It's amazing how everything in our lives are interconnected. How one element affects others. This isn't really news, as we see it regularly, but when a new connection is made apparent to you, it's like an "Oprah lightbulb moment".
This happened to me when reading the article Find Your Beauty Through Belly Dance by Shemiran Ibrahim. A few days ago I wrote a post on Expression in Dance and I specifically left out the word "sensuality". My reason being it's something I'm still trying to work out how to teach. I see a great lack of sensuality in many people, or some of them have it without knowing it, but ask them to dance sensually and they freeze. It's as if they are afraid of sensuality, or rather they are afraid of their bodies. They don't think they are sensual beings. They don't believe they can be either.
Then I read this from the above mentioned article:
"... there is a deep disconnect between mind and body. A rift that happens from childhood, where sensuality is broken."
Things started to fall into place in my mind and I hope I can articulate it here.
From the moment we are born we are surrounded by messages that we are not good enough. Our bodies aren't perfect, we're not smart enough, or well behaved enough, and therefor not worthy of love. Think about it... if a child misbehaves they are put into timeout, or shouted at, or punished in some way. Immediately, they are being told they are not worthy of their parents love if they aren't "good enough". If you think I'm over-exaggerating, think about it more closely. As adults we feel rejected when our bosses are angry with us because we made a mistake. How about when you have a fight with your partner and they stop talking to you and sleep on the couch, or they stop answering your calls and messages? This feeling of rejection and conditional love message that is sent to us as children starts the process of bad self-image.
As we grow older we are surrounded with images of perfection. Not just of the physical, but also the intellectual (marks on test) and the emotional ("boys don't cry"). Again, we are made to feel we aren't good enough if we don't attain perfection. We end up believing we aren't "good enough" and then, from our early conditioning, that we therefor aren't worth of love, thus we don't love ourselves.
We are made to feel bad and then told not to feel, or if you do, don't show it. According to Sheriman Ibrahim, this bad self-image and self "non-love" causes the disconnection of our body and mind, and "sensuality is broken".
I think that's such a beautiful way of putting it. It's not lost, just broken. You don't need to find it, you need to fix it.
She says that through the use of belly dance, a woman can learn to love her body one part at a time.
"Belly Dancing empowers today’s women and young girls by helping them to fall in love with their bodies and to dispel this myth, this illusion, that having some meat on you is a reason for you not to be loved."
Once you love your body (even just a little bit) you can start enjoying it, connecting with it, and exploring your sensuality.
I think that it can go beyond that as well. If you can learn to love your body, you can also learn to love your mind and spirit. By allowing yourself to feel and accept that it is not a weakness to feel, you will be able to find expression in your dancing. Find your sensual being.
So ultimately, sensuality cannot be taught. The dancer has to fix their own sensuality through healing their body-image and self-worth, and loving themselves. Belly dance provides the perfect medium to facilitate this healing. Your size, shape, ethnicity, hair colour, intelligence quotient, religion ... don't matter. It doesn't matter if you are feeling sad, happy, depressed, anxious, over-excited or neutral. You are accepted for exactly who you are and not according to how many "perfection boxes" you fit into.