My Journey to True Intimacy

In April 2014, my mother suddenly passed away.

She was a healthy, 64-year-old woman, successful entrepreneur, happily married, mother of 3, with lots of authentic friendships.

Between the appearance of her first symptoms (light headaches) and her passing away from an aggressive brain cancer, only 4 months passed.

It came as a total shock. The whole family was devastated. I was crushed.

My emotions were completely overwhelming.

A few weeks into the grieving process, a good friend told me that I should integrate my loss within my body. I did not really understand what she meant.

She then brought me to a Biodanza course.

Did you ever hear of Biodanza?

It literally means “the dance of life”

It’s a form of therapy leveraging dance and movement, created in 1965 by a Chilean psychotherapist (Rolando Toro) and is formally defined as a ‘human integration system of organic renewal, of affective re-education, and of re-learning of the life original functions.

In simple terms, it is a practice that aims to rehabilitate intimacy, with oneself and others, through the activation of our innate human potentials.

The 5 ‘human potentials’ that are being activated are:

· Vitality: increasing of joie de vivre

· Sexuality: enhancing of desire and decrease of sexual repression

· Creativity: increasing the ability to express, innovate and build

· Affectivity: creating connections with other people through love, friendship, empathy

· Transcendence: connecting with Nature and a sense of belonging to the universe

Sounds intriguing, no?

But let us go back to my first Biodanza course

My friend and I entered a warm cosy room, with a nice wooden floor and big windows.

There were about 20 people present, roughly between 35 and 60 years old. We did not know anyone. Everybody was bare feet, holding hands in a circle, looking at each other silently and lovingly. Then the music started. We started to dance around as a circle, smiling blissfully to each other,…

“I felt so incredibly uncomfortable!”

My mind was wondering “What the hell am I doing in this place?”

My palms were sweaty, my body was tensed, I was ready to run away.

Different dance exercises were suggested by the facilitator. A new dance exercise, a new fitting music. Dances on our own, dances with a partner, with little groups, with the whole tribe…

I participated to some exercises, to others not.

Although it wasn’t a great experience, I somehow made it through to the end of the class.

Something in my soul resonated with this space and practice. There was an atmosphere of unconditional acceptance and non-judgment in the room which was quite unique.

I did not have any epiphany or emotional breakthrough during that first class, but the Biodanza seed had been planted.

Over the course of the following months, I randomly participated in a few more Biodanza classes. I tried different facilitators, sensed different groups, discovered different locations.

Then I landed into Geraldine’s Biodanza group

Geraldine is an awakened goddess.

She welcomed me in her group and that evening my heart broke open.

Her welcoming presence and unconditional love opened the gates of my heart and tears started flooding…

My tears were of a different quality than the uncontrollable tears I shed when I was under shock of my mother’s death. They were coming from a deeper place, a softer place. They were more organic, less agitated, more healing.

It was clear that I had to start a journey in her group.

Over the 4 following years, I attended Geraldine’s classes almost weekly.

It was a deeply healing, learning and transformational process.

She demonstrated what a true teacher was about. She created a safe environment in which the heart and the spirit could open and blossom freely. She created such a sacred space, transmitted a sense of trust and acted as a compassionate container strong enough to allow old parts of us to die and new ones to be born.

Her presence and class was an extraordinary gift.

Her most amazing gift was her capacity to love unconditionally.

Her love was not personal or romantic. She was simply there, without judgment or expectations, with a clear and joyful presence that invited truth and opening from us in whatever we encountered.

It was probably the first time that I felt so fully and unconditionally loved and accepted, for no reason other than being me.

Over the course of 4 years, I cried more sacred tears than in my whole adult life. I obviously grieved my mother, but it went much further than that:

I started to trust and love my hearts’ depth and capacity to feel
I explored and welcomed the guilt, shame and fear of my inner child
I learned to dive into and listen to my body of joy and my body of grief
I discovered the notion of acceptance and kindness, for myself and others

I learned what it was to give and receive true love, true intimacy.

The Biodanza journey was deeply, deeply intimate.

It was a learning journey to intimacy.

Not the sexual intimacy but the affectionate intimacy.

Intimacy with myself, with others, with Life.

In 2018, I decided to stop Biodanza.

At some point all the hugging, kissing, caressing and loving kindness started to feel a bit too much for me.

I felt like I had grown a lot in my humanity, that I had developed a trusted connection with my heart, and that it was time to explore other horizons.

I still do not know what love is, but I can recognize its energy in my body when it is present now.

Every time my heart is touched by true Love, through sacred relationships or deep inner openings, it feels like a mysterious blessing. It comes with :

some hidden dimension of my soul unfolding
some shift in the relationship with myself and my idea of self-worth
some improvement in my inner work and my leveling up self-awareness
some renewed commitment to compassion, love, and happiness

It is always radically unpredictable and always very humbling.

It is rare and precious.

Recently, my heart was touched again

I made a beautiful encounter with a generous, open-hearted, conscious woman. I was intrigued. We connected. Got to know each other a bit better.

I felt my heart opening.

Then, at a dance event we attended, I surprisingly experienced strong feelings of jealousy and anger at the sight of her dancing with another man.

Those feelings felt unreasonable and out of place so I took some distance to inquire into them. And, of course, you can already guess it, the sacred tears started pouring.

Not just one little stream of tears. Multiple times, deep waves of tears, welling up from my depths, shaking my whole body. As if long-held memories of my soul were being released.

I was grateful to receive those insights, but also realized that I got confused, that I got attached and that I disconnected again from my true open heart.

It reminded me of feelings I had in the beginnings of my Biodanza journey. The fear of coming truly close to another, the fear of feeling love, the fear of feeling betrayed, rejected, hurt,…

When it comes to intimate relationships, there is no hiding possible.

There is either an open, unguarded heart, feeling safe and welcoming or a close, guarded heart, feeling protective and distant.

This meeting made me realize that, even as I have grown on my journey to intimacy, the path ahead is still long.

Living from an open heart and embodying intimacy is a never-ending process.

As life evolves, I need to reopen my heart again and again…and again.

My heart is still longing for true intimacy

Making true human connections at the level of soul and heart.

Meeting humans beyond their physical envelope, sensing their energetic flow.

Embodying intimacy with Life, in the moment. Awakening my heart.

Not only caring about ‘What do I need?’ but caring about ‘What can I give?’

In life, what finally makes us happy is not what we get, but what we can give, what we can give to a community and what we can give to ourselves.

And there is so much that we can give!

We can give attention, loving kindness, compassion, empathy, warmth, care, human connection. We can give honesty, transparency, respect.

We can give presence and support the awakening of the sacred.

What truly will make us happy is the discovery of our capacity to love, to have a loving, free, and wise relationship with all of life.

True intimacy is who we are at Source. It is what our soul deeply longs for.

Underneath all our activities, there is a longing for love, a movement of love.

Therefore, I decided to start Biodanza again.

PS: for those who wonder about the title of the article: emotional vulnerability is the key to great sex. If you want great sex, unlock intimacy with yourself first. 🙂

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This post was previously published on medium.com.

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