It’s here! “The Breakfast Mix,” the first in the series of downloadable audio classes on dance for natural pain relief, is now available for purchase through our online store.

While we make sure that the technical aspects work properly, we’re offering 15% off the purchase price. If you encounter a glitch when downloading the class, please let us know, and we’ll make sure you get it, delivered directly to your email address. If you pre-ordered the class, you can expect it sometime in the coming week, with the goal of getting it to you by the end of this week. Thanks for your interest in the Dancing with Pain method, and be sure to spread the word!

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The deference cost me. One of my most debilitating injuries, in fact, came at the hands of a chiropractor, just a few months after I’d taken my first healing dance steps. Even then, following that traumatic incident, I persisted in turning to doctors, physical therapists, personal trainers, and yoga teachers, in search of the person who could heal me.

“Loolwa,” my mother said repeatedly, “Dance!” But, you know, that was Mom telling me I could heal myself. As far as I was concerned, my healing would come through the hands of a formally-trained healthcare professional. Dance, though effective every single time in reducing or eliminating my pain, was too out there to be real. I chalked up the transformations to coincidence or, at best, I saw dance as a way to get myself well enough to find the real practitioner and start the real healing.

I have asked a number of holistic health practitioners why they think it took me years to trust the reality of my experience, instead of seeing it as a freak occurrence each and every single time it happened. Integrative medicine leader Andrew Weil, MD, replied that American health care “has us all dependent on high-tech solutions” and that as a result, Americans have little confidence in their body’s ability to restore health. Dr. Simon and pain specialist James Dillard, MD, DC, CAc, both responded that we are conditioned to defer to doctors as the ultimate authority figure, and that our deference is exacerbated when we are sick, frightened, and in need of help.

Fortunately my mom persisted in getting me to recognize my self-healing abilities. One day, I was sharing the frustration, the outright desperation, that I was experiencing in looking for a practitioner who could understand and hold the space for all my different needs and philosophies about healing. “Loolwa,” my mom said evenly. “You are the healer you have been seeking. Dance.” Somehow, that time, my mom’s words sank in. And so I began to dance regularly.

Over the next couple of years, a whole-body transformation snuck up on me: Suddenly I would realize I was lifting heavy bags. Or holding several things in my hands, while turning the keys in the door. Or scrubbing the tub. Basic things I had not been able to do for years.

When I first started dancing every day, I regularly woke up with pain levels somewhere between a 7-9, danced the pain down to a 2-3, went to sleep after a pretty good day, then woke up right back where I’d started – in horrific levels of pain. While I was frustrated that the dance effect didn’t seem to stick overnight, I felt grateful to have a tool to get through each day with minimal discomfort. Over the months , however, the intensity of morning pain lessened. And lessened. Until there was hardly any pain. And then no pain.

Drawing from this intuitive and transformational experience, I developed a dance method that organically blends movement, breath work, meditation, cognitive behavioral therapy, and energy work. Most of what I teach in my dance classes came to me during inspired moments of my own healing journey – particularly in my living room dance sessions. (I always dance with a notebook and pen at hand!)

Since teaching others this approach to dance, I have come to learn that it does not discriminate between causes of pain. Students with arthritis, fibromyalgia, complex regional pain syndrome (CRPS), migraines, lupus, degenerative disc disease, poorly-healed injuries, and myofascial pain have reported dramatically increased mobility, significantly lowered pain, or altogether eliminated pain at the end of a one-hour dance session. It is not uncommon to see expressions of shock at the end of a dance class – the same kind of disbelief I myself felt in the early years.

I want to share the unbelievable experience of stepping through a dance portal to spontaneous healing. Not only have informal trials demonstrated that this method has a 96% rate of efficacy, but it also can be done in the comfort of one’s living room or bed. Wearing ratty-tatty PJs. On a really bad hair day. For free. That last part is especially good news for those of us who have burned a big fat hole in our pockets — front-line casualties of our  crazy  healthcare system.

For all these reasons, I launched Dancing with Pain®. Through this company, I am developing a line of natural pain relief products and services – including live and multimedia dance classes, lifestyle management workshops, practitioner training seminars, and inspirational merchandise. My ultimate goal is to create the Dancing with Pain® Institute, providing certification programs for dance method teachers and healthcare practitioners, as well as annual conferences for the chronic pain community – patients and practitioners together, exchanging ideas and knowledge.

