Moving Meditations: Dragon Medicine, and Why I Dance

By Juliann Taube

I dance because I have to.  I am a dancer.  I was born a dancer.  I filter my experience through that lens, and I express myself though movement.

My family are all different from each other.  But each one of them has something.  They ARE something. And they filter their experience through that lens.  They express themselves differently because of what they are and what their “thing” is.

But we are still family.  We have a shared existence and a shared experience, with different filters, and different outcomes.  Each one of us has something that we do because we have to. 

I dance.  I am happy and I dance.  I am angry and I dance.  I am grieving and I dance. 
I am alive and I dance. 

I had a very difficult phone conversation with my Dad, the result of which has altered our family’s dynamic in such a way that the future of our family as a unit is uncertain.  I hung up the phone.  I cried.  And then I danced Dragon.  In my living room.  Crying.  Living.  Sensing. Dancing my life, my experience, my tears.  I filtered my emotions through dance.  I danced my life with Dragon and it all came to the surface.  My legacy, my family, my experience blended with Britta’s life and her experience that lead to her body of work, Dragon.  The result was perfect and transcendent and something new altogether.

What do you filter your life through?  What makes sense to you when other things don’t?  What have you discovered and what have you made when you came from your truth, your dance, your very own “thing?”