No matter how much I talk and write about this, the wider culture’s use of dance is louder than me, so I guess I’ll simply be saying variations of this for the rest of my life. ((ha))
This is something I wrote recently on my linkedin (and it’s followed by another clarification so jump ahead if you’ve already seen this italicized part):
I just saw someone, on a trauma related post, write "exercise/dance," and it made me wince.
To start, I can't stand the word or idea of exercise. Our culture has turned it into half/part of various punishment equations (and these are just off the top of my head):
Exercise = being allowed to eat something yummy
Exercise x Self Denial = being a size that we find acceptable
Exercise x a lot of luck related variables = health as a virtue
To equate dance with any of that just makes me grrrr...
Because the dance world is already steeped in self abusive behaviors and the encouragement of self hatred if you don't meet certain criteria.
Beyond that, our wider culture has turned dance into something only done by certain bodies in certain ways.
Or we think of it as something that we do publicly if we've had enough to drink.
Dance is a sacred human endeavor meant for expression and connection. Period.
Dance is literally in our genes, as it was the first way -- along with drumming and fire -- that we made ritual.
It was also, very likely, how we came together and created the illusion of something larger to scare off threats.
It is written into us to move to music and sound and with others.
And THAT is why it's so damn effective when treating/healing/exploring trauma.
I rarely use the word “dance” when I’m talking about The Peony Method because there’s so much about that word that can trigger so many humans, including really negative experiences with dance teachers in childhood.
So I often say movement or movement art, but we are dancing, just as the whole universe dances itself into and out of the cycles of destruction and construction over and over and over…
But there are MASSIVE differences between what I do and what most people think of when they hear the word dance, and there are just as huge differences between what I do and what a lot of what’s called “conscious dance” looks like.
We are never dancing or moving to check out or to “transcend.” We are moving to become more awake and to bring more awareness to this bodily experience life. We are moving to feel and to process and to open.
This really is the piece most people are missing if they are doing talk therapy. Talk all you want but eventually you have to come face to face with your lack of embodiment and you have to become embodied to move forward and grow.
If we really want healing and freedom, the body is the way, and you must be willing to move this body in the way it is crying/screaming/asking to move. And that won’t look like anything anyone else has ever done.
In that context, I give you “structure without stricture.”
This photo shows what I mean by "structure without stricture." Each person in this photo is both listening to the same music AND responding to the same exact prompt...
This is a practice that meets you where you are, day to day, and evolves with you over time. The Peony Method is freedom.