I know this dream will take years to achieve. But as I say in my classes: Start where you are, do what you can, and keep on keeping on.

Want to learn how to dance with your pain? Be sure to check out the Dancing with Pain store, for the “Breakfast Mix,” the first in our series of downloadable audio classes.

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Want to learn how to dance with your pain? Be sure to check out the Dancing with Pain store, for the “Breakfast Mix,” the first in our series of downloadable audio classes.

Share with others:

The idea of dance for natural pain relief is, in a nutshell, radically different than that of dance for performance – which is how our culture generally relates to dance. You don’t need a hard body, wicked cute clothes, sex appeal, or moves to write home about. You just need to respond to the music – whether in your pain-free zones in your body (never ever go into your pain zones!) or in your mind (if, you know, your entire body is a pain zone).

Slowly and gently explore your comfort zones. Get curious: How can your shoulder move without pain? Up and down? Side to side? Back and forth? In circular motions? The basic idea is replacing the “pain-pain-pain” soundtrack with a pleasure soundtrack. In essence, we’re reintroducing the idea that movement can be comfortable and a source of joy.

So go ahead: Dance under-cover in your fashion forward BedQuarters, in your ratty-tatty pajamas or buck-naked. Dance in your chair near the computer, while tweeting with your pain buddies. Dance with your kids, your partner (or partners, for you naughty polyamorous types), or your dog. Just dance.

Want to learn how to dance with your pain? Be sure to check out the Dancing with Pain store, for the “Breakfast Mix,” the first in our series of downloadable audio classes.

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Martin Rossman, M.D., a pioneer in the field of mind-body medicine, explained the mystery in terms of cutting-edge neurological research: According to the latest studies, acute pain (the immediate “ow!” sensation we feel after banging a knee into a coffee table) registers in the part of the brain that deals with tissue damage. But chronic pain  (the “ow!” that just keeps on giving) registers in a different part of the brain – the prefrontal cortex and limbic system, which the brain uses for memories.

Once pain has been hanging around for months or years on end, it gets lodged into a neural circuitry. It’s kind of like a pain train: Movement habitually triggers a “pain-pain-pain” response over time, leading to a deeper and deeper groove in the pain train track. In other words, the more we feel pain, the more we feel pain.

When done mindfully and safely, however, dance introduces – get this – a pleasure train track. The more we dance with comfort, ease, and joy, the more all the neurons hop onto the party train and deepen its funky-bass groove, until one day, the pain train files neurological bankruptcy from lack of use.

At least, that’s how I like to think of it. Dance effectively reframes and refocuses the relationship to pain, rebooting the nervous system. The more we dance with pleasure, the more we activate new, healthy neurological pathways. If we sustain a regular, happy dance practice over the long haul, the pain pathways may become slower and less likely to activate, then eventually disappear altogether.

In case that’s not a “brainiac” enough explanation for you, David Simon, MD, a neuroanatomist and medical director of the Chopra Center for Wellbeing, discussed my transformation in terms of physics: According to modern theory, the entire universe is comprised of different vibrational frequencies, or wave forms. If there is distress in one of these wave forms, there is a dissonance in the vibration, which in the body can lead to dis-ease like chronic pain.

As it turns out, Ayurvedic medicine — an ancient holistic system originating in India – was hip to this theory centuries ago. The system teaches that if we introduce a healing vibration, it will set up a resonant effect on whatever is dissonant — thereby providing the memory of harmony, helping the imbalanced state recall its previously balanced state, and restoring health.

Dance packs a vibrational punch, because it embodies both sound and movement wave frequencies. As such, it impacts our entire system – nerves, bones, muscles, fluids, and tissues. Dr. Simon put it this way: “Dancing creates a kind of heartbeat. If it is a resonant heartbeat, it harmonizes every cell in the body.”

If it is a resonant heartbeat. Maybe this resonance factor is why only particular music gets me going full-throttle: My body has to relate to it vibrationally. Repeatedly, I have found that I will be dancing low-key for a while, to various musical styles, when one song comes on that transports me to an altered state – where the music is in the driver’s seat of my body, and I cannot help but fly around my apartment like a woman possessed, pain zones vanished.

