Mike,
I used to be a Middle-Eastern dancer and in the years since I officially hung up my hip belt, I have explored many kinds of dance and movement therapy. I find body-oriented ways work like magic because I am very kinaesthetic. Mind-focused methods are too abstract for me and easily lead to emotional inertia and self-deception. I do like practices such as mindfulness but think they suit people who are more digital and cerebral in the first place. I kinda subscribe to the notion that emotions are energy in motion and are essentially dynamic and spontaneous. They *are* the language of the body. By the time we've caged them safely in the mind to deal with we've turned them into an idea, particularly in terms of good/bad or negative/positive.
One of the dance~movement pioneers I love is the late Gabrielle Roth. She was a ballerina who retired wounded believing she would never dance again. But the dance never left her and over time she went on to create the '5 Rythms' that are elemental to dance and movement. She knew that the denial of feelings had medical consequences and that to inhabit your body fully was the key to being fully alive in the here-and-now. She penned a couple of books: "Maps to Ecstasy" and "Sweat Your Prayers". They are fun, soulful reads.
I think it's worth remembering that the original purpose of yoga was to calm the energies within the body enough so that one could enter contemplation with stillness. Yoga has been utterly hijacked.
One of the most powerful healing methods of all is to pop on some headphones and dance, move, boogie, grind and let your body do its wild thing. Who cares what it looks like? It's not a performance. I heartily recommend it.
Plum
