Self Care in Movement & Dance
Words by women's empowerment coach Layla El Khadri.
Self-care is the way we show self-love. And self-love is the root of a healthy lifestyle. Often we neglect our wellbeing because we are too absorbed in our work or our everyday duties. We force, push and stress ourselves not realising that it goes against our own success; both in the personal and the professional fields.
Our minds and bodies need care for them to work more efficiently and for us to create the life we dream of. In our Human Experience everything happens through the body. We feel, we express, we communicate, we live life through our bodies. All the layers of who we are meet within our bodies. The mental, the emotional, the physical and the spiritual. Making sure this symbiosis is in harmony will ensure that the rest of our life is in harmony. With a healthy body, a healthy mind and a healthy emotional system we can create a healthy life. Success is a matter of mindset and mindset is directly related to how we are feeling.
We can live graceful, joyful and fulfilling lives if we learn the basic ways to take care of our own needs! We have so much potential, all of us! First and foremost, I have learned ways to listen to my body and my emotions, they give us all the information we need to show up as best we can in every moment and really embody our potential.
When we learn how to interpret the signals our bodies and our emotional systems send, we can give ourselves what we need in every moment. For a woman, this changes through the month based on our hormonal cycle, the moon phases and our external circumstances.
I can say that today, it is rare that I don’t prioritise my needs. Because not doing so has such a bad effect on everything else. If my body isn’t rested and my emotions aren’t calmed, then my mind can’t make the right decisions and I end up spending more resources and getting worse results! For me, the most important things are emotional peace, rest and movement.
When I let my body move and express whatever is needed, all the conflicts or confrontations fall away and before long I am back in a flow state and feeling inspired. Because I work every day with women on precisely this topic, I am constantly reminded of its importance.
We are multidimensional beings in the sense that our experience happens simultaneously in our thoughts, our emotions and our bodies. As I said before, all these layers meet at the body level and we can read how the overall system is working by looking at the symptoms of our bodies. Movement helps us anchor our awareness in the body in a powerful way. We become aware of what’s happening in a very clear way and so we can take action.
Movement helps us rewire neuropathways, unblock and release triggers and trauma as well as gain fluidity not only in the muscles but also in our mindset and in our ability to manage our emotions. Bringing our body to dance we bring our emotions to dance and our thoughts as well. I like to say if you want to solve a problem you must “get the issue out of the tissue.” Most memories of trauma and fear are stored in the fascia and bones. We can talk about it forever, but only when we give the body a new felt physical experience can we transform the trauma forever.
We are the creators of our own reality, but often we don’t know how. It’s simple. Our thoughts are only existing in the metaphysical realm, in the form of vibration. These thoughts have an effect on us and create emotions. Whilst they are still a non-physical thing, they are much more tangible; our bodies change their physiology based on each emotion. Eventually our bodies reflect the thought in a physical way, we take a determine action or a determine state, and that’s how we create. Everything was first an idea before it became a thing.
When we dance we can leverage in this process in a conscious way. We can also reverse this process. Through the dance we can invite our body to feel the way we wish to feel. Our movements will trigger the emotions that we wish to feel and the emotion will imprint new thoughts. This will shift our mindset which will reflect in the way we create our reality.
I have found peace and openness of heart through dance. I have been able to let go of old trauma and fear through dance. And I have also manifested economical abundance, relationships and success through the process of dance.
We must remember that dance is not about “how it looks” it’s all about “how it feels.” The power resides in the feeling. So there is no wrong way of doing it, as long as you are “feeling it!” A good practice to overcome the self-conscious feeling is to close your eyes and focus on breathing. Pair your breath to the rhythm of the music and let it carry your body. Don’t move unless you absolutely feel it. You will be surprised how soon the body knows exactly what to do.
Dancing is powerful no matter where, when or with whom. Yet the power of the collective is undeniable. Once there is a lot of people dancing at the same time the energy the bodies are producing rises and everyone can tap into that energy. I love guiding big groups through my Transformational Dance journey because the amount of energy that we can produce together is mind blowing and the results in each individual journey are highly potentiated.