Liberation Dance
By Kelly Inselmann, LCSW, RYT. Melinda sways and jumps, comfortable in her own skin as her short gray hair grows back in after chemo. A blue and white sleeve that looks like a tattoo squeezes her arm to reduce swelling from lymphedema.
With an MRI this afternoon, she favors her knee, even as she vigorously shakes off tension and fear.
It’s noon on Wednesday at the yoga studio. Twelve of us are inside dancing to a hiphop beat and poetry being read aloud about liberation while alive.
Liberation might be a potential side effect of the cancer journey, but liberation from what?
Andi, newest to yoga class, wears a bemused expression that seems to say, “I can’t believe I’m dancing around like this!”
When she introduced herself, she said she was here to change her patterns of not moving her body enough, spending too much time on the couch, online or watching Netflix, distracting herself from anxiety.
In her very intention to change habitual patterns might be a clue to how we find liberation. In yoga class, my students often share what they aspire to surrender: to-do lists, expectations and responsibility for other people, anger, harsh self judgment, shame, old identity, worry about the future.
They are surrendering attachment to who they used to be so they can grow in to who they are now, a growth marked by both suffering and sacred moments of awareness.
In my ongoing work over the last 15 years integrating yoga and psychotherapy, I witness people whose nervous systems are in high alert begin to relax (sometimes for the first time), emotional numbness thaws, and volatility stabilizes. Where connection to others seemed frightening or useless, after yoga and meditation, people feel more hopeful and willing to risk potential awkwardness and their fear of rejection. Met with caring by a relaxed and open group member, patterns of staying isolated to protect themselves are challenged.
Each of us in the Wednesday yoga class has a desire to feel free, spacious, and connected to a deeper pulse of life through our breathing and dancing. Having faced the reality of our own mortality, we want to enjoy our days and feel connected to loved ones.
Though Melinda is comfortable dancing in class now, at the end of her active treatment a year ago, she was new to yoga and meditation and wondered if she would be able to learn something new. Fatigued and depressed, she found it difficult to focus, plan, and remember details because of “chemobrain,” a side effect of chemotherapy that causes brain fog. She was looking for the meaning in her suffering even as the physical and emotional side effects lingered.
Like many survivors, the discomfort of the trauma itself opened Melinda to try something different.
After a few weeks, she shared that she looked forward to Wednesdays. “I come here because it’s the only time in my week when I know I might feel a moment of joy,” she said.
Now she mentors new students in the class. She has tried many types of yoga and has a favorite practice she does at home. When she has a medical test or follow up appointment, she meditates her way through it.
Liberation from old patterns rarely happens in a single moment or a single dance. For most people I work with, it comes in phases.
When you truly let go, there is space for something new and spontaneous to happen. Yoga helps with this: the new movement, the altered breath rhythms, and the repeated sayings we call mantras combine to create a temporary interruption of your automatic reactive patterns. New experiences are introduced that nurture the body and mind.
Your muscles relax and your blood and energy circulate, which release chronic pain and tension. Sometimes sadness and tears spill over, making way for joy or contentment to emerge. You taste, for a moment, a different way to feel well.
Later that day in the yoga studio, Andi came up to me. In a voice full of wonder at her own courage she said: “If you’d told me I would stand up and dance in a group of people I didn’t know, with no inhibitions, the same week I had chemo, I’d never have believed you.”
Interrupting old patterns is an ongoing process, not fixed and stationary. It’s dynamic and fluid. Just like our dance.
Kelly Inselmann (LCSW, E-RYT500) has a private practice in Austin, Texas where she offers psychotherapy and her signature Yoga and Talk® Therapy groups for people seeking to free themselves from stuck patterns and re-awaken vitality.
Website: YogaandTalk.com
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