During the COVID-19 lock downs, one of my biggest fears was the lack of exercise and physical activity opportunities. With the anxiety in mind, I ended up spending one hour each day to explore different kind of exercises on YouTube. I started with HITT, dance workouts and in the end I came across ballet workout and stretches. This is how I ended up finding the inspiration to be a dancer and want to be on pointe.

For some reasons, my body enjoyed the stretching and ballet exercises the most. Spending almost 30 minutes only on stretching made me feel free and that different parts of my body finally learnt to activate themselves. I liked doing these movements with slow music, and this sense of mindfulness and how my mind and body unify were so inspiring and liberating. I finally felt that my body has its own awareness and character. Prior to that, I was a philosophy student who believed that our souls represent our true and most authentic forms. Everything else, including mind, heart an body, is secondary, inferior and supplementary. My experience with stretching and the ballet workout during the COVID-19 pandemic proved me wrong.

At that time, my focus on ballet was purely on how my body align with the music. I really liked when I followed ballet routine when the background music is “let it go” from Forzen or the classical piece from Swan Lake. I still like it. Now I noticed that the parts that I like is probably more simular to contemporary dance than ballet. However, I still remember how inspiring and sweet I felt when I was doing these movements.

Today, my body was heavy and tired. I started reading a short book on somatic therapy and realised that it was a stress response. Doing some grounding exercises and self-care alleviate the stress really well. I finally can feel full, complete and alive again. I no longer felt dizzy or out of place. My brain fog and headache gradually disappear after the grounding activities and relaxation.

As I recover from stress and tiredness, I realise that for me my dance journey itself is like my personal somatic practices. I feel introspective when I dance. I like to feel quiet when I dance. Perhaps for this reason, I don’t pick up on social dances such as ballroom and salsa or jazz and street dance. They seem to have openness, strength and enthusiasm, whereas both ballet and contemporary dance seem a bit more inward and less emotionally expressive (or at least the emotion is not that direct) for me. This explains why I don’t enjoy my lessons with some ballet and contemporary dance teachers. I prefer to feel calm than outwardly happy when I dance. Dance for me is a meditation, not performance.

I am neither a dancer nor somatic therapist, but I will continue to think about this and practice my own mindfulness through dancing. I want to improve my mental health through dancing and enjoy the somatic experiences.

I will reflect on this more from time to time.