Tuesday, November 10, 2009

Dancing for Cleansing

How many of you dance to cleanse, to let things out, to express something that is just a feeling and cannot be put into words?
I find that when I feel emotion building up inside of me, and I am caught up with the tangled feeling that it brings,especially when it is several emotions at once, the first thing I do is dance. It isn't even conscious, it is compulsion. I get an itchy feeling, which I have come to realize is all of those emotions wanting to be expressed.
I believe that the healthiest thing we can do as humans is to express an emotion as soon as it arises, with as much honesty as possible. For instance, my grandfather recently became very sickly. My grandmother, who by all societal dictates should be,"sad, mourning, or devoted" ...instead she expressed anger. I was proud of her for feeling what she felt , even if it wasn't socially accepted. Turns out she was able to work through it much faster than if she had pretended to feel something she didn't or if she had ignored what she really felt.
What sucks is that for me is that I can only verbalize what I am feeling half or maybe even a fourth of the time. But it still has to come out, and this is where I value dancing most of all. Don't get me wrong, I love to get dressed up, dance at haflas, in class,etc. But the most precious dance to me is the one that I feel the most, the one where I am expressing, and most of the time I am my own witness. It is just me releasing through dance in my living room or kitchen. I have been dancing like this for most of my life. The dance classes just gave me more tools for expression.
reminds me of this quote:"the only reason for mastering technique is to make sure the body does not prevent the soul from expressing itself" - La Meri

anyway, try it. Just put on some music,turn your brain off, and just start moving, see where it takes you.

1 comments:

Naima said...

that's a really awesome quote.