Episode 23 - Megan Sims: Movement Medicine That Works

Connection is her North Star, wholeness her mission in life. Meet Megan Sims, the force behind the Me/Again Medicine Show– a transformative journey designed to help you explore your inner riches, unlock creative flow and release stress from your body. With an organic synthesis of Nia, https://nianow.com, InterPlay, https://nianow.com, and Eden Energy Medicine, https://edenenergymedicine.com, Megan gently guides you back to the heart of yourself. In the realm of Movement, Imagination, and Community Connection, Megan-- playfully known as Me/Again-- brings a unique blend of magic to the healing arts. With a BFA in Dance, an MA in Counseling, a Black Belt in the Nia technique and 30 years of teaching experience, Megan creates a safe space to reclaim wholeness while also experiencing joy, liberation, and unity.

https://meagaindance.com

Magazine Article

Transcript

Welcome And The Show Mission

Speaker 1 0:00

Hello everyone and welcome to Hyp Talks. I'm your host, Katherine Hinchey. I'm a certified hypnotherapist, NLP practitioner, and SHRM Senior Certified Professional in Human Resources. After spending a decade working in the music industry, my path led me into the world of the healing arts, where science, energy, mindset, and transformation all meet. Each week, I sit down with a different healing practitioner to explore the many powerful modalities available to support our growth, well-being, and personal evolution. So come with me on this journey of discovery and learn about all the opportunities for healing and transformation that are available to all of us. I am your host, Katherine Hinchy, and Connection is her North Star, wholeness, her mission in life. And my guest today is Megan Sims, the force behind the Me- Again Medicine Show, a transformative journey designed to help you explore your inner riches, unlock creative flow, and release stress from your body. With an organic synthesis of Nia Interplay and Eden Energy Medicine, Megan gently guides you back to the heart of yourself. In the realm of movement, imagination, and community connection, Megan, playfully known as Mia, brings a unique blend of magic to the healing arts. With a BFA in dance, an MA in counseling, a black belt in the Mia technique, and 30 years of teaching experience, Miga creates a safe space to reclaim wholeness while also experiencing joy, liberation, and unity. Welcome, Mia. I'm so glad to have you here.

Speaker 2 2:26

Oh, thank you, Katherine. I'm so excited to have this conversation.

Speaker 1 2:30

I am too. I've been waiting to talk to you for a while and I have lots and lots of questions, but let's start. Tell us about what part of the healing world. I mean, your bio speaks for

Meet Megan Sims And Her Method

Speaker 1 2:41

itself, of course, but tell us about what part of the healing world you're working in and how you're changing lives.

Speaker 2 2:46

Yeah, well, I have always loved to dance. And I would say that that is the first ingredient, the first and most important ingredient. I was one of those kids that danced around the living room. I danced around a Michael Jackson, Madonna, whatever. My grandpa actually used to play Beethoven on his phonograph, and I would do this big symphonic dance. And so dance is the first and foremost ingredient to my healing modalities. But as I have gone through teaching and learning and taking workshops and exploring life, I've woven in many other healing tools. So the first thing that happened was that I learned the NIA technique. And Nia is the OG holistic dance exercise. So it's an hour of cardio dance, and yeah, it's so much more. It's grounded in the martial arts, the healing arts, and the dance arts. And it's done so that everybody can move their body's way. And the first principle of Nia is the joy of movement, which means that no matter what the teacher is doing, you are responsible to choose joy in each moment. So you move your body's way that feels joy. And this has been a guiding principle in my life. Um, because you know, life is a dance, yada yada, like you know, all the metaphors, but it really is, you know, movement is life. And so I think that it's really coming out in science and in society that we need to move to be healthy and we need to move to be happy. Um, so you'll see little kids, they all dance so naturally, they dance when they eat something really yummy, they dance in the playground, they dance everywhere, and then we learn to be self-conscious and we don't want to look dumb or we we don't want to look bad or we don't want to misbehave. So we learn to be still. So dance is the major ingredient of my healing techniques, but I also use play. Um, interplay is the best way to actively creatively unlock the wisdom of your body, and that's a whole technique you can find online. Improvise, you know, we all improvise anyway. We're improvising this conversation, we improvise how we go through our day, but it's pretty structured. We got to make the money, we gotta, you know, pay rent and get food on the table. So we have a lot of structure, and yet play is really the language of the universe. When we're playing and having fun, we're very open to discovering. And when we really discover, then the genius is at work, you know, like Einstein loved to play. Einstein is this revered scientist, but no scientists actually act like Einstein. Well, I shouldn't say no, I should say the more majority I hear about. He would just play in his imagination all day, and he would do these thought experiments. He'd be like, What if I was an elevator at the speed of light? Yada yada. So um, play is really great for us in so many ways. And then the energy medicine is the third piece. And of these three main ingredients, there are other ingredients, you know, but there are three major ones, and then little strands of nonviolent communication, Ayurveda, other wisdom traditions that I learned just get woven in. But the third piece, besides Nia and Interplay, is Eden Energy Medicine. And that's just a way to do simple movements that help regulate our nervous systems. And that's the piece that I'm excited about, especially when we get to talking about the kids program that I'm developing, because um, it's such an easy tool, and we could really all be healing ourselves every day from the stress we go through.

