Dr. Christina Devereaux Interview: A Witness to Growth

Christina Devereaux, Ph.D., LPC, LMHC, LCAT, BC-DMT, NCC (she/her) completed a doctoral degree in Clinical Psychology and a master’s degree in Dance/Movement Therapy from the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA). Dr. Devereaux is licensed as a Creative Arts Therapist and Mental Health Counselor in the state of New York and licensed as a Professional Counselor in the state of Pennsylvania. She is Board Certified as a Dance/Movement Therapist (ADTA), and a Nationally Certified Counselor (NBCC) with 25 years working in the field of mental health as a therapist, educator, supervisor, consultant, and trainer supporting DMT professionals in 4 continents. Dr. Devereaux is a full-time tenure-track faculty at Rider University in Department of Education, Leadership, and Counseling for the MA in Clinical Mental Health Counseling with Dance/Movement Therapy Concentration (CACREP-accredited) and as an adjunct Visiting Associate Professor at the Pratt Institute in the Department of Creative Arts Therapies in Brooklyn, NY.   She held leadership positions for other university programs including Associate Clinical Professor and Program Director for the Dance/Movement Therapy and Counseling MA program at Drexel University in Philadelphia, PA, USA and Program Director for the Dance/Movement Therapy and Counseling MA program at Antioch University New England (Keene, NH, USA).

Dr. Devereaux is the former co-editor of the American Journal of Dance Therapy from 2011-2017 and a two-time President's Award recipient from the American Dance Therapy Association (ADTA) for her outstanding contributions to the profession (2008 and 2017). She was featured on National Public Radio (NPR), CCTV, the largest television station in China, and as a presenter for the 2014 ADTA Talks series focusing on DMT and autism. In addition to authoring many chapters and journal publications, she has a blog with Psychology Today “Meaning in motion: Dancing with the mind in mind." Christina is a recognized scholar and national and international presenter specializing in dance/movement therapy with attachment disorders, autism spectrum disorders, trauma, clinical supervision, mind-body integration and embodied understanding of neurobiology.

Transcript

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Hey everyone, today I am happy to be chatting with Christina Devereaux. Hi, glad you're here. So you are a licensed creative arts therapist, board certified dance movement therapist, a clinical counselor, and you practice both in New York and Pennsylvania is my understanding. And you have been working in the field for about 25 years. Indeed. yeah, and also are the program director for the dance movement therapy program at Drexel University, along with international faculty positions around the world. Is that right? Lucky you, so much experience. I'm happy to have you today and I'd love to start to hear about your thoughts regarding how boundaries. inform your practice as an educator and where does belonging fit into this work? Yeah, it's a great question. Something that I feel like is actually in my body from my own lived experience. I've been thinking about that the word belonging and how that's fostered for us as clinicians, as educators, but even as children. I was a child of a military family. So what that meant is that I moved around a lot and I had to have my own embodied experience of finding, quickly adapting to spaces that I needed to figure out on a nonverbal level, what does it feel like to be here? How does it feel like to fit in? What are the adjustments that need to happen in me in order to belong in this context? And so, you know, as I reflect on the question, I can't decouple that from my own bodied experience. So I feel like that is certainly alive and how I'm pretty sensitive with how I try and to support and cultivate those experiences within the classroom setting. And I feel like that requires time, it requires attention, it requires personal connections, it requires really slowing down in my own body, being really attuned to the sensitivities that are. that are alive within me and within the classroom. So that's pretty broad, but I think in general, it means Making sure that students feel that they can show up in all different ways. They can show up with their frustrated self, with their excited self, with their confused self, with feelings of uncertainty, feelings of vulnerability. Certainly those are. that we have as clinicians, but I also think, you know, we have to use those skills pretty, in a pretty attuned way in the classroom setting as well. That being said, it also contradictory, well, to the concept of boundaries, it also means that, it doesn't mean that we're just a broad, open, soft spot to land for students, that we also have. we have edges and we need to know where those lines are. One of my former mentors, Pamela Fairweather, who was my teacher when I was in school at UCLA, but also my supervisor through many, many years in my career up until recently when she passed, she really instilled in me this soft bodied, sensitive soul yet. there were clear edges that I knew this is not where I, this is not an area that I cross in terms of the facilitator connection. So I feel like both of those need to exist simultaneously. Absolutely. I appreciate that. So there's, it's, I mean, as you're talking, there's a movement with it. And, you know, I am imagining that there's a movement with the boundaries too, in how you facilitate them. And boundaries are also personal. So, you know, I have some students that want, I am comfortable in the classroom setting for students to call me by my first name. That is not comfortable for all students. But for other students, you know, to call me Dr. Devereux feels like a boundary they want to keep. And for me, I'm fine with that. But on the other