Before you begin, find a piece of music that you can’t help but want to move to. It can be on the device you are using for this or not — you won’t need to access both at the same time.

When you have what you need, find a place and a way to be. You may find it helpful to be somewhere without distraction, if such a place exists for you. If not, let it be what it is.

In this practice you will be invited to move your body to music of your choosing — and so you may like to be somewhere private, or to be out in the world, depending on your own comfort level. You may wish to begin this sitting, standing, or lying down, or you may wish to keep moving. Remember you can always repeat this practice, listen or read again, in a new place and in a new way.

Begin by bringing your attention to your body — or more specifically, to the fact that you have a body. Using sight and touch and imagination and whatever senses work best for you, bring your attention to the container that is you — to its edges, its insides, its structure, the space it takes up, the space that surrounds it and helps to define it.

Try, in your mind’s eye, to see your whole body
And once you have it, to hold that image
To see it with compassion
And as an easy and maybe even incredible fact of your existence.

And now try if you can, as you hold this easy image of your body in your mind, to think of the song that you have chosen, the one that you can’t help but move to.

And now imagine your body responding to your song — swaying or nodding your head or moving your whole self in relation to it. This image may be kind of blurry or it may be really clear — whatever it is, try to hold it in your mind with compassion. Try to imagine your body moving to this music as an easy and maybe even incredible fact of your existence.

As you hold this image of you moving to music in your mind, try if you can to see it as it is — as an innate instinct that has always been a part of you, a part of your earliest self, a part of who you are even now.

See it not so much as moving, not so much as dancing, but as a way of being in the world
Here in your body
Here in this moment.

This is an invitation to connect with your instinct — to put on music and move.

To consider what movement creates in you and what it might create in others.

To consider what walls come up
And what walls come down
What it is to move alone
What it is to move together.

Give yourself permission to be joyful, to be ridiculous, to be your earliest self — the you that has always known how to dance.

Remember that dance is simply the breath made visible.

If you don’t know where to start, start with your body.

Feel your heart beating.

Your lungs moving.

Your blood flowing.

Feel the energy that is you, alive in your body
Feel the energy that is you, here in this moment.

Begin when you’re ready.