Today, I danced for 2 hours straight. Sometimes I just get up and move, and sometimes I'll set specific intentions for my daily dance practice. For example, when I'm struggling with setting boundaries, I'll move in ways that take up a lot of physical space. I'll stomp and feel my own presence. Sometimes my intentions are to slow down and find my softness, especially when I get driven by work and doing too much. Sometimes I dance for a person, or a social cause.
For today's practice, my intentions were to sweat out all the overthinking and overcare that I've been engaging in the past week. I woke up this morning feeling a desire to keep things simple and clean with all that I'm processing in my life right now, realizing I don't need to try so hard for me or anyone else. I just need to be myself :) So I filmed a little bit of my dance session, and put on some high energy house music!
Before dancing, sometimes I'll do Osho's dynamic meditation practice, which I did today. It's basically a combination of intense breathwork, followed by expressive movement and sounds to shake up old, ingrained patterns. Allowing your body to express and release and not hold back, whether it's through shouting, kicking, shaking, crying, laughing. Then, you stop and breathe, finding your stillness. After, you end with a lively dance, celebrating your aliveness. This whole process might look and sound weird, but it's a powerful way to get embodied.
The songs I played were partly inspired by organizing my Photos folder yesterday and coming across this photo below. It brought up a few challenging memories from a time when I became physically unable to listen to electronic music like the ones I danced to today.
It was the summer of 2013. We were at Electric Daisy Carnival, EDC, the largest electronic dance rave in North America. At that time in my life, I was deep into house, dubstep, and psychedelic and heart-uplifting trance music.
My friend had purchased some moonrocks for us (MDMA rock crystals crushed into powder). She assured me it was tested and that it was safe. So I popped them, and came up to the sounds of Tiestö. Everything was going fine. I exchanged candy bracelets with someone. I was feeling really good. At one point, I remember Tiestö going hard on the bass, to the point where the ground literally started vibrating and I couldn't track the melody of the song. I opened my eyes for the first time in what felt like an eternity, and noticed there was a mosh pit going on a few footsteps away from me. All of a sudden, the hard bass shot up my spine in a split second, and then slammed me right in the chest. I couldn't breathe. It was as if my chest was slammed by a huge boulder.
The next time I opened my eyes, I was being carried out of the crowd by someone, people parting like the red sea to make space for me. I had lost consciousness. When we got far enough to sit down somewhere, I couldn't even make sense of anything. I wasn't able to talk or talk, and my whole body was shaking uncontrollably. Blood from accidentally biting my own tongue dripped everywhere. I remember my "friends" arguing about what to do with me. Some of them were trying to talk to me and I couldn't get myself to reply.
So they left me. Later on they would tell me that they feared the risk of getting arrested at the festival if one of the festival authorities noticed me wigging out and decided to search all of us for drugs (which they had plenty of). It felt like a lifetime that I was lying on the ground by myself. Dry heaving, shaking, and bleeding. At one point, a group of guys saw me and tended to me the rest of the night, feeding me water, holding me, and assuring me I was going to be okay. I'm eternally grateful for these humans, wherever they are now.
I didn't realize how traumatizing this event was until after. I remember getting on the plane back to California the next day, feeling as though a stroke was around the corner. I felt constant intense fluctuations between numbness and sharp pins-and-needles that would shoot up my left hand and all the way up my left arm, neck and brain. The nausea and acid reflux made it almost impossible to swallow and eat. I continued to experience these sensations and a whole assortment of horribly uncomfortable things for months after, including short-term memory problems. Perhaps the most challenging part of this was that I processed this experience alone. I didn't know who to turn to and felt guilty and ashamed. The only place that provided some sense of comfort was Reddit, where a handful of people gave helpful advice on how to recover from a bad MDMA experience. Although what I took probably wasn't MDMA.
Due to the isolation I felt from the whole experience, it took me a while to heal. For a few years, I was unable to go to live concerts without getting intense panic attacks from even the most mildest of bass sounds. In seconds, I would literally be transported back to that moment where I wasn't able to walk or breathe. I had chronic digestive issues for years after that.
9 years later, I look back at this with a sense of acceptance and neutrality. What happened at EDC got me to stop using MDMA as a recreational thing (I even used to pop the substance by myself when I would feel stressed). I haven't been to a rave since and don't really have interest in doing so. From my experiences, raves can feel superficial, overly hedonistic, and more party oriented than music oriented. I've had a few friends die from drug overdoses at raves like this.
Now, I live a pretty healthy and conscious lifestyle. I can't imagine my life without live music. And there are countless studies showing how MDMA, in its most pure form, can be a life-saving and therapeutic medicine for those with anxiety, depression, PTSD, etc in safe settings. In the past few years, I've had a few sacred and conscious experiences with pure MDMA where I experienced incredible spiritual insight and transcendence, which has changed my life and my relationships for the better.
Thanks for tuning in, Hive community!
Track ID:
- I Know - Marten Hørger, BIJOU
- Summer 91 - Noizu
- Bones - Omnia, Everything By Electricity
- Waterfall (Vocal Mix) - Miguel Migs, Lisa Shaw
Yes, that's it.
You love dancing as much as I do.
Thanks @donatello! It's fun how both of us post so many dance videos here, haha. It's our art form! I see that there is a weekly dance submission. Since I post my dance videos frequently, I should probably look into it!
2 hours straight is a lot of dancing! Thanks for the window into that: )
What an intense experience you had when you were younger. I'm just glad you got through it.