"So, what's your major?"

      I can't help but  break out in a grin when somebody asks me that. It means that either the conversation will end, or become much longer than expected.  Interdisciplinary Studies (known affectionately as IDS) is a major at Appalachian state that allows one to pull from different disciplines and alternative modes of learning to address a focus that cannot be addressed by one (or even two) disciplines.  It may be more accurate to say that someone who engages in this endeavor finds the whole paradigm of discplines and traditional knowledge constructs completely inadequate in the face of their curiosity.
       So, I am an IDS major.  My concentration, as they say, is in movement therapy as an effective resolution to trauma.  I am especially interested in young children who have experienced trauma in there home on a regular basis.  I don't suppose that this experience "trumps" isolated incidents of trauma or traumatic events that occur later in life, but rather find it important to make this distinction.  I also believe that working at the level of physical awareness can assist in the emergence from the restrictive effects of trauma-especially this brand of childhood reocurring trauma-in a way that other therapies cannot.  Again, I don't belive that movement therapy "trumps" other therapies.  It's just different, and important in different ways.
       Minoring in Dance has allowed me to make many personal investigations into my own awareness of bodily movement.  Working with other students in these classes has also been illuminating.  Hearing and watching individuals struggle, triumph, resign, accept, and straight-up face their physical experience of reality, especially in regards to creating or communicating something with their body, has influenced me in ways beyond which I could list.  More than anything, it has reaffirmed my belief that what the body communicates is not definable or expressible linguistically.  Of course, I feel I have become more "fluent" in this bodily capacity to be aware of myself and others (communicate).
      The core curriculum classes required by IDS majors have been especially valuable to me.  Again, much of the fruit of these classes comes from interaction with my fellow students.  Hearing where classic conceptions of well-being and culturally restrictive modes of interaction have failed my classmates has been of inextricable value to me.  What has been even more rewarding is watching them discover their own innate ability to interact with the world in a way that works for them.
     This is essentially what I believe movement therapy makes possible.  I am especially inclined to working with groups.  The functions which trauma blocks most acutely are those which allow us to balance and fully encounter our visceral sense of self and others.  I have explored how to make these kind of experiences availble to children in a PE class called "How Children Move" and am now exploring the cognitive capacities relevant at different ages in a childhood development course through Family and Consumer Sciences.  In the process of this Senior Seminar project I hope amalgamate these lessons into an appilcable practice.  I would like to find myself bringing Conscious Movement to groups of children in a constructive manner.