CORPO E MOVIMENTO COMO ARTE E TERAPIA: UMA PRÁTICA TRANSFORMADORA Body and Movement as Art and Therapy: A Transforming Practice

Abstract

The field of mental health benefits from the contribution of Physical Education through the use of bodily activities in their most diverse purposes, particularly highlighting human movement as art and therapy. Through bodily activities, here referred to as Sensorimotor Activities, a movement of life expression is promoted, serving as an important means of social transformation. The establishment of bodily activities aimed at mental health is well recognized in the literature, with the purpose of ensuring comprehensive health care, including psychological suffering, within a unique and plural setting shaped by struggles, achievements, and mistakes throughout the historical and social context. This essay is an invitation to delve into the body–mind relationship, emphasizing the role of movement as art and therapy, as well as its challenges, in the search for a perspective that is innovative, critical, and transformative of the bodily and mental dimensions, which are closely related, inseparable, and indissociable. Beyond proposing a critical reflection on the use of bodily activities as a medicalizing resource, and on the psychiatrization and psychologization of human movement, as well as the iatrogenic effects committed in the name of a “perfect body,” this essay highlights the importance of working with the bodily dimension as a transformative practice within a positive approach in the psychosocial context. It also addresses movement as language and expression, and the body and movement as artistic expression within the therapeutic setting.