The Reason Why I Dance...

There is a specific kind of magic that happens when the music starts.

For me, dance isn’t just exercise or a hobby. It is a vanishing act. It’s one of the few places where I can truly stop thinking completely. And I mean anything. The mental clutter, the looping thoughts, the quiet anxieties, even the physical aches, they all dissolve into something softer, something distant. They don’t demand my attention anymore. They simply fall away.

I remember dancing last fall, pushing through a sequence with everything I had. My body was on fire, my breath uneven, but in the best way. The kind of exertion that feels like truth. In the heat of the moment, I felt incredible, almost untouchable. It wasn’t until the music stopped, until the silence rushed back in like a tide, that I realized I had injured my toe. The pain was sharp, immediate, shooting up my foot.

But while I was in the rhythm? I felt nothing but the beat.

Dance doesn’t just distract me from pain. It transforms my relationship to it.

When I dance, I’m no longer just a person moving across the floor. I become an instrument. Something played as much as it plays. My body listens. My body responds. Sometimes I follow the rhythm exactly, letting it guide me like a current. Other times, I drift into the spaces between the notes. The pauses, the breaths, the hidden pockets of silence and create something new. Sometimes that feels less like choreography and more like conversation.

Because that’s what it becomes, a dialogue.

Not just between me and the music, but between me and something deeper.

Like a singer uses their lungs and vocal cords to reach a high note, I use my limbs to express what words cannot hold. There are emotions too layered for language. Grief that doesn’t sit still, joy that feels too big, exhaustion that settles into the bones. Dance gives those things somewhere to go. It gives them motion, shape, release.

And in that release, something sacred begins to unfold.

We often think of spirituality as stillness. Quiet rooms. Folded arms. Whispered prayers. And there is beauty in that, no doubt. But I’ve come to believe that movement can be just as holy.

Because when I dance, I’m not performing. I am surrendering.

There is a moment, somewhere between effort and ease, where control slips away. Where I stop trying to get it right and instead allow myself to be carried. That moment feels like trust. It feels like faith in motion. It feels like saying, “Use me as I am,” without needing to have everything figured out first.

In that space, I don’t feel separate from my Creator. I feel connected threaded into something larger than myself.

Every step becomes a kind of prayer.
Every breath, an offering.
Every drop of sweat, a quiet act of devotion.

I used to think of “vices” as things that pulled us away from who we’re meant to be. But now I wonder if there are also holy vices. Practices that we return to again and again, not out of escape, but out of alignment. Things that center us. That refine us. That bring us back to ourselves and, in doing so, closer to God.

Dance is like that for me.

It is my oasis in the middle of noise. A place where I don’t have to carry everything I’ve been holding. A place where I can set it all down. Not because it no longer matters, but because I trust it will be there when I return. And maybe, when I do return, I’ll be stronger. Or softer. Or simply more able to hold it.

Through dance, I’ve realized that we are not meant to bear our burdens every moment of our lives. There is grace in setting them aside, just briefly. There is healing in letting the body lead when the mind is tired.

Sometimes, the most honest form of praise isn’t spoken.

It’s lived. It’s felt. It’s moved through.

And maybe that’s the real gift. Not that dance takes the pain away, but that it reminds me that I’m more than it. That I can move through it, around it, beyond it. And even in a world that asks us to carry so much, there are still moments where we are allowed to be free.

So when the music starts, I don’t just hear it.

I enter it.

And for a little while, that is everything.

Psalm 30:11-12 ESV

You have turned for me my mourning into dancing; you have loosed my sackcloth and clothed me with gladness, that my glory may sing your praise and not be silent. O Lord my God, I will give thanks to you forever!