Who am I going to be? Am I going to be who I am? Or am I going to kick and scream to be the old stuck, dusty, greyer version of myself? Am I going to cling to my stories even if they offer me only a slow death? Or am I going to fling myself free and fly completely new, naked and unknown - learning the new me along the way?
Viewing entries in
Musings
Dance has always been a part of my life. I was the little girl dancing in the mirror in my bedroom, creating choreographies for me and my friends. At sockhops and high school parties, I was always the one that couldn’t stop moving, reciting the songs and moving to the beats in one big ball of expression. Maybe you were something like this too?
I didn’t realize until much later that dance was an integral part of my essence - one of the major languages of my soul in fact. It took honest and reflective conversations with friends and deep introspective time with myself to come to the realization that dance was not just something that I enjoyed, but was a transformative method of healing for myself and through me, for others.
I know that I am not the only one that has been given this gift either. I know that there are many other souls who speak through the language of dance. Whether they dance professionally, around the house, on the weekends or just in their own bedrooms, dance moves them and speaks for them in a way that is truly unique and special.
My guess is that if you’ve been drawn to read this article, you might be one of us.
But how do you know for sure? Well these 5 signs below are clear clues that dance could be a primary language of your soul. Welcome home if so <3! I’m creating a community just for us - to nurture and nourish the dancer’s soul - mind, body and spirit!
*****************************************************
1. You can’t help but dance - even when you’re sitting down.
Whether it’s bopping around in your car or sitting down for dinner, you can’t help but move. Friends and family often point out to you that you are dancing around to music that only you can here. You probably don’t even notice - it’s just an involuntary response, the same way someone twiddles their thumbs or taps their foot. Your body just needs to move and express itself, even if just slightly.
2. When you are happy, you dance.
This is another one that you probably haven’t noticed until someone pointed it out. When you are happy, you start dancing. Eating food you really enjoy? You start bobbing your head or shimmying your shoulders. Just got some good news? You break out into a little dance jig of celebration. Dancing is definitely one of your soul’s way of expressing happiness and it’s your default all the time.
3. You could watch dance videos - instructional or performances - all day long.
You watch dance videos the same way people watch music videos or gaming videos - video after video, hour after hour. Each one excites you even more, eliciting deep emotions within you - from tears to high-fives. What’s more, you imagine what it would feel like to be doing those actual moves. You envision how awesome it would be to learn the routines and you might even find yourself walking through some of it - rewinding that video just a few more times until you get at least one part of it down.
4. When you hear music, you automatically see choreography. In your mind’s eye, you are constantly seeing different ways to express the emotions you feel in songs.
You can envision huge ensembles and solo acts to your favorite music. You can sometimes even feel the ache in your bones to give a song a visual interpretation. You probably have a secret list of songs you would love to create your own choreographies to. I know that I do :-).
5. You were the closet/mirror dancer as a child.
You were the child upstairs in his or her room, pretending to be Janet Jackson, Michael Jackson, Chris Brown, Ciara, Beyonce or any of the world’s other pop dance icons. You imagined yourself in your own music video - not singing, but *dancing*. You memorized all of the moves from their latest videos and performed them over and over again for yourself and whoever was willing to watch. You probably did a few family reunion and neighborhood talent shows too. You could spend all day happily dancing.
If you identify with even a few of these, dance is much more than just movement for you. It’s a need to move that feeds your soul. It gives you life just as much as you feel that you express your life through it. It is the ultimate form of nourishment and nurturing for your soul.
Oh if it were just that though. But dance also has its shadow side. In the pursuit of dance, we also run right up against our insecurities, fears, doubts and secret worries. In the expression of dance, we lay ourselves out in the most prostate and vulnerable of ways, exposing ourselves to the opinions and approval of others and challenging ourselves to be unaffected and undeterred by them. Dance lovingly gives us the opportunity to love, sometimes with toughness, on ourselves and face all of the things that make us want to shrink head on.
Its gift is multifold and dynamic in its highs and lows.
This is why I’m creating the Dancer’s Bliss Community - an Academy to Nourish the Dancer’s Soul - Mind, Body and Spirit.
With dance as our vehicle and connection, DBC will help you to navigate the terrain of growth that dance inevitably will introduce you to. No matter if you are an amateur dancer in love with social dancing as many nights as you can, a dance major auditioning for your first paying gig or a weekend professional dancing on stages to the wee hours of the night on Saturdays and punching a clock at your 9 to 5 on Mondays, this academy is where you can grow within a community that understands you, your passion and your desire to evolve and expand.
Simply put, I get it and together we get it.
The doors to the academy will open very soon and I would love for you to know as soon as they do. If you’d like to be notified, just click here and leave me your email address.
I promise, you will be first to know :-).
As a special thank you, I'll also send you my Woowoo Resources for Dancers Guide with two powerful resources to help you embrace the magick of dance even more!
