Dr. Arielle Dance

Dr. Arielle Dance
Ph.D. Mind-Body Medicine, 2017

"My degree from Saybrook is kind of unconventional, and what I am doing is unconventional. But it is important that we continue to talk about these issues so we can bring the pain that so many people are experiencing to the surface, and then work to help them heal."

Arielle Dance, Ph.D., is using her education to challenge taboos around women’s health and mindfulness in the workplace.

Mind-Body Medicine alumna Arielle Dance, Ph.D., has long been an advocate for women’s health: as a doula, as a doctor for the  American Cancer Society (ACS), and through her research into techniques for easing painful symptoms of endometriosis, a disease she was diagnosed with at 15 years old. Through it all, she’s striven to break down the stigmas that surround unconventional treatments and preventative care.

After earning her master’s degree in women’s health, Dr. Dance chose to continue her education at Saybrook University because it was the only graduate school she found willing to support her unconventional research interests. Throughout her time at Saybrook, Dr. Dance studied how specific relaxation techniques including meditation, deep breathing, and guided imagery could positively affect different aspects of women’s health—specifically endometriosis, which often results in infertility.

In 2015, she was awarded the Herbert Spiegel Scientific Poster Award for her research poster titled “The Utilization of Hypnosis, Hypnotherapy, and HypnoBirthing for Childbirth and Labor.”

Today, she finds that her research continues to attract a diverse range of women seeking to learn more about her nontraditional methods of treatment.

“Besides my full-time job, I am balancing roles as a doula and unofficial consultant,” Dr. Dance says. “Because of my final dissertation on endometriosis, I have found a lot of people reaching out to me specifically related to their pain and how they can cope with their pain and infertility…. It’s been a unique group of women all in different phases.”

Dance has also used her education to help transform the culture in her day-to-day work at the ACS, where she manages a team of employees. She has begun integrating techniques she learned during her time at Saybrook to increase mindfulness in the workplace, routinely beginning staff meetings with meditation and using aromatherapy and dim lighting in her office to help her begin each day.

Dance remains firmly committed to bringing awareness to the issues she is passionate about by speaking up.

“My degree from Saybrook is kind of unconventional,” she says. “And what I am doing is unconventional. My original research is still kind of stigmatized because it is very much about every female topic possible, and every taboo topic that a woman could talk to a male-identified person about. But it is important that we continue to talk about these issues so we can bring the pain that so many people are experiencing to the surface, and then work to help them heal.”