An embodied practice of becoming: an interpretative phenomenological analysis of the psychotherapeutic potential of Argentine tango from a person-centered perspective

This study explores the psychotherapeutic potential of Argentine tango through an Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis (IPA) of in-depth interviews with seven tango dancers, situating their accounts within a person-centered theoretical framework. Although tango has been associated with wellbeing and therapeutic benefit, little research has examined how such experiences are subjectively lived and understood by participants. The analysis identified five interrelated Group Experiential Themes: Finding Renewal; Developing Intimacy; Finding Solidarity and Community; Reclaiming Expression and Expanding the Self; and Asserting Boundaries and Navigating Ethics. Together, these themes illuminate tango as an embodied, relational practice through which participants negotiated vitality, connection, creativity, and ethical relating, often in the aftermath of adversity. Renewal was experienced as a gradual re-opening to lived experience consistent with organismic valuing; intimacy and community emerged as mutually constituted and ethically contingent; creative expression enabled the reclamation of disowned aspects of self; and participants emphasized consent and boundary-setting as conditions of possibility for growth. The findings suggest that tango may function as a context in which organismic processes of growth and integration are reanimated beyond the consulting room, extending person-centered psychotherapy literature into explicitly embodied and communal domains.