This is a truly blessed work. The title of this book - Performing the Dreams of your Body: Plays of Animation and Compassion - gives us an indication of the depth of its content. This book shows us a glimpse of body as incarnation of soul impregnated with sprit. A 'suffering with' is presented, from which new community is co-created and compassion experienced by both witness and mover.

Jill says the book wrote itself; and my experience on reading it was that it read itself. The reading required no effort on my part. I feel grateful for that lightness. In the stream of ideas presented, fed by the poems and voices of participants, I experienced a gentle touch. My imagination was stimulated by each performance as it played out human conflicts in a symbolic process of expression and containment.

These performances are enthralling. The framework Jill uses to capture their communication within community speaks to the heart and soul within me. I do feel moved to move! We are designed to move and it is in the body, spontaneously moving with imagination, feeling and community, that the direct experience of the self, and of life itself, can be profoundly felt.

There is a suggestion that the heightened awareness of the perceptual and expressive body is also a tool in the verbal therapeutic relationship. It is made clear towards the end of the book that transpersonal dance movement can be usefully employed in the continuing professional development of counsellors and psychotherapists, which I can fully endorse since I engage with this in my own practice.

I sincerely recommend this book to those involved in dance movement therapy, visual art, dance and spiritual practices of any kind. It is a gem to treasure. I hope it will be read by practitioner, client and trainer both present and future. It will surely develop a depth of understanding of the processes involved when embodiment becomes the seed and flower of that which is heartfelt.

Professor Helen Payne

A fascinating work on the relationship between body, mind, art and healing. Jill Hayes has made an important contribution to the field of somatics, movement and expressive arts therapy. She has conveyed the philosophy, theory and aesthetic experience of embodiment and creativity that is often difficult to capture in words.

Daria Halprin
Gestalt therapist, expressive arts therapist, writer, and educator. Her publications include The Expressive Body in Life, Art and Therapy.

High on my list of the best books written about movement and bodily expression in therapy. The brilliance of this book bodes well for the future of the expressive arts therapies worldwide.

Shaun McNiff
Dean & Professor, Lesley University, Cambridge, Massachusetts. Past President of the American Art Therapy Association and author of Art Heals: How Creativity Cures the Soul, Art as Medicine, Trust the Process and Creating with Others.

I loved reading this beautifully written, sensitive and perceptive work on inner-directed dance. This book is about dance as a way to experience, express, communicate and explore the passions and mysteries of the human soul. If you are interested in embodied imagination, emotion, creativity and compassion, don’t miss this book!

Joan Chodorow PhD
Dance therapist, analyst member, CGJung Institute of San Fransisco. Author of Dance Therapy and Depth Psychology:The Moving Imagination, editor of Jung on Active Imagination and author of Active Imaginiation: Healing from Within.

This is a book that promotes self-knowledge and helps to dispense with self-doubt. It is authoritative and yet accessible, with an approach that is gentle but, nontheless, powerful. Dance practitioners will be enriched by the knowledge it has to impart.

Dr Ann Nugent
Senior Lecturer in Dance at the University of Chichester. Internationally acclaimed dance writer and teacher. Former editior of Dance Now and Dance Theatre Journal.

This is a truly blessed work that gives us a glimse of the body as incarnation of soul impregnated with spirit. In putting into verbal language the amazing embodied experiences and performances she has witnessed, Jill has integrated the poet with the researcher, the receptive with the proactive, the feminine with the masculine.

Professor Helen Payne
Professor in Counselling and Psychotherapy, University of Hertfordshire. Dance movement therapist and psychotherapist. Editor-in-Chief of the international journal Body, Movement and Dance in Psychotherapy and author of several books including: Dance Movement Therapy, Theory, Practice and Research.