Sign up below to be notified when the Dancer's Bliss Academy opens!
So this full moon held the promise of major change. Doors closing and doors opening. Well, I can attest to it. I've had the endings and now I'm looking forward to the beginnings :-). I'm no master astrologer, but what I do know is that there is opportunity in everything and I talked about that today on Instagram. I gave a reading for what this Full Moon is giving us the opportunity to release. (You can view in my stories for the next 20 hours or so www.instagram.com/goddesslifestlyecoaching)
Even now, I'm having ahas about it. The basic premise is that there is something (or multiple somethings like it is for me) that we've been working so hard on, doing what was necessary at the time to bring about the manifestation. And now we are getting tired. Well we were getting tired. It was beginning to wear us down, to not feel worth it. And we felt so guilty for feeling like that. We felt like maybe we should be more patient, more understanding, more diligent, more persevering. But in truth the time has passed for that. The time has come instead to move into a higher level of understanding and to release it back to the Universe. And to get back to flying light ourselves :-). And the way the Universe works, you can happily give it up or the Universe can rip it from your hands while you grasp at it like an upset toddler.
It was fairly profound :-). There are some things that I'm sure I'll find the way to share with you soon about changes in my life. What's most important now though is that you know that you can fight it or you can roll with it, excitedly waiting for the next chapter.
I'm with the excitement all the way :-).
Featured
It’s been a little bit of a messy week emotionally. I’ve had some love and I’ve lost some love and the grieving process shook me up (as grieving processes should). I’ve come out of it on the other side though much more intact and a lot more aware and hopefully a little bit more healed. Fingers crossed.
What I realized in my self-exploration is that I was still reeling from old hurts I experienced in GRAMMAR SCHOOL. Grammar school dear. Like age 6 to 10. I grew up in a neighborhood where the popular people were mixed, light-skinned and had curly-hair. That still rolls off my tongue with such ease because it was something that I was painfully aware that I was not. My hair was wooly, I was not mixed and even though I was light-skinned, I still somehow got the ugly streak.
Now this is my kid-self talking. My adult self of course knows that I was NOT ugly, I was JUST shy and had my step-father been a little better at making me feel adequate, I wouldn’t have quite needed the validation of all of those mean little kids who were acting out their dysfunctions too.
So in my current relationship situation, I think I’ve realized what is there to heal at least right now - what the mirror is showing me today. My little girl self is still comparing herself to the light-skinned, mixed, curly-haired girls she went to grammar school with. Maybe not even comparing. Maybe still feeling the most gut-wrenching, despair-filled sense of helplessness and hopelessness because she was not born that way. In her logic, maybe if she’d been born that way, all this other stuff would be different too because surely the light-skinned, mixed, curly-haired girls had it better. On the playground they certainly did.
Plus the old stories of withholding affection being a tool of manipulation that causes me to scramble to get and maintain that attention and affection made an appearance as well. Adult Leah is well aware that she doesn’t *need* anyone else’s attention or affection, yet somehow my current situation triggered all of that subconscious reacting as I strove to be patient, understanding and unattached.
The one thing I can gladly say is that the Universe never fails me, even when I’m screaming at it. I was guided every step of the way to these revelations. By following my urges, I got the answers I was seeking and I do believe that some profound healing is in the process of unfolding.
I know by now that I don’t always have to decipher the whys and that I don’t actually have to do any of the heavy lifting. I just have to ask the questions and be open to hearing and exploring the answers *and then* I have to remember to ask for help.
Featured
I’ve had a few pretty full experiences this week that have given me a chance to explore this theme. Even when it’s tough, I am completely grateful to life for the opportunity to see more of myself and to choose more on purpose (as opposed to default).
Like with my experience this Wednesday when the celebrity makeup artist Robert Jones came to visit Paul Mitchell to teach: this was a perfect opportunity to work through some issues of power, perception and choice.
I’m happy to explain :-). If you are just tuning into my world, recently (a little over a month ago), I took a new position as the makeup artist instructor (learning leader) at our local Paul Mitchell cosmetology school. Within the Paul Mitchell system, there is an online makeup academy that the students can enroll in to learn professional makeup skills. Robert Jones created it.
So to meet him just a few weeks after starting and getting into teaching his methods was just amazing for me. I have really become the fangirl over the past few weeks as I’ve gone through his course. Besides my makeup classes in esthetics school and what I’ve learned as a cosmetic chemist and holistic makeup artist sharing MOVE Makeup, I’ve had no other formal makeup training. Some of my favorite YouTubers (Wayne Goss anyone?) have been incredibly helpful but an organized, step-by-step program, I have not had. So his program has been gratifying on a number of levels. And then to be charged with the responsibility of helping the students acquire these skills and more - well let’s just say I’m in grateful amazement that I get to do this everyday.