Perhaps for that moment, with that particular vibrational frequency flowing through me, my body is restored to harmony and therefore perfect health. Regardless of why dance works, I know for a fact that it does. Over the years, using dance as my primary vehicle for healing, I have gone from living with pain levels generally around an 8 (on the infamous pain scale of 1-10, with 10 being excruciating) and spending a lot of time in bed, to being more or less pain-free and leading a healthy, active life.

And that is something to dance about.

Want to learn how to dance with your pain? Be sure to check out the Dancing with Pain store, for the “Breakfast Mix,” the first in our series of downloadable audio classes.

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So you think you can’t dance? Think again! You can dance if you’ve never danced a day in your life. You can dance if your doctor has looked at you sternly while declaring you physically unfit. You can dance if you have two left feet. Hell, you can dance if you have three. Or none.

You can dance if you’re in a wheelchair or bedridden, obese or waif thin, a sexpot or a prude. (Remember Church Lady?) You can dance in your bed or in your imagination, wearing pajamas or the finest birthday suit. You can dance alone or with friends, indoors or out, to the grooves of hip hop, religious hymns, or punk rock. If you’re the adventurous type, you even can dance to all three at once!

And you can dance with pain. In fact, you can dance to heal pain. Which all goes to say, the only thing standing between dance and you is yourself. So get out of the way! I know, I know, it sounds outlandish. Fanciful. But so did the idea of airplanes, electricity, hygiene, female scholars, and the notion that the earth is round.

If you’ve been living with pain for months or years, chances are you’ve been told there’s nothing you can do. It’s permanent, doctors have said. Learn to live with it. In addition, chances are that to date, you’ve done everything short of chopping off a limb to find a remedy for your pain, at great cost to you and with little or no results, so you’ve skeptical about trying something new. What if it hurts. What if depletes the energy you need to make it to the bathroom.

As someone who suffered from chronic pain and bounced from practitioner to practitioner for well over a decade, I understand and validate your wariness. But here’s the thing: What if it works. It did for me and numerous others who spent years in chronic pain hell, just like you. Are you willing to pass up the opportunity to heal, just because you’re so damn exhausted from trying?

OK Miss Smarty Pants, you reply, let’s assume dance has some healing properties and maybe will work for me. Still, how the heck am I supposed to dance, when I’m strapped to this here bed, doped up on Percoset, Vicodin, and other pretty little pills controlling the side effects of aforementioned meds?

I readily acknowledge that dancing for pain relief is counterintuitive. Pain patients who love dance specifically have stopped dancing because it hurts – as I did for years. Other pain patients have gone to great lengths to avoid any kind of movement at all, so as not to exacerbate pain.

In addition, when we think of dance, we typically think of athletic prowess, stage performance, and romantic courtship. We think of hard bodies, a musical ear, and sex appeal. We don’t think of disheveled people in ratty-tatty pajamas, hobbling around, barely able to function because their nerves are screaming.

So it’s no surprise that when most pain patients are introduced to the idea of dance for pain relief, their initial reaction is, “Oh I can’t dance, because of pain.”

In addition, we are conditioned to think that if the big guns haven’t worked (pharmaceuticals or surgery), then something simple can’t possibly work (dance). What’s more, considering that pain patients typically have endured years of false promises for this cure or that, leaving us with empty pockets and possibly in worse shape than before, we are understandably cynical about trying something new.

For all these reasons, the first step to dancing with pain is addressing psychological resistance to it – dissolving the mental barrier between pain patients and dance. So let’s break this down:

For starters, I validate the hard-earned skepticism that pain patients are apt to feel about yet another method promising a cure. I do not and never will promise a cure through dance. I was promised sure-fire pain-relief cures to the tune of, oh, a brand new house in a nice little neighborhood somewhere. I’m not going to turn around and pull that bullshit on anyone else. I will, however, offer this dance method as another handy tool to add into your sequined chronic pain toolbox, which hopefully has copious amounts of butterflies painted on it.

Maybe it will prove to be your portal to wellness, as it was for me and others. Maybe it simply will offer a distraction from the movies you’ve viewed nine times each, from your BedQuarters screening room.

Regardless, it may be helpful to know that the Dancing with Pain® method was developed by a feisty-ass chronic pain patient (me) healing from her own damn pain (mine). It is tailored to the body, mind, and spirit of pain patients who are fed up with our sickcare system — um, I mean “healthcare” system. It is doable from the comfort of your bed, and once you learn the method, it’s free of charge, becuase you can do it by yourself, for yourself.

