Reflections on Embodiment | Dancing on the Frozen Bde Unma Lake

I came across a powerful question recently: Where does the body live in creative change?

Growing up, I was told that dance was pointless because you couldn’t make a decent living off of it. Instead, my Dad taught me how to shoot hoops in basketball, and would make me do endless sprinting drills on the track. My body became strong and decently athletic as a result, and I played sports for most of my childhood. Yet the spirit of music and dance kept calling me out, inviting me to cultivate a relationship with my body that wasn’t solely driven by performance and achievement.

Going deeper, dancing allowed me to experience what it was like to feel at home in my body. As a child, I loved dancing when no one was watching. I would bounce, thrash, spin, turn, and twist to every genre possible. I would hug myself in front of the mirror, learning how to touch with love and care. I loved the feeling of gyrating my hips in ways that weren’t sexual as much as sensually liberating. If dance could produce this level of joy, confidence, and pleasure within me, I knew I could trust it. This reminds me of a quote I saw somewhere: safety is the freedom to cultivate your own expression and existence. Dancing is my safe place.

Here's a brief snippet of me dancing on the frozen lake near my house: Lake Harriet (originally named Bde Unma by the local Dakota tribe, meaning “other lake").

When I think of social movements, I notice the word "move" in movement. What is the meaningful connection between ourselves, our embodied practices, and our communities in learning how to be in this world together? Embodiment can look like many things: a mindfulness breathing practice, creating art, stretching and wiggling on the yoga mat, dancing to our favorite song, listening to a piece of music or a poem that touches us. All of these practices can soothe and slow down our nervous system. Our defenses and "head on a stick" tendencies can relax, which gives rise to the space, connection, and insight so deeply needed to cope with our busy lives.

Embodiment practices remind me that I am free. Free from the inner fears that keep my body in tension. Free from the over-identification with my pain body. Free from any story that imprisons me. When I dance, sometimes a song comes up with lyrics that I didn't even know I needed to hear to remind me of the bigger picture.

“The mirror image of suffering is the truth. Try it. Change the story. Change the course of your entire history. Right now.”
“You want me to lie about my past?” Diana wipes tears from her face with the back of her hand.
“No, to tell the story a truer way,” says Herself. “Any story can be told infinite ways, dear, but listen to me. Listen well. If a story liberates your soul, believe it. But if a story imprisons you, believe its mirror image.”
― Excerpt from Diana, Herself: An Allegory of Awakening by Martha N. Beck,

When I danced on this lake, I looked around and realized my body was literally standing on a deck that was rooted in place by a frozen body of ice. I felt this effortless freedom arise in me as I danced, played with my own shadows, and greeted the radiant sun. I felt immersed in this larger truth of life, an experience that often gets blocked when I'm stuck in fear and worry. The natural world is such a reminder of beauty, vitality, and wholeness. The cycles, seasons, rhythms, death of the old, and the birth of the new.

How does this deeper embodiment support our relationship with media and politics? As political organizer and somatic practitioner Prentis Hemphill says, what good is freedom if we don’t feel it?

I believe in an activism that invites us to undergo personal transformation, knowing ourselves outside the distress of oppression and fear to create the world we want to live in. To heal social division, fear of the Other, and loneliness. I believe in human goodness and our creative and collaborative instincts. I believe in freedom: the freedom to create constructive changes for myself and the world. The freedom to align with what is authentic to me, instead of pledge my allegiance to status quo norms.

Owning this inner freedom seems to be an important part of supporting the freedom of our collective existence: freedom from captured government agencies that put profits over public interest, endless wars, censorship, mass surveillance, the increasing corporatization of daily life, and privatization of collective wealth. Freeing ourselves from these harmful systems starts from within, and what we do to grow and evolve ourselves in a world filled with fear.

When I lose sight of these values, dancing brings me back. One of the most profound discussions I've read on the power of dance is from the inner teachings of the Torah: Miriam’s Circle Dance. I've mentioned this before, yet the receiver (me) is in a different place. A place where I can receive its wisdom on a deeper level. The Torah speaks on what transpires after the miraculous parting of the Red Sea. Miriam the prophetess gathers the women to dance and celebrate, in the form of a circle. Moving out of linear form, circle consciousness invites the celebration of divergent worldviews, experiences, and truths that all have a place, and serve the larger whole. Authority and hierarchy by themselves diminish human and community potential. As Sarah Schneider from Woman and the Circle World eloquently articulates, "the spiritual bliss of the world to come is the intensely abiding joy of finally becoming who you are. When that happens the distorting veneer of hierarchy will melt away and, behold, we will find ourselves standing in a circle."

The Torah emphasized how Miriam knew of this evolved consciousness, and that song and dance was a vessel for embodying this consciousness.

The lights of the circle world are so vast that they cannot fit into the brain as an isolated organ of consciousness. They require full body participation (for example in dance), and even a collection of them in coordinated activity (in this case all women) to create a container sufficiently spacious to hold their revelations.
— Sarah Schneider, Woman and the Circle World

Miriam's Circle Dance presents a vision of a woman recovering her full stature and feminine consciousness. As she matures, she exerts greater influence on the world and its values. I believe that the power of the feminine, the yin, expands beyond gender. This consciousness shift in how we see the world is for all of us.

The more I danced, the feeling of vitality started building in my body. In 30 degree weather, I took my sweater off and moved to a song that continues to open my heart and soul in powerful ways.

And lastly, here's a video of me grooving out to a song called Intergalactic Tango!

Thanks for tuning in, Hive community.