In my last post, I wrote about allowing your internal movement of energy to guide your external movement and how to use it for healing. In this post I write about how I have used external movement, specifically dancing, to develop inner awareness and how I am using it for healing from childhood abuse. Although this is my personal story, written in part for my own healing catharsis, I hope it will also raise awareness of the impact of childhood abuse and the potential of movement for healing.
I will begin with some information about my childhood. I have memories of being abused as an infant. Although I cannot be certain the memories are accurate, I believe they probably are true. There is an often told story in my family about how as a young kid if anyone other than my mom even looked at me, I would scream, cry and hide. Even now as an adult I have many “reflexive” instinctual responses typical of people who were abused at a very young age. Interestingly, I did not connect these responses to the physical abuse until writing this article.
Whatever physical abuse might have happened ended in my first few years of life, to be replaced by a childhood full of emotional abuse. The name calling, bullying and intimidation were constant and awful. My dad was physically violent with our neighbors (he initiated it), resulting in visits from the police, as well as some other things which I will not mention here out of respect for my family. However, of all the things I witnessed and experienced, being publicly humiliated was the worst. My dad knew how to draw a crowd and use it to get what he wanted. He did this often.
Growing up with the abuse was very difficult and painful. Nothing I ever did was good enough; even my personality was not good enough. I never lost sight of who I was, but I learned it was not safe to express it. I kept much of my inner self private. I shut my dad out of my life, eventually moving halfway across the country to finally have some peace. Feeling safe to be myself and express myself has been a big issue for me.
In my 20s I became involved in the human potential movement and learned how to facilitate encounter groups. From the leadership role of group facilitation, I learned what it was like to feel confident. I got in touch with my extroversion. I facilitated a lot of groups, including many on giving and receiving nurturing touch, one of my favorite topics for groups. I did a lot of inner work. My life totally changed. I thought I had worked through the abuse and put it all behind me. It was not until I moved to Massachusetts many years later that my past came back into my awareness for more healing. Dancing has been a big part of both the awareness and the healing.
Dance, because it is tactile, non-verbal, and often involves a lot of physical closeness can bring up a lot of baggage. It has been a relentless and challenging teacher and mirror. Although this can be very painful, it is also valuable and it is one of the reasons I dance. I dance as part of a large group that rents a dance studio and gets together regularly because we love to dance. When I first started attending the dances, I tried to get my body to move, but it was like I was frozen. I had not danced much before, and I had to learn to quiet my mind enough so my body could express. Whatever movement came through ended immediately if I noticed anybody watching me. I stood in a back corner and kept to myself.
Around this same time, I started attending another similar dance group that practiced a form called contact improvisation. I had seen this form of dance before but had not tried it. Everyone was very friendly, offering techniques and involving me in their dances. At one point everyone formed a chain, lying on their backs they passed people one at a time over all the bodies, using their hands and feet. Intense fear overcame me. I did not participate.
Dancing has brought to my attention many deeply held fears around physical trust. Through dancing I have often noticed that if someone I do not know very well tries to move in too close to me I instinctively pull away. This is especially pronounced with men. Even in my romantic relationships, I go through an initial period of this before I get comfortable and the reflex disappears. With contact improvisation, my dance partners sometimes try to lift me and I go into automatic fight or flight mode (pun intended- being lifted is often referred to as flying). Unless I know and trust the person, fight usually wins out over flight.
It took me quite a while to become comfortable enough to dance contact improvisation at all, with anyone. After the first time I went to the contact improvisation group, I went back a second time, only to leave after a few minutes. It took me about a year to be ready to try again and then the flashbacks began. I remember one time I was dancing with someone, I was seated on the floor and he was doing a cartwheel. He was a skilled dancer and was far enough away from me that his feet could not hit me while he was upside down, yet I flinched and pulled away. He must have noticed because he asked me if I was okay. What he did not know is that I had a past life flashback. I was a woman sitting on the floor of my kitchen while my husband stood over me, kicking me as I tried to defend myself. For months the flashbacks continued when I danced contact improvisation. Eventually I worked it out and the flashbacks ceased.
With the flashbacks gone, dancing became easier…a little. I was still very self conscious. Dancing alone was challenging, I still froze whenever I saw anybody looking at me. Dancing with a partner (or partners) was even more difficult because instead of them being across the room at a distance, they were close up; aware of every time I was clumsy or unsure of myself. I was really hard on myself. Every dance was like a form of self abuse, trying to measure up to some standard, rather than just enjoying the moment. It took me a long time to realize that it was the need to live up to a standard that was getting in the way of the dancing, rather than the other way around. Sometimes I still forget this.
Making eye contact while dancing helped me to become more comfortable dancing with others. At first I chose people who felt safe: close friends and gay men. Looking in their eyes, I could see and feel the person I was dancing with, rather than going round and round in my own mind judging myself. I noticed that everyone had their own baggage, but I was okay with it because it made them real to me. Like me, they had their issues but were able to dance anyway, and even be present to the fear, joy, love and whatever else came up. This was when I really started to get the healing potential of dancing. I was able to see everyone as works in progress, all learning together in their own ways. I saw buttons get pushed between people and I saw closeness and ease. Everything became framed in loving compassion. When I get too caught up in being hard on myself, I try to reframe it in this larger context. I find it helpful to know that like everyone else, I am learning.
Although reframing things in the larger context helped me be more comfortable dancing with my friends, I was still uncomfortable when I noticed anyone in the room watching me dance. I felt angry too, and did not know why. Eventually I realized the discomfort came from feeling like I was being evaluated and did not measure up. The constant feeling from my childhood of not being good enough left me feeling defensive. Every time I see someone watching me dance, I feel the need to protect myself and I go into defensive mode with a glaring look, turning angrily away so I can have privacy with my feelings of discomfort, or just pretending they are not there.
Being watched from a distance feels unequal and one sided. I feel vulnerable while the person or people watching seem inaccessible. Like with my father, approval was always somewhere off in the distance, impossible to obtain. It was a one way street, I was vulnerable but he was not. The sense of powerlessness from the inequality led to my feeling angry. Dancing helped me to realize that most likely people were not keeping a distance because they were judging me like my dad in my childhood. It was my anger and defensiveness (resulting from fear) that kept people away. If someone acted towards me like I acted towards many of the people who keep a distance, I would probably distance myself from them too. My fear brought out the fear in others. I needed to see and feel the message over and over and over again for years before I got it, but when I did, it was a big help for me.
Dance was very challenging emotionally for me at first. Being in a group of people I did not know, feeling unsafe and excluded, trying to express myself in a medium that felt foreign while working through all kinds of abuse, trust and intimacy stuff, has been quite an experience for me. Yet despite everything I have been through, I would not trade any of it for anything. I have a much stronger sense of community and close friends to dance with. I am learning to love myself and others unconditionally. Tactile expression and intimacy (once I trust) are strengths for me. Developing them further through dance has resulted in many beautiful, deep and transcendent dance experiences. I call this “dance magic” and I love it!
Dance has become a source of joy, expression and empowerment. I still get triggered around things from my past sometimes, but thanks to the awareness and healing from dancing, I am moving through it all very quickly now. I am grateful for all my experiences. I have learned to use all of it, even the discomfort at being watched, as an assist in my healing process. I look forward to whatever unfolds, while enjoying the pleasure and peace of being present in the moment-um of movement.
Linda White Dove
copyright 2008 Linda White Dove
