My family loves to tell the story of how, long before I could even walk or was out of diapers, I would wiggle my little body and bob along enthusiastically to the beat of music whenever it was playing. This earned me the nickname “Boogie”, and it was indicative of a passion I’ve had for dance since before I can even remember. Since those diaper days, I’ve gone on to dabble in formal dance training on and off for most of my life.
When my family couldn’t afford studio training, I always found a way to keep dance in my life — whether that was by joining the cheer squad so that I could perform the halftime dances, or by taking free hip-hop and breakdancing classes after school from a local B-girl who volunteered her time. In a literal sense, dance has been a lifelong love of mine. It’s also something I made the decision to take a break from at the beginning of the pandemic, and I’ve recently made my return to — at long last.
facing fears
I originally stopped attending classes because I didn’t feel comfortable going into closed spaces where so many people were breathing deeply and sweating profusely. I mean, COVID-19 is an airborne virus after all. I vowed not to return until I could get vaccinated, but what I found was that even after I was both vaccinated and boosted — I stayed away. I think the truth is that I was afraid of starting over after almost two years of sitting on my couch.
Before the pandemic hit, I had been dancing regularly for years and documenting it on social media, to boot. I had finally begun to grow into the dancer I knew existed within me my entire life. I was flexible, I was strong, I was fluid, and I was just beginning to grasp the concepts of musicality and texture. I knew exactly how humbling it would be to return after my hiatus. How slow, heavy and clumsy I would feel. I swear, the fear was almost enough to make a girl hang up her dancing shoes and whisper to herself that she used to be a dancer. Ha! But I could never do that. I promised myself long ago that I would never stop dancing, and it’s a promise I’ve managed to keep for decades.
the backstory
It wasn’t until I was in college that I recognized the positive effect that dance has on my mental health. Actually, it was pointed out to me by one of my sorority sisters who I was on a step team with. She was one of my closest friends, had seen my through several seasons of life, and she could see that there was a difference in me when I was dancing. I was more calm, more grounded, I could shake negativity off more easily, I laughed more often. She noticed what I have always felt. Dance elicits a type of joy in me that can’t be replicated in any other way. As a highly sensitive person, I can understand now that dance was giving me a physical outlet: A way to move through my naturally deep feelings, to express what was going on inside of me in a way that was nonverbal and subconscious. I had not yet learned how to process my emotions in a way that was both intentional and healthy — something I’m still in the process of learning, to be perfectly honest.
While writing this, I actually came across a great series of posts that explain an important component of healthy emotional regulation that I didn’t learn about until adulthood. They were posted by Yolanda Renteria, a trauma therapist who does educational work surrounding emotional regulation:
This leads me back around to the point of this post, which started out being about my return to dance. But more than that, this article is an examination of how the spiritual has a tendency to show up in our lives whether we are aware of it or not.
getting a little ~woo woo with it now
I believe in pre-birth planning — which is the idea that before we are born, our souls plan out our lifetimes according to the lessons we are working on during this incarnation. I view natal birth charts as the map we give ourselves, to help us to remember the plan and guide us toward the tools we need in order to complete our mission. Perhaps the biggest theme I’ve noticed in my life has to do with healthy emotional expression, and I believe that the very spiritual reason I had a propensity to dance in the first place is because something in me knew that I would need an emotional outlet.
When I first learned yoga, for example, I was surprised to learn that many basic yoga poses are also the same movements I had done during warm-ups in dance classes my whole life. How comforting to know! That I was drawn to and placed myself in a position to be guided through physical movements that would give me the emotional release I so badly needed while growing up. I may not have been learning about the tools I needed in order to move through my feelings on an emotional level, but I was able to dance (and stomp!) out the physical feelings that were living in my body unexpressed.
tapping back into authenticity
And so in my long winded way, I’ve come back full circle to the beginning of this post — which was to commemorate that I’ve started my dance journey once again. Of course I started back with possibly the most demanding form of dance I’ve ever encountered: pole dance. By the end of that first excruciating class back, I was shaky, trying to remember to breathe, and struggling with every move I was being asked to attempt. Despite that, it felt amazing to use my body in this way again! Exhilarating, even, to connect with myself and to the music and to the people I was taking class with. It felt like coming home. Returning to dance is always both a nostalgic and brand new feeling; finally satisfying a craving and a yearning and an itch in my soul that has built up over years.
I mentioned earlier that I had been documenting my dance journey on social media before the pandemic. In retrospect, I think I really needed this break from dance. It was a hard decision initially, but being totally honest with myself, my dance journey had become a way for me to obsess over my shortcomings, rather than what I wanted it to be — which is an authentic look at what my journey looks like. An honest peek into what growth actually looks like: Peaks and valleys, rather than a straight unwavering line that only goes forward. Coming back to dance feels like coming back to a more honest version of who I am at my core, without concentrating on what I look like or how many likes I’m getting on my latest video. It’s about the delicious feeling of moving my body to a beat. And I’m hoping that is what this blog achieves as well. A total and complete honesty about who I am at my core.
OK, I hope that this post came together in a way that made sense. Thanks for reading, fam! ❤
theburiedgold 