Interview with Toni Bergins, M.Ed., creator of “Embody: Really feel, Heal, and Rework Your Life by means of Motion”
Toni Bergins is an embodiment trailblazer who has taught on the premier holistic therapeutic facilities for the final 27 years. She’s on the school on the Kripalu Heart for Yoga & Well being in Massachusetts, and has labored there as a motion artist, dance educator, expressive arts workshop chief, and knowledgeable in creating transformational workshops. Her upcoming livestream JourneyDance occasion, mixing motion, music, meditation, and playful expression, is designed to allow contributors to take self-discovery into the New 12 months.
What’s “Embody: Really feel, Heal, and Rework Your Life Via Motion” about and why did you write it?
My guide is a information for readers on a transformative journey to reconnect with their our bodies, launch emotional blockages, and deepen self-awareness by means of motion and dance. At its coronary heart, it’s about utilizing aware, expressive motion to entry and course of feelings. I share my very own journey of fixing detrimental thought patterns and supply a approach for releasing what not serves us in order that we might develop our emotional bandwidth and domesticate pleasure, freedom, and self-love.
Embody: Really feel, Heal, and Rework Your Life Via Motion supplies readers and listeners with a possibility to expertise embodiment: an genuine sense of presence that comes from reuniting the thoughts and physique, so you’ll be able to expertise an built-in reference to your self and the love that you simply deeply need. On daily basis I train my college students methods to get out of their minds and again into their our bodies to allow them to course of and digest their experiences (each the fantastic and tough), and may reside full lives. The change is dramatic: they shift from dissociation to presence, and from a spot of stagnation to one in every of movement and limitless potentialities.
Embody is structured as a journey by means of varied “qualities” or themes — Embodiment, Awakening, Alchemy, Sensual Freedom, and Celebration. It encourages readers to discover these ideas by means of each reflection and bodily practices. Every chapter affords music playlists, guided workout routines, and visualizations that help therapeutic and self-discovery by shifting by means of every theme. Tapping into totally different emotional tones helps readers discover new elements of themselves whereas discovering each empowerment and peace.
The guide invitations readers to see motion not simply as train however as a robust device for self-healing and private progress, encouraging them to belief their our bodies, embrace their feelings, and expertise freedom of their distinctive expressions.
I share many embodied motion processes within the guide, as your information, and share an experiential portal of movies and playlists to maneuver with me and comply with alongside the journey.
I wrote this guide to assist individuals get again into their our bodies, finish cycles of perfectionism, and study to really feel their emotions in a container of private growth. I imagine that self-awareness and self-mastery are the keys to enhance {our relationships}, neighborhood, and lives.
In case you are feeling caught, numb, or overwhelmed, you can also safely develop the confines of your consolation zone so you’ll be able to lastly really feel, heal, and remodel your life. I do know from my very own private expertise, and what I’ve seen on the dance flooring with 1000’s of my college students, that therapeutic is just not for the faint of coronary heart. The truth is, I imagine it’s for the courageous and the brave.
Are you able to discuss a bit of bit about your private and non secular journey. What are among the challenges you went by means of and what had been among the instruments that helped you overcome these challenges?
My journey has been one in every of deep transformation. I’ve confronted challenges of self-doubt, perfectionism, and struggles with physique picture, and it took me years to heal and combine these experiences. The instruments that helped me had been primarily by means of motion — particularly dance and somatic practices. Motion allowed me to launch what I couldn’t course of by means of phrases alone. Spiritually, I turned inward, realized to belief my physique, and cultivated a deeper reference to my very own soul’s reality. This course of wasn’t simple, but it surely led me to a spot of true alignment.
How does dance and motion assist to facilitate therapeutic and progress?
Dance and motion are extremely highly effective instruments for therapeutic as a result of they permit us to bypass the thoughts and straight have interaction with the physique. Once we transfer, we faucet right into a primal type of expression that’s not certain by language or logic. This enables suppressed feelings to floor, outdated wounds to heal, and new power to movement. It may possibly really feel just like the physique holds the knowledge that the thoughts doesn’t all the time have entry to. Motion creates area for progress as a result of it reconnects us to our true essence and opens the channels for transformation.
What recommendation would you’ve gotten for somebody with no expertise or expertise for dancing, however wish to incorporate dance into their therapeutic and non secular journey?
