Let’s Dance..for stress relief, for birth preparation.. for ECSTASY!

I pride myself on being a warrioress.. FIERCE about my body… committed to my pleasure.. willing to do whatever it takes to FEEL good.

That said, I am feeling deeply challenged by this pandemic, as we all are.

Take this morning for example, I woke up early, did a meditation, an hour of exercise, a body practice, and had a green smoothie.

Sounds good right? Until I sat down to get to work and my laptop would not turn on.

2 hours later… a failed apple support attempt, wrestling with a defunct desktop in the house, I have eaten more cake and chocolate than I care to admit. Pleasure has gone out the window. I not only feel like crap. I feel committed to feeling like CRAP.

When things feel bad… we REACT.  Our instinct is to get right into alignment, victimized by circumstances. These days it is waaay too easy to knock my fierce warrior self to her knees.
 
So if you are feeling like… “PLEASURE?!?! What’s the point of PLEASURE in the midst of all that is going on….?!”  I get it.  I get it.

Even on the best of days it can feel like a stretch to reach for pleasure.  

And in the birthing room??? Seriously?!? Amidst all the intensity.. who can think about PLEASURE?!?!  

One of my favorite (and most effective tools) is literally the LAST thing I feel like doing, especially in moments of intensity: DANCE

Dance allows me bridge the intensity of my REACTIONS and bring me back into a space of CREATION where I have control over my experience of life.
 
I put the chocolate away, turned on some music that fit my mood (Grrrrrr) and let my body take over. My movements weren’t choreographed or pretty. My dance was exactly the expression that my body needed in this moment and it FELT SO GOOD.
 
Let go of the idea that pleasure has to look happy or sweet or pretty.

PLEASURE is meeting yourself exactly where you are at and allowing that expression to flow through your body.

DANCE is a powerful tool to express a range of emotions with varying levels of intensity and (BONUS!) it is amazing stress relief!

If you are like me, dancing is the last thing you feel like doing when you are in the dumps, but I invite you to give it a try. It consistently changes my chemistry and brings me back into the seat of my own power– this morning, 12 years ago in the birthing room, and many moments in between.

Nuggets:
**Dance is a universally accessible and powerful modality to release fear, stress and worry and call in bliss, joy ecstasy
**We can ALL use that right now (and our birthing moms can use that always in labor!)
**Release the idea that it has to LOOK a certain way and focus on how it FEELS
**You can use dance consciously to drop out of the cortex (thinking mind) and drop into the limbic and primal brain. This is where you want to be in birth!
**2 Dance breaks + benefits of movements to mother and child explained!!

Truth is… all the practices and tools we use in the birthing room to ride the waves of intensity are especially powerful for us RIGHT NOW.

Let’s ride the waves of intensity with deep authenticity and pleasure ❤️

Stephanie is also a featured guest teacher in the Ecstatic Birth Practitioner Training.