Question 1

The use of kinesthetic empathy allows us to connect with others by participating in their movement or attuning to the sensory experience of their movement.

(a) With reference to a recent interpersonal encounter that lasted for at least ten minutes, critique the way in which you physically attuned and empathised with the other person by describing the internal sensory signals and movements of your body.
(20 marks)

(b) Based on your answer in part (a), evaluate what the other person could be feeling or experiencing by drawing on your own sensory, emotional and image responses during the empathic process.
(20 marks)

Question 2

Treatment Plan

As an expressive arts therapist who specialises in body-based and dance movement therapy, you have been running weekly sessions for inpatients who suffer from bipolar disorder at the Institute of Mental Health. The sessions follow an open group structure. The duration of each session is an hour.

You are planning for an upcoming session and have been informed that there are six patients who have been referred. You have seen these patients for a couple of sessions before. They include three males and three females, and their ages range from 21 to 40 years. The patients’ difficulties in regulating their mood fluctuations have resulted in disruptive impacts on their daily routines and social interactions. The patients’ physical capabilities are intact.

Based on the information above, you are required to construct a treatment plan for the upcoming session with the group.

Areas to address in the treatment plan:

• Patient goal(s): What do you hope to achieve with this clinical group through the use of body-based work and dance movement therapy? (10 marks)
• Movement profile of patients: What are some expected observations of the patients’ postures and movements based on their diagnosis? (10 marks)
• Intervention strategies: Be thorough in explanation. These may be organised into categories such as warm-up, main section and cool-down. (20 marks)
• Theoretical rationale: Critique your interventions based on mind-body theories/ frames of reference. (20 marks)

Guidelines:

• Treatment plan should be given an organised structure and written in complete sentences
• Provide research evidence where appropriate. In-text and reference list citations should be provided in APA format
• Advised word count is around 1000 words  (60 marks)

Answers to Above Questions

Answer 1: Kinesthetic empathy is defined as the ability of an individual to participate in somebody’s movement or their sensory  experience of movement. The application of kinesthetic empathy is therefore highly effective in order to understand the movement of an individual, as it allows for understanding the experience and expressions performed by an individual through the body. In this relation, I would apply the kinesthetic empathy in order to understand an interpersonal encounter with one of my friend, and the main focus would be on analysing the ways in which I was physically attuned and empathised with the other person, and it also include an analysis on the internal sensory signals and movement of my body during such interaction.