I've never been much of a talker. That being said, it's kind of funny that I became a teacher – a language teacher, but also a teacher of a dance practice. I can't say that I chose to be a dance teacher, in the same way I cannot really say I chose to be a dancer. Dance has always been my most relaxed and natural way of being, ever since I can remember. I would just slip into it effortlessly. Imagine my joy when I found this 5Rhythms work which basically evoked, validated and celebrated my most intimate states of being, the same ones that I'd been systematically taught to forget about by everything and everybody else!
The "teacher" part of me kicked in only a year after I started with the Rhythms. After an exciting, frightening, full-on, blissful, heartbreaking, world-shattering, ego-dissolving, soul-rocking month-long workshop with Gabrielle and her crew, when my body, heart and mind were so tired that I couldn't do much more than only and finally BE myself, I realised there was nothing else I could actually do but show other people how to become this blissfully alive! Everything else made no sense.
Gabrielle often reminded us to become a teachING, rather than a teachER of anything, a movement rather than an identity, a process rather than a persona. I „got it“ intellectually, but it took quite some time for it to really sink into my body and my life.
And it's been quite a ride, this teaching. Truly a wounded healer, I'm still being wounded occasionally as I go, and healing as I go, every class, every dance step, teaching what I need to learn the most. Dancing between the student role, the teacher role and my own human condition with as much grace, stamina and integrity as I can, between self-doubts and insights, hiding and showing up for myself and others, between a public image of me and just silly old me, between expectations and acceptance, being direct and elusive, guarded and free, passionate and disillusioned, compassionate and juicy, being a yes and a no, and so many things in between; sometimes a teacher, sometimes a teaching, step back, two forward, chest sunk, heart expanded, feet first, hip-rockin', ego-trippin', moved to tears, remembering this dance, this dance that holds us all and just moving it through. Through it all, I'm doing my best to keep it simple, keep it real, feeling and weaving my way of connecting.