hand, there are also student experiences where to have that sort of parallel, you're a human and you have a first name and I can be with the Christina part feels really good. So that's just a tiny example of even kind of how do I show up and also how do we navigate our relationship that has both boundaries and also belonging in a sense of openness. And I also think there are times where students need clearer. boundaries. They need me to step forward and say, this is an edge that we won't cross here. You know, this is my role and putting this hat on, I'm kind of holding these edges to support them and feeling that in their own body. Yeah, that's a responsibility of yours as the facilitator, as the educator to be explicit around the edges. Yeah. And so tricky at times because there's nuance in it. And then, you know, we have to check in with ourselves to figure out what's happening in this moment and what's the best way to communicate about the moment, right? And to... Bracket off the pieces that are irrelevant. It's a quite a multifaceted task if you uh-huh Yeah that we have as educators, I think, in this field. Yeah. And I, you know, I also want to mention just appreciating that our boundaries are contextual, that there are cultural nuances that shift boundaries, you know, even down to the title that's used to address you as a facilitator. Yeah. And I believe that is exactly as you described. There's the nuance that comes from their own lived experience and cultural context around how do I refer to an authority person or, you know, I have a colleague that indicated to me when she came from into her program from another country and to have your shoes off in a class and to share, show your feet. to the instructor was disrespectful. And so that was a boundary that was really challenging in a different cultural context in an educational setting. So I'm just, I'm relating to what you're saying there. Thanks for that example. Yeah, and how body and boundaries come together. Oh, that's so interesting. I'd love you to share about your teaching experience, your journey to teaching, what you teach, what you love about it. Yeah. Well, I think sort of my initial opportunity to be in a role of educating others happened in my graduate training at UCLA. I served as a teaching assistant for undergraduate non-dance majors for modern dance. So that was sort of my first role of developing a curriculum and creating the content and stepping into the space and holding the space. And also I also had the opportunity to work with live musicians. And so there was that dance as well in there. So that was the first start within that. And then I think it grew into another angle when I started to do off-site, or sorry, on-site supervision for therapists and training where I was working at a residential facility with children in Los Angeles and started to mentor and teach. within the context of the clinical environment, in groups together, in session moments of teaching. So that kind of bug started to get massaged for me around what role I could have in helping shape and shift someone's development as a learner, as a practitioner, ultimately as a mover. And then, kind of more formally, my first... sort of adjunct teaching role happened at the Pratt Institute in New York, at Brooklyn, New York, and I was working in, I had various courses that I was teaching there. And then life happened and I moved to another state as a result of a relationship shift and was hired as a full-time faculty at Antioch University, New England. You might be... I'll remind you in this moment that my upbringing was a military child. So I moved around a lot and it feels like it was also mirrored in my educational experience as I'm describing it. So I was the full-time faculty at Antioch for eight years and also served as their director of their master's program in dance movement therapy the last two years of my career there. And then. My husband and I were interested in shifting some geographical regions and experiences. And so we moved to Philadelphia after I was offered the position at Drexel University. And here I am the program director, as you noted for the dance movement therapy and counseling master's program. In addition to some opportunities that have come to expand some of the training abroad with Inspiriees of China. in China. I was one of three faculty to kind of be a part of the development of that program. And also my colleague Joan Wittig and I partnered with some colleagues in New Zealand and we developed an online international program in New Zealand. So opportunities to just expand it into other regions and continues to help me. shift and grow and evolve for sure. Yeah. I'm curious what about being an educator? What about it do you love? What does it nurture inside of you? Is my curiosity. Yeah, I think that might change every day if you ask me a different day. So I appreciate the question today. It actually, you know, we're at the end of the quarter and things are sometimes pressure filled and a lot of things moving. So to like step back into the question is really powerful and useful to me. I think ongoingly, I love being a witness and a participant. in the evolution and journey of students' process moving from student to therapist and becoming a helping professional and just being a part of that and you know the process of the deep transformation that has to happen when you're learning to be a helper and I kind of I like to be a witness to that growth that's very powerful and I like observing how their initial passions to coming to this unique profession, how it ends up evolving into their curiosities and what they study and what they ask the deep questions about or projects that they develop. And yeah, I just I value the co-created collaborative process of teaching graduate students. I think that's what I love the most. And it's useful to come back to that during those