Speaker 1 6:37

Wow. Okay, that is so cool. I'm so curious about what that looks like. We'll get into that in just a minute. But first, can you you so you you were always into dance, and that's where it started. But what made you want to make this your life's work and to teach?

Speaker 2 6:55

I love that question because it really is one of those stories that so many of us have where we had to heal ourselves and then in discovering how to heal ourselves, or I should speak myself, when I learned how to heal myself, then that just naturally unfolded into my career. So I was one of many people. We now have this name neurodivergent. I think that's a great start. I think we're gonna get to a way beyond that where it's like there really is no normal, but you know, we're on our path. So that's you know, not too far in the future. But, you know, I had ADD or what is called ADD. Um, it's actually an abundance of attention. There's no deficit, it's just really the school culture that really sort of hampers your ability to play with your natural imagination and genius and brilliance. Again, that's another story. And we all know these social structures really inhibit our natural tendencies. So that's a whole nother podcast. But um, so I have ADD, what's called ADD, and even a mood disorder, bipolar disorder for a very short time. And I was dealing with depression from early teenagehood,

How Dance Became Her Medicine

Speaker 2 8:09

and I was what what I think that is now is I was just disconnected from my spirit. You know, um, I think a lot of mental health is actually people in their early 20s having been disconnected from their spirit for too many years. And it starts to lock in in the early 20s, and that's where you see the mental and mood disorders coming out. So I had to go through a lot of healing. I did have a therapist and um I did even go on medication for the bipolar, but I needed dance to heal. I needed dance, I needed to move, and I needed to move to feel better. I needed to move to have energy, I needed to dance to express myself, and I needed to dance to discover how I was feeling. And that's one of the beautiful things about dance and movement is that it helps us know what we're feeling because we're so in our heads that we can think ourselves into total craziness, like you know, politics and all these horrible things going on. You can really think yourself into really mistaken and misguided conceptions of what is real and what is right, but the body doesn't lie, the body will tell you how you're feeling. And so um, I had to use dance to heal. And um, after working all these, you know, food service jobs, I finally took the plunge. I think I got fired from Whole Foods. And it's so funny, I did the I Ching that day and it said something like, I was like, should I quit Whole Foods? And it's like, just wait, and I got fired that day. Oh boy. And um, for being late to like a 6 a.m. meeting with my like one and a half-year-old toddler, I got fired, and it was the best thing ever happened to me because I started teaching dance and I started at the local rec center, I started teaching the little kids, and I worked my way up. And that's when I was teaching at the Y, I discovered Nia. When Nia came into my life, it was like a door opening, and through that door were a thousand more doors. You know, sometimes the big door opens and you can feel it, and everything conspired for me to teach Nia. I still remember the phone call I got from Beverly Drum, this British woman. I was driving down Liberty Street, downtown Ann Arbor, and I got this call, and she's like, I'm Beverly, and I'm gonna dance in the Super Bowl halftime show. And I'm I do a terrible British accent, so I will I will discontinue that. But I could hear through the phone a like a wormhole of opening. Like I could feel something was going on. I'm like, what is going on with this phone call? Like I can feel a door opening. So I took her Nia class so I could sub her class so she could be in the Super Bowl halftime show. And when I took my first Nia class, I could not believe that someone else created Nia because it was so me. It was so mean. I felt so much like me again, which is why it's that moniker. When I dance, I feel like myself again, like my real self. And that's what I like to do with dance for other people. I know how to hold space so that people who don't think they can dance or don't know how to dance or were taught they were bad at dancing can dance and feel safe and feel like their true selves again. So that Nia door opened, and from there, so many other doors open.

Speaker 1 11:37

That's wonderful. And how about people who are limited in their ability to actually move their bodies? Can they do this type of work?

Speaker 2 11:49

That's a wonderful question. And yes, absolutely. We can even someone who is completely paralyzed can dance in their imagination. So a wonderful thing about interplay, which is another great technique I found, is that it's very much um a it's very much accessible to all bodies. And through interplay, I've learned a lot about how many different ways there are to teach movement to people of different abilities or disabilities, some might say. And so I actually, my day job, my the job I do more often than any other class that I teach is teaching elders in assisted living homes dance exercise in their chairs, in their wheelchairs. So we'll dance seated, um, and we'll use our legs, but even if you can't use your legs, you can use any part of your body that's available. And if you can't even move your body except blink your eye eyelids, you can do that, or you can imagine yourself dancing because our imagination is connected to a reality energetically. So um I've worked with

Movement For Elders And All Bodies

Speaker 2 12:59

people who are in wheelchairs, or I've worked with many uh on a big spectrum of abilities, people who have chronic pain, you know, they have this invisible illness, and it's so tough on them because they look quote unquote normal, but they're in pain all the time. And so they have to pick and choose what they do. I have this um dance protege, Heather Bennet, who made a movie called Pain Raise Me about that, and she is a dancer too, and she actually did a performance where she was lying down in a bed and she did her performance on that cot on stage. So absolutely um, people of any ability, any range of abilities can dance, young, old, um, in a wheelchair, standing, and I can even have people in the same class um of different abilities do their thing.

unknown 13:49

Yeah.

