The Dancing Nurses and the Language of the Body: Training Somatic Awareness, Bodily Communication, and Embodied Professional Competence in Nurse Education.

At first glance, dance and movement may appear foreign to the idea of nurse education. On closer inspection, it could be high time. The flow of words may stop, but the body is always in movement--always communicating. Still, the language of the body, and certainly movement, is an often overlooked potential in education. This is also true for nurse education: in spite of the often bodily close meetings with vulnerable and crisis-stricken patients. These meetings make great demands on the nurse to both contain own feelings and be able to "read" and understand patients' often only sense-based communication. This dimension of the nursing profession can be overwhelming, touching, and shocking for young nursing students. This research project examines, whether a course composed of theory, dance and movement lessons, and increased focus on the bodily communication between students and patients may be developmental for the nursing students' beginning embodied professionality. Results from the project have innovative educational potentials. They also give concrete indications of how nursing educations can develop new holistic anchored embodied training in a very accessible, as well as essential, ancient, and unavoidably present part of the nursing profession.