What makes us want to dance? What makes us want to love?
I’ve been quoted as saying “Joy is the Essential truth of Movement”.
But how does this joy help me love and make me want to love deeply, completely?
I first discovered deep joy in my body when I was a child dancing. It was like my body lifted out of itself. I connected to a part of my psyche that felt free, unlimited, untapped and unknown. And nobody could tell me what to do with it, how to be with it or when to stop. It was all mine. This deep connection to me was and always has been my dance.
The dance let me feel the limitless nature of myself. I saw how no-one could control this place in me– except me. I saw how no-one could access this place except me. And I knew in my gut, my bones, my celsl that I was experiencing me in a way that no-one could experience – except me.
It sounds obvious – right – that only you can feel your body. But if you really explore and went into what that feels like, you would find a vast empire that you are the empress/emperor of – and all the gifts, treasures and pleasures at your disposal for your pleasing and your desires.
Most of us look outside of ourselves for pleasure. We’re trained through toys or television or stimulation that pleasure is derived externally. The internal pleasure is one that is regulated to sexual activity. But dance is the playground where you truly own your internal pleasure without anyone else being able to mis-interpret or co-opt it into something else. This is love.
Love is the action, the process and the place where you can truly be and feel and express yourself. Without judgment, without curtailing a sense of the completeness of who you are. Love is an experience. And its not static. Love grows, changes, evolves and morphs with every human experience, every breath, every chance to exchange your experience of the world with another.
Love is a process is one of the higher principles of a love that I explore in The Body of Love: 10 Steps to Love Yourself and Your Body. The body is the place where you can explore this process of experiencing yourself and your ability to interact and play with the world you are in, the body you are in, the gift you are in. I am constantly connected to love through movement, even with the in and out of my breath. The way the breath can move me into my soft of my belly or the expansion of my lungs and the ribs encasing those lungs. In any movement, the body is looking for more sense of itself and its experience. The body grasps new ways of feeling itself and enjoying the possibility to be able to feel alive.
The way the body grasps aliveness is not like anything. The moment the body feels how good it feels to be in this body and connected to it – there is a sense of never having left home but coming home at the same time. Its odd, to be encased in a form called a body where you lose the connection to it – but never really lose that connection to your body.
In Dance Delirium we explore the possibilities of being both in this body and much more than this body. Dance Delirium is where you can define what you are moved by and for. What you are looking for when you say deeper love or connection. The more you go into your connection to your body, the more you will discover what love is for you.
Movement and the body are the easiest, simplest, most powerful ways to remind you of a physical place of love. When you remind yourself of every little detail and all the nuances of your body and the way your body is shaped to experience every crevice, unexplored cavity and unexpressed desire, you find that part of you that desires to be more and feel more.
Yes, joy is the essential truth of movement and love is the essential truth of your body. Your body is a playground waiting to be explored at any moment and invite you to move into the truth of how much love is available to you through dance, movement and loving this body that houses you.