challenging times where I think, oh, there's a lot here. But truthfully, you get to step back and see the whole picture of being a witness to their journey. Yeah, it really is an honor to be able to see the growth and the change over time. I appreciate that as well. I'm wondering how you would describe your teaching frame. What are the edges? What are, you know, the important pieces that you make explicit? And what do you think also shows up implicitly from you? yeah, I think, oh, implicit and explicit. Yeah, good question. Certainly, I'm learner-centered, I think, relationship-driven, have a frame that's learner-centered and relationship-driven. I also value balance in the classroom, meaning I value bringing in historical context and critiquing it, and also bringing contemporary trends in. So like the balance of both because knowledge is constantly evolving. Learner centered meaning the importance of active engagement in the classroom and outside of the classroom, really centering the learner's experience that might mean we need to adjust and flex in the room, but we still follow kind of the intended learning objectives of the course. I feel like my role is to be a model, particularly since we're facilitating a classroom space. What does that facilitation model in terms of how they will facilitate other types of you know, engagement spaces? And I feel like that's a responsibility that I have. And then there was a question you had about how does that show up implicitly and explicitly? Yeah, I'm curious about those explicit edges, you know, that you were talking about before. How do you speak to those in this frame? Yeah, well, I think there's a class that where it comes up really directly. I teach group dynamics and process and we the that course, we intentionally look at the role of a group facilitator from two. We look at group dynamics and theories from two positions, one as a leader and the other as a member of a group. And so that means that there are times where I might be facilitating an experience in a learning training focused space, and they're also having their own experiences as a member of the group that get activated. So how do we hold those boundaries between a learning training space and an activated, you know, deep discovery, I might have feelings here. I might have feelings towards you, the classroom teacher, who also holds different positionalities within my training. So I feel like that's where boundaries have to be explicit. Sometimes literally it's saying, okay, this is the hat I'm wearing now, I'm gonna take it off and I'm putting on this other hat, or let's hold that. Sometimes I literally change classroom spaces on the different days. So multiple ways, I think, or I might need to back off and say, I understand from this position, you're seeing me in this way. It's tricky. Yeah, and quite a dance. It sounds like you are aware of a number of the nuances that are woven into your different roles as a facilitator, especially in the group dynamics class, but I imagine in multiple classes where, you know, your role as an educator can look in multiple ways, depending on the content of the course or the needs in the moment. yeah. So we will talk about that certainly at the beginning of the course, but we need to reiterate that through group agreements and ways in which we might be struggling with them. And I think for some students, that's harder than others. And I honor that too. So I might feel some of those subtleties and say, okay, this is as far as I, these are the edges that I will hold particular student or with this particular group. Yeah, I'm not your therapist, I'm your teacher. I am a therapist, but I am not yours. So how do we navigate that? yeah, that is quite a navigation. I feel like in therapeutic education, where many, if not all, of the facilitators are also practitioners, therapeutic practitioners, and I wonder what is the work that you do as a therapist educator to hold those boundaries, you know, with the space? But there's also, I imagine a soft edge too, because it's a both and, right? Our therapeutic training and our work as therapists, I mean, at least for me, is a lifestyle. It's part of who I am in the world. So how are you in the world as a therapist? How does it show up? Yeah, well certainly because I feel so relationship centered being in communities where we have shared questions about these edges. I have some great colleagues that are kind of teaching similar classes in the same field and we kind of unpack them together like, oh this is coming up for me. I'm a participant in my own modern psychoanalytic group. which is very interpersonally focused, as well as have been in post-graduate training for the Center for Group Studies for many years, so in New York City. So I feel like a constant learner myself. And as I also feel like working in a graduate training, it's a co-created process. I'm also continually evolving and growing and learning. So if I shut that part of me off, then I think, I don't think the students will feel a sense of flexibility or spaciousness to come forward in their own vulnerabilities. I have a memory of when I was in my doctoral program, one of my professors, somebody was asking a kind of a complex question. And I saw her as so knowledgeable. She knew everything. She could pull things down and I just wanted to be her. And somebody asked a question and she said, oh, that's a great question. I do not know the answer. I would love to find out. And it was this dropping back of humility of, I am a human, I don't know everything, even though I put her on this pedestal in that way. And so I feel like that's an important role for me as well to show my humanness and to communicate. the co-created learning space that we're in. Oh, you just taught me something really wonderful about that moment, or oh, you're reminding me of this as you're sharing this experience. And