Speaker 2 13:50

So what does that look like? Well, there's a lot of different things I teach. So, for example, an assisted living home will do a 45-minute hour-long class in the chairs, and I'll use a lot of great music like the Beatles, like Motown, classical music. And some of us will there'll be a couple songs where you have the choice if you want to stand, you can stand up. Some places I even have a ballet bar we can hold on. But some people are standing and some people are seated, and so it's really just you know, I've been teaching for 30 years, and so, like anything, when you get a lot of practice, you get better and you can hold better space so that I can be talking to people seated, talking to people standing, um, people who can barely move, they're kind of just swaying side to side or moving their fingers. But I also lead um retreats where we might be doing a class with. So very recently I led a retreat called All the Colors of Your Soul. And it's at this wonderful retreat center, Earthwell Retreat Center in Manchester, Michigan. A beautiful place with a pond and it's so much beautiful nature. And we did NIA interplay energy medicine, but I'll tell you, like, for example, what a session could look like that uses so many different arts. So in the evening, after doing some NIA outdoors and interplay mixed together, we did what we call MDM3. So you meditate, dance, make. So it's three minutes of seated meditation. You can do it any way you want, eyes closed, eyes open. We give some structure around that. And then six minutes of gentle movement where you can be seated, lying down, or standing, and you're not really, you know, wisping around the room. You're kind of in your own space, moving gently. So your body can bring up what's really inside of you, because that's what the body can do through dance. And then nine minutes of watercolor. And you just put color on the page, you don't know

Retreat Flow Meditate Dance Make

Speaker 2 15:58

how you don't have to know how to paint. We've been really taught in America, everything's connected to money, to profit, to expertise, and we've lost our sense of real culture, of play, of just doing things for joy and connection. So we have to relearn that, and that's part of what I do. So we just said put color on page and just follow your joy and delight. It doesn't have to look like any kind of thing. Then we go back to three minutes of meditation, six minutes of gentle movement. Then the next nine-minute making period was words on the page. So just put words on a page. Is it poetry? Is it prose? It doesn't matter. It's just coming from you. You're just getting information. It's an exploration, right? Third time, three-minute meditation. Then people are really in their bodies, they're really in their selves, they're really in their energy, their spirit, they're grounded. Six minutes, gentle movement, nine minutes, choose what you want to make. Do you want to color? Do you want to paint? Do you want to write? And after that, you know, just shivasana with a sound bath. And it's just so many layers of bullshit just peeled away. And what you're left with is you, you know, so much closer to you. And for some people, maybe that sounds terrifying. Like, I don't want to know what's under air. I'm terrified. But it's all right because you know what's in the middle of you? Light, love. You know, it's there's nothing too darkened or dirty or damaged or broken, no matter what at the center of you is beautiful. So yeah, it's it's just there's so many different ways. And I've just been exploring a lot of different modalities and how to layer them and weave them. And now that I'm, you know, at my stage of my career, I've become an expert. So I really know what I'm doing, you know, and I'm really, you know, the first thing is do no harm. So you have to really make sure you can hold that space. Um, and I still have yet to do get trauma-informed training, which is gonna happen this summer, so that I can really go forth and and explore more people, more populations.

Speaker 1 18:20

Okay, go back for a second and explain to our listeners who might not know Shivasana and Sound Bath.

Speaker 2 18:26

Oh, okay. Yeah, so Shivasana is a really the best part of yoga where you get to lie down because right in our culture, we're just go, go, go nonstop. And shivasana is when you lie, it's called corpse pose. So you just lie down like you're dead, you know, no life, no movement except your breath. And you, your body gets to process and absorb and synthesize all the stretching, all the breathing, all the twisting, and all the mobilizing and all the aligning you've done and get to just let it settle. It's like let the paint dry, you know, is how um one, I think it was a chiropractor is like, I was like, Can I work out? He's like, No, let the paint dry. You know what I mean? Like, let it settle. And that's one thing I think yoga we think of as exercise, but of course it's it's connected to this whole system of Ayurveda, the science of life, where it's really about the whole person. So when we stretch and we breathe and we become mindful, then we have to be still and just let it settle. And that's something we can really learn. And I'm a fast switch person, so I'm continually trying

Shavasana And Sound Bath Basics

Speaker 2 19:40

to learn that you know, stillness is tough for me. I'm a mover.

Speaker 1 19:45

That's something that I guide my clients in a lot, especially in this day and age when everybody is so has so much pressure to perform and produce. Yeah, I'm often telling my clients this week, I want you to spend 15 minutes a day laying there and doing nothing. No, don't read, don't read, don't stretch, don't multitask, just do nothing, be still, right? And it's so hard.

Speaker 2 20:13

It's so hard. It's hard. It's it's good to have someone to tell you to do it like a prescription. I've heard now that doctors are giving prescriptions for forest bathing, which means go outside and sit there. Yes, you know, we have a name for it, which is great. Whatever it takes, you know. Love it, whatever it takes.