But him coming to the school so soon was also nerve-wracking. What would he think of me? Do I really have the skill level to pass on his trainings to the students? Would he ask to see my portfolio? “Why oh why don’t you have an up-to-date portfolio Leah!!!”
And then of course, I wanted to be sure that I gave him some samples of MOVE Makeup to try. I couldn’t miss out on that opportunity.
I was also worried about my demeanor and how it comes off sometimes. I’m beyond the point in my life where I try to be overly extroverted when I’m not feeling extroverted, because that’s just too stressful to maintain. But on the other side of that, I tend to fear that I will come off disinterested, too quiet, shy, unengaged. All untrue statements.
So I grappled with this up until Wednesday and even on Wednesday. I was in need of some quick mindshifts.
There were a few key things I reminded myself of:
Most of this angst is in my mind.
Apparently a whole bunch of somebodies believe in me or else I wouldn’t be here.
I have tons of proof that my makeup line is awesome and loved by many.
I have tons of proof that *I* am awesome and loved by many.
Even if the absolute worst thing happens, I’ve survived other absolute worst things and I’ll survive this one.
The absolute worst thing usually never happens.
I am an adult doggone it. I’ve paid my dues. I’ve graduated to full adulthood. I get to act like one and expect others to treat me like one. (For some reason, I tend to remind myself of this often.)
So how did the day go? I’ll admit, I had some awkward moments. I was left feeling out of place at certain points, unsure of what I *should* be doing. But for the most part, it was an amazing day. I had some teary-eyed moments to myself even, contemplating the pure miraculousness of what I was getting to experience. I couldn’t have created this storyline of being a makeup instructor in a million years. It was nowhere on my radar and I had NO idea how fulfilling it would be.
And that evening, when my ego tried it’s best to scare me into not taking another courageous act ever again in life, I pulled out a favorite ego circumventor, what if.
Yes, Robert Jones could think my makeup is crap, BUT what if he thought is was the absolute bomb-diggy?
Yes, Robert Jones could have thought that I was a dull, nitwit (like the arrogant CEO of Eminence who swore that I was lying about being a chemical engineer - a story for another day), BUT what if he thought I was brilliant, had the perfect amount of poise and energy to motivate and connect with the students, and had every confidence that I am the perfect person to trailblaze new heights with the academy?
Yes, everyone could have thought I made all the wrong decisions and was painfully awkward that day, BUT what if everyone thought I was a rockstar, especially that day?
The What if game is POWERFUL. The little bit of space it creates in your mind for a pause automatically results in a rise, even if you just vibrate a hair higher and feel a tiny bit lighter and less burdened.
I encourage you to try it the next time you have a day of being outside of your own comfort zone :).
Upcoming Makeup Class!
I'll be teaching a small group makeup class next Monday! We will cover how to do a natural Daytime makeup look without looking overdone and how to take that look to a Nighttime Date night look. This class is great for professional women who want to wear makeup and have that polished, together look but NOT look like a drag queen or Instagram model (not that those aren't beautiful looks!). Perfect if you are new to makeup as well. Everyone will have the option to purchase a MOVE Makeup Sweatproof & Natural Starter Kit as well. Introductory Price: $40 w/MOVE Makeup kit: $65
If you want to register, click here to message me and reserve your spot. Limited spacing - only 5 slots available!
Ready to be Audacious?
I have a new Facebook group for women that are audaciously falling in love with themselves and their lives and burning away everything that is standing in the way of that. Won't you join us?
Featured
How do you handle learning things again that aren’t new to you? What’s your process when you could have sworn you’d “done that already”?
I’m reading a new book, You are a BadAss at Making Money by Jen Sincero. I’d shied away from reading it about a year or so ago because I felt like it would be stuff I already know. I mean, I enrolled in a course at the beginning of 2016 whose sole purpose was to help you change your money mindset and stop blocking the moola. I’d enrolled in two other money mindset courses before that. And countless other trainings, books and exercises have helped me to look into my relationship with money and change it for the better. So when this book came around the first time, I was really feeling like “been there, done that - got the t-shirt.”
The booked popped back up again though, right when I felt in need of some new energy around money creation and so I decided to pick it up. I have to admit that I’ve really been enjoying it. Jen’s writing style is a perfect mix of good information and the right type of humor to deliver it with. I feel like it’s written for someone like me, the queen of DIY for instance, predisposed to making thing harder for oneself just because it’s cheaper more so than just enjoying the crafting part of it.
She introduces concepts that I’m familiar with in fresh ways that actually are giving me nuances of insight. My sticking point is that as I’m reading them, I remember when I first came across them, feeling like I’d found the holy grail. Like “great! This is all that I have to do. I’ll be manifesting the things I want and need in no time. All of the successes that I’m claiming, they are about to show up big time!”
