ecstatic dance as remedy

Hello, how are you doing?  I was just lying in bed trying to sleep.  But I was having some thoughts that felt important about ecstatic dance as remedy.  It’s really good medicine.

ecstatic dance as remedy

We put up with so much bullshit in a day.  We can feel a lot of pleasure and love, eat delicious foods, drink clean water, see nourishing art, care for Parent Earth, and enjoy touch with beings we trust.

But there’s so much bullshit too.  Problems with work and family–pain of capitalism, violence of advertising, fears of climate catastrophe, pain of poverty and political upheaval, harm when we have less power…

You can’t experience that and expect to come out unscathed.  Of course your body is feeling all that.  We can’t ignore what our bodies are.  We have them to feel with.  If we don’t let them feel the grief, horror, terror, and emotional pain that come with being a modern person in a dysfunctional society, we will develop big problems.

Stress is a huge deal–unprocessed stress is a pandemic health issue.

I believe that most of what’s considered mental illness is actually a totally sense-making response to the violence of a fucked up world.  That’s part of radical mental health.  The solution in my opinion isn’t to medicate feelings away–the solution is to change the world.  But while we work on that, our bodies are taking a huge hit.

allowed to feel

I love ecstatic dance as remedy.  My body needs to be allowed to feel.  Trying to kill feelings with pills is an emergency measure that creates more harm, not a long term solution.  Ecstatic dance is a safe way to allow my body to have a big reaction.

What if doctors prescribed dance, touch, sunshine, and pleasure?  That would have good side effects, and there’s nothing to purchase.  Capitalism is not furthered by authentic, self-knowledge based, realistic embodied self-love care.  So I prescribe dance, touch, sunshine, and pleasure to myself.

the body’s big reaction

My body needs to have a big reaction to big harms.  But it’s not appropriate in most situations to respond to fuckery immediately.  Blowing up at a meeting is not ok.  Yelling at people is just passing along harm and frowned upon.  I often take the harm and crawl away to safely process it on my own.

But I can’t think my way out of the violence that’s done to me.  For healing, all of me needs to be involved, but especially my body.  It’s actually not safe, to drag myself to an isolated place to quietly suffer alone.  I need movement and community.

dancing in community

I’m happy that I brought ecstatic dance to the community where Ming and I live now.  Last night eight of us danced together.  At first some community members seemed hesitant.  But the playlist is good, and I modeled enthusiasm and brave movement.

A few songs in, people were more willing to move.  At a certain point, we were all really doing it.

I did learn about my community members and myself, from that dancing.  Here’s the playlist, if you would like to dance with us backwards through time.  Or if you’d like to ecstatic dance as remedy in your own way.