Dancing Into Flow
on courage, sensuality, and boudoir-style pole dancing
Trans people get called courageous a lot.
It’s like the one thing I get honored for more than anything. Sometimes, it’s very touching. Certainly, a privilege of this identity I yield within our strange meritocracy, while so many others’ courage goes unseen.
Still, it is true, courageousness is something I’ve come to know as a tool of my own.
With cowardice having long been my safe haven in times past — still a part of how I routinely operate in unconscious ways — discovering this newfound skill of concerted fearlessness has been a boon to the possibilities which now lie before me in life.
It’s been crucial to becoming myself as a woman. Instrumental to my own personal growth as a human being. The reason I’ve come to find my voice.
Still, courage is not mine.
Just as sadness and sorrow are not a part of who I am — rather — passing phases of emotion which I’ve earned through action. Courage is a reward which has been bestowed upon me.
Knowing it’s not mine, and being grateful for its graces upon my life, is the key to continue receiving it effortlessly.
To take it for granted, is to lose it.
While this gift is something bestowed through action. Often, as with myself, people stumble their way into it. Happy accidents of fate causing them to do something bold and brave which proves to help them grow beyond their comfort zone.
Those moments teach, at least to those who listen, that stepping beyond the boundaries of our fears is rewarding beyond measure.
For us to keep this prize; our newfound courage, is up to us. It’s our own willingness to follow guidance of insight which will steer us true.
Once you’ve experienced this. It’s recognizable.
This special kind of fear. The anxious, exciting, and terrifying feelings which come before great leaps that must be made by force of will, become a signifier of things that need to be done.
Calls from the heart.
We must listen to these intuitions. Lest they stop speaking to us. Finding ourselves moored alone in the shallow seas of doubt and fear.
The voice, once lost, can be hard to find again.
I’ll never let it go. I leap every time.
In these moments, my heart is telling me to do something that needs to be done, which challenges my more limited sense of self.
The reason courage is earned, is because you must make that first leap on your own. You have to get over the hump. It doesn’t come free.
It’s a trust fall. Sometimes, plunging into your own shadows. Illuminating your fears. Showing where you need to grow.
Yet, with trust. Fate catches you every time.
You find yourself more than fine, and reap rewards beyond expectation. You begin to see this is a process to repeat.
It’s the way to live free of all the bullshit fear coding put into us by a system that raised us as consumers of self-hatred. Rats in a maze. Afraid and panicked. Denying our hearts. Eating crumbs from hands of the rich. It’s the way to abundance, to our own dreams. It takes stepping boldly outside of your comfort zone again and again.
The positive reinforcement from just the first few leaps of courage alone will fuel the rest of your path forward.
At least, that’s how it worked for me.
It started with sharing guided meditations that my repressed-ass was terrified to put into the world. I’d even listen to them with big groups of people in person. That was the worst part, for sure.
Having long been a filmmaker who could not stand watching my own movies with other people out of insecurity — also, because they were awful — I had never been able to take the cringe.
It was the same with these meditations at first. I’d put my whole heart into them. Still working at finding my smoothest meditation voice, often slipping into over breathy-ness that I hated. Still, sitting there, listening to this love centered meditation that other people were deeply into. But I’m just tripping through my insecurity and being healed by how broken open it makes my heart feel to not only share this work, but have it truly touching people’s lives.
To be scared to share a meditation with someone who then cries and hugs you and tells you they haven’t felt connected to spirit like that since they were a kid — it teaches you how your fears aren’t always right.
There’s the kind of fear you listen to, that protects you. The let’s avoid that dark alley at two in the morning kind of fear.
Then there are calls to be courageous which are frightening.
Once you see the difference, it’s distinctive.
My journey led through years of sharing these meditations, but not making it publicly known to family and friends.
Eventually, I felt called to make that leap as well — outing myself to all as a spiritual weirdo, because really… who cares.
Later, this healing work led to my gender transition. To coming out. To changing my name socially before the hormones had done fuck-all. To wearing women’s clothes for the first time in public. To shopping for bras the first time. To going back to my old workplace where they’d known me in the before-times.
Every step of a gender transition is one of these leaps. A trust fall into yourself.
As I unpacked all that had been repressed within me. I found something arise which would call me forward to one of my very biggest and proudest leaps.
So, I Was Shroomin’
Full disclosure - I was micro-dosing at the time pretty regularly. But this night I’d fully macro-dosed.
I’d taken like four times the amount of what I’d normally do, which already would be a double dose.
Biggest I’d ever taken, for sure.
In the bath, letting it hit — all of sudden — something in my embodiment shifted. Mind you, this is early transition. I’m just starting. Honestly, I don’t even think I’d begun hormone replacement therapy.
