321. HOW ONE DANCE CLASS SAVED MY LIFE: No Rules, Just Healing

HOW MY PARENTS RAISED ME

Dawn Chitty

Self Help, Self Improvement, Relationships, Personal Journals, Self Esteem, Depression, Healing, Health & Fitness, Women Podcast, Trauma, Emotional Abuse, Ptsd, Mental Health, Anxiety, Childhood Trauma, Narcissistic Mother, Society & Culture

4.8 • 1.7K Ratings

🗓️ 4 November 2024

⏱️ 50 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

By the time Toni Bergins reached grad school, her life felt like chaos. Beneath the surface, she was grappling with the lingering effects of childhood trauma, which manifested in body image struggles, disordered eating, and self-destructive behaviors. She became consumed by exercise and dieting, using alcohol as a coping mechanism. Then, one day, Toni took a dance class—unlike any other. There was no choreography, no rules. As she ran freely around the room, Toni felt like a child again. She broke down, crying, unraveling—but she had loved every moment of it. This was Toni’s introduction to embodied movement—a form of raw, primal dance that encourages women to fully inhabit their bodies and embrace every emotion. Today, embodied movement is helping countless women heal from their trauma.

Toni Bergins is the creator of JourneyDance, a form of embodied movement which is helping women transform their lives. Buy her book Embody: Feel, Heal, and Transform Your Life Through Movement here https://shorturl.at/LCZJr You can find Toni via her website https://journeydance.com/ or look her up on instagram www.instagram.com/journeydanceofficial

Key Takeaways:

Embodied Movement Is Transformative and Healing: This free-form, primal style of movement enables women to fully feel and process their emotions and work through trauma in a physical, embodied way.
How Is Trauma Showing Up For You?: Toni Bergins struggled with body image issues, disordered eating, and self-abuse, all of which were rooted in unresolved childhood trauma.
What Are You Doing To Cope With Underlying Trauma : Exercise obsession, dieting, and alcohol are coping mechanisms, masking the deeper emotional pain.
Movement Can Be a Powerful Tool for Healing: A dance class with no choreography or structure allows us to reconnect with our body and emotions.

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Tags and Categories:

Trauma, Healing Childhood Trauma, Embodied Movement, Disordered Eating, embodied movement

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Transcript

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0:00.0	So I go to this class and I'm just, I literally fall apart.
0:03.1	I fall apart.
0:05.0	I have no idea what I'm doing.
0:06.2	There's no choreography.
0:07.2	So I'm just running around the room.
0:08.8	I'm just like a child and I love it.
0:11.3	And I fall apart.
0:12.3	I just cry.
0:13.7	I think I cried probably for 15 minutes straight just in the corner in that spot.
0:18.8	And that moment, it was just one moment, I said to myself,
0:22.1	I'm never working out again. I'm done being a perfectionist. And I just absorbed myself into
0:27.2	that world.
0:34.3	If you could sit down with your little self and tell her anything at all, what would it be?
0:40.5	Well, now there's no need to imagine because we are about to do just that.
0:45.8	My name is Dawn Chitty and each week I'm sharing the stories of courageous women who are ready to share their past, their triggers and their
0:55.5	trauma on the journey towards becoming their best and truest selves. And this is your safe space
1:02.7	to do the same. And it all begins by starting a conversation with little you.
1:18.3	Music starting a conversation with little you. Hello, my beautiful friends.
1:20.4	Thank you so much for tuning in today.
1:22.7	How's your week going?
1:24.2	Life can be a lot sometimes,
1:26.7	and it's easy to forget to ask ourselves how we're really doing.
	...

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