that's really useful for me to remember. So for what it's worth, I think that's something that's alive as we're talking. Yeah, the importance of sharing one's humanness as a facilitator. And it sounds like it impacts students in a multitude of ways. I mean, you were talking about your experience of realizing the humanness of your professor and how that felt like deep humility. And in that modeling, you too as an educator are offering that humility as, you know, not as the expert of all things, you know, but another human in the group. Yes. Oh, wouldn't that be amazing if I could be the expert of all things. And I would not have to be vulnerable or continue to grow or, and at the same time, no way. I mean, that shuts me off from other perspectives and. lived experiences that, you know, as a white woman growing up in a middle-class home, I really was only privy to certain things, and that feels important to continue to expand from other perspectives. Yes, amen to that. I mean, and what I what I'm hearing you say is that when a person, when an educator holds this archetype of being an expert, then there is a there's potentially a lot that's lost. There's we don't get to receive as much if we are in this position of power over Mm-hmm. Power over. Mm-hmm. Yeah, I'm curious. I'm curious how, how do you work with that personally as an educator when you come up against like rigidity inside of yourself? What, what, how do you wiggle it out? Like what, when does it show up? Yeah, well, I think sometimes the feelings that get in induced in me in those, you know, kind of tension filled moments, I try to use it as information about what also might be in the classroom space. So if I'm feeling like I need to defend myself or I don't feel, you know, like, like I have nothing to offer or, geez, I know nothing in this room or no one is interested in. I think, I wonder if the students in some way might be experiencing this and that I need to kind of metabolize it, find my own confidence and skill. And I think it's an embodied process for me. That's all I can say is I think it's sort of, whoa, what's happening, what's alive in me? How am I making sense of that? And is there something about this that's getting... evolved in me that is related to something I need to know about how the classroom space might be experiencing the material that we're learning. So it doesn't mean it is equivalent to, but it's another layer of, I think, information. So sometimes that's how I grapple with it. And as I indicated, you know, being in conversations with people I trust. And sometimes that's challenging to, you know, then always be, I think I sometimes struggle with my desire to be in process. And I don't know if that's always matched in certain spaces. So I have to find those places where I can do that. Yeah. Yes, thank you for that. Yeah. Yeah, I, you know, I'm so interested in how we use our bodies to make choices, you know, in the moment, both like consciously and unconsciously. And I heard you speak to that, you know, the digesting of what's happening in the room. And sometimes as the holder of the space, as the facilitator of the group, of the class, there is this experience of metabolizing, digesting what the group is bringing. And so there is discernment that has to happen while we're digesting it. Like, okay, what is happening in my body? Where did it come from? Is this related to the group? Is this related to what happened this morning? Yeah. yeah, I think it's just such an interesting meta process. Yeah, it's reminding me as you're speaking about COVID, when most classrooms went 100% virtual, we actually did have an opportunity to have some classes in person now, dance movement therapists, but we were spread out all over the whole room, like we had these boxes on the floor, so we could move in our spaces. And of course, everyone was masked. And I was... quite acutely aware of the cues that I normally read, facial expressions, body responses, even interpersonal distance, and all of those things were shut down, or we had to, so I had to be more explicit with the students. I need more feedback from you that's indicating that you're getting this. You could go like this, you can say, got it. Like I needed it because I could see that. there was a part of me that was discerning and reading cues in the room that was more implicit and was more from a subtle cue reading that was very much more challenged during COVID time. So I'm just thinking about that as you described. That's so interesting. Yeah, the limit, the limits to our ability to read the room that showed up during the pandemic. Yeah, whether it's from the space in between and the masks or, you know, the box that only shows a certain part of the body, right? And how easy it is to look away and to not be present in a, you know, a group of 15 or so online with all these boxes talking about whatever it is that we're talking about in class. Yeah, or even of course accessibility to, for the permission to turn the camera off or to just communicate through the chat. So all of those like, well, we had to kind of throw everything up and try to adapt from that. So for sure. Yeah, yeah, thank you for bringing that in. It's, it's, because I know that there, there are many educators now that are solely in person or solely online or doing both. And they really are, they're just very different experiences that require different tools and methods to create community in this space. Yeah. I think we had, there was a huge, massive cultural shift in education once we were forced across the world really to do this. And especially as a dance movement therapist, I think there was a period of time where many of my colleagues internationally, we came together in an international forum and said, let's talk about this. Everybody has moved. an embodied training into this virtual space and how do we, where are the challenges? But