Korean immigrant woman to the United States. An indigenous dance that is inherently cultural can be a resource to empower a person to be an agent of their own liberation through support and solidarity, even in a virtual setting, and to expand Western notions of what healing might entail.

Keywords:

• Indigenous dance
• traditional Korean medicine
• traditional Korean dance
• Gimoo
• han
• complementary and alternative medicine
• dance/movement psychotherapy