The Shadow Dance
Lately I have been dancing in my living room in the early mornings. Yoga and core exercises have not been “cutting it” as my embodiment practice. I’m returning to my love of moving my body and allowing it to speak. Organic movement helps awaken my creativity. It helps me unlock stuck emotions and memories and feel into them and literally be moved by them. When I give myself permission to fully feel whatever emotion is arising, I know I have discovered another piece of me that I am able to reclaim.
One particular morning, there was a lot of tension in my sacrum, legs, and hips. I moved in sensual, small, circular patterns to the gentle and mystical music of Deva Premal singing the “Moola Mantra”. Memories swam across the movie screen in my mind: images of my childhood, my pets, a long ago tailbone injury, and the house and job I left four years ago. And like a big ocean wave, grief came out of nowhere and crashed into my heart. I felt like I was drowning but it was only my tears. I gave myself permission to ugly cry in the middle of the floor.
My grief transformed into anger and then back into sadness. My body’s tension slowly began to lift. Then the music shifted and became “moodier” and I found my body wanted to go deeper. My muscles tensed again and I felt a sense of power and destruction right on the surface. Like Maleficent in the Disney cartoon, I wanted to be a big dragon and spew my poison. I recognized that old feeling and where it was stemming from: my Shadow. That part of me that I stuff down into the darkness because I’m too afraid of letting others see it. But, embodied dance was a way I knew I could allow it to be seen.
The more I moved like a sensual “wicked witch” the more I began to play. This play gave me permission to not be afraid of the Shadow. And the more light I shined onto this side of myself (through the art of dance and storytelling there in my living room), the more I saw that my Shadow was actually my Soul. She was a goddess who was powerful. A mother figure who wanted to be heard and seen. The Angelina Jolie version of Maleficent who was earthy, calm, attentive, sly, cunning, and magical.
More images of myself in transformation these past four years came up as I danced with the new figure that had emerged from the Shadow: the vulnerable woman who hiked at Walker Creek nestled in the Blue Ridge mountains; the grocery store clerk at Trader Joe’s who was able to live in anonymity; the stepmother to teenagers; the wife of a chemist; the woman who recovered from a mastectomy; the writer who is now emerging.
The more willing I am to step into the unknown parts of myself, the more I am able to create new experiences of self-expression that not only resonate with who I am becoming but integrate who I once was. Embodiment practice helps me examine and release old patterns. This particular experience I just shared led me to my own grief and showed me my desires. The next practice will more than likely reveal something new. My very own evolution each time I choose creative ways to meet myself.
Only when I can attend to my own wounds, my own feelings, and see where I have fallen into patterns of my own doing or my culture’s or society’s conditioning, I am able to release and to unlearn what no longer serves me and others. The more willing I am to dance with my Shadow, the more I am able to excavate the gifts of my Soul.