Welcome to my rebranded and newly developed Dancing WEB.
I'm eager and so happy to be bringing together all the elements I have come to know as being essential to my own healing and greater life fulfillment, as well as to so many others. I'm finally weaving the strands together of my own journey of healing and transformation through my love and passion for the ancient traditions of plant and dance/body medicine all here in one tapestry.
First, I will share a little more about how I came to dance/movement therapy as it was one of the first major strands leading to a life of continual seeking of healing and transformation.
Becoming a dance/movement therapist was one of the best decisions I ever made. Not only did the process of becoming one transform me in amazing and countless ways but I still continue to learn, grow, and be in awe of the healing powers of Dance/Movement Therapy.
I am often asked...so how did you know you wanted to be dance/movement therapist?
or how did you even hear about dance/movement therapy?...So I will start with these questions. In college I was not clear on what I wanted to study. I did know I liked helping people so I studied Psychology. At this time in my life I was not an avid dancer. In fact, like many women at this sensitive age I was so uncomfortable in my body. In my younger years, I used to like to dance and being athletic but somewhere in adolescence I lost this ability to be comfortable in my body. Just walking across campus made me uncomfortable. Somehow deep inside though I knew that dancing was the remedy. So I nervously signed up for a Modern Dance class, then another, and another and soon I was taking Improvisation and History of Dance also. In my History class the teacher mentioned dance/movement therapy and something deep inside me clicked. As I was finding healing in my own dance experience I could not believe that there was actually a profession that did this specifically and for other people. I set out on finding more about it and a few years later I was at Graduate school studying DMT.
I have one experience I would like to end this blog with.
I had the opportunity to travel to West Africa to visit a friend who was in the Peace Corps. He was finishing his tenure there and his ʻvillageʼ had a party for him. The women danced and played music separate from the men as this was the custom. The shy yet deep release I witnessed in the women dancing was so moving for me, it is something I will always cherish and remember. Then I was told that there was no word for dance in the Bambara language. The words used for the concept of dance are translated into English as “enter yourself”. That is exactly what I witnessed in these women and that is what I wanted to make as my profession, helping others to fully and authentically enter themselves.
So, come enter yourself, as fully, deeply, and whole as you are meant to be @the Dancing WEB...