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Dance as Healing: How One Nurse is Combating Burnout in Healthcare
The Personal Roots of a healing Practice
Tara Rynders has always associated dance with healing. While navigating a
tumultuous childhood that ofen required her to care for her siblings, she
found refuge in the studio. And when her sister lost her speech after
developing acute disseminated encephalomyelitis (ADEM), a rare inflammatory
disease of the brain and spinal cord, Rynders used dance as a connection
tool.
But Rynders,who is a registered nurse,often focused on healing others,
neglecting her own needs. When she found herself in the emergency room with
an ectopic pregnancy, a nurse offered a hand to hold and words of support,
and everything changed. “I remember softening into my nurse’s hand and
feeling so grateful that she remembered my heart, and remembered me as a
person,” Rynders says. “I learned something by letting myself receive care,
and I wanted to share that.” Now, rynders uses performances and
movement-based workshops to extend that learning to other nurses. “My mode
of storytelling has always been dance,” she says.
The Art and Heart of Healthcare Institute
In 2017,rynders founded The Art and Heart of Healthcare Institute,which
uses movement,art,and storytelling to help fight burnout,compassion
fatigue,and isolation. “Nurses are taught to just give and give, and
receiving can often feel like shame,” she says.”So much of our identity
and worth is tied up in our work. It’s hard to untangle that.”
The Institute’s main offering is Rynders’ signature (re)Brilliancy
workshops. (“re-brilliancy” is a play on “resiliency.”) ” ’Re-brilliancy’
is about helping people remember the brilliant humans they already are,” she
says. Rynders travels to health-care facilities around the country to work
with nurses in person.
The (re)brilliancy Workshop Experience
When participants arrive, she welcomes them personally, washing their hands
for them to create an atmosphere where they feel honored and cared for. As
the day progresses, they create music and poetry, and they put on an
improv-based dance show together, complete with costumes. Rynders says the
performance, which begins as a guided story-based experience, often morphs
into amiable dance-offs. “For my colleagues, who are usually so serious-running
codes and navigating life-or-death situations-just belly-laughing and
playing together…
