Moving bodies, healing bonds: dyadic embodied psychotherapy in crisis settings

Introduction: Children and parents exposed to war-related forced displacement often experience disruptions in emotional regulation, relational availability, and communicative capacities. While dyadic interventions are increasingly recognized as important in emergency contexts, less is known about how movement-based, embodied processes operate within parent-child therapeutic work during acute displacement-related crises. This qualitative study examines psychotherapists' experiences of movement-based interventions with parent-child dyads in emergency settings, focusing on therapists' subjective understandings of therapeutic processes with children and their caregivers. Methods: Using Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis (IPA), semi-structured interviews were conducted with ten psychotherapists trained in movement psychotherapy and experienced in crisis and emergency contexts. Interviews explored therapists' meaning-making regarding therapeutic change within embodied dyadic work following forced displacement due to war. Results: Two superordinate themes emerged. First, the dyadic frame was perceived as critical for supporting embodied co-regulation and emotional availability in both parent and child. Therapists described how caregivers' presence, initially peripheral, often evolved into active engagement, enhancing the child's sense of safety and enabling reciprocal transformation within the dyad. Second, movement was understood not merely as a technique but as a primary therapeutic modality, facilitating preverbal expression, relational attunement, and regulatory embodied meaning-making in contexts where verbal discourse was limited. Therapists' embodied presence frequently served to model parental functions, reanimating caregiver responsiveness and vitality. Movement also functioned as a diagnostic and relational lens, allowing real-time assessment of trauma responses, interactional synchrony, and regulatory shifts. Discussion: Findings highlight the value of integrating nonverbal, developmentally sensitive, and relationally oriented approaches into clinical frameworks for families experiencing displacement-related crises. The study suggests that intervention design in emergency contexts should explicitly include dyadic and body-based components that engage both caregiver and child as active participants, emphasizing embodied co-regulation and relational repair as central processes in the early stages of trauma recovery.