Speaker 1 20:31

Okay, and then for those who don't know, sound bath. Oh, sound bath. Yeah, yes, tell people what that is.

Speaker 2 20:38

It's wonderful. Um, it's well, I actually I'm not too much of an expert in this, but my experience of sound bath is um is an artist gets certified in creating sound for you in a number of ways, and you just receive it. And it's the experience of receiving it in stillness and the vibrations, a certain vibration of music. So I would say, you know, going to a symphony orchestra performance is a form of a sound bath. But in terms of the way I'm using it, it's at a retreat where someone has, for example, crystal bowls, where each crystal bowl is tuned to be a certain number of hertz that tends to vibrate in our bodies in a way that feels really good and healing. Um, there's um, oh, I'm gonna get myself in trouble with some fact finders. The Schumann resident resonance, which is the resonance of the earth, I believe is 432 hertz. I don't exactly know the science, but I just intuitively get it, you know. Um, like we everything is vibration that's been established in our universe. We sort of forget because everything looks so solid, like our forms look so solid, but it's all vibrating, it's all vibrations layered into form. And so um, when we hear certain vibrations, Vibrations, it can bring us back into balance, especially by relating and interfacing with our chakra centers. And our chakras are a whole thing I won't get into, but but they're important. So I would say go look up chakra and what that means. But we have these energy vortices that help us interface and relate with everything outside of us and everything inside of us. And they manage that. And it's important that they're healthy. And I would say our first layer of illness happens when our chakras get kind of stuck. Um, so it's really important we can really preemptively keep ourselves healthy with vibes, vibrations. Good vibes. I love it. Good vibes is so real.

Speaker 1 22:48

So tell us about your studies in counseling and how that interplays with the work that you do now.

Speaker 2 22:55

Oh, I love they use the word interplay. I went ahead and got my master's at Goddard College, which is sadly no more. And this is a very progressive college in Vermont that where Bread and Puppets started, and I think it used to be naked. It's very progressive, a good place for me. I was a single mom. Uh, my son was, I believe, seven when I started. Yeah, because I was 37. My idea was to get a degree in counseling so that I could do dance counseling. I didn't want to do strictly dance therapy because I didn't want to follow someone else's model. I felt like maybe I wanted some more room to move, wiggle room. But it turns out that I'm a terrible counselor because I just want to say what I want to say. You know, counseling, you really need to not, you need to let the person discover and explore. And you have a light touch. I am not, when it comes to certain things, I can be a light touch when it comes to my retreats, when it comes to certain scenarios. But when it comes to talking, I am not a light touch, as you might have noticed by now. I just say what I think, I say what I feel, and

Counseling Lessons And Embodiment

Speaker 2 24:08

so I started this practice. But what counseling did teach me was it really just helped me explore how to heal myself and some ways that humans generally work. There's a lot of psychology out there teachings that I don't agree with. And, you know, in the end, it's still under the white supremacist patriarchy paradigm. So even the the best female psychiatrists out there who are going by the mainstream modalities, which I don't even know if that means anything anymore, because we have branched out in so many ways, it's still very limited in its thinking. Um, because the law of attraction is real, and what you focus on is what you create more of. So, you know, if you start diving into that's a whole can of worms, it's good to know what your wounds are and how to heal them, and then you pivot and you go towards what you want, but you can really drown in the talking process, and you can really get stuck in there and never come out, you know. Um, that's exactly why I do hypnotherapy. Yeah, I mean, you can get lost, and it's it's the problem of being in our heads, our culture, you know, everything's under this whole building of our culture, and our culture is messed up, you know. It was built by white men, and and I'm not putting down white men. I love a lot of white men, I love my son, I love a lot of people, but it's the culture of that, not including the heart, the body. It's it started so long ago with that ancient, you know, Christianity that oppressed and got so many people messed up and killed people if they didn't agree. It's like the body is to be shamed, the feminine voice is not valid, like only white people are real citizens of the world. I mean, there's just so much harm that was done, and and all this stuff we've built has come from that. So we have to really step outside it and look and say, I want to take this part about psychology, but I've got to recontextualize it, knowing that all these people were excluded and and that we're in the head and not the heart. The heart and the head together is where it's at. And to do that, you have to be in your body. And in a way, our culture has broken things down is like the head is male and the heart is and the body are female, and that's it's not that simple, I know, but it's just to be embodied is to be sitting in the feminine values of receptivity, of openness, of nurturance, of nourishment, of listening. And so um, to be embodied is so important, and it's finally coming into mainstream um uh what what would I say, um, awareness that the body that embodiment is important, you know, they finally figured out with all their science. It's like, yeah, okay. I've been trying to tell you all this time, but you know, it's good. So it's it's coming in there.

Speaker 1 27:22

And going back to something you said before about people not wanting to dance or move, being still because they feel embarrassed. I think there's also we're taught to feel ashamed of our bodies, yeah, if they're not, if they don't look a certain way.

Speaker 2 27:43

Yeah.

