Tag Archive for: Dance

The Emotional Yo-Yo of Healing

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Between internal scrutiny—examining how an injury could have been avoided—and external perception—experiencing how your world responds to your injury—the ups and downs of healing goes beyond the body’s health. It’s an emotional yo-yo!

Being diagnosed with plantar fasciitis accompanied by a fascia tear led to months of physical compromise. I gimp around with a cane; I can’t demonstrate while training clients; I struggle with a single grocery bag.

I haven’t felt free to be me. And, the worst part is, I don’t feel beautiful.

Finally, it was explained to me by Ming Chew, a NYC PT fascia specialist, that I was quite dehydrated and my fascia was brittle. In addition to his therapy, he put me on a hydration regime with minerals to condition the fascia and permit healing.

I felt responsible for and irresponsible about this depletion!
I blamed myself for the tear and drank water like my life depended on it!!

After 2-weeks of this regime I was thirsty for the first time in possibly a decade. I was thrilled that my body’s hydration meter was back on the clock and my general condition was improving.

At this juncture I felt relieved that this dehydration issue was caught before it caused problems on a deeper organ level. Shame turned to celebration!

At every incremental improvement, a celebration would soften the blame for having allowed such a condition to creep up on me. After all, I’m an athlete and trainer who’s in constant dialogue with her body!?! How could this have happened?!?

Initially, my limp prompted questions from folks, and a huge percentage of them had experienced plantar fasciitis before. Nearly everyone recommended calf stretches, including the doctor. But it felt wrong to me. It produced the wrong type of pain.

Reluctantly, I followed these orders until a cane became my constant companion. It was after this that Ming came onto the scene and determined that stretching likely worsened the fascia’s tear.

With every well-meaning person who gave stretching advice I’d be seething under my breath. They’d say, “I know just how you feel. I experienced the same thing.” I’d think to myself, “If your advice helped you, you really don’t know how I feel!”

Humanity redeemed itself, in my eyes, at my boyfriend Anthony’s gig one night. He leads the stage on the drums, while historically, I’d lead the dance floor on my feet. But, I only had one foot!?!

If you’re a dancer or know one, you know that you can’t keep a dancer down when they love the music. It’s in the blood!

Friends enjoyed my chair/cane dance, and fellow dance floor companions borrowed some of my one-legged moves. But the greatest moment came when Anthony and I danced together to the next band.

Alone on the dance floor, onlookers were visibly inspired. They saw a man loving his woman, and a woman untethered by her limitations, doing what they too wanted to do—dance with abandon.

I felt happy to be moving, cane or no cane. I felt free to be in the moment, injury or no injury. I felt innocence and acceptance, perfect or imperfect. I felt beautiful again.

My smile stretched from ear to ear, and I finally elevated above my condition.

What happened that night, with the help of many onlooking strangers, friends and Anthony, was I realized I AM HEALTHY. Healing is a process that takes time, but the miracle of regeneration was in tact, no matter the fault or learning curve of my circumstances.

We are self-regenerative in mind and body. The only thing that we can always count on is change. And as long as we strive to be our best, without constantly scrutinizing our performance, that change will elevate us.

No matter your circumstances, accept your innocence and expect positive change.

DancerInWhite

Jeffrey Epstein Cohorts

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DancerInWhite

How Sex, Dad and Dance Woke Me Up!

There have been many reports regarding sexual misconduct, sexual abuse, sex trafficking and pedophilia. Little commentary from these report’s share the actual experience beyond the victim/perpetrator dynamic.

Jeffrey Epstein’s story is no exception. Even with the stream of young women who bravely confirmed his disgraceful schemes, the high drama was created by the who’s, the how’s, and the outcomes.

An experience is felt. It may be felt all at once or as awakening layers of deadened sensation. An experience exposes feelings not scandalous facts.

My story is an account of my experience, not the facts that could accuse and convict a perpetrator. My perpetrator is dead and I seek no revenge. What I offer in this story is faith building…

Asleep only a few hours, I am awoken night after night by my dad. Hearing him enter my private space curled me up into a ball of tension. My eyes wide open under closed eyelids. Even the first time, at the age of ten, I knew nothing good was going to follow.

Then suddenly, I am plucked out of the terror, from what felt like a hand from the heavens, taking me to a place that I can only describe as nirvana––a place where the soul is free from worldly possessions (including my physical body)––a place where I felt safe, relaxed and strong.