particularly around connection, belonging, being in community. Yeah. Embodied learning, I think feeling a sense of belonging and connection is a... a bodily experience. And so when we become two dimensional, or when we, it doesn't say that, not to say that can't happen, because I think we have learned it can, we're doing it now, right? Yeah. But what do we lose and what do we gain are the questions that we have to keep asking. Yes, absolutely. Because I imagine that one of the pieces at least that comes to mind in this moment is the importance of comfort in belonging, right? That when we are in separate spaces, there can be a different type of personalized comfort that is maybe sometimes harder to attain when we're all together. So... Yeah, I just hear in this part of the conversation that we are doing it, we are creating community in different ways, and it's just, it shifts like the understanding of these concepts that are important to creating a community and a sense of belonging. I'm wondering, you know, how, we've already talked a little bit about it, but I'd love to hear you expand on how do you co-create belonging in your classrooms. What does that look like in terms of, you know, skill building or activities or curriculum that supports this experience? Mm-hmm. Well, again, I would say I think that this requires time. So let's reflect back to even an admissions process, because I think belonging as a therapist, belonging begins. A sense of belonging begins with the first contact, I think. How does that first show up? So oftentimes, my first contact with students is during their admissions. process or their admissions interview. I am pretty transparent about, I am not here to, well, I'm not transparent in this specific way, but I go in with the mindset of it is not my job to convince them to come here. It is for them to feel a sense of I belong here or I don't. And that is a body understanding. So we will have conversations about who they are, what's bringing them to this profession. I try to find moments where I can connect to that so they can feel a connection with me or someone at the program, or I can connect them to some things that are happening within the program. Because if I feel connected in some way, then I will feel a sense of, I fit in here. We know this from group dynamics theories that there's like two questions that people ask in new spaces. Am I gonna get my needs met and will I fit in? And we're speaking about belonging. So I think admissions, in the admissions process, the first point of connection is what we do that. So how that translates in the classroom too is spending time in the beginning of the space to talk about group agreements, talk about expectations, be very clear about what that means, how we, there is room within a structure to like be flexible to some aspects of the curriculum and where we need to flex based on the learning needs of that. On a movement level, I always try to start with some kind of warm up and that doesn't necessarily mean warm up to me means. kind of like a psychic preparation for deepening or an emotional, like warming up the climate or making it feel warmer belonging in the space. So how does that look? It could be doing an actual movement experience together where we're warming up our body. It could be some kind of icebreaker exercise. It could be a guiding question that we consider together. It will look differently depending upon the context, but. I always hold the beginning of a class with that intention. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, I am. I was imagining it as you were describing it, being both like a member in the group as well as someone who facilitates it sounds like similarly. I am curious about What you've seen from students in terms of how they respond to becoming a part of the community in your space, what does that spectrum look like? Mm-hmm. Yeah, I think it's an opportunity where we learn about each other's ways of... how they can show up in this space. So there might be some, the spectrum is there might be some students where we don't hear much from them verbally, but we can see them fully taking risks and engaging on a body level and experientials. And others that are definitely more verbally active and coming forward and maybe in those instances, we need to invite those that are that we haven't heard from as much to draw them into those conversations. I have this, a student I'm thinking about in this moment, that wouldn't hear a lot from them verbally. So in a kind of a private advising time, I noted that and said, you know, I don't hear much from you in the class and I wonder what you're taking in, what is it like for you to share in the space? And would it be okay if I invited your voice in more? Could I do that out loud? And she said, yes, please. So in some ways, what she needed was an invitation to come in. And so that might manifest in ways where I'd say, like, can I help you get your voice in with this conversation? And then they can say, no, I'm good. And that's, I think that's an honoring there. I might be going on a tangent, but that's some things that are coming up when you. ask the question. The spectrum, yeah. yeah, I appreciate that there are different ways for folks to enter into the space and that as an educator, you are tracking that. You're tracking who's showing up with their body in ways that like their body's warmed up, maybe their voice isn't, or vice versa, or maybe it's, you know, Maybe everything's there or little is there, right? So there is quite a spectrum in the way that students show up and that part of what you do is you pay attention to that. Yeah, and culturally, you know, who am I to say, you're showing up in the room if I hear your voice more, versus you're fully present and here, but you're not maybe coming forward in a verbal way. And those are the tricky nuances, because I do think if we're stepping