Speaker 1 27:44

And so how do you help people overcome that?

Speaker 2 27:51

That is such a great question. You know, that's a great thread to pull out because there's so much in there. And when we move, we're very vulnerable. Like you can sing in a group, you can go to a bar and you can sing, you can tell stories, you can tell jokes, but if you dance, you're very vulnerable. And again, the body doesn't lie. Um, and then it is wrapped up in that how I'm looking. So I I probably do a lot of stuff that I don't know how to put into words or I'm not even aware of because it's like I get in the room and who's in the room. It's very different if it's kids, if it's elders, if it's middle-aged, you know, this kind of person or that city or that rural area. It's very different. But the main thing is to I know how to hold space where you focus on how the movement feels. And then also there's boundaries and rules. Like, for example, I'm in a culture of ecstatic dancers where ecstatic dancers, ecstatic dance

Body Shame And Safe Space Rules

Speaker 2 28:53

is like you go for an hour and a half and someone has a playlist or a DJ and you follow, and it started with Gabriel Roth, the five rhythms. That's a whole other, you know, podcast. But um, people just free dancing. And I know a lot of my friends who are so free, they love to do it, but you try to give them choreography and they freeze up, they're afraid of that. Then I have people who take my Nia classes, that's all choreography, and they're afraid to do the free dance. So it is like about being watched and being seen, and being seen is not good enough or um ridiculous, or someone's gonna laugh at you or make fun of you. And so, for one example, in my Nia classes, where anyone can walk in at the Ann Arbor YMCA or my co-housing community, and someone new feels very vulnerable and nervous and self-conscious. And so, one rule of NIA is you can watch me, but you don't watch each other. So you're in a no-judgment zone. Everyone in the room is trying to learn the moves, they're not watching you to see how dumb you look. They're watching me because they're worried about looking dumb themselves, which obviously we don't want anyone to worry about that, but that's the reality. So, one is the parameters, the boundaries in the space. And whenever I teach a class, we start in a circle, except in the assisted living homes, because that might be a little too radical for them. I respect, you know, I respect where people are at, but we start in a circle, the boundaries are laid, and there really is this culture of how you feel on the inside is what we're working with today. It's not right or left, it's not right or wrong, it's not front or back. Some people don't do right and left. In every room, there's someone who doesn't do right and left. It doesn't matter at all because you're just connecting with how you feel inside your body. And it's very radical. And to be honest, it is scary. And the people who come the first time do use their courage. But what they find is that they feel when they finally let go, they feel good, and they feel so good in a way that they're so not used to that it's so liberating. I also use energy medicine that we will use today when we get to that part where I'm gonna share, share a little uh dance flow. And like, for example, one thing we do is bring our hands to our hearts, and if you want to try that with me, Catherine, when you bring your hands to your heart, and then when you after you exhale, take a nice deep breath with a sigh. So we'll try that. So when you're ready to deep breath, you feel a little more like yourself now, don't you? That's just one breath, that's just five seconds. So we do things in the beginning that help people, it just forces them to feel how good it feels to let loose, to let go, to be themselves, to not worry about how they look. And I basically kind of you know help them in the very beginning because we're all in a circle, we're all doing it. Okay, putting your hands on my heart is not that big a deal. I can do that, okay. I can take a breath, okay. I can let out a sigh. Now, letting out a sigh can be very hard for people to make sound that can be very radical. Shake it out when you shake it. Let's shake it out just for a second, and you just and then at the same time, you shake out, shake out your voice.

Speaker 1 32:32

I feel like I'm back in acting school.

Speaker 2 32:35

Yeah, so it's like, you know, that's another five seconds, and we're already feeling more grounded, more connected to our bodies, more connected to our soul or spirit, or whatever you want to call it.

Speaker 1 32:47

Yeah.

unknown 32:49

Yeah.

Speaker 1 32:49

Um, all right. So I wanted to ask you about your um your program, Integrative Movement Magic.

Speaker 2 32:59

Okay, so you're gonna hear it here here first, hip talks listeners. I have to lay down my beloved title of Integrative Movement Magic, which to me is the most accurate title I can give this program, but people are not signing up for that. So I am changing integrative movement magic to everyday dance and play. Love it. I'm getting it because I want to get it in every school, I want to get it into every program, every YMCA, every after school program, every camp, etc. So I'm simplifying the name. Everyday dance and play is a good name. It doesn't cover the depth of healing and wholeness and joymaking and radical rediscovery of our true nature and our true consciousness that it covers. But I think it's gonna get the program in the door. And um, and it is accurate. It's kind of this everyday dance and play, which is good for us. We all need to dance, we all need to play. There's a lot more under there. So thank you so much for asking. This is my latest project.

