ABSTRACT
The links between physical activity and health have long been the subject of discussion within the fields of sociology of sport, health studies and the wider social and hard sciences. The effects of regular and moderate sporting/leisure-based movement on the body through associated physiological gains are well documented. Alongside this established and intricate body of literature, sits an emergent field of study that considers the affective, holistic and mental/psychological benefits of movement practices, both sport/leisure specific and more broadly related to everyday or organized social cultural activities such as dance, drama or artistic practice. As part of this emerging body of literature, which has been defined as physical cultural studies (PCS), there is a dedication to exploring the concept of ‘therapeutic movement practices’, in part in response to a research climate that increasingly values unearthing the impact of physicality and movement on specific wellbeing factors such as mental health, disease, cancer and ageing. Therapeutic movement practices are considered to be any embodied movement practices which either instill a sense of wellbeing in the practitioner, diminish trauma or distress, or aid a person to better understand themselves mentally and physically, whether they be organized/created specifically for the purpose of therapy or whether the therapeutic effect of movement is incidental to the activity. Broad as this notion is, it is not surprising that the number of ‘practices’ studied through a social and cultural lens in relation to therapeutic movement practices is prolific. From movement-centered clinical interventions, elite (cathartic) running, through recreational yoga, to community gardening, repeated studies in extremely varied contexts have documented similar personal and collective improvements in perceptions of wellbeing, mental attitude and sense of self as a consequence of engaging in activities that put the body in motion, a central concern of PCS. In this chapter I will initially highlight key themes that have evolved in academic research on therapeutic movement practices. Before concluding, I call for researchers to consider novel and holistic approaches to understanding the movement-therapy nexus, specifically by utilizing the creative and subject-centered tools for data collection and analysis open to and formed by existing PCS scholarship.
