The first step …
It takes courage to do something for oneself: On banishing - for a time - the voice of shame and fear.
I love Dance and love dancing . It was my first - and ephemeral - career. Yet after I recovered from this first major sabotage at age 22, I made an unconscious decision that I will never again dance. After this, I worked in theatres in Paris as a press officer, and Dance crossed my path again and again. It was wonderful as well as painful to watch performances knowing that I had sabotaged myself. At the time, and for a very long time, I couldn’t go to the place in my mind and my heart where all had gone terribly wrong and look at it. I didn’t know that I could heal from the loss and the shame I felt about this mess that I had created. I thought I was responsible for it and that was the end of it. It took me a long, long time to realise that far from taking responsibility for it, I was instead punishing myself endlessly.
Many years later, I saw in a shop window in London a little advertisement for Tango lessons and impulsively arranged for my first lesson. I nearly didn’t go… I nearly left the class as soon as I arrived… Yet, something in me was not going to listen to my defeatist and judgemental inner talk. I stayed. I danced and it was total joy.
Six months later, I was back taking ballet classes every day which I did for the next 10+ years. I continued to dance Tango and even performed here and there. I was non longer a professional dancer, I was free of enjoying Dance for myself and all it took was to venture out of my comfort zone of surrendering to being a beginner again and accepting the reality of my profound love for movement, music and performance and letting go of my own harsh critic and punishing inner judge.
I often dance for myself after yoga practice now, it brings me joy.