I find myself fully in presence with my body, not mind. My hips are waking up. I’m feeling extra jelly. I just loosen and melt into my body and that tub.
Even before hormones. Embracing femininity meant, in part, embracing my own natural inclination towards embodying sensuality, which in general I’d forsaken.
You see, to move in flowy ways. To bend. Is something which was policed by masculine peers and elders as I was conforming myself to the standards which would help me blend in. I knew, to move freely, would be to show myself.
Melting into this bathtub. Finding myself so entirely comfortable in a way I’ve never been before. I just get the sense; this is a preview of what’s to come. One day, this will be me.
For the longest time I had found havens of sensuality. Naturally, the bedroom with a lover is a place where that comes out.
Always, for my whole life. The only way I could truly exist in the bedroom was in a sensual and feminine capacity. Daphne always peeked out in those times, in her ways.
I remember often, right after lovemaking, thinking on how I wished I could feel the way I did right then — but always. And not regarding the sexual gratification or whatever. The embodied sensuality.
There is no cozier place to me. And it’s something I completely deprived myself of throughout my life.
After that bath, I began to dance. It just came out of me. My hips moving in ways I’d always pined for, but had simply never been able to bring myself to do. Always having been so riddled with self-denial, and crippled by fear.
There I was though, dancing in ways I never knew I could, the flowing movement rising from my body — a wisdom from within.
I leaned into this for some time. Got quite the workout. I was enjoying myself too thoroughly to stop. Getting truly lost in the way my hips were leading me, not the other way around.
At the end of the session, I remember listening to this sad song and crying so incredibly hard. It’s a song which would later speak to other emotions for me. But at that time, was hitting me as a song to myself.
It’s a song of longing and remembrance. And the cry I had was about knowing my true self — who’d been tucked away so very long, and I’d just got to be for a couple hours — would be going away again. That I’d have to earn my way back to her.
To Earn the Way Back
The reason it was to be fought for, this way back. Is because of all the ways I’d coded myself to hide through a lifetime of routine. All the learned behaviors — the repressed ways of living.
As I began and progressed through hormone replacement therapy, I’d start to find more comfort in my body, deeper ability to sink in more fully.
Sometimes I’d try to dance. Following that experience which so called me to embody sensuality more holistically. Finding myself stilted. Uncomfortable and insecure. Unable to release.
This same insecurity would manifest when attempting to sing. I’d always shied away from expressing myself. From smiling in photos. Literally hiding from cameras most of my life. Singing; never. Dancing; of course not.
Always, in the corners of the gym avoiding dance floors.
I would literally go to school dances and only come out for the slow songs. It was the one time I could operate naturally and not be seen.
If I were to move in the ways required for one to dance — to be free and natural in movement — I would not be moving how a boy should. For those faster songs at least, the fun ones.
So, I’d hide and stand there with nerdy boys and feel so out of place I can’t even tell you.
Those slow dances were why I suffered through. Girls would often reveal to me they’d always thought I was cute by asking me to dance. I wouldn’t understand how or why, because I was so involved with my own dysphoria, but those moments were precious.
Even in such gentle sways I could find flow. I could be sensual. I could feel more like myself.
Despite still feeling uncomfortable moving in my body during early transition. I tried. Also seeking experiences romantically which could lead to leaning more into this sensual embodiment so sought.
Being physically affectionate with another, for me, remains the quickest route to finding connection with this sense.
However, facing ups and downs of creating those connections and needing to seek a path towards connecting more into this myself. I decided I’d figure out a way to take some kind of dance class.
This is where the courage comes back in.
It was a podcast; something like that. It talked about a really cool sounding, spiritually centered dance studio. That was pitched in near total darkness, fully focused on pole dance.
It was a place where you could practice without fear of being seen. Leaning into your own body and movement and sensuality.
They spoke about how powerful the practice was for them.
My heart was just like — yes.
Still, that was a seed. It would take until some time later. When I was finding this connection to my feminine sensuality more and more, but feeling the need for a kick-start. When that intuition would come knocking. Some knowing. Time to do this.
Well, fuck, how lucky. I was feeling reckless and empowered at that moment. Years of running in the flow of leaping when I’d felt myself triggered by the emergence of that special kind of fear.
I found a place to do it that weekend.
Go Hard or Go Home
I didn’t realize psilocybin was going to be a thru-line on this one. But I was still working with it at the time, and had remembered the experience it gifted me before.
Frankly, I’d used it purposefully many times in search of that found sensuality. Finding only once after that same level of embodiment with it, enhancing my embodied experience to heights by doing a lot.
