Movement as Medicine: Ecstatic Dance & Trauma Healing

There are some things in life that don’t just become practices… they become home. Ecstatic dance is one of those things for me. It has become one of the deepest pillars of my healing, my embodiment, and honestly, the heartbeat of my work and my life.

I was a little girl who felt most alive moving freely, and it was inherited from my mom and her mom. Dance was passed down in my linage, and I've passed it on the my daughters!

Although I didn't understand it at the time, in my teens I used dancing at clubs to get a reprieve from PTSD, dissociation, and the aftermath of sexual trauma. Long before I had language for “somatic healing,” dance was quietly becoming my medicine. When stillness felt impossible and traditional meditation made me want to crawl out of my skin, movement gave me a way back into my body.

In my 20's, I moved from the club scene into safer, sober dance spaces like swing and contra dancing, and eventually stumbled into ecstatic dance through what felt like pure synchronicity during one of the most intense seasons of healing in my life. The moment I stepped into my first ecstatic dance, something inside me whispered: oh... I’m home.

Ecstatic dance creates a special kind of safety. We dance in silence, cell phone use is prohibited, consent is paramount, emotional release is the norm, shadow work in community is acceptable - and being witnessed without judgement is powerful. These spaces are portals for healing, expression, and coming back to yourself.

If you're feeling disconnected from yourself, trapped in your head, carrying emotions you don’t know how to release, or simply craving more aliveness, come dance with me at one of my in-person ecstatic dances in Gainesville or Melrose, or come move with me every Friday for our 30-minute online ecstatic dance inside Ecstatic Life Academy.

Learn more about why ecstatic dance is my favorite medicine in this week's podcast