Everyday Dance And Play For Kids

Speaker 2 34:10

I started off teaching little kids. You know, when you're a dance teacher, you get the little kids and they don't really dance, they just bounce around and you try to sort of contain the mess. You're like, okay, you try to herd them from one side of the room to the other and being kitty cats and being this and being that, you know, a lot of imagery. It's actually the most delightful thing. What I'm gonna do is more than that. And this, you know, this might get a little serious, but deep breath, our kids do not feel safe. They don't feel safe anywhere. We have completely screwed ourselves into this corner, we've painted ourselves in the corner of digital cell phone use, of being disconnected from nature, disconnected from our bodies, disconnected from you know, our culture and each other, because of mostly digital media use. And, you know, profit being the bottom line has really gotten us there. So we have a lot to change and we're changing it. It's gonna happen, and I believe in that. Meanwhile, kids need a lot of help, and then they're gonna grow up and we're gonna never have another person in the office like we have now because that person is so disconnected from his body on top of the trauma he incurred as a child, on top of the all the things. But one thing is he is so disconnected from his body, he is not a human being anymore. He's not even human. All right, we know this. And sorry for the people that voted, even the people that voted from you can tell, you can tell that's true. So, my program for kids is an integration of movement magic. It is Nia Principles, it's interplay, and it's in energy medicine. So basically, the kids come in, we do an intro circle, we do some, we do a lot of games, it's kind of like theater camp plus. So you do a lot of improv that helps you just have fun and express yourself, but then there's more directed movement and dance, so it's not exact, it's a little more than just theater because we do movement that is both free movement and choreography, and kids get to make their own movement, and then in the beginning of class, we just do a bunch of different breathing techniques. So kids right away learn all these healing tools to soothe their nervous system. Um, meanwhile, they're learning how to feel their emotions through their body, express themselves in words using nonviolent communication, create healthy boundaries between them and other kids, learn to listen to the other kids while staying safe in their boundaries in their bodies, and then having fun and feeling joy and expressing themselves. And they learn all these, you know, energy medicine moves that they can take home, they'll teach to their parents. It's just gonna be the norm. So, two times a week, three times a week, one time a week, whatever. Uh, plus the videos. These kids are just going to gym class and instead of just playing kickball, which is also fun. So, you know, I'm not gonna diss on the kickball. We can have it all, but they're gonna learn how to, you know, rehumanize themselves and how to deal with their anxiety and express themselves in words and know when they need to use movement and know when they need to be quiet and know what how good stillness can feel because there's also stillness, so they they sit there for three minutes at the end of class after they're all grounded, the whole group in stillness, and it's like magic, you know. So um, I really miss the name integrative and magic. We'll see. I haven't sold it yet, so I'm gonna try everyday dance and play. But it is my you know, Ren and Stimpy plan to take over the world with dance so that every kid grows up knowing that it's good to be in their body, that they can feel good, that they can help themselves, that they can interact safely and lovingly with others, and that they can really enjoy movement in their body's way, no matter whether they're in a wheelchair, whether they're artistic, whether whatever color they are, however much money they have, they can have that movement in their lives every day.

Speaker 1 38:26

I know accessible to all kids everywhere.

Speaker 2 38:30

Great idea. We'll do a YouTube show to start. Okay, good. Yes, I do plan to make some YouTube videos, movement videos very soon. I'm thinking in the fall.

Speaker 1 38:42

Great. And so before we got started, you began to start telling me about this project that you're working on with your son uh Mario. I asked how Mario was.

Speaker 38:52

Oh, yeah.

Speaker 1 38:53

And um, so why don't you tell us about what that is all about?

Speaker 2 38:58

Yes, right. Well, I don't know if all your listeners will see my hat, but it's covering my frizzy curls that I I just sort of squished my way out of this little patch of jungle I have near my house um with my feet are all muddy. Um, because we are filming a video. This is a dream of mine to work with my son, who's a videographer, and um he's just getting started. So if you need a videographer, please let us know. Um, but um I got a commission from the Abbey of the Arts, which is a beautiful and amazing online creative spiritual wellness community. So it's not necessarily um one religion. You have to be any religion. You can be atheist, you can be agnostic, but it's just a place where music and dance and um are considered spiritual sacred and a natural part of our spiritual lives. And I got commissioned to do choreography for a beautiful chant called May I Be Empty. And um, I wish I had the name of the artist, but uh it will be online in the fall, I believe in September it will be up and active. And um, so maybe I'll get