This is referred to as a disassociated state in psychology, where the person experiences a detachment from reality, different from a loss of reality as in psychosis. My experience of this state was not one of mental scrutiny; rather, it was a spiritual awakening.

When in this surreal state I felt plugged into both earth and sky. A relationship with my energy body, separate from my physical body, was woken. My central plumb line––the body’s innermost relationship with gravity––was plugged into a relaxed stretch that carried a current of pure life force. I was infused with a spiritual strength that cursed through my energy centers.

I felt like the channel connecting earth and sky. I felt important. I felt like an integral part of the whole of Creation.

Then suddenly, I would be snapped back into my physical body. Usually dad would be gone by then. Sometime not.

My life was like a Ping Pong game. For the 3-years dad visited my room at night to satisfy his sexual need. Back and forth I would bounce, between feeling the relevance of unifying earth and sky, to feeling unworthy of the most basic parental protection.

I had no control over these disassociated experiences. Just as I had no control over what was happening in my reality. But what I gained from these experiences was twofold:

• I have clear reference points for tension and strength.
• And I can distinguish between energy movement and physical movement.

At this time in my life I started dance classes. I wanted the physical mastery to maintain the energy alignment I experienced in my surreal life in my real life. I knew undoubtedly that spirit lived through me, and the way to connect with it was through my central plumb line––my posture.

I learned to transform the static energy of tension into the fluid energy of strength. I found the quiet balance of energy movement inside the demands of physical challenge, and understood the inner grace of poised posture.

Through years of practice, the tension of my curled up body learned to elongate into a channel of life force. Gaining the mastery, embodied in my surreal life into my real life, landed me in the Broadway cast of A Chorus Line at the age of nineteen!

Posture matters. It has the capacity to break through tensions grip and transform misaligning beliefs. It rescued me from the potential downward spiral of my childhood trauma.
Your plumb line connects the essence of you with gravities force and you plug into a universal belonging that is safe, relaxed and fiercely strong.

Strength is experienced as ease-full, not tough, rough and rugged.

It has become clear to me that many of the ways we are taught to strive, prepare and compete for the lives we want are tension building rather than strength enhancing. And by relating to an end goal, in leu of being on the journey, keeps us detached from our energy body––Spirit–– and exhausts our physical body.

What I have concluded from my experience is, the aligning energy that connects our energy body (or Spirit Self) to our physical body is the energy we each borrow from the greater whole. It took trauma for me to experience the gift of spiritual belonging. Showing me that there is a sacred thread that runs through all our life experiences.

Listen inwardly and trust what feels safe, relaxed and strong.

 

To learn to access the relaxed strength found in your posture check out: The Art of Strength: Sculpt the Body ~ Train the Mind, a Book-3D/Video Learning System that helps you feel relaxed on the inside and strong on the outside.

Behind the Scenes of The Mind Body Adventure App

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Tammy Dancing on Broadway!

The pre-launch of The Mind Body Adventure App is happening next week! Here’s a behind the scenes look at how the BodyLogos Method Shape-Shifted my prolonged tension into Relaxed Strength!

I started dance class at 10-years old. It was the great escape from a home life that didn’t feel safe. When teachers would instruct me to use my body in a way that created tension I would cringe inside. My little frame couldn’t carry any more tension. So, I would quietly figure out ways to create what they wanted, but using my own methods. By high school, I was a soloist in North Jersey Ballet Company. But my ways remained my secret.

After a professional career dancing in Broadway musicals, movies and the like, I was looking for what came next. I was fascinated with energy and figured diet would be an interesting focus. So, I enrolled in Anne Marie Colbin’s cooking school: The Natural Gourmet. I took a class called, Cooking with the 5-Elements of Tao. I was startled by what happened next…

The principles they were teaching explained my method of dancing. There were other people like me. A whole philosophy based on my way of being in my body. Taoism offered a coming home, a sense of belonging, and the validation I needed to look beyond my own needs with my method.

I immediately transferred to Tao Seminary. For 4-years I immersed myself in Tao theories and its healing arts. I’d memorize details by thinking, yes that’s how I do a pirouette, or that’s how I do an arabesque. I was delighted; and, I found the way I wanted to spend the rest of my life.

I want to share my mind-body strength training method, BodyLogos, with the world, which means the Body’s Divine Wisdom.

I can’t wait to share the BodyLogos Method and The Mind Body Adventure App details!