I used to think I loved to dance.

Except, I don't think I ever really danced until tonight. So how can you love doing something you've never done? I used to think of dance like this physical exercise. Beautiful, very much so. At times, graceful. Often, liberating.But that was pretty much the full extent of it.

I've been taking these dance classes, sort of. It's a contact improvisation type thing. And there's no choreography, and it's completely out of my comfort zone, if we're being honest. Anyway, last time I went, I felt like crap and left early. Felt really disconnected. But this time around, *magic*.


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The class today focused on inertia, and defining the difference between conscious, purposeful movement, and just going with the flow. It was really sweet, a very intimate class, and I think something just *clicked* in me. After the class, everyone's welcome to hang around and keep dancing or doing whatever in a truly improvisational jam session.

When that started, I moved (maybe for the first time) with such clear connection between my body and mind/soul. **I never realized how disconnected I was before tonight, and it stunned me. 'Cause I'm quite good at letting my mind run away, I do that a lot in writing and making art, and whatnot, and I love it. But tonight, when I was finally able to "hear" my body for the first time, I realised it was so sorrowful, 'cause it always got left behind. Nobody taught my body to run free, or be truly, completely present.**

One thing I really like about these people is that nobody forces you, or suggests how you should move at all. You're free to be as crazy and as weird as you like. Do the most "awkward" shit. Move like you wouldn't in public spaces.

With my soul and my body suddenly connected, I found not only that I could move, but that I could do so with purpose, and it was such an incredibly cathartic experience. **Suddenly, I could move *with* the hurt and the fear and the love and all these other complex emotions that I felt and was aware of. There were, I realized, so many things that had registered on a cognitive level. Either hurt that had happened at that level, or hurt that I consciously understood, even felt, on a purely emotional level, but never really embodied.**

When something undesirable attaches itself to us, like a mosquito, or lint, or whatever, we know how to shake it off. Our bodies immediately react when we feel a bee buzzing near us, in self-defence. When the danger exists on a purely psychological (or emotional) level, it's much harder to defend, and move away. Which made the whole dance all the more liberating.

In dance, I allowed myself to "feel" and embody a much wider palette of emotions than even I acknowledged. A lot of hurt, surely, but also, love in places where I could not accept it before. Suddenly, in movement, not only did I become aware of it, I allowed it. It suddenly felt natural. *Of course it's like this.*

Because it always had been like that, except you don't always *think through* what you're feeling, do you? You sometimes acknowledge "I'm sad" or "I'm excited" or "I'm confused", but many times, it's more of a blank statement. Like you're describing yourself to yourself, not like you actually live there, you know?

In this make-shift dance, my body finally caught up with the emotional and psychological gallop I'd been going through. It  took the metaphorical punches that, in my own journey, were inevitable. It was almost like an adult suddenly stepped into the room full of chaotic toddlers, and went *"Okay, this is what's happening. Okay, I know where we go from here."*

Because it did. I found, when I stopped thinking through my dance, when I was truly connected, the answers flowed naturally through my body and into my reality, into my consciousness. 

*We move like this, but it's okay to also fall to the floor sometimes. It's okay that you wanna go sideways like that. That, too, is part of your dance.*

Afterward, I had to sit with myself for a while. To calibrate all that had happened, all the marvellous epiphany-like movement. I see now how it was a direct answer to certain (opposing) emotions/thoughts that had risen earlier in the week. I think maybe this logical, more balanced answer was there from the start, perhaps in a subconscious level. It just needed someone to carry the message, and in dance, my body became that.

So yeah, thank the gods for dancing. And for people who hold your hand.


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