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About Oregon daily emerald. (Eugene, Or.) 1920-2012 | View Entire Issue (Oct. 17, 1973)
Dance therapist Mary Miller —dancing is awareness and more By JAMIE HARTSHORN Of the Emerald To Mary Miller, dancing has come to mean much more than a solo ballet performance or moving about on a crowded floor in time to music. It can serve as an avenue to self-awareness, she believes, a means of discovering the body through movement. A professional dancer for the past seven years, Miller became involved in psychomotor therapy, or the use of dance movements to get in touch with one’s self, on recommendation of a New York dance instructor. “I enrolled in a program in psychomotor therapy offered by New York Medical College,” she said, “and l«'i?t June received my cer tification as a psychomotor therapist. “The term ‘psychomotor therapy’ technically refers to using dance for its cathartic effect on persons with emotional problems,” Miller continued. “It helps the mental patient to become less self-conscious in a group stiuation. “Especially helpful with retarded patients, dance movements can help them gain independence, which many of the retarded are denied. It also helps develop co-ordination,” she said. “The psychomotor therapy program at New York Medical College is a one year program, offering classroom and technical training while actually working with patients in a clinical situation,” Miller said. The therapeutic effect of body movement is not a new phenomenon. “For years, psychologists have experimented with different kinds of moverru therapy. The term ‘dance therapy’ can now be used to encompass this whole range of body movement. “Primitive man used dance as a sort of therapy long before he was aware of what it was all about. When dance became more of social situation, people ceased to realize the vitalizing effects of movement,” she said. Hoping to work within the University dance department, Miller moved to Eugene last summer. “The ‘New York paranoia’ was getting to me, too,” she laughed. “I had to get out of the city for awhile.” Due to a lack of University funds, however, she was unable to obtain a position. Instead, she is now the instructor of three weekly dance classes held at Wesley Center which are not University-related. A body movement and physical awareness class is offered every Tuesday from 4:30 to 6 p.m. Although based on psychomotor therapy principles, this class, as well as two modem dance classes held Tuesday and Thursday at 3:00 to 4:30 is open to anyone interested, Miller said. Cost is $2 per session, or $4.50 per week for all three. “The work I do in my Movement and Awareness class is very advanced in terms of how I would work with retarded people or patients with emotional problems,” she said. “Here the participants are taking the class to step out of the everyday hassle, to slow down, get in touch with themselves. “I usually begin the class with yoga and basic warm-up exer rises,” she continued. “Tension must be removed from the body before it can function ef fectively.” Following the warm-up is a half-hour of improvisational movement. “Music is often used in this exercise, and it acts to double the benefits,” Miller said. “It can be taken deep into, the body, ‘digested’, and allowed to flow through. Or on a shallower level, the students can simply move with the music,” and examine the different levels of consciousness and movement, she said. “During each session my main role is to observe the participants and offfer verbal cues to help them find areas of unexplored movement.” “Five minutes are taken after each improvisation just to talk about it. Sometimes I make comments on the exercise and the participants are free to ex press their own feelings,” said Miller. “Anyone can get in touch with him or herself, but it’s entirely up to that individual to do so. The process is not always easy or quick. Sometimes when you improvise, things surface that you’d rather repress and you ask ‘is that really me?’ These are the sort of things that must be dealt with and worked out,” she said. “The earlier one becomes really aware of his or her body, the healthier that person is likely to be,” emphasized Miller. “Movement classes should be initiated into grade schools, but most school administrators are not receptive to the idea of in stating something they consider so different from the traditional curricula,” she concluded. Photo by Susan Dawson Mary Miller came to Eugene to work at the University, but instead is now teaching dance classes at Wesley Center. The classes are based on psychomotor therapy principles, which she learned in New York. Russians hear strange signals UFO’s here again? Workers claim to visit alien craft By United Press International It’s red. It’s blue. Sometimes it turns green. It has wrinkled skin, crab-claw hands and pointy ears. It has a beard. It foams at the mouth. And the Russians say it may be trying to say howdy. It has been seen down by the old fishing hole at Pascagoula, Miss, out near the airport at Beckley, W.Va., in the piney woods of Louisiana and in the hallowed halls of the College of the Ozarks in Arkansas. And it has been heard in Moscow. The UFO craze is on again with a vengeance. Two Pascagoula shipyard workers claimed they were hustled aboard a blue, fish-shaped craft by three weird creatures who gave them the once-over with an eye like scanning device. A Northwestern University astronomer, Dr. Allen Hynek, said flatly the craft was from another planet. “Where they are coming from and why they were here in a matter of conjecture,” Hynek said. “But the fact that they were here on this planet is beyond a reasonable doubt.” The attorney for the two shipyard workers—Charlie Hickson, 42, and Calvin Parker, 18—said they were “just resting” Tuesday and would take lie-detector tests in a week or so to prove their story. Around the world in Moscow, Soviet scientists said they picked up unusual radio signals from space and did not rule out that they came from another civilization. >. The Tass news agency said the signals, of a type never heard before, come in pulses after definite lapses of time, last for several minutes and are repeated several times a day. Tass said scientists have ruled out the possibility that the signals g I | VVA W story mistake corrected | In Friday’s issue of the Emerald, the story on the Vietnam Veterans Against g the War stated that, “the Army has a streamlined method for getting rid of people it doesn’t want.” The following | is how it should have read: “the Army ;!;• has a streamlined method for quickly and easily getting rid of people who :§ don’t conform to rigid military discipline.” Sturm also stated that the :j§ ‘ ‘inherent racism of the military’ ’ is the jj| reason for the high portion of less than ijij: honorable discharges among minority :£ peoples. . S are from satellites launched from earth. “It is not precluded that they may be sent by a technically developed ex traterrestial civilization,” the Russian report said. Tass said Professor Samuel Kaplan of Gorky University was the first to pickup the signals. Later they were heard in other Soviet cities. At Pine, La., sheriff’s deputies chased five orange-reddish flying objects 12 miles through the woods early Tuesday. “One of our deputies was scared pretty bad,” said Deputy Michael Moore. “He turned on his red lights, and they came down at his patrol car. He turned them off and they just vanished like in a cloud.” Pine and Pascagoula are 150 miles apart. Down the road at Slidell, across Lake Pontchartrain from New Orleans, Lloyd Mercier said he was driving home when he saw a UFO that was 20 feet thick with a streak through it. “All I could see was a red glow. It looked like it came straight out of the water. I’ve seen it tonight with my own natural eyes,” Mercier said. “I have to believe what I see. It was no moon and it was no balloon and it was no ship.” At the College of the Ozarks in Clarksville, Ark., a “ghostlike bearded creature with long, gray hair who foams at the mouth” has been seen by students and faculty members. But that creature has been hiding for four days. “He was last seen Friday behind McLean Hall,” said Vernon McDaniel, a college official. Mrs. Fritz Leo, wife of the vice-president of academic affairs. Two night watchmen also said they saw the monster. Pilots at the Raleigh County Airport at Beckley, W.Va., saw a mysterious night flyer that turned red, then green, then white. “It just kept moving away from me,” said one pilot who chased the object in a small plane. “I couldn’t get any closer. I don’t think it was an airplane because the whole thing would change color at the same time. Other reported UFO sightings came from Gulfport and Meridian, Miss. . ...-'"'I.. — Make 'em an offer they can't refuse ode classifieds
