Rainbow Dance Intervention
Rainbowdance is a developmentally specific, multi sensorial program created to reinforce or establish healthy attachment and attunement for children aged 1 to 9 years. Through the use of music, gesture, natural movement and story, this program promotes the self-esteem, social empathy, and self-regulation necessary for mastery, healthy exploration, and competency. As the number of infants and toddlers entering full time day care programs increases,the opportunity for dyadic relationship building decreases. Rainbowdance provides children with the opportunity to experience the attachment necessary for healthy relationship building, minimizing an orientation toward peer violence. Individual and collective trust emerges as the children are soothed and energized in the natural flow provided by rhythmic rituals and archetypal movement patterns.
Encouraging the dynamic of resonance, each child experiences the balance between reception and expression in his relationships to peers, to his environment, and to himself. As this work is developmentally preverbal, it is accessible to all children regardless of physical or emotional affliction, cultural background, traumatic exposure, or other disability, which might otherwise exclude him from group participation. The foundation of this work may be adapted for different age groups and is adapted specifically for reincorporation following acute trauma or loss.
Rainbowdance Programs are tailored to meet the needs of each community site. We offer the program as a 16 or 32-week intervention as well as full year programs, in which two credentialed group leaders/therapists conduct hour-long weekly groups, which are composed of 6-10 children. We encourage the participation of a site staff person or teacher as Rainbowdance songs and movement sequences are readily adapted for use in the classroom.
Rainbowdance has been adapted for: Toddlers, Preschool and kindergarten children, for refugee children and their mothers, for Autistic, Deaf, and Blind children, as well as those with physical impairment and attention or learning delays.