We so often need to still practice what we know instinctually. Mothering, showing up in actual love and care. Have a listen to the pre-christian rituals my ancestors are still doing against he church’s wishes even year in devotion to the “grieving Mother.” In the middle of hte night the village goes silent and a group of men do a blood letting ritual at every Mary station in teh village (there were at least 8 of them.) We went into a trance following the men in this ritual well into the night - they started around 11p. My takeaway is more about the art showing up as the present and the possessions we can learn t cultivate choice inside of (with the right support pic.) This writing and podcast on my bloody ancestral rituals and my body as the place that deserves to be ask questions and listened to as much as she is told, pushed and penetrated without presence…welcomes you into the taboo. Maybe the taboo is not simply the place we are forbidden to go. Maybe it is the place where something sacred has been set apart. But also, despite what white colonialism and patriarchy ingrained in us…we are not entitled to everything in this world. Even the wildest parts of us want us to move in a certain way in order to gain access I have found. This is 10 years of practice in a form that didn’t even have a name when I began doing it. I was following grief and heartache that needed to be danced, to be written and spoken… Its roots are connected to my Italian ancestors, to trance work and Italian shamanism, to dance, grief, Eros, and the underworld—the places we descend into to meet the parts of ourselves we are carrying but don’t always have the consciousness to accept or allow. The flow and body of work that has moved through me and countless others at this point, we call Body Temple Dance™. And underneath all of it is the taboo. The things we were taught not to feel. The things we were told were too much. The grief, the rage, the sexuality, the blood, the desire, the death, the pleasure, the parts of ourselves that didn’t behave. The parts that were inconvenient to religion, patriarchy, family systems, or whatever culture taught us how to be a “good” person. Body Temple Dance is interested in those places—not because I think we need to live inside our trauma forever, but because I believe there are parts of our aliveness buried underneath the things we learned we weren’t allowed to feel. Trauma is not negative the way it lives in us even if it feels unpleasant, it’s a doorway to our True Self. I grew up around addiction. My father was an addict, and when you grow up around addiction, the addict’s needs can become the gravitational center of the entire family. His survival mattered. His pain mattered. His moods mattered. Him feeling loved or not loved was the priority of the home. His crises took center stage. And there was very little room left for mine. I also grew up around intense sexual trauma. There were things happening in my family system that my young body didn’t have the language to understand, but the body doesn’t need language in order to learn. It learns through sensation. It learns through repetition. It learns through what is safe and what is not safe. “The most common way people give up their power is by thinking they don’t have any.” ~ Alice Walker I inherited symptoms that showed up in my body as: * hypervigilance and constantly scanning the room and feeling the environments * bracing and holding tension in my neck and jaw (used to have bad TMJ) * freezing or shutting down * the impulse to leave myself that led to self harm * difficulty knowing what I wanted * feeling that being seen was dangerous for me * confusing intimacy with threat * becoming incredibly attuned to what everyone else needed while disconnecting from myself And underneath so much of it was one very simple survival strategy: If I disappear, maybe I will be safe. I learned how to become smaller, quieter, less demanding, less sexual, less angry, less alive. I learned how to be everywhere except inside my own body. This is why the taboo matters so much to me. Because the taboo isn’t always some outrageous thing. Sometimes the taboo is having a need. Sometimes it is saying no. Sometimes it is wanting pleasure. Sometimes it is being angry. Sometimes it is taking up space. Sometimes it is being witnessed or witnessing another in a way that doesn’t extract from either person.. Sometimes it is admitting that you’re exhausted. Sometimes the deepest taboo is simply: I am here.I have a body.I have desire.I have boundaries.I have a voice.I matter. And this is the eternal practice we share called “unhooking” - it is one of coming back to the True Self. To caring for the child inside instead of becoming her. Not by forcing ourselves into catharsis. Not by trying to shake trauma out of the body as if trauma were something we could simply expel and be done with. I don’t believe we are broken containers that need to be endlessly emptied. Sometimes we need to be filled with something that can meet us fully. I believe we are bodies that adapted brilliantly to what was happening around us. What happens when the body gets to have a new experience? That is the part of this work that matters so much to me. I don’t want to spend the rest of my life processing my childhood unless it’s in service to what I am here to create. I want to experience something my childhood didn’t give me. I love knowing what it feels like to: * have a need and not have that need become a threat * take up space and still belong * be visible and remain safe * experience pleasure without performing * have anger without becoming destructive to myself * surrender without giving myself away * stay connected to myself while being connected to another person * inhabit my body instead of constantly monitoring the world around me We live in a culture that doesn’t give us much permission to be slow enough to feel ourselves, so even slowness can bring us to an edge. We allow the body to begin speaking before the mind has figured out what the story is. Then we move into activation. We growl, squeeze, shake, push a wall, another’s hands, make sound, and work with boundaries and consent. We reconnect to the part of ourselves that knows how to protect us—the part that says, I got you. Sometimes underneath the depression is rage and our fierce living protector. Underneath the overwhelm is desire. Underneath the numbness is grief. Underneath the stuckness is something alive. Something has been waiting for us to come back. And then we surrender, a little bit at a time . This is essential because we don’t stay in the catharsis. We don’t make intensity the goal. We come back to the earth, into deep rest, into conscious letting go. We practice death and dying because death gives us access to our potency to keep living. We allow ourselves to come into direct contact with whatever we understand as Spirit and ask, Can you hold this with me? Can you show me the way? This is where integration happens. Maybe I have always braced, and now I experience support. Maybe I have always disappeared, and now I take up space. Maybe I have always swallowed my voice, and now I make sound. Maybe I have always abandoned myself in relationship, and now I can stay connected to myself while being connected to another person. Maybe I learned that power meant power-over, and now I can inhabit my own power without harming someone else. Processing isn’t the end goal. Integration (for the rest of our lives if we choose to live alongside Spirit listening and learning how to love. We are allowing what has been unfinished, frozen, suppressed, or disconnected to have movement, sensation, expression, relationship, and choice. And through that, we create the possibility of something we couldn’t previously experience. We begin to perceive ourselves differently, more clearly. The body has been the site of so much control, shame, violence, erasure, and conditioning. And the body can also become the site of our return. For so many of us, especially those whose bodies, sexuality, grief, rage, spirituality, or ways of loving have been controlled or erased, simply coming back into intimate relationship with the body is already f*****g revolutionary. So yes, we go into the taboo. We go into the places we were taught to avoid. But we don’t go there to get lost. We go there to find what had to disappear. And then, slowly, we teach the body that it doesn’t have to disappear anymore. We can feel. We can move. We can want. We can say no. We can say yes. We can rest. We can be witnessed. We can belong. We can belong to ourselves. Your body already knows what you need to heal. Your body already knows what you need to be free. And underneath all the conditioning, underneath the shame, underneath the stories we’ve inherited, there is something alive. Something dynamic. Something erotic. Something holy. Something that still knows how to belong. The work is not to become someone new. The work is to make enough room for what is already alive in you to finally have an experience of itself. PS. We have a short ritual film we made on our last artist immersion in Santa Fe - where we did a two hour Inanna Shadow Theatre piece and we will show it to yo on the full moon In Pisces next Wednesday. Come we’ll practice the unhooking - we’ll also massage our mouths, sing together, write with our anger passion, shake our asses, release and reclaim. Sign up here! Get full access to Mother of the Sword at bodytemple.substack.com/subscribe
