Fighting Parkinson's with Indian dance therapy

In a quiet community hall in Mumbai, 70-year-old Hari stands surrounded by a group of men and women, some older, some younger, all marked in different ways by Parkinson's disease.

- Divya Naik

A tabla beat pulses steadily in the background. Hari's arms float through the air, his fingers curled into soft gestures, his feet tapping in sync with the rhythm. This simple act of moving joyfully and purposefully is a small triumph. Just a few months ago, Hari could barely walk across his living room without the fear of falling.

Hari, like many with Parkinson's, has faced a steady erosion of not just motor control but identity itself. "It wasn't the tremors or the falls that broke me," he says. "It was the loss of who I used to be." But joining a dance therapy group changed something in Hari. While it didn't promise a cure, it offered something else—presence, expression, and a pathway back to joy.

Parkinson's disease is often seen through the lens of its physical symptoms: tremors, rigidity, slow movements, postural instability. But those who live with it know that the psychological burden is just as heavy, if not more so. "There's immense grief associated with Parkinson's," says Anshuma Kshetrapal, president of the Indian Association of Dance Movement Therapy and founder of Drama Therapy India. "From the onset of symptoms, there is anxiety—what is happening to me? What am I losing? Then comes the depression, the grieving for a version of oneself that may never return. People begin to withdraw socially, lose confidence, and experience a collapse of identity."

Despite advances in medical treatment which include dopamine replacement drugs and deep brain stimulation, these emotional aspects are rarely addressed. The disease chips away not only at the body but at relationships, agency, and even the will to participate in life.

WHY DANCE MAKES A DIFFERENCE