Put your body in motion and your psyche will heal itself.
Gabrielle Roth
Many of us like to think that January is a new beginning, a portal to a clean slate and a fresh start. And it can be, in many regards, especially if you can find a way to keep your motivation going past the first couple of weeks.
But there’s so much of the old year (and our old selves) that we inevitably drag with us into the new.
Our bodies tell the stories of every sleepless night, every joy-filled party, every heartbreak and fight, every little moment of stress and worry. It’s all stored inside of us, woven into our beings just as much as the homegrown vegetables you ate last summer or the Christmas cookies you devoured this past month.
You hold those experiences in the fibres of your muscles, the posture of your body and the lines on your face. Sometimes the weight of it all can feel absolutely suffocating. It can change us into versions of ourselves that can become hard to recognize and hard to escape, even if we wanted to.
If you’re anything like me, you may have spent most of your life unconsciously doing your best to be the way you think others want you to be. You walk on eggshells around some, try to be more outgoing with others, but it’s only when you’re by yourself that you can finally take a deep breath, exhale and just be.
What an exhausting way to go through life. I didn’t realize until I had my daughter how much I changed myself for other people and how much I try to please people. She’s the only one I am just my real self with: no pretences, no show.
Several years ago, I had the chance to take part in a week-long 5Rhythms dance workshop in California. Started in the 1970s by an American dancer named Gabrielle Roth, 5Rhythms is a dynamic movement meditation practice that asks the participant to completely let go in order to let energy and music flow through the body and release what’s trapped inside.
As Roth put it in one of her books, “Your body is the ground metaphor of your life, the expression of your existence…. So many of us are not in our bodies, really at home and vibrantly present there. Nor are we in touch with the basic rhythms that constitute our bodily life. We live outside ourselves – in our heads, our memories, our longings – absentee landlords of our own estate.”
The other people in that dance workshop comprised a large and varied bunch. Some were professional dancers who were obviously very comfortable moving their bodies; others were just as obviously not.
Yet, by the end, of each day every single person seemed a bit lighter, a bit freer and a bit more like their true selves. At the end of the week, each of us had changed in ways we couldn’t have imagined possible. Dancing for 10 hours every day of our lives isn’t realistic for most of us, but remembering that experience got me thinking.
Instead of writing down a long list of new year’s resolutions and goals this year, I decided I would have just one: to dance every day for the length of one song.
I’ll admit, I’ve already missed a day. I’ll also admit that sometimes my dancing happens in the shower because there’s no other free moment in the day to do it in.
I know it’s not the most earth-shattering daily habit to pick up for the new year and I’ll probably still feel self conscious dancing around people (with the exception of my daughter) by the end of 2025, but it’s a start. It’s a step towards reconnecting to myself, to hopefully shake off parts of the old year that have been weighing on me and to just surrender for a few nourishing minutes each day.
In a study that came out about a year ago, a group of Australian researchers came to the conclusion that the best form of exercise to treat depression is dancing and that it may even treat depression symptoms better than SSRIs.
(independent.co.uk/life-style/dance-best-exercise-depression-b2501113.html)
As Gabrielle Roth so eloquently wrote, “Put your body in motion and your psyche will heal itself.”
So often we don’t listen to the little voices inside ourselves that beg to be heard. As a society, we definitely don’t listen to our bodies. We say “yes” when we want to say “no”, we keep quiet when we want to scream out, and we deny ourselves the joy of moving freely simply because we’re too worried about looking foolish.
May this be the year you drum up the courage to do the things that feel supportive and nourishing to that pure and true self inside of you, no matter how foolish you may look. May it be the year you do the things that are authentic to you, that make you feel awake and embodied and fearless.
May it be the year you decide to share your gifts with the world and let yourself be seen.
