EROTIC DANCE: The Key to Finding Your Way Forward | Annalise Oatman | TEDxBorrowdale
URL: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h06fvlYD70k Video ID: h06fvlYD70k ============================================================ Transcriber: Tess Kayal Reviewer: Mujtaba bakhet Have you ever wanted to have a family? At age five. I already knew I wanted to be a mom. I can still remember the way the sun was falling through the window slats onto my bed as I woke up one morning and realized it. Mommy's a girl and she has babies. I'm also a girl, so that means I can have babies too. Yeah. But. That seemingly natural dream didn't go like I planned. At 29, I fell in love certain that this relationship would probably eventually lead to a family, just as the fairy tale had gone for my mother and her mother before her. But by my mid 30s we'd been together for four years. We lived together, we were engaged, and then it ended. Largely because we couldn't get on the same page about becoming parents together. This was unbelievably painful and not something I ever imagined would happened in my life. And then I met someone at my cousin’s wake and the same thing happened again. And I found myself in the same place. Childless, but a year older. It was the tragic lesson on repeat that sometimes the purest way to love someone, to really love them is to let them go rather than trying to get them to want what you want. I'm going to go off script here by saying that there are no victims and perpetrators in this story, just people who are all doing their best. So my 35th birthday at the time was approaching at a breathless pace, and I made the gut wrenching decision to freeze my eggs, which actually isn't something I ever wanted to do. I always wanted my pregnancy and birth experiences to be all natural, you know. First of all, getting pregnant by actually having sex. And then full shamanic birth experience. No pain killers, out in the woods with eagles flying overhead. I’m kidding. Kind of. But my dream for the way this whole part of my life was supposed to be had been crushed. And I was grieving. And then with all the hormone injections on top of that. Yeah, you have to do them in your belly. I mean, I kept needing to take breaks in the middle of my day, day after day to lie on the couch and weep at a volume that probably made the neighbors wonder what was going on in my apartment. It was exhausting. But in many ways, my biggest internal challenge at the time was not my grief. It was a deep, ongoing uncertainty about whether I was really with the right person or in the right situation and about what on earth I should do with my life now. My therapy practice where I had helped hundreds of creative women heal their trauma and live more joyful lives had become fully remote during Covid. So I had the liberty to go and live anywhere in the world. And while that sounds fabulous, I felt like I was totally spinning out. Like I had way too many options and I couldn't possibly decide what to do in any area of my life. So I consulted oracle card’s, well-meaning and highly opinionated friends and family members and psychics and shamans and psychotherapists, psychoanalysts. And in a way, all of this only confused me more. Notbecause they weren’t doing their job well, but because of my approach. I kept looking outside of myself for clarity and answers. I even flew deep into the jungle in Peru to engage in a series of Ayahuasca ceremonies with Shipibo Medicine, people. With the intention to just hear myself. And of all the sources of help I turn to, this was the most pivotal because it reminded me that my best guidance can only come from deep within me. And this came as a reminder of something I already knew, because throughout my recovery from the loss of the life, partnership and family I thought I would have, there was a continual process taking place in the background. As it happens, I've always had a journaling practice, but I started to really devote myself to a combined erotic dance and writing practice. I was practicing softening into my body to allow my grief to open me rather than close me. To allow it to tenderize my heart rather than harden it. Sometimes I do my erotic dance practice and then I would go outside and just allow the birds and trees and life to leave impressions on me, and I would write them down. Sometimes the writing would turn into a poem, sometimes it wouldn’t, but it was always writing that was rooted in my deepest self and an attitude of openness to life. Because the erotic is a force that opens us and reaches outward to everything other than ourselves. Whereas depression and sadness and narcissism can close us down. And it's not really surprising that I found this helpful, since studies show that expressive writing can be a really beneficial way to cope with grief, anxiety and depression. Studies have also shown that intentional movement alleviates symptoms of depression, and according to the National Center for Health Statistics, at least 1 in 10 women currently meets full diagnostic criteria for major depression. So as I fell more and more in love with this practice, I decided to look into the ancient Greek myth of psyche and Eros and into the definition of erotic dance. And whenever I use the word Eros from now on with a capital E, which is where the word erotic comes from, I'm referring to that great archetypal force that our own eroticism puts us in touch with. So erotic Dance is currently defined as a form of dance intended to elicit a sexual response in viewers. And that feels off to me because do you know what that's describing? A performance. Eros is more subtle. It’s internal. It's a feeling you get in touch with from inside yourself. It's not even necessarily always sexual. It's that sweet, embodied longing and craving that comes from our deepest self. An erotic dance, in its essence, is about learning to work that energy and move it up and through the body. When you tap into Eros, you are tapping into your intrinsic impulse, your intrinsic motivation. And this is where all liberated creativity, intuition, spontaneity and joy come from. So not surprisingly, as I deepened into this practice, I found more joy in the midst of my pain. And over time, I recovered my own instinctual clarity about a way forward that felt authentic to me. And no one had ever told me this. No one had ever told me that Eros is how you turn on your light and aliveness and clarity about the way forward. Incidentally, the central image and the psyche and Eros myth is the image of a confounding darkness interrupted by the simple yet plot altering decision to turn on a lantern. You can use practices like erotic dance and writing practices that get you in touch with Eros to find your way forward when things don't work out the way they were supposed to. It gets us from stuck to movement and always in a way that is rooted in our depth. So you might be wondering, where did this practice get me? Part of me wants to give you a more tangible, happy ending by telling you that this practice led me directly to my soulmate or my first pregnancy. But I think it's important for us to have stories about women that don't necessarily end in a partner or a baby. Stories about women as whole people unto themselves. Stories that show us we can be so much more open to whatever life brings as long as we trust our own soulful self leadership and trust that no matter what, our lives will be rooted in purpose rather than performance. Because when women reclaim their own erotic essence, they become truly empowered to blaze utterly original paths through life. So here's what I want you all to do. Are you ready? This is Non-gender specific. Okay. When you get home, choose a song. It can be a sexy song or a song that's more aligned with the way that your body wants to move in that moment. And when you turn it on, stay with your breath and just allow your body to move the way it wants to move. And if you start to get stuck in your head or feel stupid, that's actually good. You can shake it out because you're moving beyond your normal, cramped sense of self in this practice. And then as soon as the song ends, if you're out of your head and into your body, immediately set a timer for three minutes and free right to the prompt. What is true for me now? What is true for me now? And don't let your hand stop moving for the entire three minutes. Allow your body to right through your hand and bring yourself to the edge of your own truth. To paraphrase the great writer Audre Lorde, recognizing the power of the erotic within our lives can give us the energy to pursue genuine change within our world. So I'd like to leave you with this blessing. In spite of life's setbacks, may you always remain in touch with the power of the erotic to keep moving forward.