into a therapist space, we also have to find a way to have an embodied and full presence. that our clients can feel us with them. So we also do some self-assessments and we have the students kind of assess themselves around participation and things like that. So it's a collaborative assessment process around those kinds of skills of developing verbal presence. Mm-hmm. Well, you know, That piece of situating participation in a cultural context is, I think the application of that for an evaluator, which is part of the, you know, the educator's role is to evaluate and assess that is that's really strikingly important, right? How am I assessing a student's participation? And how is that based on my cultural biases around presence and participation, right? I think that's, that's just, it's striking. Yeah. Yeah, and something that is, I think, something I'm always having to unlearn, too, from culture and also from neurodiversity, too, around how do people learn, what are ways in which I can show up in this classroom to be able to take in the information, and I've learned some things even more recently around, standing up and moving around the space helps you stay more grounded or engaging with an object. Or I have a dear friend who's an art therapist who every meeting when we were in a job setting together, she would doodle during the meetings. And for some that could just be so annoying and disrespectful, but for her it helped her stay present. And so I think those kinds of we have to sort of let go. of this, well, this is my bias around how I can show up or what presence looks like. Coupled with, we're also training them to be present facilitators with helping professionals. So the impact of that on others is another layer of learning. Mmm. meeting that may have an impact on how my colleagues are perceiving me as present with the material, although it helps them stay present. So it's a both and with that as well. Absolutely. And what is it? How does it shift perhaps the perception of let's stay with this, you know, example of doodling in a meeting or in a classroom if that person narrates this is this helps me stay present, right? It does the impact shift if there's direct communication around how we meet our needs to be in a group, you know? And I would say yes, it would. But that also is really valuable to continue to help them understand, you know, to help to explore that together in community. Yeah. Yeah, and I want to go back to something that you said earlier about supporting a student to come into a space more verbally and how in part the way that you did that was you spoke to the student one-on-one. So not only do you have relationship with this student in the group, You also have an individual relationship with the student. And I imagine that supports that student's experience of belonging in the group. And you created a bridge for the student, right? I see you. I want you here. I'm curious about you. Tell me more. And that interaction requires time, like you were saying. And, you know, it makes me think about how many educators are adjunct, how many educators are not on campus or are teaching online, and how those conversations get harder to have the less amount of time you're in a space. Yes, so true. So true, so tricky. wow, I don't know if I have anything to add to that. I think there is, I think from my position in where I get to, I have, I think, it's a responsibility, but also a privilege to be able to zoom out and try to see the whole. And that my role is to communicate to those other individuals or to stay in dialogue around these are the things that seem to work well in this space or in this space. But you're right about that. I think there's already kind of a relationship that's on the periphery. And so it seems as if you're talking about an academic program that would be a team responsibility to have ongoing communication to support the student as a team, not a sole individual's responsibility. There's a collective there, I think. Mmm. As I'm saying that out loud, yeah. That makes sense. And then, so then there's also two layers of community and belonging that intersect, right? There's the groups of students, and then there's the group of faculty, and then of course, you know, admin. And so we, right, we have these, yeah, but also circles, right? Circles of belonging within the system. And I guess that's, you know. Yeah. and I would say that's also, you know, can be conflictual. Unfortunately, I think I've seen sometimes, you know, experiences that we're intending to incorporate in the program, but may show up differently in the greater university level process. And so they might get different messages and sometimes there's nothing I can do about that. And that is very challenging, I think, to kind of sometimes have conflictual values program in college and university or, you know, the micro and the macro experiences that even, yeah, global situations that are affecting belonging that show up in the in the classroom, there's a lot alive even right now, around that. alive right now. Absolutely. Yeah, I, I feel that I, and I hear it just the impact of, like you shared, conflicting values within a large system like a university and the trickle down that, um, that impacts takeaways, you know, that impacts what can be communicated about or what can be changed and what can't be changed. Yeah. I'm curious about how you see, you know, your role as an educator versus a program director. Like, how are the responsibilities similar and how are they different? Mm-hmm. Hmm. Well, certainly I have as a program director administrative tasks and things that are where I have to report to greater accrediting bodies, making sure that, you know, systems are in place so that students can get into the classroom or, you know, some kind of logistical things that can be very tedious sometimes. I think, but, however, not but. However, at