Misty Tripoli describes a personal journey of self-discovery and liberation through dance. After periods of over-exertion and physical pain from fitness practices, she began dancing alone in a studio, giving herself permission to move without concern for how it looked. Repeating this practice helped her connect to her authentic self, shift away from moving for others' expectations, and allowed the feeling of liberation to permeate other parts of her life.
Chapters
And through the questioning and sitting and really sitting with myself and contemplating the answers to these and allowing my brain to just mull over them. This voice inside of me as I was altering my consciousness and seeing things differently, it kept saying, misty, you gotta dance. Dance. You gotta dance. And my body was in so much pain because in the fitness world, I was. Like I said I was abusing my body. I just hurt so badly. And so I would go into a studio and I would just put music on, and I gave myself permission to just. And I felt even stupid by myself the first time. First couple times, I had to really, like, why do I feel stupid? This is ridiculous. There's no one in the room. No one's looking at me like, why do I feel? And it's this craziness that happens. But finally I just. It was that same thing with sitting still. I just had to keep repeating it. And the more that I did was like this liberation. I started to connect to my authentic self. I started to realize that even with dance, I was moving for someone else instead of actually going, how does my body want to move? And what makes me feel good? And even if it looks stupid and crazy and wild, who cares? It feels good to me, and that's all that matters. And the more I did that and the more I gave myself permission to really just be authentically myself, even if it was just through dance, that started to permeate through the rest of my life.
