The main factors enabled synchrony and safety are working creatively with nature and maintaining the familiar format of the group model. To be added is the therapists’ ability to generate new and familiar movement experiences, and by that deepening confidence and trust in interpersonal interaction.
Healing factors brought on by COVID-19
Several observational conclusions can be made from the implementation of the DMT model during the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic. First, creativity and “thinking out of the box” were the main healing factors identified as essential for coping with the strict hospital regulations related to groups. Also, familiarity, the group model practiced in this research was familiar in a sense that the patients had a clear body memory of the movements and the music and it can be practiced at times when meetings are done only via phone. Finally, we become playful with nature, especially when it becomes part of the group it has its own “say” in terms of weather, shade, sounds and shapes. Nature has a form of a ‘moving body. The pattern of the “Embodied nature” is a tool for observing how emotions circulate from nature to ones’ body to the other while influencing its movements, feelings, senses, and expressions.
The implementation of the DMT model intervention points to the potential value of creativity, familiarity, and nature as a ‘moving body’ as forms of an agent of change for treating depressed adult patients. It must be kept in mind that this model practiced in nature offers the “Embodied nature” to become part of this preliminary assessment. This knowledge may be added to the effects of DMT in the treatment of inpatient and outpatient psychiatric patients diagnosed with depression. During COVID-19, DMT group interventions will be continued as a long-term project in the current setting in order to further study the efficacy of the DMT protocol.
