Nothing in my life has touched me as much as dance.
No words could ever touch me in the same way, because the language of dance has a completely different dimension.
In the mystical experiment with dance today I found a spot. I was moving through numbness. A LOT of it. I just couldn’t “feel” it. In any other day I would have just resigned and left it there: it’s not my day for dance and I’d tag along with something else, like a nonchalant change of topic in a long pause inside a conversation flow.
But today I decided I would be by my side, I’d listen and just “keep moving”.
And there it was.
The spot!
I almost missed it in the flow of the rhythm eagerly inviting me to continue to “pulse” along. It’s ok, I’m not missing out if I don’t “follow the beat” by the tact, I thought.
Stop. Breathe. My form was held in a twisted shape.
Suddenly, I felt warm liquid pouring silently over my numb cheeks. It didn’t “feel” like anything I had felt before. Well quite frankly, I was quite surprised to “not” feel and still having tears roll down my face.
Curious, I held the moment in the dark, I simply allowed more breath into that space.
And then “it moved” me along, my hands began gliding towards the spiral I had made place for around my heart.
There was pain.
There was log stuck sadness.
I cried more, now I could begin to sense the pain and the amount of sadness that had been closing my heart, for I don’t know how long.
This was old pain. Maybe “embryo state old” or older.
And from there it took me down the trail of discovery: all the moments that life had been “on hold”, in “stagnation” inside me.
All the movements I had “done” to my body, like a criminal against its will and desire. The dancer days.
What was this about exactly?
….ah…. I had always enjoyed prowess until I finished my professional dance studies. Then, it became “serious” to move. No space for fun or just “winging” it. I HAD to move to make money and survive.
Intense desire that was so familiar: I want to become a part of the elite of dancers.
All the prowess became of shiny beacon for the unattainable gold. Everyone else “had it”, but not me. Why wasn’t my body “performing” to fit in?
Why do we dancers even go there?
Why do we create this inner world of war against our body, when our body is the only friend we have truly.
The dancer’s journey is often a lonely place.
Wow, there’s many dancers like me. My teachers were “stuck” too: this dynamic of desiring some unattainable horizon that kept moving ahead faster, the more we run to it, is so common in the whole industry.
And this was the “closing”: my body stopped desiring to move, because moving meant “never succeeding”, “never getting there”, “never being worthy” at last.
By the time I hit 27 everything in my outer world began to move into stagnation, too.
I got stuck in jobs.
I got stuck in a toxic relationship.
I got stuck in my creative expression.
I got stuck in endless loops of codependency.
I got stuck in being a victim of an outer power I couldn’t ever control.
I got stuck in my finances.
I got stuck in pleasing everyone except myself.
I got stuck in being a good girl.
The spot I found wanted me to look at it anew and re-position it:
Thank GOD I got stuck in such a glorious way!
Thank GOD my body pulled the trigger and began saying EFF OFF to all of that!
I deserve attention, love, worthiness, freedom, expression.
I deserve to just be and thrive in my most pleasurable state.
I was trying to protect me, but I just didn’t “know” how to read the signs then.
Yes body. I love you.
Thank you. I’m sorry. Please forgive me.
I’m here. I’m listening. You are safe to feel it all.
I’m here. I’m listening. You are safe to feel it all.
And the whole inner vision opened to a realm that was even more ancient.
A long time ago people decided how dancers needed to move to “be liked” and “accepted”. A very long time ago they decided to feed our brain with “prowess” being the only worthy way. This fed into whole systems of patriarchy and consumerism:
the show needed to “sell”, so let’s find ways to insure that people will like it.
This is narcissism. You position things in order to coerce or manipulate an outcome.
This is narcissism. You position things in order to coerce or manipulate an outcome.
This process stripped dance from the GOLD that I’m feeling rise in me again. Dance is SO MUCH MORE!!! than what a greedy spectator could ever “see”.
When we EXPERIENCE dance, there’s medicine, there’s integration, there’s dripping honey of wisdom, there’s “coming home” and there’s liberation in BEING.
BEING means we MANIFEST with ease and channel the divine (which is in no way what’s outside of us in the form of a deity).
We BECOME the divine, the truth is that it’s always been here.
And this experiential realization (yes you need to LIVE it) shatters the whole system of projecting prowess and sell-able dancers as the only calling. It’s “definitely not whole” and a pure illusion. Just like many other systems that fuel our addictions and intrinsic dis-eases. My younger self didn’t have the tools to see through it, she just got “stuck” there, not seeing that things were wiring to shut down her feminine essence, her creative spark, her un-controllable, non-disciplinary wild side.
Quiete frankly, I feel she was afraid of her wild woman, of the status quo, of rocking the boat; a typical sign for women who have been emotionally and mentally torn into pieces by their own addictive demons. I was desperately seeking validation through “showing off” my skills. It was very subtle.
We can trick our thoughts and safe constructs of the ego, but not our body.
Our body stores it all and responds.
Our body stores it all and responds.
I’m so fascinated with how our body contains such divine sacred codes of alignment!
We ARE more sacred than we could ever “think”.
Photo by Shaheen Razzaq
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