the same time, my role as an educator in a position of power, such as a director role, I feel is to keep a pulse on the trends in higher education and healthcare, to continue to inform myself of these trends, to continue my own learning and growth, so that the students can continue to evolve with really current contemporary trends, but also with precedents and historical context to support that. The dance of that, let's say that. I think I have a role, a gatekeeping role that serves both, but it has a higher impact, I think, as a director. Gatekeeping meaning, when I think of a gate, I think of, you know, it's something that keeps things in or keeps things out. And so my job is to support students or to support that line around, which is such a power position. Who gets to be a dance therapist? Yeesh, you know, I have a role in supporting that. So that is a program director role. Lots in that, I think. In terms of micro-responsibilities, too, I have to connect with accreditation needs of various fields and be a voice at the table in those spaces so that I can be part of important decisions and impart education in that way. Yeah, a lot of responsibility. Yeah, I'm like, but watching your face as you talk about it and can some of that responsibility is hard. You know, I hearing you talk about the gatekeeping, there's like, understandably, and I think there's echoes of this and some of the other interviews that I've done and in myself around that conflict of, of gatekeeping, you know, and why they're why there are students who either need to pause or that counseling, dance movement therapy, art therapy, expressive arts therapy, this track is may not be the right one for them. And that is a is such a tender place. And I'm wondering maybe from here, we could, we can kind of go into this place of what What are some of the boundaries around this gate? What are some of the ways that "no" shows up to students or that, "let's pause here," shows up to students? How does that happen? And why does that happen? You know, are there, in your experience, are there certain skills that are underdeveloped that need, you know, yeah what is that bag? Yeah, it's interesting because I've heard these, we try to unpack this question and try to put it in some policy and things like policy making around this because it's so murky. And I don't know if we've ever got it right, but we continue to try. So I would say it's important I think even on an admissions end, what I'm interested in that gives us like the foundation of entering into this training experience is are you able to be reflective of your own experience? So the reflexivity aspect I think is essential. There needs to be some kind of ability to navigate stress and have an emotional stamina. You can have feelings, but do they flood you? And do you get overwhelmed to them where I am, or I can't navigate that? And sometimes I think those are some of the challenging things that might get evoked in a learning space where there's a lot of self-learning that happens simultaneously with theory and practice. Interpersonal skills, you know, to be able to communicate presence and compassion and empathy and to be able to have a reciprocal, yeah, a give and take kind of engagement. Yeah, I think these, sometimes we call them the essential functions, which I'm not sure I like, but like these are the qualities or the... the dispositions that intercultural awareness, I don't wanna negate that, but that's an understanding of our own locations and identities and its impact on others or the distinctions that show up in various contexts. So there's an intra-personal learning, there's an interpersonal, there's an intercultural. And then there's this other layer of kind of navigating stress and emotion and being able to, you know, have some healthy coping strategies around that. Mm-hmm. Yeah, I think those are some of the things in the bag. Yeah, yeah, thank you for narrating that. That was really clear. And I, and I know too, that there's also like a developmental process with all of those, those skills, right. So from the, from the beginning of the program to the end, I imagine that there are different expectations around. some of those skills and students come in with some of them solid, you know, or leave with some of all of them solid or solid enough and that it's this is all life work, right? There's no there's no perfection. There's no perfection in any of it. It's just that it's a it's a consistent practice that's important and I, you know, one of the things that you said and that I know that I've experienced is The work that we ask students to engage in is deep, right? To be able to hold the journey with another person as a therapist requires us as therapists to do deep work. And so when we're doing deep work, of course, there's going to be emotional expression and experience, and that does show up in the classroom. Mm-hmm. And I, you know, I feel like part, or at least in my experience, part of the work as an educator is to be in relationship with heartache and heartbreak. And that it emerges in all sorts of ways. Sometimes it looks like conflict, sometimes it looks like flooding, sometimes it's the whole group experiencing it because of a global event or a national event, or it's, you know. or it becomes a cascade because we're all feeling each other. And I'm wondering if you could speak to how heartache shows up in your classrooms and how you hold it and how you interact with it. yeah, all of those things you just said, I feel like I could pop in moments. And in this moment, I'm thinking about, you know, 2020 with the murder of George Floyd, and that we had a class the next day and we're talking about trauma. And we're on Zoom. We're in a global pandemic. And just how do we navigate? how do we together as a community, oh yes, well we have goals and learning objectives and things that we're supposed to do in