JABADAO › Research › Practice
Practice
JABADAO practitioners are dancers by nature, teachers and group workers by training, and health workers by inclination. They are curious about the contribution that body experience makes to human ways of knowing and take wholehearted delight in spontaneous movement play as a valuable form of human exploration and communication. They are concerned with the felt experience of the body rather than making visual experiences within a specific aesthetic model and focus on the ways in which relationships underpin all learning experiences. They value adaptability and are happy to find ways to engage others.
The practice engages participants of all ages and all levels of intellectual agility in spontaneous movement activity - in ways that are comfortable and ordinary. Practitioners are skilled in facilitating person-centred group work, supporting each participant to focus on their own way of moving and the layers of experience involved.
They understand the processes involved in learning from the languages of the body – sensation, feeling, movement, instinct and image – and are able to use these to highlight relationship to self, to others and to the environment. They are skilled at creating a non-judgemental, safe working environment.
Competencies
What are JABADAO practitioners competent to deliver? What can participants expect of them?
Core Skills are those possessed by all JABADAO Practitioners. Practitioners may also have many of the Additional Skills.
Core Skills
Spontaneous Movement Activity
Engage participants of all ages, all levels of physical ability and all levels of intellectual agility in spontaneous movement activity.
Duty of Care
Be able to put the best interests of participants and colleagues at the core of the working practice, protecting the physical and emotional wellbeing of all participants and supporters.
Felt-experience
Bring attention to the felt experience of the body, (sensation, feeling, movement, image and instinct) rather than making visual experiences within specific aesthetic models.
Process-oriented approach
To develop spontaneous movement work within a process-oriented approach – bringing attention to, and structure to, an unfolding, emerging process rather than working to pre-determined goals and outcomes. This is a particular approach to person-centred work, beginning with the unique experience (physical, emotional, imaginative, intellectual, spiritual and possibly trans-personal) of each participant and group.
Groupwork and Group Process
Understanding of the roles and behaviours adopted in groups, the ways in which groups operate as a microcosm of larger networks and the ways, therefore, in which groupwork can address individual and wider issues.
Developmental Movement
Design movement activities that support involvement in a series of significant early movement activities which affect development of all-round functioning – with babies, young children and adults.
Movement Observation
Use movement observation frameworks to underpin the development of spontaneous movement within a process oriented approach.
Additional Skills
Social Dance
Use the social dances of the 20th century ballroom and ceilidh dances as the basis for celebratory, community dance events.
Experiential Anatomy
Understanding of the physical structures of the body, and ways to explore the sensations, feelings, movement, images and subtle energies contained alongside the physical structures through felt experience – alongside text book study.
Subtle Energy Work
Understanding of the subtle energies held within the body - how they can provide information and/or a way of working with physical material.