Rap Music Reflection

The session started with discussing a broken CD player which Tom had jammed earlier. He continued went on to talking about writing music and discussed the prevalence of violence, drugs and sex in rap music. He said that his rap music was different and called it ‘rap poetry’. In response I caught myself giggling flirtatiously. We started using props to amplify the space between us and to provide me with time to regain my professional stance. The props promoted whole-body interactive movements, flexibility in response and movement-interactions which encouraged a shared focus, cooperation and creativity. This took Tom and me out of our previous pattern of interaction (Stanton-Jones, 1992). Tom then started to build a tower using foam yoga blocks and a ball at the top which was about 3 feet tall. He called it the ‘Tower to Heaven’. The shape of the tower suggested a phallus. He spoke about how it is not possible for people to climb it to reach heaven. This made me think whether the tower symbolised Tom’s confined state, which resonated him not having any form of sexual intimacy with others.

Tom suddenly became silent and had a horrified look on his face while staring at what he had made. His body became bound and slowly started to curl into a seated foetal position. I sensed some deep connection Tom had made to his offence through the object he had created. One of the most important elements of Chase’s approach was image-making, as the image shifted the clients’ movement from being a simple action transformed into a symbolic act. This stimulated the connection between feelings state and symbolic representation which in turn transform into symbolic communication (Sandel, 1993). We sat in this powerful silence for a long time and reluctantly ended the session on