Somatic Movement Dance Educators & Therapists often invite clients into movement processes that explore and investigate the language of touch. They explore the health benefits of communicating through touch and non-verbal  expressive dialogue. They also offer alternatives to touch-based work for clients who want to work without connective touch.  Hands-on-touch is used to explore how movement and touch underlie all other senses.  Therapists invite and encourage energetic flow through body tissues and systems, using different types of qualitative touch. ​

In group work they may offer improvisational movement processes that explore bodily contact and inter-connective bodily flow; this supports heightened expressivity, develops the imagination as a healing agent, and opens new expressive neuro-muscular movement pathways. I use hands-on-touch most frequently to support clients in contacting their parasympathetic nervous system; develop conscious awareness of their nervous system; and  explore a sensory-perceptual re-patterning of neuro-muscular tension. Educators and therapists use touch to:

• refine perceptual, kinesthetic, proprioceptive, and interoceptive sensitivity that supports homeostasis, co-regulation, and neuroplasticity
• recognize habitual patterns of perceptual, postural and movement interaction with the environment
• improve movement coordination that supports structural, functional and expressive integration

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