Dance Me Free

On my “Get to Do List” for 2025 is a weekly practice of figure eights. I’d like to eventually turn it into a daily practice for this year and beyond. Why? Because figure eights are so healing!

When I learned about the power of figure eights a few years ago from Dondi and Titanya Dahlin, and their mother Donna Eden (of Eden Method Energy Healing), so much started making sense to me. My awareness of the connectivity of our bodies, minds, spirits, and the universe became so much more heightened. In particular, I had a deeper understanding of why I felt so much more in balance, strength and flow when I was dancing.

Figure eights run rampant in dance, especially the dances I was focusing on. I was using them constantly in my practices, classes and social dancing. I just didn’t even know what a profound impact drilling them into my body’s muscle memory could and did have.

It turns out that figure eights balance out and reconnect the right and left sides of our brain. And since we know that the two hemispheres of the brain correspond to the opposite sides of our bodies, this could work wonders in bridging any disconnects in our bodies that may have become weak from injuries, underuse, misuse, or even disease.

Even though I had been diagnosed with Multiple Sclerosis way back in 2006, there was something that was allowing me to be much more mobile and active than most of my doctors had predicted. I thought maybe it was simply my love for dance that was giving me an excuse to push through and make sure to always keep exercise in my life. I thought that having that passion for dance kept me hopeful and happy.

But years later, I was to learn that actually, it was much more than that. That all those figure eights that dance had me doing repeatedly was helping to solidify and sometimes even heal parts of me that could have otherwise continued to disconnect from disease. That a lot of the joy and lightness I was feeling wasn’t just from my love of the activity, but how these repeated figure eights were helping to restore the wholeness of my body wisdom.

I had no idea that when we come into this world, we move homolaterally. This means that the left and right sides of our bodies are working parallel to each other. The right hand or arm is trying to walk or crawl or move with the right leg and arm, instead of crossing over or using the opposites sides as we usually become accustomed to as we develop.

This is why, as infants, we have trouble coordinating our hands or feet, standing up, or walking. This homolateral way of moving is awkward and cumbersome. We are still learning how to build up to a contralateral, or cross system of movement, which is what we are more familiar with as adults. Moving contralaterally allows our bodies to use our own leverage to balance us out and be able to travel in different directions with more dexterity, speed and ease.

But it takes some time for our bodies to learn this. So we crawl and fumble and waddle our way through our surroundings as infants and children. The parallel or homolateral system doesn’t allow us to recognize the convenience of using the left arm with the right leg, or the left side of our torso to propel the right hip, or our right foot to anchor our counter reach towards the left. But through our falls and getting ourselves back up, we discover more and more how the right arm helps the left leg, and how the left leg can work with the right side of our torso to turn over or pick something up. That the left and right sides of our bodies are meant to work with and help the opposite side.

Eventually, with a natural and healthy development, we begin to move more contralaterally as our bodies strengthen and grow. This cross system or contralateral movement is what allows us to walk, twist, turn and jump without the waddles and falls on our butts that we used to experience as a toddler.

However, if we are exposed to too many toxins, traumas, fears, injuries and viruses, our body can actually resort back to a homolateral system and lose its ability to coordinate and move with ease, even in adulthood. We can go from homolateral in our early years, into contralateral as we develop, but start going back to the homolateral way we used to awkwardly move. This happens if the contralateral system gets overridden by toxicity, stress, or illness. We can end up essentially going backwards in our development.

While the fumbles and falls as a child are often seen as cute and even comical when we are young, as an adult, they can cause a lot of fear and loss of hope, resigning us to think this is just a fate we must succumb to. This way of thinking can take a hold of us as we struggle to go about our daily tasks and do the things that we may have taken for granted in the past. We are told this is part of the aging process, or it’s what’s to be expected from such and such a disease or diagnosis. Instead of finding another solution, or even believing there is one, we stop using those body parts and they do weaken as predicted.

But through the Eden Method teachings, I learned that there is a way out and through these weaknesses, and it can not only be empowering, but enlivening and even fun! By using figure eights to teach the body to coordinate the left and right sides again, we remind our bodies of the contralateral system we were meant to keep developing and strengthening, not losing. This can be done through tracing figure eights over the body parts that are aching or need attention, or even drawing figure eights out on paper. But one one of the best activities to do this without even realizing it is dance!

When I was dancing more regularly, I didn’t know anything about the power of figure eights. But I was doing A LOT of them. Whether they were ochos in tango or kizomba, waves and sways or laterals in zouk, chest or hip eights or even head rolls in bellydance, fusion, hip hop, or house, I was constantly training and retraining my body to work its two sides together in a contralateral system. Even the finger, hand and arm styling classes, and foot embellishment practices I was so fascinated with meant I was repeating figure eights literally right down to my finger tips and toes! I have no doubt now that my body was thanking me.

Doctors had told me what I wouldn’t be able to do with my body or how my life would look in a few years time, especially without their medication. What they didn’t know, and what I didn’t even know at the time, was that there was a whole other kind of natural medicine that the universe was bringing to me- Dance Medicine. And no pills were required. Figure eights were being traced over and over again, throughout my body in dance practise, in social dancing, in dance drills and exercises. And instead of losing coordination, I was building up strength with my ability to coordinate and move because of this.

The two sides of a figure eight can correspond to the two sides of us- the left and right sides of our brains and bodies. And when we exercise both sides, not just physically but mentally and spiritually, we can restore alignment and balance in us that might have been lost over the years. We can even trace figure eights over and on other people to help them heal. This can have huge impacts on our health, happiness, and ability to move through the world with flow and ease.

It’s no coincidence, I’m sure, that the double helix of our DNA is an intricate wave pattern of figure eights winding up and down our spine. It is entwining our left and right sides right down our center, to be able to work together synchronize and form the magic that makes up our unique blueprint. Activities like dancing where we are constantly instilling these figure eights in and around our system with all the different parts of our body, reminds our body of this uniqueness. It is meant to thrive and exist as a whole. It has its own healing properties when we remind it of them. Making and moving in figure eights with our bodies is one of the best ways to do this.

Figure eights are infinity signs on their sides. Like the infinity shape suggests, eights are limitless and can work miracles, especially when we are guided to understand why. Using figure eights in our daily lives, especially through dance practice, can help us tap into our own limitlessness, our own divinity.