Hello, everyone. Spring has come to Adelaide with more sunshine and fluctuated temperatures every day. This season in Australia now reminds me of our immigration to Down Under a year ago. I have been so busy that I needed to find time to reflect on what I have done for the last few months. In this newsletter, I would like to update my recent activities. NDIS and DTAA I recently have started to involve in the voluntarily work for the Dance Movement Therapy Association of Australasia (DTAA), particularly working towards a recognition of our profession (dance movement therapy) in the National Disability Insurance Scheme (NDIS). The NDIS is an Australian national scheme that supports people with disabilities to become more independent and socially accessible to carry his/her ordinary life. It is a huge government funding scheme and very complicated political, social system. Recently creative therapists have been able to provide their services to NDIS participants through this scheme. Since the NDIS was launched in 2003, music therapy and art therapy with the other ‘major’ therapeutic modalities (occupational therapy, speech therapy etc) were ‘invited’ to be part of the NDIS therapy supports. A number of dance movement therapists have raised their needs for a professional recognition by the NDIS, yet this was a pending project till the beginning of this year. I too work with NDIS participants and understood a huge necessity for dance movement therapists (DMTs) to have more job opportunities through the NDIS. Since then, I raised my hand to volunteer to work on the application of a recognition of our profession by the NDIS and now am heading the Workplace Development Committee at the DTAA. Many months had passed to find out whom to contact and where and what documents to submit. The President of DTAA, Sandra Kay Lauffenburger, finally had a phone conversation with an NDIS Commission Member in July. Since then, the Board and the DMTs who have been working with NDIS participants put all their effort into compiling a giant document about our profession, history, memberships, code of conducts and so on – 180 pages. In the middle of October, the DTAA finally has filed the application to the NDIS! Our fingers and toes are crossed for our future. For more information on DTAA and NDIS, click here. Body Mapping I recently facilitated the Spring Body Mapping workshop for a woman who creatively explored about her grief and loss yet celebrated her body mapping process. It has been a joy for me as a practitioner to witness such a delicate personal journey and I feel so honoured to have been able to see another body map being created in Adelaide. This year, my colleague, Vanessa Daughtry and I facilitated all the four seasons, and I am so proud of and thankful to have been able to hold a sacred space for the women. We would like to continue to offer body mapping workshops again in 2022 and hopefully people from the interstates and overseas can participate in this workshop. Move & Connect Monthly Move & Connect moving space has been offered in the last few months. At the end of the working day, I always wonder whether I still have energy left to move and dance. But once I find my feet and move along with other people, my body just gets tuned into it as if it is the first thing of the day to do! I had four people in the last session where we had so much fun – moving with props, connecting through moving together, giggling and playing like small children. A woman beautifully reflected on this session. “I notice there are happy but also sad feelings in me when I was moving. I know I tend to avoid sad feelings, but with the movement, I was able to stay with them.” It is simply so honest and touching. Creative space can help you lead to an “inner presence of self” or a “deeper sense of connectivity to self’ (Kossak, p. 15). The next two sessions till the end of this year will be on 18th November and 9th December 2021 from 7 pm till 8 pm at Room 7, Mitcham Community Centre. Please register your expression of interest here. This Move & Connect is very affordable and located as a taster session for dance movement therapy (DMT). It is part of my advocacy work of DMT and hopefully people may find this approach useful for certain people. I welcome any referrals to my dance movement therapy sessions (What is DMT?) if anyone is going through personal hardships, trauma, grief, depression and more. I see people of all ages who would like to bodily explore and understand about themselves. Please email me at info@intertwinebodymind.com You can find more details at my website. Peer Supervision Monthly Peer Supervision is an ongoing reflective thinking space for practitioners. All allied health practitioners are welcome to be part of this space. We will begin and end the session with movement facilitated by DMTs. The next one will be held on 21st November 2021 from 3 to 4:30pm (Sydney Time). Please register your interest. Thank you for reading my newsletter. Hope you all are continuing to stay safe. Hopefully our borders will be open soon and have freedoms of movement back in our life. #dancetherapyadelaide #SA #bodymapping #mentalhealth Reference Kossak, M.S. (2009). “The Therapeutic Attunement: A Transpersonal View of Expressive Arts Therapy” in The Arts in Psychotherapy 36, pp.13-18