And it wasn’t that at all. Things didn’t show up in my life just because I put them on my vision board. (I’m still waiting on quite a few things on my 3 boards to be honest). It hasn’t been as simple as examining what I want certain amounts of money for and then just watching it roll in. In fact, it’s actually been constant work. I feel like in some crucial ways, I’m still standing in my own way. I feel like there are still some major blocks I’m uncovering about my self-worth and ability to do what feels impossible. (Even though I’ve done “my” impossible many times before.)
And so what it’s leaving me with is thoughts about the layers. I’ve talked about layers before. I’ve mentioned them in regards to my mental health and in regards to my pursuit of my version of success (and even figuring out what that is because it differs very much from what others think my success is supposed to look like.).
What do you do when you realize that there is yet another layer. Is it a “CRAP!” Or is it a gentle “oh what do we have here?”
It may depend on the subject and your mood at the moment like it does for me. I think somehow, we got the wrong message that there is such a thing as fully being done with something. Or fully mastering something. And I think we are really bad in general about noticing, let alone celebrating the baby steps and the little pieces of evidence.
I know for myself, especially with money considerations, I have to continuously remind myself to look for the little bits of evidence and also to be easy and kind to myself. There is no pass/fail. It’s only evaluating and adjusting and then getting back out there in the game.
Maybe you are like me? I’m really good at getting back out there in the game. But what I’ve been traditionally really bad about is giving myself a failing grade. I don’t even think to evaluate, adjust and tweak. I just blanketly look at what I asked for versus what I got and think FAIL if it’s not exactly what I thought I needed it to be.
How often are you doing this? It’s a good question to ask yourself. I think in answering it, you and me, we both will find the shortcut to the easy way.
The annoying truth is that manifesting really is easy. It really is just a law of the Universe that you can’t help but utilize. It really is just about getting better at training your thoughts and emotions on what it is you actually do want. So that evaluating and tweaking part is what gets you past blindly grasping at straws and throwing your hands up in disgust when you feel like you’re floundering. It’s what helps you hone it in and fashion yourself into an expert.
And it brings me back to the book and a new way to see being told about concepts I learned at least 2 years ago if not more. It’s just tweaking. It’s just another layer. It’s just another light bulb. It’s just about sharpening myself into an expert. And so it’s something to be incredibly grateful for instead of slightly annoyed by.
I’m working on it :-). How about you?
I am so very proud of myself for this past Tuesday. It was a tough day. It was the first day of my cycle, my emotions were all over the place, I was tired, feeling sick, my usual rah-rah was a quiet, little 'I guess, maybe' and I just felt crappy. But I still had to go to Paul Mitchell and try to be my best self there and then I had this really cool, awesome thing to do that evening that took me back to all the things that were important to me maybe 15 years ago - that I had no desire to do at all at the moment. I was teaching a class called Wise Woman Ways to Happy Hormones for our Central Arkansas Herbalism group and my own hormones were all over the place. And yet, I could not bail on any of it because when I'm feeling my most awesome, these are things that I cherish and feel incredibly grateful that I get to do.
So how did I get through it? Focusing on my silver linings. Distracting myself into the next minute with things or either thoughts of things I enjoy. Reminding myself that I'm pretty awesome, I rock things like this out all of the time and I even have evidence. Reminding myself that I'm not doing this by myself (my woowoo friends will know what I mean). And promising myself a bomb dinner and vegan (me being nice to my body) chocolate for dessert 🙃.
And it worked :-). The Universe helped me stay focused, enjoy sharing and give out the right information that everyone needed that day. Yay!
So I'm proud of myself for staying in the game yesterday. Sometimes it's just not the right time for a time out and you have to keep it going. I'm immensely grateful to everyone that gave me smiles and good vibes yesterday without even realizing what good and needed medicine that was for me. And I'm immensely grateful to the Universe for always having a path before me to follow 💖🌞😊.
So my thoughts? What I think is a beautiful sign of growth for me is that it is very possible for me to see my own beliefs in the beliefs of a traditional Christian Church, even in an evangelistic one. Though the language that I use and the perspective that I have is different, the basic tenants of love being the driving force of everything we do remains the same. That fact warms my heart every time :-).
I will say one thing about my adventures over the past two weeks or so with traditional Christianity and how it runs up against my personal beliefs; I don't think traditional Christianity creates a space for anyone else's understanding of God and their own personal relationship. That is annoying at its best and painful at its worst. I lost the closeness of a very important friendship because of our clash in beliefs in fact. Because mine are different, this friend just could not accept me as I am today. That has always been my main issue with traditional Christianity (and organized religion in most cases). Why we must focus so much on what someone else is doing has always been a very interesting question to ponder.
In any case, I'm very glad though that I had the experience of sharing the revival with my sister. I was happy because it made her happy and sometimes just a fact as simple as that makes it worth it. :-).