5 Signs That Dance Is Your Soul’s Language.
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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 who 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 who 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 five signs below are clear clues that dance could be a primary language of your soul. Welcome home, if so!
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 hear. 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 jig of celebration. Dancing is definitely one of your soul’s ways 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 multi-fold and dynamic in its highs and lows.
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Leah Patterson is a transformation coach, holistic beauty and wellness mentor, and salsa dance instructor who provides women who identify (sometimes secretly) as living with high-functioning depression and/or anxiety with the guidance they need to create an overall lifestyle of mind, body and spirit balance. She works primarily with dancers — professional, amateur and hobbyists — using holistic beauty, wellness, movement, and mindset as her tools of transformation, facilitating major breakthroughs and rock-solid self-empowerment for her clients. Visit her website to find out more about her and the Dancer’s Bliss Academy, and follow her on Instagram for inspiring self-empowerment training.
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