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Dance for health and wellbeing across the lifespan
Welcome to Dance Garden
Dance Garden is an emerging arts and health initiative dedicated to strengthening wellbeing, creativity, and connection across the lifespan through dance, movement, and play. We work alongside health, education, and community organisations to ensure that dance and its benefits are widely accessible, servicing the Moreton Bay Region and North Brisbane areas.
Gentle Rhythms of Renewal
A creative and somatic dance experience designed to restore and revitalise wellbeing.
Join us for a nourishing morning of movement, reflection, and creative expression.
Guided movement explorations invite you to drop deeply into your body, to listen, sense, and respond. Movement becomes inquiry: a way to meet yourself anew, release what no longer serves, and rediscover your natural rhythm.
Together, we’ll explore:
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Somatic movement patterns – grounding and attuning to your inner rhythm
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Creative movement – renewal through embodied expression
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Authentic movement practice – moving and witnessing each other with compassion and nonjudgment
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Celebration dance – integration and expression of what’s emerged
Allow yourself to be witnessed and supported in community as you open to subtle or significant shifts, a soft turning or perhaps a leap toward what’s next.
This workshop may appeal to:
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Anyone seeking to reconnect with their body, creativity, and inner wisdom
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Those in transition or needing time to reflect before the year ends
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People curious about somatic or authentic movement practices
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Therapists, teachers, and creatives wanting to renew their energy through embodied exploration
No prior movement experience necessary.
Sunday 16 November 2025
🕘 9:00–11:00am
📍 Zen Space, Samford Valley
💧 Bring: a water bottle, journal, and comfortable clothes to move in
💰 Cost: $44
Creative Dance for Adults
Expand your movement range through play. Creative dance for Adults is a playful, expressive space for creative movement, blending somatic awareness, improvisation, and guided exploration to support physical ease and emotional vitality. Through individual and group movement, you’ll expand your movement range, awaken creativity, and connect more deeply with yourself and others. All bodies and backgrounds welcome—no experience needed, just bring yourself as you are.
How we move impacts the way we think, feel and the state of our nervous system.
Creative Dance and Yoga
for Children
Our Creative Dance and Yoga classes offer a joyful space where children can explore movement, imagination, and self-expression. Through playful activities inspired by music, and imaginative themes, children develop confidence, body awareness, and emotional resilience.
Unlike traditional dance classes, our sessions encourage children to discover their own unique ways of moving— using structured dance improvisation. Yoga elements are woven in to promote balance, focus, and relaxation.
Join us as we explore, play, and grow through dance and yoga!
Please get in touch about booking in for a trial class for your child.
Classes in Samford Valley.
Grades 1 - 4, Tuesday 3:30 - 4:30pm
Creative Dance and Yoga
for Teens
Our Creative Dance and Yoga classes for teens offer a supportive space to move, connect, and express. Blending playful structure with freedom, these sessions invite young people to explore their own movement language through improvisation, creative tasks, and yoga-inspired grounding practices.
Classes focus on building confidence, self-awareness, and emotional wellbeing, while encouraging curiosity, imagination, and fun.
For those interested, there will be gentle opportunities to share their creations through informal community performances. These are entirely optional and designed to be low-pressure, celebratory experiences.
Come and stretch, dance, breathe, and discover what moves you.
Please get in touch about booking in for a trial class for your teen.
Classes in Samford Valley.
Tuesdays 4:45 - 5:45pm
Photo credit: Over The Moon Studio, Castlemaine Victoria
Movement for Life: Dance Therapy for Seniors
Supporting your loved ones with Dementia, Parkinson’s, physical fraility, depression and anxiety, chronic pain through movement for wellbeing.
BENEFITS OF DANCE MOVEMENT THERAPY FOR SENIORS:
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Improves memory and communication
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Boosts balance, flexibility, and mood
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Reduces anxiety, promotes relaxation
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Preventative care: Enhances overall well-being
OUR SERVICE:
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In-Home & Residential Care Visits Available
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Personalised sessions to enhance physical, emotional & social well-being.
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No dance experience necessary
Please get in touch to have a chat about booking a session for your loved one.
Emma services areas in the North Brisbane and lower Moreton Bay Regions.
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Movement and Creativity Workshop:
Dance, Writing & Nature as a Pathway to Presence
Join me for a gentle and nourishing workshop that invites you to return to presence through the combined practices of movement, writing, and connection with nature.
This workshop offers a supportive space to explore your inner world through embodied creative practice. Rooted in the understanding that we know more than we are consciously aware of, this experience draws on dance and writing as tools for self-discovery and insight. As we move and reflect, we allow yet-to-be articulated thoughts to gently surface—shifting internal patterns and making space for new perspectives.
