High percentages of incarcerated women suffer from untreated PTSD. One quickly expanding program is successfully using dance to help them move forward.
When 38-year-old Cassy Bustos first saw a poster advertising the Dance to be Free program at La Vista Correctional Facility in Pueblo, Colorado, she felt a rare spark of excitement.
It was Spring 2016 and Bustos was in the midst of serving her three-and-a-half year sentence for first-degree burglary and third-degree assault. Prison was taxing, and to cope, she had been following a cardio, weights, and yoga routine. But up to that point, there was no dancing in prison. She loved to dance.
At the first class, Bustos and three dozen other women gathered in the correctional facility’s gym as Lucy Wallace, the founder of Dance to be Free, led them through a variety of dance styles, from hip-hop to lyrical, set to songs by artists such as Beyoncé and Sia. Students ranged from enthusiastic to preoccupied and bored at first, but towards the end of the class, nearly everyone seemed engaged.
“It was so much fun. I was covered in sweat and was immediately hooked,” Bustos says. “Afterward, [Wallace] left DVDs [of her dance routine] she had recorded at her studio, so we could watch later. We would rent the DVDs and dance in the gym on our own.”
Wallace wasn’t merely offering a movement class, however, but an embodied form of therapy designed to help heal trauma in incarcerated women. Soon, she introduced journal assignments, poetry, and writing prompts to encourage the women to reflect on past trauma and open up to each other.
“They became more vulnerable with the writing, poetry and group sharing that followed,” Wallace says. “And that’s a step towards healing.”
[To read the rest of this article by Ari Honarvar, click here.]
[Photo courtesy of Dance to be Free.]
Comments (1)