The Body Hotel Company has hatched!

What’s the story behind The Body Hotel?

The Body Hotel started while I was living and teaching dance movement psychotherapy in Scotland. My mission was to create a monthly retreat series for professionals to take some time to ‘check out’ from daily life, and ‘check in’ to their bodies as many times in our professions we are often giving way more than we receive. I discovered that it was important to have a dedicated space to move, engage positively with others and investigate ways of creative reflection. The workshops received a cross section of participants: we moved with new mums, financial analysts, artists, nurses, carers, therapists and youth workers, among many other professions, which was incredible to see. Years later, I had a coffee with an colleague and was telling them about these workshops – and they said: “why don’t you do this for the NHS in Wales?”, and I said Wow - Yess!!! After much encouragement from my colleagues and the DMP Wales Network, and establishing a trajectory of running this format of The Body Hotel in China, several workshops for LGBTQ+ people in Scotland, and a self-produced sessions in Wales, I decided to transition this body of work into a social enterprise this past November, trading as The Body Hotel LTD. I am really excited to have transformed a practice into a way of operating with a wider scope, which will aim to inform dance/movement interventions in health and wellbeing, and keep striving for a wider impact in the health, care and education sector.

How would The Body Hotel help everyday people like you and me?

The pandemic has really highlighted the importance of wellbeing, physical activity and movement. The Body Hotel as a company, is now offering both workshops on employee wellbeing and dance movement psychotherapy services, a new branch launching on 19th June! Dance movement psychotherapy involves helping people ask ‘body questions’, drawing connections between movement behaviour and life stress, and transforming relationships through the vehicle of psychotherapeutic creative expression. These body questions are what we engage with, using movement, metaphor and play – which are things we as adults forget to prioritise, but they are key to our wellbeing! The Body Hotel workshops focus on this aspect by making movement accessible to any adult who wants new perspectives and ways of understanding themselves, others and their environment. Hopefully we can get more funding in the future to bring these workshops to support more LGBTQ+ people, which is one of my passions as a dance movement therapist and artistic practitioner.