| Dance and movement offer a doorway into our ancestors’ ways of knowing. To their relationship with the land, the sacred, and the web of life. Through the body, we remember.From a somatic and scientific lens, this remembering is connected to something called mirror neurons. Specialized brain cells that activate both when we perform an action and when we observe someone else doing it. These neurons help us feel with others, learn through movement, and develop empathy.Over time, this mirroring ability became essential for human connection, communication, and culture passed down through generations as part of our evolutionary and relational inheritance. Some researchers believe these neural patterns are ancient and hardwired; others see them as shaped by experience and environment. Most agree it’s both our biology and our lived experience working together.In the context of ancestral and somatic healing, mirror neurons remind us that what we feel, move, and embody is not only personal but it is also relational and ancestral. Through dance and mindful movement, we can activate these pathways of empathy and remembrance tuning into the rememberance of gestures, rhythms, and emotional patterns that have traveled through generations.When we move, we don’t just move ourselves we also move with those who came before us.Our bodies remember. Our bones know. |
| Dance & Reflection Prompt This month, as we honour remembrance and ancestral connection, I invite you to explore how movement can become a bridge between body and lineage. Our ancestors don’t only live in our stories they live in our gestures, our breath, our bones. Through mindful movement, we can listen to what they share with us through sensation. Practice: Begin by standing or sitting quietly. Take a few slow breaths and sense your spine, this is your inner axis, your ancestral line. Let your body begin to intuitively move, allow gestures, rhythms, or small repetitive movements to emerge even if they feel unfamiliar. Trust your body’s impulse. optional music to move to https://open.spotify.com/track/5zbqZZMOnCbsAkQnnBMdCG?si=b2e88beedd124c8b https://open.spotify.com/track/7kZ1ZKDu8grHd3XVrRKpIL?si=2b0498ecdac14aae After moving for a few minutes, pause and journal: What sensations or emotions arose as you moved? Did any movement feel familiar, of something you’ve known before? If this movement belonged to an ancestor, what might they want you to understand through it? This simple practice awakens embodied memory a conversation between your nervous system and your lineage inviting healing, empathy, and remembrance through motion. Remember: your body is a living archive, carrying stories that long to be witnessed, honoured, and set free. Upcoming Offering Join the upcoming What Your Bones Know: Ancestral Healing Circle on Nov 29th from 5-6:30pm happening in person in Toronto or book a 1-1 somatic/dance healing session here. A few spots remain for our in person group circle, I look forward to sharing this time with you, Liz |