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True power comes from the continuity and connection between mind, body and soul, which creates an inner power that allows you to feel, know and live your purpose and express and share your essence with certitude, clarity and love. Working in dance and healing through the emotions in the body, I explore how to connect mind, body and soul through creative visualization of the Ideal Body and how this can affect change in your real body.

The nature of the human body and soul is to work with concepts and beliefs about your body and your being. We live with a concept of our body (or a mental structure) and beliefs about our body (or an emotional structure). You can affect true change in your real body by visualizing and meditation with your Ideal Body. The Ideal Body is a construct I use in meditation and dance therapy. It’s a combination of your mental images charged with emotional beliefs that empower you. Using an emotionally exciting image of your Ideal Body is how I access the power of your soul and your essence that charges, energizes and influences all your life choices and experiences.

The concept of an Ideal Body with the power of visualization, movement meditation and guided imagery and also fantasy, daydreaming and wishful thinking, works on moving you beyond your perceived limits and what you see in the mirror.

Playing with and visualizing your Ideal Body is a way to listen to your real body, to understand you body from a heart-felt place and allow your feelings, desires and dreams to be expressed. The real you is not just a physical body. Your body and being is created by your life experiences (parenting, environment, socialization, education, spiritual beliefs and relationships) and your soul experiences. The soul has both positive and negative memories. What you may feel as limitations in your life or body, may actually come from your soul. As we play with the concept of an Ideal Body we move beyond both the limitations of your body, mind and emotions and even beyond the limitations of your soul.

The Ideal Body is where your emotions, your physical body and mind are working together to access your true self, your inner power, your aliveness and messages from your soul about how you are truly meant to be. When you connect to your true self, who you are from the level of your soul, you are empowered with a clarity that allows your body, mind and emotions to work synergistically.

Your emotions are vital keys as to what has created your physical body the way it is. The clue is to not see the emotions as who you are, but simply an aspect of who you are, that is open to change and will change daily, even from moment to moment. Emotions need to be felt and moved through the body. That is why you feel different after a good cry.

The body you have is not good or bad – it simply is what you have – at this point in time. Your Ideal Body is one that allows your emotions to move as you move beyond limits of time and conditioning, allowing your expression of self to flow out of you in a way that does not harm yourself or others. You may still offend or confuse people, but that doesn’t harm them!

Emotions that get bottled up get stored like toxins in your body. They collect around fat cells, get deposited in trigger points and meridians that create painful muscles, swollen lymph, poor digestion, extra weight, bloating or clouded obsessive thoughts and inability to focus, do things or simply be yourself. You can also lose your life vitality, libido, appetite and lose weight or suffer mental health issues from withdrawing from the life you are truly meant to live, simply because you cannot feel who you are on either the level of your body, your emotions or even your soul.

Movement helps the body to move stored energy and stored emotions. Dance is movement with emotional intent. You have to feel the movement to really be flowing with the dance. Dance is like exercising the muscle of emotion. When you dance you are practicing what it is like to feel and you can release feelings that are bottled up or simply not being expressed.

When you are dancing or in meditation or any body awareness practice, ask yourself what is that you feel good about or what you feel bad about. Simply asking your body to show you what it is that needs more attention or what needs to be felt, allows your emotions to surface and begin to be released and expressed. When you have danced or meditated with this question, write about your feelings and you will have another excellent way to understand, express and release your feelings.

Sometimes you may gain a sense of physical release without moving deeply held emotions. In order to get to deeper more chronic or problematic emotions, work with the INTENT in your dance of accessing your true self. This type of dance is a form of “authentic movement”, where you encourage the body to simply move without thinking about how you dance. You can simply use the idea and intent to access your true self in any movement form and your body will automatically flow according to this desire. Release any expectations of what that should be, look like and feel like and simply allow your body to explore.

Releasing emotions in a healthy way is acknowledging that there is no right of wrong way to feel yourself or acknowledge your emotions. Your emotions will be different every day and change through out life. Dance can be fun and just for laughs and freeing and sometimes dance can access blocked or negative feelings that need to be understood. Simply because you are moving, you have the choice to allow your emotional body to move as well, which is the pleasure that empowers your mind, body and soul to be and feel synergistically at one.

Dance is an external expression of an internal beat. The two elements of inner feeling and outer movement are always in dialogue. The dialogue of inside and out is the way the dance acts as a mirror for what is truly going on in your body, your feelings and your life. Empowerment for you will come when you connect this dialogue between your Ideal Body and your emotions and gain access to what it is you truly wish to be and how that feels like, physically, emotionally and spiritually.