Sacred Dance Project With Her Son

Speaker 2 40:19

you a link for that, but it's you know, I'm so earthy and yet I'm so spiritual. So it's been really interesting growing up and coming into my own because, you know, as you know, in this culture is so separated and so silly, and that is also because we haven't been embodied. There's cultures in the world, you know, Africa, South America, so many places, Brazil, where dance and music are part of the culture, they're part of celebration, they're part of spirituality, and they're sacred. And so I found my sacred movement path through my friend Lucinda Kurtz, who had me make um sacred movement every month for Rosh Hodich, which means head of the month in the Hebrew calendar. So every month I create sacred movement that helps us embody the energy of the month that's upcoming. And it's so amazing, you know, how I found that, but it was inevitable. I think that was really why I came to this planet was to do this stuff. So um, it's just been a joy to find it. And so there's this chant may I be empty, and I'm doing movement that is part of the prayer cycle that you can have access to on Abbey of the Arts, which is online and it's very accessible. Some people pay, I think um, you can also get it for free, and so it's a really nice way to um for me. That's really the most authentic expression of me is creating sacred dance. Because when I dance, it's always sacred. I actually feel tears coming here when I go in the woods. I dance with the trees. I am that crazy lady, talking to trees, singing with trees, dancing with trees, because that's just how my joy and my delight come out. And I express this feeling of divinity and connection. It's like I just have to move it, just flows, and that's the most natural way for me to express. Um, and so to finally have a commission to create sacred dance for an international community and have my son who is just beginning, but already a good, I know he's gonna be a great videographer because he's very aware, he's very perceptive, he's got good instincts, he's very connected. Um, and so it's just such a dream come true to create a beautiful dance. And we're doing it in the river. That's not like feeder money. We're doing it in this little creek um in the woods near my co-housing community. And uh, I have this beautiful blue robe, and the sun's coming from behind me, and Mario and I sort of were so synergistic how we found that site. Um, and so it's it's all about this vessel and how we can be empty and how we to receive, but sometimes we're very full to receive. So yeah, I'm really excited about this project.

Speaker 1 43:17

That's so cool. I um, you know, it makes me think about because I've been learning a little bit about um Kabbalah and understanding that whole idea of the each month having the different theme and lesson and and qualities to it, but also that whole idea of having being a vessel to receive and being and receiving and all of that. So um that's really interesting. And I can't wait to see it. I can't wait for it to be out there. And yes, if you have a link, we'll put it in the show notes. Oh, thank you. I'd love that so much. So I know that you're in Ann Arbor, and I know that most Ann Arbor, Michigan, that is where I grew up and How we know each other. Um, and I know that most people um are working with you in person. So, do you do anything online for people that wanted to participate?

Speaker 2 44:14

That's a great question, yes, because people have been starting to ask that more and more. And what was stopping me was music royalties and music rights. And you know, I'm a Luddite, I don't love to be working with technology very much. It's just not intuitive to me. If if I had a full-time assistant, I it's like no problem. But yes, I am finally have been asked enough, and I now know enough local musicians where I'm gonna start making videos with people who do vocal improv with this wonderful drummer I know, and yeah, other people I won't drop names until I do the thing because they might get mad at me. But I've got I've got some a posse of musicians, so I am going to create movement videos, and then I believe after those, you know, go viral or whatever happens, you know, that then I will begin to have some classes on Zoom because people are really wanting it who are not here in Ann Arbor. And um, it just was the whole music royalty thing. I didn't know how to pay for that or get around it or whatever. I don't I don't want to rob musicians of they they need their money because the whole system right now is not great for musicians. So yes, coming from ASCAP, I'm very aware of that. Yeah, so every you know,

Going Online And Music Royalties

Speaker 2 45:35

all of us artists, we need to support each other and find ways to to make that real. So look, it's like we're gonna be super local and also super super global, yeah. You know, and that kind of makes sense in a strange paradox way that all things all real truths are a paradox in some way. Um, at least all paradoxes are truth. I don't know if it works the other way, but I I really look forward to that. So I'm hoping that this video we do, which should be live in uh September, just leads to making more videos with Mario. I don't know how much longer he's gonna be in Ann Arbor, so I need to like jump on that now while he's still here. And I'm hoping he'll we can just make a series of me again movement medicine videos that people can access just about 10 minutes. So it's just easy to sort of get in and get out, just the way I use YouTube for yoga when I don't have a lot of time. But yeah, we all need to move to be healthy, we all need it, and I that's what I want to share. So I'm I'm definitely gonna go digital and get that YouTube uh channel up and running very soon.

Speaker 1 46:41

So before we go to the exercise, would you tell us how people can find you?

Speaker 2 46:49

Yes. So right now, I guess the best way to find me is my website, which is meagendance.com. And that really is a portal to all my offerings. It's not always super up to date. I have a great web lady, but you know, we're it's been pretty slow. But now things are cooking for me. So we're gonna start, you know, getting a little more on top of that. But yes, you can find me, you can email me. Um, you can go ahead and put my email in the in the chat or the in the thread. It's Megan Sims 600 at gmail. And so my name is Megan, and it's also me again. So when I'm performing, when I'm creating, when I'm facilitating, it's me again. Um when I'm just hanging with my with my people, it's mean most of the time, but sometimes me again. And that has the my interplay offerings, Nia performances and videos. I love it. I love it.

Speaker 1 47:50

Okay, so would you lead us through something? Yes. Hey everyone, if you're listening while you're driving or operating heavy machinery, please hit pause at this point and come back when you're safely somewhere where you can listen and go into a nice trance state.

