Embodying kinaesthetic empathy through interdisciplinary practice-based research

This paper draws on a practice-based interdisciplinary research project to examine ‘kinaesthetic empathy’ as an intersubjective phenomenon within clinical practice. Research participants included both experienced movers (a group formed by qualified dance movement psychotherapists and dance artists) and non-experienced movers (a group comprising multidisciplinary clinicians within a National Health Service mental health unit). The investigative work was grounded in embodied interdisciplinary research and was informed by dance movement psychotherapy (DMP), phenomenology and cognitive neuroscience. Research outcomes included: (i) A measure of motor cortex involvement in movement processing; (ii) phenomenological analysis of participants’ accounts and (iii) embodied performance work. This paper straddles art, science and clinical practice boundaries and contributes to discourses of embodied empathy and intersubjectivity within clinical contexts.