the class today. But how do we radically, compassionately let that go and just be with what's in the room that is very much aligned with what is happening in this moment. So yes, it shows up, it shows up in big ways. How do we care for each other? Mm. And I think we hope to have, we have conversations about community care. What does caring mean? What are the ethics of care? And how, you know, I remember another incident that's somewhat recent where there was an experiential presentation that happened in a group. A group had an assignment and they presented it in a creative way. And there was a gesture of. something that happened in the group presentation that was, disrespected a country's flag. And there was an individual in the classroom that was from that country. And so there was some harm that got evoked in the class appropriately so. And we took time as a community to to talk about rupture and repair and to kind of unpack what that experience was like for both the group expressing something and engaging in a creative process and the witnesses that had varying levels of impact on that gesture. So I think, and there's learning in that. There's so much learning in rupture and repair. So we say heartache or. harm or whatever those words are. Isn't that where therapy is? That's the moving transformative experiences I think of therapy. So if we can put things that happen in the classroom into a learning context, I think it lands in a different way. That is not always easy. I'm not, it's certainly, I've wobbled in those... spaces on my own challenging times. Um, but I think like those are two examples I'm thinking about, about that. Or if somebody's having a personal challenge that's happened and, and it gets revealed in some way in the, in the class, then how, how do we be with an individual while also moving forward with the content or, or How can they inform each other in the classroom? It's a dance that I don't think I've mastered, but it's something I'm constantly navigating, yeah. Yeah, I mean that dance keeps emerging, you know, and I can I can feel I can feel how touching being in relationship with students is. You know, for you, for me, it's, it is a deeply relational experience. And so of course, the, the emotions that show up in the, in the class are meaningful and impactful. And so, you know, that work around community care and self care. that, you know, whether it's like, okay, let's hold ourselves together in this moment, you know, physically. Let's sway together, rock together, you know, cry together is just really deeply beautiful and ceremonial work that is so much, can be so much bigger than higher ed, you know. I think those are the learning moments that stand out to me, even in my own training, as you're speaking, I'm even reflecting on my own graduate program as a student. We were in a class and somebody, we were doing something with movement and somebody got very emotional in the class and was sobbing and there was wailing and it really had an impact on others. And we had a break and in the bathroom, during the break, two people in the class said something like, oh, when so-and-so was doing that, it was so distracting, blah, blah. So then that came back into the room, because this person happened to be in the stall anyway. So it came back into the space. And so then, but then this was the, it happened to be a group dynamics class too. So that mean we could be in the soup of the rupture and repair that just happened or all the experiences and that got outside of the room, we can now bring it back in and have a learning moment here. So I just think of these learning moments, these are the ones that stand out to me as most important or oh yeah, that's a great example of what transference was or counter-trans, or this is a great example of care or harm. Yeah. I feel like in some ways they touch the edge in education around, especially clinical education, I think they touch the edge, but they're the transformative learning moments. As long as we can couple them back to the learning and kind of come back to that as the boundary, then I think it's... it stays within an appropriate sphere. Mm-hmm. Yeah, and that requires the ability of the facilitator to manage and navigate, speak to, narrate, and for the students to sit in the discomfort and to be able to participate in direct here and now conversation, communication about what's happening. It's It's really, yeah, it's really important skill building for relationship in general, you know, but absolutely for therapeutic, therapeutic space holding. Yeah. hard, hard work we're doing. Yeah, it is. And it's so beautiful and so important. Well, you know, I, we're coming to the end of our time together and I, I'm wondering if we could end with speaking to where you find the spaces of silence and quiet as an educator, like what those spaces feel like in your body, what they look like when you're holding them, how they impact your teaching. Just kind of curious about that. Yeah. Yeah. I think they're alive. Silence, there's a lot can be, a lot is communicated in those spaces in between, right? So they're in between. They're active, they're liminal, they're spaces of integration. I think. And to, or a pause, there's power in those pauses. I think if we... Yeah, we don't try to fill it. A lot can happen as a result. So where do I hold that in my body is. I think I feel it in my heart and in my gut, as you're describing it. That's in this moment, that's where I see it. It's like a dropping in to kind of find some rooting, to trust that this is where we need to be right now, because a lot happens in those silent spaces. Yeah, integration can happen then. Mm-hmm. Thank you. Thank you for that. I feel it in my body, too. Yeah. Yeah, thanks for taking the time and spending it with me in these conversations. I really appreciate it, Christina. Yeah. I look forward to listening to others.