How To Find And Contact Megan

Speaker 2 48:09

I just remembered I'm about to get training in Música do Circulo with these amazing Brazilians who are coming to uh Massachusetts to train. So pretty soon I'm gonna have body rhythm, which um I do spoken word performances, I do dance poems. I have a few. The one I was gonna leave next was where I do the spoken word and everyone dances instead of me performing. I see, let's just like let's improv here. So let's play. So I'd like people to do, let's see, let's bring one hand to the heart. Let's do a heartbeat. So, what I'm doing here, if you can't see me, is I'm just swaying side to side. I've got my feet planted on the ground, so you definitely want your feet to anchor you. And I'm doing bump bump bump bump on my heart. When we touch our hearts, it's very healing, it's very grounding, and it's very energizing. So let's just take a couple deep breaths while we sway and get that heartbeat rhythm. Bump bump bump bump. You can even say it bump

Guided Practice Heartbeat To Grounding

Speaker 2 49:13

bump bump bump. And making sound is also healing. Bump bump bump bump. Good. Let's do a couple more, take a deep breath. So I'm just getting an idea that's coming to me. So right now we're in earth and water. So the heartbeat is earth and the flow is water. So let's extend our arms and with our feet on the floor. I want you to just move side to side as if your spine is a river. So try not let the arms lead. Try to let your rib cage flow and just flow like water. It can be any rhythm, any speed, and let your arms be these just serpentine extensions of your spine. And now watch your hands and just let your hands fly around. Let's get into some air. So let your hands. This is just a total improv dance. And see if you can get to a space, if you're in the room with someone where you just keep your eyes on your own hands. So let your hands flutter. I actually have seen like four monarch butterflies in the last two days. So my hands are doing this flutter butterfly thing, and I'm just watching them go and I'm just going ahead and breathing naturally, and my spine is still flowing. So I now I've got earth, water with the spine, air with the hands, and then I'm just gonna begin to reach up for the sky, grabbing big handfuls of air so I can get a stretch. And now I'm gonna just wrap my arms around myself and go ahead and hug yourself and just bring your head down to your heart. Take a deep breath. And just say to yourself mentally, something along the lines of, I've got your back. Just tell yourself in your body, I've got your back. Whether you say it aloud, whisper it, or just say it in your head. Because you're holding on to your own shoulders. And now go ahead and slowly unwrap yourself, let your arms gently and gradually come down and roll your wrists down, roll your hands down, bring them to your lap. And now, just speaking of shavas and stillness, let's just be still for a moment. Feel your shoulders drop. Take a deep breath. And I'm gonna just end with a grounding cord. This is a wonderful practice that you can do anytime, any place. You're gonna feel your hips and your butt on the chair, okay, if you're sitting, or feel your feet on the ground if you're standing, or feel your whole body if you're lying down. Whatever is touching the surface of what's supporting your body weight. Just really feel that. Take a deep breath when you're ready. And now in your pelvis, I want you to imagine a beautiful red garnet. A beautiful red garnet or ruby, if you've never seen a garnet, a beautiful red gemstone glowing inside your pelvis. A beautiful, beautiful glowing gem that's emanating this deep red root chakra glow inside your body. It's a beautiful energetic. And now, if that image doesn't work for you, if it feels bad, you could just change the image. Maybe it's a tiny magical pomegranate seed, whatever. Deep red is a nice color for the root chakra vibrationally. And now from that beautiful glowing orb gym, I want you to direct a red ray of energy, whether it's a light or a cord or a stream or whatever makes sense to you. You can even get silly and imagine like a rope of licorice, like whatever, really whatever. Nothing's too weird, too silly. And just imagine a ray or rope, a cord of energy moving from that beautiful glowing orb from your pelvis down through the chair. Imagine it going down through the floor. If you're on an upper floor, have it go down through all the floors. Don't worry, it's not going to disturb anyone under you on the way down. And just go down and down and down. And imagine that cord is dropping down and down and down into the earth. And have that cord go down into the earth about eight feet at least, or you can have it go all the way to the molten center of the earth, and just imagine that cord for a few more breaths. Just going down and down and down. This is a practice, it doesn't have to be perfect today. You can practice it over and over. Just breathe with it, imagine it. Our imaginations are so powerful. They create everything. They create everything. Just have that cord go down to where you want it, and then just feel it hook into Mother Earth, our beautiful earth. And let that settle with one more breath. And then go ahead and just gently move your body like water, just like you're doing. Let your shoulders and body flow a little and feel how that cord is still there. Wherever you go, you're still connected to the center of Earth. And hopefully that's gonna help you feel really grounded. And you can also release stress and emotion down that cord, too, if you need to. And now let's just bring our palms together, our heart, and thank you so much for just doing that simple improv practice with me. I just did want to be spontaneous and be in the moment. So I hope that felt good to you.

Speaker 1 55:56

That was beautiful, and I always love a good grounding being Vada and Gemini.

Speaker 2 56:04

Oh, yeah, Gemini. Y'all are crazy to the earth. Y'all are crazy in a good way.

Speaker 1 56:13

Oh, Megan, thank you so much.

Speaker 2 56:15

This was so cool. Oh, Catherine's been a joy. I'm I wish we could talk more often. Maybe we will, but it just was a delight to talk with you.

Speaker 1 56:26

You've been listening to Hip Talks, original music by Tracy Moore and the Jazzy Fat Nasties, Podcast Editing and Sound Engineering by Zachary Trainer. If you like what you heard, please like and share, and follow us on Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. And if you make a comment, I promise I will respond.

Speaker 56:50

Kid would have to live you gifts again. Kid would have to live you gifts again.