StepQuote.

Hi, I'm Toni Bergins

Author of Embody: Feel, heal and transform your life through movement and Creator of JourneyDance

This is how one dance changed my life...

In June 1993, I was in grad school at NYU for a Masters in Education.

I worked my way through school at a public relations firm for Art & Culture and in my spare time I took yoga, dance, improv and comedy classes.

And I was having a hard time because I was dealing with body image issues, disordered eating, self-abuse and severe mental negativity. 

I was conditioned into a perfectionist mindset that meant: I would never be good enough

My self worth was only felt through external approval

Self-hatred ran deep in my family of origin. So, I had grown up with that conditioning

On top of that…

I had become obsessed with exercise and dieting that was preventing me from having deep relationships and maintaining friendships..

My wild emotions frightened me, so I numbed them out. I was drinking, smoking, partying, and (dancing in clubs was my favorite release…)

No one knew what I was going through behind my mask. Underneath I knew I had some serious problems and I needed help. I was stuck in the perfectionist culture of the success train, trying to fit into societal norms and the achievement trap…

I was failing at healthy relationships…

In a search for hope, I began my spiritual quest. I went to many many therapists. And it wasn’t until I met a Gestalt therapist who helped me uncover my childhood trauma and the dysfunction that I was trying to hide with my perfectionism.

To deepen my own healing, I decided to go to Kripalu Center for Yoga & Health for a personal retreat.

It wasn’t until the dance/movement session that I realized just how disconnected from my body I truly had been and how limited I was because of it.

In that monumental moment of my first free form dance I found myself, literally, crying on the floor in a puddle of tears and realizations… I felt self-love for the very first time, and in that I knew I could heal what I thought was brokenness into someone whole! 

Then I experienced how much better life could be. I was hooked.

I never stopped dancing from that moment on….

I found love for my body, a new profound love for what I hated and tried to control, for so many years. I felt my sensations, my sensuality, my whole being, I fell in love with my body and my life. 

I found room for my emotions, my heart, my soul’s expression….on the dance floor…

I knew at that moment that music and movement would be my medicine for reconnecting to my body, this one and only temple that I live in!

And then things all started to fall into place, my life was coming together, I felt like something clicked and I was home and I was whole. That’s when I started studying every type of movement I could, every type of psychodrama, theater, and voice work! Then I started teaching classes.

I entered a deeper understanding into my own healing, and I witnessed others having deep healing experiences of their own.

I owe it all to finding my body on the dance floor for the first time in years. I returned from dissociation to fully inhabit myself…

That’s when I knew I needed to offer this so others could heal like I did…

Imagine if you led one dance that changed the course of someone’s life. Imagine if a phrase you said while dancing like “Listen to the whispers of your heart…what does your heart really need?”, or “You are beautiful, you are amazing, you are enough” opened a new possibility for them and they really heard it for the very first time?