My Body is Not My Enemy

‘I have organised for us to go dancing’ my friend Camille told me when I was staying with her in Melbourne. ‘It’s called 5Rhythms’. While I love dancing, the way she described 5Rhythms made my stomach turn. It sounded like some hippy ‘express your feelings though dance’ thing and I was not up for it. Expressing my feelings was on a strictly ‘only when I am against the wall’ list. However, Camille is my friend, and she was so excited – so what to do? Reluctantly I agreed to go. After all, I like to think of myself as being willing to try something new – in theory at least!

I felt uneasy as we walked into the hall where the class was held. Mellow music was playing and people were lying on the floor with others dancing around the room in their own groove. I lost Camille pretty quickly the room of about 80 people and so, after a moment of abandoned panic, I decided to do my own thing.

I did not have a friendly relationship with my body growing up. I remember clearly wishing I didn’t have a body. I wished I was like vapour, and just existed as thoughts. My body was awkward, ugly, and something that could only bring me shame and embarrassment. At best it was a fun thing to take dancing. Mostly it was something to hide. It also felt things that were very uncomfortable that I tried to shut myself away from. If there was any chance of having a body lobotomy and being valued only for my mind, I would have signed up for it in a flash.

You see my body was not only an unattractive object that seemed to want to eat even when I knew that not eating was, it also housed an emotional world that was alien to me. Controlling my emotions and being logical was the only safe place for me to exist. My body was scary on every level. It was even scary if a boy liked me because I felt so threatened and had no idea how to connect with men. They were aliens.

As the music in the 5Rhytms class stepped up a notch I found myself bopping away and lost a lot of my awkward cautiousness. The teacher would occasionally mention a body part to lead the dance with and off we would go. ‘Elbows’… ‘shoulders’… ‘feet’….

Tuning into different parts of my body and following how they wanted to move taught me how to listen to my body.

And then I saw it. The freedom of self-expression in the room was amazing. And no alcohol! How amazing is that! The gentle suggestions from the teacher gave me a focus point on my body to explore. How did my elbow want to move? What a weird and wonderful question.

As a non drinker, I have spent most of my life on dance floors with people who had been drinking which creates a particular vibe, as I am sure many of you know. But, here were people who didn’t need to drink to dance, or perhaps a better way to put it, people here didn’t need alcohol to be themselves in a group and be in their body – I was so excited. Had I found my peeps! Energised by this feeling I found myself unselfconsciously (well mostly) swinging my arms this way and that, my hips and legs in all directions without worrying about bumping into other people or intoxicated people bumping into me. It was liberating  and I and had so much fun.

At the end of the class I was feeling amazing. I was more connected within my body than I had been for a very long time. I walked up to the teacher (Madhuma) with a brazenness that I did not recognise within myself.  ‘That was amazing.’ I said. Then, I looked her straight in the eye, paused, focussed fully on her, dropped my tone and said ‘I see you coming to Tasmania!’. Normally a avoid teachers and anyone in authority, so I surprised myself.

I was so confident in my statement that Madhuma was taken aback. She paused and asked me if I was clairvoyant. I was chuffed. She thinks I have super powers! How awesome is that!! The seed was planted. It was a good as decided, and when I went back to Tasmania, I proceeded to organise for Madhuma to come to run classes in Tassie.

Now Tasmania is not exactly 5 minutes down the road from Melbourne. Tasmania is an island with 600km of treacherous water between it and anywhere. So asking Madhuma to come to Tasmania to teach 5Rhythms set me up for a bit of organising!

 As many of you will know, it is not easy to sell something when people have never experienced anything like it and it is difficult to explain, but I put the word out everywhere I could and managed to get a good number of people to come to the beautiful Wesley Hall for Madhuma’s first class in Hobart.

It was the beginning of me starting to feel safe within my own body. Movement was a way to explore what I was feeling, to trust my body as an incredibly intelligent part of me that could help me heal and feel safe. I was connecting with myself through following the way my body wanted to move, and connecting with other people through partner exercises and groups where I got to feel my fear and vulnerability and work though it.

I have tried lots of ways to reconnect with myself. I was never any good at meditation. I tried really hard, and had done several Vispassana courses (10 day silent meditation courses) to throw myself into meditation boot camp. But I could never maintain the practice after the course and felt like a Vipassana failure. My mind would be fighting itself as I tried to ‘focus on your breath’ and ‘observe sensation without reacting to it’ – which I felt like I never could. I was just one reaction after another. I was a reaction machine. I would get so frustrated that I would give up.

But 5Rhythms! Here was a process of being in the moment, listening to my body and moving with music. It allowed me to start connecting into my body and start trusting what it had to say. And, it did not involve any co-ordination as there were no steps to learn. It was all about deepening our connection with ourselves and others through movement. This was revolutionary for me. I was hooked.

I learned that 5Rhythms, developed by Gabriel Roth is the mother of many conscious dance schools, such as Movement Medicine, Open Floor and other modalities.

Through conscious dance I was becoming more at home in my body and in my own skin. I was learning about myself and the incredible emotional intelligence of my body. Starting to notice where my intuition was in my body, how I lost myself in relationships with other people and how to stay in my own space. It was incredible.

Photo – My Open Floor Movement Facilitator Training Module 1 2014 California USA. That’s me sitting at the front, 3rd from the right with my arms in the air.

I have since been trained as an Open Floor Movement Facilitator and a Therapy in Motion Practitioner. The story of that journey is the subject of another blog. I use the intelligence of the body and movement in my work. Movement is a profound way help people feel learn how to trust the intelligence of their body to heal wounds and feel fully alive.

If you enjoy music and movement, and struggle with sitting meditation, I would recommend trying a form of conscious dance. Some schools include (there are many but I will list those that I have tried and enjoyed):

5Rhythms - https://www.5rhythms.com

Open Floor International - https://openfloor.org

Movement Medicine - https://www.schoolofmovementmedicine.com