Dance!
Where would I be, without dance?
Sheesh… I don’t even want to think about it.
Dance has featured all the eay through my life. It’s been my joy and my refuge, since I was a youngster.
Although I’m far from a youngster now, it’s still my daily dose of medicine.
Back in the day, when I identified as queer, growing up, I had to suppress so much of my love. The dance floor was the place where I could feel and express.
There, in Rainbows’ nightclub on Friday and Saturday nights, I could finally allow the rich currents of Eros to pour through me, in safety. Rolling my hips in the heady gyration that would nourish me, feed me, all weekend.
I’d often start dancing at 8pm and not stop until 1am.
My first career was in theatre, where I loved the body-based warm ups. I’d treat myself to an hour of freeing the body and voice, every single morning, and I’d feel so darn complete.
I loved holding workshop spaces for others to do this, something I did in my career as a movement and theatre director, for fifteen years. To completely free the body, and let the life force fountain through us! And then to weave stories together as an ensemble, oof! So powerful.
How I loved to tell stories with the body, without words.
I took a hiatus from performance for a decade, and studied meditation instead. Dancing the inner dance, of subtle energies.
After a back injury (yes, sitting meditation can be bad for your health!) I returned to the conscious dance floor in 2016, and felt like I had come home.
Imagine being underwater for a decade… and then finally, with lungs about to burst, drawing a breath at the surface. That’s what it felt like.
I began to retrieve my parts, somatically. Like Isis retrieving all of the parts of Osiris, bit by bit.
Now, my somatic meditations start the day. A deep-listening-to-the-body, followed by a dance, perhaps. For about forty five minutes, or as long as it takes for a stick of frankincense to burn.
Tensions fall away.
Trauma surfaces and old stories and energy blocks are cleansed and integrated.
If I’m needing to cultivate a certain energy to get me through my day, like balance or focus or courage or joy, or tenderness, I’ll dance with that.
Softening into this beautiful, animal body and her spirit… sometimes fierce, sometimes tender.
All five of my bodies are called into the dance.
Through these bodies, I imagine and embody new possibilities, new versions of myself.
And end, often full of intuition and contentment, surrendering to the slower dance of silence.
It brings me more and more alive.
May you too keep dancing yourself back to life.