First, neglect about expertise and concentrate on feeling. It’s not about being good at it — it’s about being current and permitting your self to maneuver nonetheless your physique feels. Begin with easy actions like shaking, stretching, or respiration deeply. Let the music information you. The extra you follow listening to your physique and shifting with out judgment, the extra you’ll faucet into your innate rhythm and energy. Dance isn’t about perfection — it’s about liberation and connection to your self. Let go of any expectations and permit your self to simply really feel.
In your guide, you write about sensual freedom. What does that imply and the way can we develop it?
Every of us involves the Sensual Freedom high quality from totally different locations alongside a large spectrum of views and experiences of our our bodies. Chances are you’ll be fully comfy, open, relaxed, and expressive. Or you’ll have a tough or complicated relationship along with your physique, your sensuality, and sexuality. These totally different outcomes could also be associated to sexual trauma, extremely restrictive or id harming environments, or a sexually constructive upbringing — and all factors in between. Wherever you fall on this spectrum, this high quality is an invite to benefit from the sensual nature of your physique, experiencing it from a brand new perspective that’s constructive and exquisite for you.
You’re able to being sensual, whether or not you expertise it or not. Sensuality is human nature. It’s how we take pleasure in nourishment, pleasure, and connection. It’s the anticipation of flavors and textures hitting your tongue; it’s the primary chew. It’s the enjoyment of life’s moments. It’s about having fun with your physique shamelessly as you embody a complete appreciation of what’s doable. This follow can turn out to be an act of self-love and compassion, affirming our worthiness and worth.
Your connection to your sensuality and sexuality can deeply have an effect on your shallowness and how you’re feeling about your bodily physique. Think about what it might really feel prefer to have a sensuous love for your self, fully by yourself phrases, with out having to contemplate different individuals’s expectations or the exterior gaze. We may forged apart the false and dangerous assumptions about which forms of our bodies are lovely and which aren’t and as soon as and for all remodel the societal burden we feature. This shift to having fun with our sensuality from the within is game-changing work.
You’re your personal aphrodisiac: simply dancing and shifting sensually could make you’re feeling fantastic. Once you dance sensually, you naturally improve your proprioception (sense of the place your physique is in area) and your interoception (sensing what’s taking place mentally and bodily in your physique), since you begin to see and really feel your physique shifting in area in a gradual, clean, luscious approach. And whenever you try this, you activate a sensory notion that I name embodied instinct. That is instinct that leans in your physique’s knowledge in tandem along with your thoughts. You start to have a deeper perception and develop a brand new sense of boundaries and start to say sure to what actually feels best for you and no to what doesn’t.
Once we’re not linked to our sensual physique, we will miss the refined cues of what “good” appears like. When we now have entry to our sensations, we will choose up these sensory indicators rather more simply. Once you follow this sensual freedom state, you’ll be able to really feel a visceral sense of self and should discover when your private, and even sexual, boundaries are being encroached upon, permitting you to make new decisions.
You additionally write about therapeutic by means of poor physique picture. How can somebody enhance their physique picture and improve their self-confidence in the event that they don’t meet society’s requirements for what’s historically thought-about lovely or good trying?
The extra we dance on this JourneyDance model, with out mirrors, with out particular steps, we start to really feel increasingly comfy shifting in our physique. With this consolation we begin to really feel higher about how we really feel and extra assured in how we glance.
Therapeutic physique picture begins with breaking free from society’s slender definitions of magnificence. Once we dance in a freeform model like JourneyDance, there are not any mirrors, no proper or mistaken method to transfer — solely freedom and authenticity. This creates a protected area for people to reconnect with their our bodies and cease judging themselves.
Via constant follow, you’ll start to really feel extra comfy in your physique, which naturally boosts your confidence. The extra you belief your physique and permit it to maneuver with out judgment, the extra you’ll fall in love with its uniqueness and energy.
Is there the rest you’d prefer to share?
I need to remind everybody that this work is about being courageous. Therapeutic by means of motion requires vulnerability, but it surely additionally brings essentially the most unbelievable transformation. Each time we present up on the dance flooring, we’re selecting to be current, to really feel, and to heal. I encourage everybody to embrace this work totally — to belief their our bodies, embrace their feelings, and dance their approach into a lifetime of freedom and pleasure. The world wants your distinctive power. Don’t maintain again.
How can we dance with you on-line?
You’ll be able to be a part of us on-line each Tuesday at 12pm EST/9am PST for a JourneyDance with me or one in every of my supportive staff of academics. And, we now have a Particular Reside Streaming Occasion this December twenty eighth, 7:30pm EST, Transferring into Unity and Group.
To study extra, go to journeydance.com.
