The Year of Liberation… how free are you really?

When I used to think of the word liberation, it brought to my mind images of the feminist movement, women wearing and burning bras… or images of other populations of our society who at have been suppressed and oppressed and have risen to fight for and claim their freedom, their liberation. It always seemed like a word that should be applied to a group of people, not a word I would use to describe myself. And when you look at the definition you could assume that to be true…

But LIBERATION is really a word every woman should be able to say and claim, because from a self-love perspective is means to be FREE to express YOU… a major Madly in Love with ME milestone of self-love. Whether you know it or not, you have your own version of ‘bondage’ that keeps you from liberation — not in the kinky sex kind ladies but in what I call the ‘robes of repression’ kind…  robes that we’ve picked up along the way, robes that tell us to be good girls, stay composed, act like a lady, keep our feelings bottled up, play smaller, not boast, and the list goes on and on. Those robes are heavy and they keep your soul and spirit from being free to express yourself with wild abandon… without the need of a substance to help!

My Liberation AHA!
The sad fact is that most people are trapped inside themselves, dying to get out… NOT liberated. I really got this lesson when I went to my first retreat in California. 25 people over 4 days at an ocean front beach retreat center. There was journaling, talking, going deeper, all that great head and soul searching stuff I was totally cool with. But then at night, there came the dancing. Free form dancing with soulful music, pieces of fabric and total permission to just let loose and not a drop of alcohol in site! Oh how I wished for a glass or two of Pinot just to oil the uptightness my bones had been trained to hold.

The dancing was the kind of exercise where one person at a time gets up and joins the circle when they feel the groove, one by one until the whole room is dancing. Of course you don’t have to participate, and that night I didnt. Not because I didnt want to, but because I couldnt move. My butt was stuck to my chair, no matter how badly inside I wanted to dance. I remember it so vividly, even though it was six years ago. I sat there watching this beautiful 6-foot tall blond English woman named Joanne — who reminds me much of my friend Elayne, also from England, a dancer and a performer at my upcoming Madly in Love with ME event. I sat there watching her move, twist and express her body with total freedom, as if she was one with the music. She was so, so, so LIBERATED! And I sat there memorized by her, wanting to get out of my chair, wanting to express myself that way too, but I couldn’t move. It felt as if I was stuck inside myself crying to get out, but so darn repressed and stiff, scared to let myself move that way in a public arena that wasn’t a dance club. So I remained an observer.

When I got back to my room,  I made a promise to myself  that by the end of the weekend I was going to shed my robes of repression if it killed me! If given the chance again, I would at least get up and dance. And by this same time next year I would be FREE enough to dance like the stunning golden dancer of a woman I had observed.

Here is a picture of what I looked like at the end of that weekend…

And Here is a picture of what I looked like last year at the Madly in Love with ME Self-Luv-apoolza while Elayne, aka as Kalila was performing her Shakti Dancing….

Clearly, I have been liberated!! That night I noticed that while I was now free of all robes of repression, free to move my body and my shakti in all kinds of directions, there were many more women who stood there watching the liberated bunch dance. And it made me sad. It made me sad that in that moment they were unable to let themselves go, to liberate their spirit to move with this powerful music that was calling all of our souls to move. I know that some of women really didnt want to dance, but I also know that there were women in that room who were laden down just as I had been with the robes of repression that stopped them from being free. In that moment,  I decided then that at every Madly in Love with ME event from that day forward, I would do my best to create experiences that gave women permission to throw their robes of repression to the curb and freely and fully express themselves, without the need of our friend Vino.

We will be getting our Shaktis moving on February 13th at the Claremont Resort in Berkeley, CA — I hope you can join us!  http://www.madlyinlovewithme.com/event

And there is no need to wait until then. You know how much I love to take a dare and give them out. SO this week I dare us all to liberate ourselves through the power of dance and moving our bodies to the soul and groove of the energy that flows through us. What does that mean???

DARE:  Get your groove on…. do the liberation dance. You, your body and music that moves your soul. 1x a day let yourself go and dance freely to the music. Can even be one song. Just let yourself go, no repression, only liberation. I’ll be listening to my self-love song sister, India Arie. Look at that face… her spirit and soul are liberated. Now it’s our turn!