Top 3 Healing Medicines I Received From Doing Conscious Burlesque
Dancing Elephants Book Project: Health and Wellness
Renting a hotel room so I could perform a Burlesque dance online in front of strangers was way out of my comfort zone. Honestly, it still sounds crazy to me. I did it just a few weeks ago. It’s one of the most profoundly healing and exhilarating experiences of my life.
Being both highly sensitive and a very practical person, I desired to make more sense of my recently reclaimed passion for dance and use it in a practical way that ripples throughout the other aspects of my life. Kellita Maloof’s intensive 12-week online group program called Burlesque from the Inside Out (BIO) called out to me, so I took a leap of faith and tried it.
What Conscious Burlesque Is
I want to clarify what Conscious Burlesque means. A typical Burlesque dance is a performance with some element of stripping and comical humor involved. A Conscious Burlesque act is created as a soulful way of coming home to the body, both by the performer and her audience. As the performer removes layers of her clothing, she’s also using it as a metaphor for revealing more of her radiant essence consciously.
This is why Kellita Maloof is lovingly known as “The Mr. Rogers of Burlesque”. She introduced to me how Burlesque can be created and performed as a soulful practice.
5 other highly sensitive women joined me in this 12-week intensive program that started in early February 2022. We spent 9 three-hour weekly sessions together, each creating and eventually performing our Burlesque solos in the 10th week. Each of us received a private session with Kellita to fine-tune our solo acts too.
Our audience consists of other soulful women who have taken at least one of Kellita’s group workshops to practice seeing and being seen. After the show, we had two weeks of processing and integrating all our experiences, and gathered together online again for a final closing party.
There were so many profound insights and healing shifts I’ve experienced in my life as a result of taking this program. I’d love to share with you my top 3 healing medicines that I received from doing this Conscious Burlesque program.
#1 The Healing Medicine of Loving Self-Touch and Undressing
It was all very sensual at the beginning.
I regressed to my childhood years when it was always a jubilant occasion to get naked at bath time. Those were the times when I don’t try to keep thinking incessantly and mistake that for living fully.
Doing a Burlesque solo is different from doing a pure dance solo. There’s the act of undressing in front of my online audience, which initially felt quite awkward and uncomfortable to me.
Kellita lovingly reminded us that we can choose how much of our skin we want to reveal. In this conscious form of Burlesque, we focus more on the act of revealing, rather than the amount of skin we reveal towards the end of the solo act. I was the most conservative performer, as my final reveal was simply a baby blue sports bra and short biker shorts, dressed up with some shocking pink sequins.
Touching my face and parts of my body intentionally, slowly, and lovingly helped to ground myself when I was removing layers of my clothing. I witnessed my fellow course mates touch their bodies intentionally, I felt similar sensations of being touched in my own body too. Once I allowed myself to feel through the initial sensual sensations, I was so surprised they made me feel intensely alive in a non-sexual way.
It was the feeling of my body rejoicing in being fully alive. This rejoicing made me feel safer and more grounded in revealing layers of my clothing. I wasn’t trying to seduce anyone. I was trying to feel free, without the restriction of clothing. Touching our skin is so different from touching our fully clothed bodies. Sensations are heightened when we touch our bare skin.
I regressed to my childhood years when it was always a jubilant occasion to get naked at bath time. Those were the times when I don’t try to keep thinking incessantly and mistake that for living fully.
As I rejoiced in my nakedness and touch my skin lovingly, I instantly become much more present. My mind becomes quieter and I embrace my animal instincts more.
It feels easier to not overthink and to trust my instincts and intuition more.
#2 The Healing Medicine of Stillness
I love the thrill of doing fast and powerful dance moves. When I first freestyled to my chosen song — Utada Hikaru’s First Love, I filled the entire song with mostly fast moves with very few pauses. It was so tiring, yet I didn’t know how to slow it down.
One of my course mates moved so slowly and intentionally in her solo, that I felt immediately captivated by it. There was a point in her song when she was just removing her ponytail hair tie so slowly while still looking at us confidently through the screen. It was powerful to witness.
I reflected on my discomfort in moving slowly or even just pausing. A big AHA insight came to me — I didn’t like to slow down because I felt powerless and extremely ordinary. I was too used to feeling powerful and beautiful through doing fast movements that tend to somehow ‘hide’ my body at the same time too. If I were to not move at all, I would imagine subjecting my entire body to harsh scrutiny by the audience. Yet, when I’m back home at the end of each day, I would collapse on my bed and binge-watch Netflix. I felt stagnant and bloated when I did that.
Kellita shared with us that being still is a type of movement medicine too. After we have done some dynamic movement and we pause or move slowly, while still allowing ourselves to breathe fully, this stillness allows us to process and integrate our previous movements. We are also allowing our audience more time to process what they felt from those earlier movements too.
Stillness is a quiet power that I need more in my life. I added pockets of slower movements in my solo for me to breathe through more deeply. And in doing so, I feel more confident to be myself without needing to do anything much. Similarly, in my life, I learned to replace my pockets of stagnant rest with more restorative stillness.
I feel much less of a need to appear busy, knowing that it doesn’t serve anyone at all.
#3 The Healing Medicine of Always Receiving Even As I Give
Before we start this intensive 12-week BIO program, we were asked to choose and share 3 main intentions each of us want to embody throughout this program, and in our solos.
My chosen intentions were — Softness, Longing, and Kickassery.
I tend to swing between extremes of being soft and dynamic, so I wanted to embrace my polarities. I also wanted to give myself more permission to have desires.
In order to embody these intentions in my solo, I had to feel these intentions and show them through my facial expressions and movements. Throughout this BIO program, I noticed that the more I feel myself as I moved, the more I could radiate the same energies to my audience.
This felt so different from the way I usually performed when I danced on stage in my early twenties. In the past, I learned to numb my emotions and put in all my energy to impress the audience. I would smile widely but not feel the joy of that smile. After each show, I would feel exhausted yet pumped with adrenaline, but I didn’t feel connected to my body.
During the actual Burlesque showcase, I felt so much more at home in my body and connected to my audience. The supportive energy of appreciation, connection, and celebration that radiated throughout this show helped me continue to receive from both my audience and myself as I performed.
I’ve been translating this incredible insight into my relationship with work, exercise, and parenting. The more I feel through and enjoy my sessions with my clients, my dance workouts, and the caregiving of my kids, the more energized I feel to keep going.
Work doesn’t have to feel like a sacrifice. I can receive even as I work to benefit others. This feels so much more sustainable for me.
The Big Reveal
I feel so grateful that my road to health and wellness is not about doing the right exercises, eating the right foods, and being disciplined enough to adhere to my routines consistently.
It truly is about allowing myself to connect more deeply with my body, giving myself time and space for more stillness in my life, and receiving as I give to my audience, clients, and my family. It is about choosing to still reveal my radiant essence throughout the ups and downs of my life.
As I shift the energetic relationship with my life, it feels so much easier for me to thrive and help others in a fulfilling manner.
References:
A big thank you to and editors Lady Dr. Gabriella Korosi, Sharing Randomly, Vidya Sury, Collecting Smiles for the prompt and opportunity :)