Together, we’ll explore:
- Somatic and improvisational movement practices that support embodied presence
- Guided writing prompts that emerge from the felt sense
- Quiet time in nature to ground and integrate
- Opportunities to listen, reflect, and reconnect—with yourself and the world around you
This workshop is inspired by the idea that dance is not just movement—it is a way of thinking, feeling, and perceiving. Through shifts in posture, breath, and orientation, new thoughts and sensations arise. By pairing this with reflective writing and nature-based connection, we create a rich field of self-discovery and creativity.
About Dance Garden
Dance Garden is an emerging arts and health initiative dedicated to strengthening wellbeing, creativity, and connection across the lifespan.
Mission
We support health and wellbeing through dance, movement, and play, creating spaces for expression, connection, and community.
Vision
We imagine a future where dance and movement are recognised as essential to wellbeing and made accessible to all. By partnering with health, education, and social justice organisations, Dance Garden delivers programs to those who most need support, ensuring creativity and connection are within everyone’s reach.
Values
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Accessibility – Dance for all ages, abilities, and backgrounds.
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Play – Creativity, imagination, and joy in movement.
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Respect – Consent, safety, and clear boundaries.
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Inclusion – Celebrating diversity, difference, and body positivity.
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Connection – With self, others, and community, through both verbal and nonverbal expression.
Leadership
Dance Garden is directed by Emma Wilson, a Registered Dance Movement Therapist (DTAA Prov. Prof. DMT), Community Dance Facilitator, and Performing Artist/Choreographer. I am passionate about bridging dance and health, using movement as a pathway to creativity, resilience, and community wellbeing. Her work is grounded in the belief that dance, both as an art form and a therapeutic practice, is a powerful tool for healing and social connection.
"My practice sits at the intersection of dance, health, and community. Drawing on my background as a dancer, choreographer, and educator, and principles of dance movement therapy, I facilitate movement experiences that are both expressive and restorative. Through creative process, embodied awareness, and relational presence, I support people to connect with themselves and others, build regulation, and rediscover ease in movement. Whether in community, education, or healthcare settings, my work bridges the artistry of dance with evidence-informed approaches to wellbeing, affirming dance as a vital resource for individual and collective health."
Emma Wilson, Dance Garden Director
Emma Wilson qualifications:
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Master of Creative Arts Therapy (Dance Movement Therapy) - University of Melbourne (current)
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Graduate Diploma Somatics and Dance Movement Therapy - Tensegrity Training 2025
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Level 1 Yoga Teacher Training - Kate Pell Yoga 2012
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Bachelor of Dance (Choreography) - The Amsterdam School For The Arts 2010
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Bachelor of Contemporary Arts (Dance) - Deakin University 2005
Participant Experiences
“I didn’t know that movement combined with guided meditation could be so healing. I reached depths of experiences both past and present that Emma helped me to explore safely and with compassion.
Difficult experiences seemed to move quickly through me and felt released to the universe. I don’t do stillness well and so being able to dance/move was a new and surprising way of meditation.“
“It was an appreciated and affirming experience, to enter a safe space and take the time to tune into my body and be guided to explore possibilities.
Over the duration of the sessions I felt progression towards feeling safe to find the spaciousness around me and opening up that was in contrast to feeling stuck and trapped within myself and physical body.
The key 'take-away' for me by the end of the sessions was that I really felt accomplished and confident to overcome the moments when I feel 'stuck' in a place of no movement/rest/sedentary (pain), feeling depleted and unmotivated to be being hopeful.”
Get in Touch
I would love to hear from you. Feel free to reach out to me for any inquiries or to discuss your movement needs.
Unless indicated, imagery on this website is AI generated.
Acknowledgement of Country
Emma Wilson Movement Is Therapy acknowledges the traditional owners of the lands and waterways of the Moreton Bay Region, the Kabi Kabi/Gubbi Gubbi, Jinibara, and Turrbal people. I pay our respects to their Elders, past, present, and emerging. I recognise the ongoing connection that Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people have to this land and honour them as the original custodians. Sovereignty has never been ceded; this always was and always will be Aboriginal Land.
I recognise First Nations Peoples as the original storytellers, dancers, art and culture makers of this land, and I am honoured to follow in their footsteps by using the creative arts as healing modalities. I am committed to allyship, guided by the leadership and self-determination of First Nations Peoples, and to ongoing practices of decolonisation that centre their experiences.
Emma Wilson Movement Is Therapy is dedicated to embracing diversity and eradicating all forms of discrimination in our wellbeing services.
I celebrate people of all ethnicities, faiths, sexual orientations, and gender identities. My practice is committed to being anti-racist, anti-discrimination, anti-ableism, anti-stigma, and anti-oppression.
Copyright 2024 © Emma Wilson Movement Is Therapy