dancing & the art of healing
Dancing has always been a large part of who I am, for nearly as long as I can remember.
I attribute that to my mother.
I remember how it felt shortly after my parents separated and she became a single mom. She played a lot of music; from Fleetwood Mac to Martina McBride – she played it all and she danced like no one was watching. My sister and I would dance with her and suddenly the act felt more like healing than it did exercise. I can still remember the height of the CD racks we had full of different artists in our living room. Of course this was back before streaming services. I come from a time where you’d get those Columbia House music subscription flyers in the mail exclaiming “13 CDs for the price of 1!” You would then affix the stamp of the CD that you wanted into the designated ‘mail in’ and a few weeks later, your brown box of CDs would arrive in the mail. Mom always let my sister and I choose an album stamp to place on the mailer. When that brown box arrived in the mailbox a few weeks later, it was always exciting.
Weekend mornings were always slow, I would wake up to the sound of my mom cleaning, listening to music, and dancing. The sun would be just above the horizon with warmth of the sun rays and the flowing of the crisp air bellowed in through the open windows. I can still smell the Windex in the air, and I can still hear the tapping of the blinds against the window frame as the wind would gust. Her brown hair would be tied up in a ponytail and she’d complain about her bangs. But even when there was much on her list to be done, the music moved her through her tasks.
Flash forward a bit, I spent a lot of time alone in my room as an adolescent. I remember getting my first giant stereo in my room and how excited I was that I had a six-disc changer with a remote. I spent a lot of time in my room with Christmas lights affixed to the border of my bedroom and dancing like I was auditioning for a job as a backup dancer for my favorite artists. I loved dancing, I loved Julia Styles in ‘Save The Last Dance’, and to this day my best friends dance with me in their living rooms during get togethers. I don’t think I realized until quite recently that I was dancing in the name of self-regulation.
Emotions are nothing more than different energies formed in our bodies in motion, which is how they got their name. Derived from the French word émouvoir (to excite) which was born from the Latin word ēmōtus (to agitate, or stir up). This is why moving your body in any form is helpful during stressful or highly emotional times in life. While I know we are all so tired from the everyday stresses of life, rotting in bed or on the couch is really one of the most detrimental things you can do when you start feeling less than yourself.
To this day I dance. I dance in the car, I dance in the woods, the gym, and I dance in the street. I find copious amounts of joy dancing in a room full of candlelight, where I feel most close to myself. I feel feminine, I feel true, and I feel happy. It’s hard to be sad and dance at the same time. If you start dancing when you’re sad it’s easier to get that energy out of your body and catapult yourself into to a better mental & physical space. At least, that’s the truth when it pertains to me.
You see, when you dance, you’re moving stagnant energy from your lower three chakras which rule over your stability, your intuition & creativity, and your sense of self. Most of us spend the majority of our days sitting, so movement in the core of our bodies is highly restricted in this position. Without some sort of regular movement in this area of your body you’re going to feel (and even sometimes see) the stresses of life start piling on. May I even be so bold as to say twerking can be a healing ritual - if you let it.
When these three chakras are misaligned (root, sacral, and solar plexus) you’ll feel it. I never really made the connection until I started diving deeper into my spirituality and had a yearning to understand myself better and why I innately do certain things. The subconscious is an intricate space that I find almost mystical. Where our magic is stored. Deeper understandings of ourselves lie dormant in those depths. I have come to love myself so much that I want to know everything about me and why I feel drawn to the things that I am and that I do.
I recently became a Certified Ayurveda Specialist. Ayurveda is a system of medicine that originated in India over 3,000 years ago and is still practiced heavily in the region to this day. The focus of Ayurveda is the study of life; a holistic approach to healing the mind, body and spirit as one instead of just focusing on singular physical ailments/symptoms or pharmaceutical intervention. It has allowed me to see the bigger picture of life. It has offered me a space of understanding & healing in a multitude of ways that no medical professional has ever come close. As someone who has struggled with mental health, has a lifelong chronic illness, bad discs in my lower back, and feels my emotions to a depth that most people do not; I can easily say that focusing on the human form as a whole, and as an experience has led me to a place where I have never felt better physically, emotionally, or spiritually.
I did that.
& all of it started with a love of dancing.
I hope to see you on the dance floor,
xo-jess