Why Dancing Can Make You Cry

Dear Dancer,

Dancing, singing, telling stories, stillness, and dreams are birthrights. 

To go further, they are us. 

When we get too far away from our creative, human nature, we feel lost without knowing why. Come back to any one of them, and we might just bawl. 

That’s good. Tears are our soul, leaking out as if to say, "You're back! Thank you for coming home, dancing human.

deborah lange artist

I’ve been walking around with tears right behind my eyes this week. Probably a case of the bittersweets. (Thank you, Susan Cain, author of “Bittersweet”). So, I was probably primed to cry when Donna Mazzola read me a blurb for her dream group.

Bringing Dreams to Life

What are we supposed to do with dreams?

Could DREAMS be yet another way that Divine Mystery whispers to us…shouts to us…loves us?

Could it be that there is yet another sacrament—a way to encounter the Living God?

When I heard, "Could dreams be another sacrament!?" tears welled up. My throat caught. A subtle shift moved all over my body, including my head. My hands went to my eyes. I needed to pause. Missing the movement would've been easy. Slowing down, my thoughts moved at the speed of the experience. I remembered a time I told Donna, "I've got enough weird stuff to deal with during the day. Open to my dream life, too? No thanks.”

Could dreams be yet another sacrament? 

I'd never taken dreams as a sacrament until that movement with Donna. ( I'm curious about replacing the notion of a “moment” with “a movement.” For what are moments but life dancing us?)

Anthropologist Angeles Arrien says the ancestors understood it as soul loss when a person stopped dancing, singing, resting, or telling the truth. It’s human nature to organically dance, drum, pray, sing, gather, and dream together. Today, science reminds us that creative birthrights, weak or strong, are, indeed, mental health pathways. In my soon-to-be-published The Art of Ensoulment Playbook: How to Create from Body and Soul, I dive into the urgent need to reboot our Creative Birthrights with play, whether our favorites or the weaker ones. We need to rebuild the infrastructures of spiritual intelligence that help us commune with Divine Mystery. More than theorizing, I encourage us to play again with creative soul.

Dreaming is one of my weaker birthrights. I don’t give it much practice or attention. Thanks to Donna, my resistance to "dream work" fell away. I woke up and remembered that dreams are a holy sacrament, a rite of Divine Play.

Toward the end of our conversation, I asked Donna, "What was like to write your dream blurb?" "Oh," she said, "the words came straight out." Of course. Her words, born of her soul after many faithful initiations, now dance. She is the dancing word, transmitting the sacred way of dreams to me, body to dancing body.

What sacrament awaits you, dear friend? When were you moved to tears? Saunter over to Penny Hackett-Evans The Sacred Path and read her beautiful post where she notices the power of tears, too.

Are you kinesthetically sensitive? You are in my prayers today. Body-to-body transmissions bear both gifts and challenges. It’s not a disease to be sensitive, although it requires customized initiations and approaches alongside meaningful support for body and soul. Bowing to you, me, and the journey we are on.

If you are new to The Dancing Center, I approach my writing as a kind of correspondence. Letters create intimacy by both bridging and honoring the space between us. I relish your comments and questions. For those who are joining me with paid support for this hand-crafted substack, THANK YOU SO MUCH! I’ll be sharing more personal art and resources in the days to come.