Awakening Our Primal Body

Dancing opens us up to kinesthetic experiences

The human that engages in the raw, messy fierceness of his or her own inner wild may be on the brink of extinction. Though there are thousands of self-help programs, there is still so much outward distraction that we are losing the connection of our own animal-body biology. It is easy to get swept into thinking our body is a machine like so much of our modern conveniences. Even science and history subtly hint toward this through their languaging of the pelvic floor or spinal column as examples.

Our bodies are dynamic, fluid systems that are always in motion, not static like a house. Some of us tend to compartmentalize our inner needs and expressive cravings into little boxes that are labeled negative energies and positive energies. Our animal body dances and embraces all of it.

If you are like me, you may have thought that instincts are only the hardwired set of genes that have traveled through the thousands of generations of our lineage.

Though some are, like the four F’s that American Physiologist, Walter Cannon discovered with the fight, flight, freeze and fornicate responses, which are activated from our sympathetic nervous system under a perceived threat. Through my experience of embodiment, what has come to my attention and that science is still investigating is that many instincts are formed based on the environment we grow up in. This is when I get concerned about losing connection to our feeling body, to the bio-intelligence and multilayered systems that are integrated as our wholeness.

In the simplest context, we could look at the differences of basic lifestyles. If you grew up as a fourth generation city dweller, your life would evolve with much different instincts or behavioral responses to that of someone from several generations of living in a rural environment.

It is impossible to mimic the feeling of being face-to-face with a predator such as a brown bear, while safely dancing in a studio. Yet, I have found that our primal body craves a space to be unleashed and invited to discover its untamed expression. In fact, this self-discovery I have witnessed in my own body and that of my students led me to continue studying and exploring all the messages that our primal body is sending us through impulse and sensations.

Dancing opens us to kinesthetically experience the natural gestures, emotions and spectrum of expressions that helps us understand the intelligence of our primal body’s language.