Grateful in Wonderland

This Tuesday night marked a very important day in my life here in Atlanta. The day I reconnected with myself and dance. I debuted my new class BMOVED. The first lyrical class I've taught. I've been wanting to add classes to my schedule but dealing with physical things and emotional things as well as Koru had kept me stuck. Earlier Tuesday I had been rehearsing a dance I'm making for a group of 30 kids in Norcross at a studio called Footnotes. I was there from 1130am til 330 pm then headed back into town. Since late last week I've been worrying about my new class and trying to focus on what people would want, is the warm up good enough, is the music right, is it...should it be...will it... blah blah blah. Then suddenly it was Tuesday. So here was the day that I had been postponing for months, the day that I needed to trust myself, the day I needed to surrender to the universe. I got to the studio to teach my first class Old School Jazz at 6pm, I love this class cause it is the style I learned and loved when I first moved to L.A. I love dancing hard, fast, and with lots of direction changes. In OSJ I have my regular students that come back every week and I am so grateful to see their faces. I know they want to be there and dance. After class I headed to grab something to eat across the parking lot and as I left I glanced at the sign in sheet for BMOVED and there were 11 people...I thought cool that's allot. I got back about 20minutes later and as I walked past the front desk I noticed that the sheet was full (35) and that they had taken it away so no one else could sign in. What? The amount of people didn't really register with me until I got in the room and at that moment I was overwhelmed with gratitude and nervousness. I looked around the room and saw so many faces that I have seen at various stages of my teaching here in Atlanta. Comforting smiles, accepting eyes, open hearts. I was elated. Humbled. I shared a bit of how I was feeling which helped take the edge off, welcomed everyone to the class and then got started. As I was leading the warm up I closed my eyes and trusted. I took deep breaths of gratitude in and exhaled fear. My skin was tingling with the feeling of movement and with the energy of the others in the room moving in harmony. Several times during the warm up I felt my breath get tight as though my lungs were about to burst, I felt the pressure of tears well up to just bellow my tear ducts as though they were waiting to explode forth but a bit too shy to show their true selves. It was at this moment that I knew I was back home in my body. As the class went on I felt more at ease and as we launched into the combination I trusted again, I allowed for what was to be the experience to form without judgement, I saw the dancers absorbing the movement and allowing their emotions to attach to it and extend into the room, I understood as I have my entire life that I am a dancer. It's what I do, it's who I am and will always be.