craving movement ll marissa shares

I am an elementary school teacher and today was my first day of school. For all my fellow be.comers out there who are educators, you know how draining the first day of school is. I didn’t really sleep last night because of all the first day jitters, and could easily lie on my couch and watch Netflix for the rest of the night (I definitely considered it). I have been teaching for six years and today is my first ‘first day of school’ where I came home and craved movement. I still sat on the couch and decompressed from all of the emotional energy expended throughout the day, but then I laid out my yoga mat, put my essential oils on, and got ready to be.come. When this realization hit me before I checked in and started this week’s routine, it overwhelmed me with emotion and deep gratitude. You see, I am a dancer at heart. Since I was three years old, dancing has served as movement therapy for me. Dancing is my meditation. Movement is my medicine.

I stopped dancing (and most movement all together) when I went to college. I was struggling with debilitating anxiety and for the first time in my life stopped dancing regularly. I went from dancing in a studio 15+ hours a week to only dancing when I went out to parties or clubs with my friends (which was also rare). Movement was not a regular part of my life again until January 2019 when I started be.coming. I randomly saw someone post about the be.come project on Instagram, and I was immediately attracted to the vibe of the app. I signed up for the 10 day free trial, not really expecting to continue afterwards. Panic attacks and anxiety had kept me from sticking to any sort of movement routine for years. Yet here I am, 8 months later and be.coming multiple times a week. be.come is truly exactly what I needed in my life. It has helped me radically transform my relationship with my body and how I think about movement. Movement is once again medicine for me. I experience the same joy and release flowing through a be.come routine as I did when I would soar across the dance stage in my recitals growing up. I crave be.come because I have fallen in love with moving my body again. Exercising is no longer something I should do to lose the weight I gained in college while struggling with my mental health. It is something I do to heal my spirit, strengthen my body and mind, and ground my energy.