Movement Medicine has changed my life and my relationship with the world. What started out as my weekly physical activity to let off steam while dancing has given me much more than I expected.

Movement Medicine allows me:

• To calm my mind
• Learn to manage my emotions
• To have a space of freedom and a moment of pleasure
• Develop my self-confidence
• To make peace with my past

And yet, it's "just" dancing. So how does it work?

I explain it to you by sharing what I try to convey in the classes and what I feel when I practice.

Calming the mind

A Movement Medicine workshop calms the mind. In modern life, we spend most of our time in our heads. It's the decision-making center and often even the control tower. It's constantly churning away! Do you ever feel like clearing your head? Take a moment to slow down?

In a Movement Medicine workshop, all attention is focused on the body and how it feels. In practice, the teacher will, for example, suggest focusing attention on the feet: looking at them, moving them, feeling the sensations inside, the contact with the ground, the contact of the air on the skin, taking the time to feel each part of the foot land and then lift off the ground. Feel the moment of imbalance between two steps. In short, bring awareness. In this exploration, the feet move naturally, it's "their" dance. The feet move the whole body in one direction, just as they do in life.

The head doesn't need to censor or search for the next step, it can just rest. The movement is guided by the teacher's indications and carried along by the music. In reality, the head is always there, it's just been occupied with something else to let it breathe a little. So you can simply BE in what's there for you.

Manage your emotions better

Emotions are a formidable vector of evolution when we know how to use them. The first step is tolearn to recognize them, i.e. to feel them rise up within us and make us react. The dance space can be the time and place for this exploration. When an emotion arises, everyone is invited to put it into movement: to represent the physical form it gives to the body, to feel how it spreads. Everyone is free to share or not what they have felt.

Getting back to the feet, depending on your mood today, you might feel like massaging your feet, tapping your feet, jumping up and down or dragging your feet. This is your moment, anything is possible. The heart can express itself fully without damage to self or others.

A space of freedom

A Movement workshop is a space of freedom where you can let yourself be yourself without fear of judgment from others. Some come to dance, some to let off steam, some to relieve stress, others to get to know themselves. Depending on your temperament, you can dance on your own or meet others and share your dances with them. It's a time to let go of the mind, so stretched by our busy lifestyles. Either to give it a breather, or to use it differently. For example, to get to know ourselves by dancing all the facets of our personality.

The pleasure of dancing

Dancing has been my passion since childhood. All dancing. When I start dancing, I don't know how to stop until I'm exhausted. For me, it's the quickest way to enjoy myself, to feel good and fully alive.

Movement Medicine is a dance that's a little unusual in that there's no imposed movement, and we don't try to look good, or even well. In this practice, technicality comes from the ability to feel one's body and let it express itself. The teacher does not show movements. Instead, he/she gives indications to help you let go and find and follow your own movement. The unique movement that is good only for you. Themoment of grace is when the body follows its own movement without going through the mind. This movement moves a part of me that was frozen. And often, physically unblocking this part of me also leads to personal evolution.

Developing self-confidence

Movement Medicine has given me the tools to develop my self-awareness and self-acceptance. This naturally increases self-confidence (I know myself better) andself-esteem (I like myself better).

In the workshops, I was invited to set in motion my relationship with myself. This enabled me to discover how critical I was , without tenderness or complacency. Little by little, I learned to accept myself as I am (with my faults and qualities), and to know my needs. I set in motion - danced - the dance of gentleness,acceptance and self-respect. Giving it physical form -embodyingit- in dance is a regular practice tohelp me embody it in my daily life. In this way, dance teaches me to respect, love and take care of myself. It helps me evolvemy self-perception.

This dance of esteem and confidence has led me to gain confidence in life in general. In my personal life, I'm no longer systematically looking for security; I'm also willing to take risks for the better.

Having more self-confidence also means daring to assert yourself more clearly in relationships with others, without fear of rejection. And the simple fact of expressing clearly what's important to us greatly simplifies our relationship with others. Relationships become clearer, smoother and more harmonious.

Making peace with your past

Movement Medicine has also enabled me to make peace with my past. During the workshops (which were longer than the courses and workshops), depending on the themes discussed, difficult events reappeared. It was rarely what I expected. But the dance space provided me with the safe conditions to " revisit " these moments with today's knowledge. I was able to fully feel the emotions and behaviors that were attached and " stuck " to them. It's rarely comfortable at the time, but it's always a source of great liberation. If you accept the process, you can learn from it, understand its consequences in the present and even make sense of it so you can free yourself and move forward more serenely.

In conclusion

Dancing gives you a feeling of pleasure and freedom. You feel alive. By shifting attention to the body, Movement Medicine lets go of the mind. It's a physical activity that uses movement to release emotions. Exploring self-perception means developing self-knowledge. This naturally leads to greater self-confidence andacceptance. Exploring our perception of the world gives us the opportunity to develop our self-knowledge in relation to others, and to heal past wounds. Searching for and embodying your personal dance is seeking your unique and authenticplace in life, and beginning to create a physical reality for it by embodying it.

This is how Movement Medicine gradually changed my approach to life. Practice after practice, I continue to discover, take my place and make my life evolve for the better. Each of us has the resources within us to find our essential nature and realize our full potential. Movement Medicine proposesusing the body in movement to get in touch with these resources, and then to learn how to use them.

Video demo

On August 17, I challenged myself to dance for 100 days and post 25 seconds of that dance every day.

My intention for this challenge is todare to dance the dance of my life, and for everyone to find the inner resources to dance the dance of their own life.

This 1st week was the fine-tuning phase: clarifying my intentions, finding the best set-up and organization to bring this project to fruition.

Music 

1 - Attraction by Riopy

2 - Azawade by The Touré-Raichel Collective

3 - Beauty of Massai by Mindfulness Meditation World

4 - Kole Nidre by Patricia Kopatchinskaja, Camerata Bern, John Zorn

5 - Vietnam by Yosi Horikawa

6 - Songs from the Seven Towers by Bombay Dub Orchestra

7 - Song of the Stars by Dead Can Dance

Follow the progress of my challenge

every week on my Vimeo account 

             or every day in my story