And it boasts negligible risk, if any, because you’re the boss in each dance session: There are no “dance moves.” There is no choreography. The dance is simply about finding your comfort zones (even if only in your mind) and optimizing the sense of comfort and pleasure you have in there. For some people, a dance session involves lying on the floor for an hour, doing a little wiggle-jiggle with the wobbly bits. For others, it involves sitting on a chair and visualizing dance in the mind.

Which brings me to my final point about dance: We have limited, conventional notions of dance as performance, but there are historical and contemporary precedents for dance as medicine. Dance is comprehensive and inclusive – something far beyond leaps, twirls, and fancy footwork. It is a primal connection to the creative life force. It is the healing unification of mind, body, and spirit.

Did you know that across America, there are professional dancers who use wheelchairs and prosthetics? I once danced with a group of them, in a summer intensive. My performance partner, another non-professional dancer, had no arms or legs; but she bounced around the room, putting to shame plenty of able-bodied people I’ve seen shaking their groove thang at nightclubs. And if she can dance, so can you.

Want to learn how to dance with your pain? Be sure to check out the Dancing with Pain store, for the “Breakfast Mix,” the first in our series of downloadable audio classes.

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Integrative medicine experts cite the following health benefits of dance:

• stimulates immunity
• tones the nervous system
• releases endorphins that decrease pain
• conditions the heart and respiratory system
• improves cholesterol and blood sugar levels
• amplifies oxygen flow throughout the body
• increases strength and endurance
• promotes a sense of wellbeing and euphoria

A research study in the October, 2009 edition of the Journal of Aging and Physical Activity revealed that regular dancing can improve balance, agility, flexibility, aerobic capacity, and lower-body muscle endurance. It also indicated that dancing may increase lower-body bone and muscle strength, as well as reduce the risk of falls. In addition, in the June 19, 2003 issue of New England Journal of Medicine, the Einstein Aging Study reported that dance not only has a profound impact on the body, but also on the mind — helping prevent Alzheimer’s and other forms of dementia.

“Some of the healthiest elderly people I encounter are those who dance regularly,” affirms integrative medicine specialist Andrew Weil, MD, author of Why Our Health Matters.

Gabrielle Roth, founder of the 5Rhythms freestyle dance method, even credits dance for saving her life from otherwise-fatal, stage-four lung cancer: In freestyle dance, she says, “we’re in the unknown and creating something.” Rather than learning routines and perfecting moves, she says, freestyle dancers practice deep inner listening and spontaneous movement. “As we move in freestyle, our entire being is engaged in this process,” she explains. “Today I’m sitting here cancer-free. I think a lot of the reason is that I was able to listen to my body as it said yes and no. It’s something we learn in freestyle dance…[The dance] was with me as I faced the exit sign and as I had to make life-and-death decisions.”

Those who are ill, elderly, or disabled may think they cannot dance. They can, doctors say, but those with limitations must be judicious about which dance methods they choose. A style like belly dancing, Weil notes, “can be less challenging on the joints.”

“As with any exercise, dance can be overdone,” cautions integrative medicine specialist Martin Rossman, MD, author of the forthcoming book, The Worry Solution.”You need to start slowly and work into increasing levels of exertion…High impact forms can be tough on the feet, knees, and back. Listen to your body, and do a bit less than you’d like,  until you are in shape to do more.

“Consider any previous injuries or limitations in joints or muscles,” Rossman continues, “and make sure the dance you choose doesn’t put inordinate strain there. If you are limited by injury or illness like arthritis, talk to a physical therapist or dance therapist to help you design a program that will help you, not hurt you. Take it slow and listen to your body as you do new movements.”

Lastly, Rossman concludes, “have fun!”

Want to learn how to dance with your pain? Be sure to check out the Dancing with Pain store, for the “Breakfast Mix,” the first in our series of downloadable audio classes.

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The Dancing with Pain® method organically and synergistically blends numerous techniques already known to be effective in natural pain relief — including breath work, meditation, cognitive behavioral therapy, and physical movement. It has proven to offer dramatic results in as little as a one-hour session; it is a technique that is available 24/7, free of charge, once you learn the technique; and it can be done anywhere — even in bed, and even if someone is significantly disabled from physical pain.

Want to learn how to dance with your pain? Be sure to check out the Dancing with Pain store, for the “Breakfast Mix,” the first in our series of downloadable audio classes.

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