Finding grace by dancing with grief

The medicine in music and movement

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At the height of 90s club culture, I was an undergraduate student at Glasgow University and danced all the way to my degree. With uni friends, I went to the Sub Club, the Arches, sometimes the Tunnel for wild nights of house music. With old school friends, I indulged in indie music at Fury Murray’s. And with friends from my weekend retail job, I boogied to disco hits at the Cotton Club. Several times a week. God, how I loved to dance.

When I think back, I don’t know how I funded all that dancing. I was skint. I had a tiny student grant (one of the last 90s kids to receive this), a small student loan, and a Saturday/Sunday job in Razzle Dazzle, a shop that sold cheap clothes, jewellery, shoes, and knick knacks. I earned about £15 a day, so £30 a week. Nightclub entry fees were £5-£10. I lived at home with my parents and commuted to uni as I couldn’t afford rent for a student flat. I ended each academic year deep into my bank overdraft and worked full-time all summer to get my finances back on an even keel. But I always managed to go dancing. Priorities!

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Fast-forward to my mid-30s. I still loved to dance but nightclubs’ shimmer had dulled. I was living in London. A group of us went for a birthday night out in Shoreditch and it was there I broke up with clubbing. I remember leaning against the wall, sipping a drink, looking around, feeling like an alien. I didn’t belong any more: to the people, the music, the clubs, the whole scene. I realised I was in a different phase of my life. I stopped going dancing.

Fast-forward to now, 49 years old.

Widowed at the age of 45, a devastating loss changed my life and left me bereft. In a different universe from dance.

As the grieving years passed and I slowly acclimatised to my loss, I began to understand that moving through grief needed engagement from my whole being: my thoughts, emotions, physicality, energy, spirit, and soul.

I learned that I can’t think my way out of grief. I read every book about it I could lay my hands on, but I can’t move through grief with logic or rational thinking.

I can’t escape grief’s emotional terrain with distraction or numbing. Netflix and wine might take the edge off (and sometimes that edge needs offing), but next morning it’s all still there, waiting to be felt (and now with a hangover).

I can’t move through grief solely from a spiritual perspective. Meditation is important to me, and my spirituality has grown since Andy died, but I can’t use it to dissociate because I must live in this body, on planet earth, in these circumstances.

Slowly, one by one, I built a constellation of things that helped my mind, body, and soul process grief: writing, meditation, coaching and therapy, walking in nature, gardening, yoga, sea swimming, healthy eating, acupuncture, sound baths, dancing, reading, spending time with friends and family, and getting a good night’s sleep.

It’s an annoying list. All clean-living stuff. If someone had handed me this list during the early stages of grief, I’d have torn it up in front of them.

Loss tore my life down to the foundations. I needed time to sit in the rubble, mourning.

Now I am beginning to rebuild, my ‘constellation of things’ are like building materials. Bricks here, a window there, some insulation here, a roof there. Step by step, I’m constructing my new life chapter.

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It was May last year I realised I needed to dance again. I heard about a 5 rhythms class in my town. Crossing the threshold was terrifying. I almost turned and ran at the last minute. I felt self-conscious and scared and clumsy and ridiculously out of place. But somehow I got through the door: a church hall at 1pm on a Sunday afternoon.

I let the music move me, guided by Liz Collier’s¹ wise, kind words and phenomenal music set.

The warm up. Dancing into each part of my body. Plucking up the courage to leave my safe corner at the back of the hall and travel around the space. Receiving and returning smiles from other dancers as I passed them.

And then into the 5 rhythms wave.

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Flowing. My limbs arc and sweep, my body graceful, following the melody’s beauty.

Staccato. Tempo, beat, energy, rhythm rising. My feet stamp, kick, my body turns and leaps, drives across the floor.

Chaos. Raving to the crescendo, spinning, releasing, sweating, dredging my lungs for more breath to dance the fullness of myself.

Lyrical. The grace after the chaos. Held in melody, weaving shapes, grounded and flying all at once.

Stillness. Dancing all the way home to myself, arriving, at peace.

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After two hours of dancing, I feel cleansed and renewed.

My mind is quiet. Thoughts can’t race faster than my dance, so they settle into rest.

I’ve shaken grief, anxiety, anger, and frustration out of my body, been healed by rhythm, met joy on the dance floor.

Serene in mind and body, a meditative lightness lifts my soul.

Each time I dance it’s different. The music meets me where I am and moves me forward a little. Grows me. Heals me.

Multiple scientific studies have proven that dance is good for our health and wellbeing.

Turns out my skint-student-teenage-self had the right priorities all along.

Perhaps dance is a form of prayer.

For sure, it takes me somewhere divine.

If you feel like it, hit play and join me on the dance floor.

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1. Liz Collier is a wonderful 5 rhythms teacher. If you’d like to find out more about her classes across Yorkshire UK, drop her an email on collier.liz@yahoo.com