Throughout my life-journey in dance, I’ve always been drawn into its deeper layers, exploring how movement can be more than just physical expression. Movement is a potent metaphor for inner processes, a powerful ally in our often turbulent dances with ourselves in the whirlwind of life. It has the power to heal trauma and help us cope with what life throws at us. Ever since I began researching, writing and teaching about embodied practice, I've been tested again and again. For every "ah-hah!" moment, every Power Move discovered, has come an embodied test of my conviction about the healing power of movement. You can say I've been my number-one test subject, and I can tell you without a doubt that embodied practice has been a saving grace in my life.
Back in March of 2013, I gathered all my notebooks, diagrams, videos and scratchings to finally sit down and begin writing my book Prayerformance: Embodied Devotion for Personal Transformation. I was so excited that evening! With music playing and my cats purring nearby, I prepared my mind, body and soul to begin the process of authorship. And then the rain started, and it rained and rained. Howling winds brought lashes of rain sideways into my house as I rushed to batten down the hatches. For the past three years, I had been living alone in the coastal jungle of São Paulo: experimenting, teaching and incubating my book. This intense storm was new.
About half an hour later, I heard my neighbor screaming my name. I rushed out to the second-story veranda to answer her and saw that my house was now in the midst of a meter of rushing, swirling water. I could barely see the roof of my car throughout the pounding maelstrom, as it floated around the courtyard. My neighbor and I agreed to pray hard and keep connected. Soon the power went out as the water steadily rose throughout my ground-floor. I lit candles and stood frozen in the middle of the second floor, gripped with fear of destruction and death. This was real.
Candle light flickered onto one of my big notes: "Stay grounded by putting your intelligence into your feet." So, in the midst of a tropical flash flood, I stood in my power-pose in the middle of my upstairs, deep breaths helping me ground and send my wits down into my feet. I imagined my feet sending liquid root-currents into the surging waters. I gave those currents intelligence and asked them to swim all throughout the ground floor of the house to verify the foundation and check for damage. I saw and felt them carrying out their task, and then breathed them back into myself for the final report: I was safe, but the next month was going to be hard.
With nothing left but trust, I performed a full-body shaking ritual to throw off the shock. Eventually, I lapsed into an uneasy sleep when the sound of the rain started quelling in the wee hours. I had no idea about the destruction this storm had visited upon the community that night. Waking up to the damage, isolation and two feet of river-silt to dig out of, my adrenals kicked survival mode into gear. The next month was all about digging, cleaning, repairs and helping my neighbors. There was loss of life. Landslides and road closures separated families from displaced loved ones. We banded together as humans do, and our community strength helped us pull through until rescue efforts reached a week later.
Throughout the worst of the aftermath, I stopped to breathe, shake and cry. Although I may not have realized it or named it as such, I now know that what I was doing was regulating my nervous system. Fast-forward to twelve years later. I just completed a course of study in somatic nervous system regulation, a powerful science-backed confirmation of the healing power of movement.
As a certified NeuroFit nervous-system regulation coach, I'm excited to begin focused work helping people access their body’s innate ability to regulate and heal itself. I've always blended somatic techniques into my lifework, but this is different. My upcoming workshops, classes and one-on-ones will focus on helping people identify the signs and symptoms of nervous-system dysregulation and equip them with the tools to "hit the vagal brake". Short, easy embodied techniques interrupt the stress response, get us grounded and centered, and re-balance the nervous system.
As we work through trauma, stress, burnout and overwhelm, it's immensely empowering to know that simple tools exist to help us balance our emotions through our bodies. With 80% of the nervous system running impluses from the body to the brain, research shows clearly that the solution to negative stress states is through the body. And we now have simple tools to help us neutralize stress that manifests and accumulates in our bodies.
So, a new leg of the journey unfolds before me! I'm excited to share more in the upcoming weeks and months with my local and worldwide communities. Let me know in the comments if you're interested in being tagged in my upcoming posts with bite-sized learnings about nervous system health. And let's get our power-moves on for shifting and healing!
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