Claire Levey Lewis

What I can share as a teacher and facilitator of Biodanza is what I learned and gained from my journey over nearly 20 years. First and foremost a fundamental return to the joy of living. This joy gave me energy likened to the awe and wonder experienced as a child, which seems to disappear as we get older.

Waking up the next morning, with that impulse of life, reawakened from childhood, felt as a deeper sensation within my body.

This sensation I now realise is what I mean when I refer to being ‘present’ – it is a corporeal sensation, felt and experienced deeply in the body.

This connection with the joy of life is always present within us, and what I have learned is that as memory works on a cellular level, so we can ‘forget’ about this primal connection and force of life.

If we are living without the experience of joy, it doesn’t mean that it has disappeared. It has been forgotten and is lying dormant within us ready to be awakened and brought to life again…. to be felt, lived and danced…..our essential link with life that is rooted in joy and celebration.

(This fundamental concept can be challenging to embrace, as we don’t seem to have a culture that puts the joyfulness of living at its heart and root of life. And it was challenging for me initially as I was coming from a background in Psychology, which had trained my mind to look for solutions to problems that were essentially individually based. There was no mention of the need to experience life as something joyful as an essential way of life.)

But I have learned that, over these years, going from student to teacher to director and trainer that it is this deep connection with the essence and root of joy and celebration that has kept me healthy and happy and alive. It is the joyful experience of life, its awakened memory and lived moment, that motivates me and has continually inspired me to share this profoundly beautiful connection with life, with others. This joy comes from being accepted, valued and loved for who I am which is one of the essential aims and effects of the practice of Biodanza.