Dance - my first love and where I come home to myself again and again
photo by Johnny McClung
I’ve been told that as soon as I could walk; I danced. Whooshing, swirling, prancing, shimmying and shaking all over the house. This and my flat feet prompted my mum to send me to ballet classes at the age of two.
A circular journey via formal dance disciplines, choreography and a stint as a student at the royal ballet school in London — all the way through to five rhythms, shamanic trance dance and then ecstatic awakening dance —I find myself regularly practicing something not so dissimilar to my first foray into dancing. I’m doing the freeform, foot stomping, life affirming, hip swaying and intuitive movement that I was doing when I was a child. I had to go the long way round… all the way back to what I knew already.
We all know it. It’s ancient and primordial stuff. Perhaps one of the most ancient of healing modalities known to humans.
For me, the more I dance, the more I get out of it. The deeper it takes me on a journey of reconnection to myself, this amazing body and the buzzy life force whirring through it.
For me, the more I dance, the more I get out of it. The deeper it takes me on a journey of reconnection to myself, this amazing body and the buzzy life force whirring through it. And yes. It makes me feel fully alive. Wholeheartedly alive. When I step on the dancefloor the treadmill of the daily grind is left eating dust.
Other practices and art forms can do that too. But nothing comes close to dance in terms of how it can take me on a journey of whole and holy self-expression. Where all the stuff I’ve been feeling over the days, or even years is allowed air to breath.
We’ve had this empowering expression civilised out of us. Patriachal-ised out of us. Don’t be too happy, too sad. Too angry, too excited. Too sexy, too alive. To dance all of these expressions and so many more is a subversive act. Not according to rules or any sort of discipline. Not performing for someone else’s pleasure or approval. But just for the sheer joy of it. And in fact, not giving a hoot what anyone else thinks of it or what you look like. Just for your. sweet. self.
Dance can also take me on a journey within. Where I make contact with my body’s intelligence. Inspiration arises. Questions get answered. Guidance is received. Knowing is felt. In the bones and in the blood.
We’ve had this access to our body’s intelligence stifled too. Trust the priest. Trust the guru. Trust the physician. But don’t trust yourself. Don’t listen to yourself. Just the academic, mechanistic ruminations of the left hemisphere of your brain. Such a small part of all the wisdom we can access. But as all the traditional modes of operation — from religion all the way through to patriarchy and politics are being called into question and found lacking — I feel our returning to our primordial inner knowing.
Gone, or at least going, are the days where we trust our connection to truth and to source to be interpreted via someone else, some ‘messenger’ of ‘higher standing’. And while the betrayal angers us and the cynicism that flares up in us is painful, perhaps it is very necessary and right for this time. It is a step towards a reconnection to ourselves and to our remembering to turn within not look outside of ourselves for what is true to us. This living stuff. This being fully alive. It’s an inside job.
We are sovereign unto ourselves. And we have this body that is so ready and so willing to release endorphins as we raise our hands in the air, stomp our feet and move to the rhythm of the beat. When our body is allowed to move and express and journey within it is able to do a tremendous amount of healing — all by its sweet self.
Whatever you’re feeling dancing can help to experience it in totality. From grief to ecstasy. Dance allows us to fully live it, feel it, express it and when the time is ripe to release it and heal it — so everything returns to its natural state of flow.
And so, again and again I will return to what I did as a child… back to what I’ve always known and dance myself home.