So, here, with this opportunity to dance. Such a new experience. Having signed up for a boudoir-style pole dancing workshop, because my heart knew that’s what it really wanted. I decided to take double my regular dose.
Not too crazy, but giving myself real a good go at forging new brain pathways.
I walk in and it’s a room full of the most gorgeous cis women.
They’re all very much dancers.
I’m still shockingly early in my transition to be doing this. About to be rolling on some mushy-pills.
They were very kind. I’m so grateful for that. But it was awkward.
When everyone introduced themselves and said a piece about why they’d come, I was straight with them all. Told them in briefest terms about all of this. My repression. Knowing movement would be a healing part of my journey. Being a complete dance virgin. And feeling excited to find a sensual connection with my body.
I’d helped the awkwardness dissolve significantly with my vulnerability.
Still, I was awful. I’m sure people saw some horrendous things.
It was dark, but it was not dark enough. Certainly not like that place I’d heard mentioned on the podcast.
And I’d chosen — willing and excitedly — boudoir style. Which basically means slutty.
But I’m so into it. You don’t understand how good it feels to me.
For me, to let myself move that way. It takes me to places that I’d only been able to reach with the assistance of others in the past. But for myself. In the flow of movement. Radiating from my hips and within my spine.
Sexy feels good, yo. There’s nothing to be ashamed of.
Still, I feel very lucky to have been rolling so thoroughly on mushrooms by the time this two hour long workshop came to it’s crescendo. Because the teacher taught us to do a little routine. She’d had someone pick a song.
This one…
So, having practiced this whole routine in our own spaces. In a mostly dark room. Myself, praying that no one is watching me as I do my thing. Literal, first time I’ve ever attempted to move this way. Even when I’d moved my hips before, it wasn’t like this. This was arching your back and flipping your hair. Hands everywhere. Grinding on the wall. Doing a spin on the pole and going down to the floor. All with very provocative intents. Yet, the focus on allowing it to be a healing endeavor for the women involved. Not for some gross amusement for others. A chance to have it for ourselves. To own it from the inside out.
Then, she pulled the rug out from under me.
Everyone was to do the routine in front of the crowd. My god.
I’ve blacked this out pretty good.
There were two other people going with me, thank the fucking lord. But I was such a disaster.
We’d practiced a lot. I’d done okay in fits and spirts. I’d not put it all together though. With the pressure, I was extra awful. Thank god for the mushrooms.
I puked outside afterwards.
Probably more of a hydration and spinning related nausea thing to be honest. But the mushrooms and the pressure of it all sure didn’t help.
Even with the disaster final moments. I left feeling pretty great.
I’d cracked something open.
Shake It Loose
Taking this practice home is where the healing really came in.
In the privacy of my own space. With the chance to practice in comfort from other’s eyes. It became a simple task to find myself lost in the flow.
So sought, moments free of mind, of purest presence. To be free of worries. Not in the future or the past. Right there, right now. Feeling your whole body.
To now be able to do that on my own. To pour into it freely. Holy wow.
After some time I went back to that studio and owned it.
That’s probably a stretch, but it was my feeling of the experience. I’d not done exceptionally well or anything. But much, much better. And without self-consciousness.
Granted, this second group was a room of five women that were all newcomers of varying body-types, and the teacher. Much more comfortable.
I swear that first group was a special day. There were other dancing teachers in there. Old friends. They we’re literally honoring this teacher’s first workshop at the studio. I’d crashed some party of super gorgeous dancer women and they’d been so kind. Eternally grateful for that.
Going back was empowering. I brought a friend too. They did it with me and we had a great time.
I still struggle with tightness in my body.
The work is not done for me to get back to that self I had the wonderful preview of with the help of psilocybin.
Now though, I can get there without it.
It takes work. I have to make the time to move. I have to shake it loose. My hips are often stiff. I carry a daughter around who’s getting quite large. I work at a desk and commute like crazy.
Life is not luxurious.
It’s so much easier to crash and sleep than it is to get myself super hydrated and move my ass. But it’s that movement that cracks things open. A feeling in my hips. An energy in my spine.
It’s the creative flow of life, that stuff. It’s what moves me. What inspires me. What brings me into presence. It’s the purest sense of life-force, apart from my heart.
Embracing movement, song, yoga, or any practice that makes you feel deep connection with your body and the moment is a grace. It’s a healing endeavor. And it’s been a key for me to finding my way home into femininity. Each one of these experiences forging a deeper connection.
I still have a ways to go. But I’m dancing my way there now.
I’m home free.
I chose the song we danced to on the second trip :)
