You can’t go home again.

So much has happened since you last heard from me.  I’ve travelled out to another rural district to run a workshop for the EAGLE-MS project (Enabling Adolescent Girls through Life skill Economic empowerment against Modern day Slavery) – by far the hardest district yet; I’ve battled petty NGO politics, personal crises, a broken laptop, bed bugs and food poisoning.  The past month has left me feeling grateful, lonely, homesick, and at times empty – both figuratively and literally (thanks, food poisoning!).

I find myself at times counting down the days until I can return to a world I know better, and at the same time dreading the end of this project.  There is so much work to be done, and we seem to be constantly at crucial points in the therapeutic work, and simultaneously running into constant disruptions and limitations: projects in other parts of Nepal, short-term volunteers from NGOs running recreational activities with the already-overbooked girls at the shelter, constraints of space and time, government and visa restrictions, illness, monsoons and their effects on infrastructure and transportation. I’m existing in this space between my ‘real’ life and what is actually really happening here and now.

In my first three months here, I became this work. My life outside of this shelter in Nepal in essence ceased to exist.  Coming at a transitional point in my life, this was easy.  All I wanted was to do this work, do it well, and do it for as long as the Nepali government and my finances would allow.  I’ve written a lot about my difficulty with the boundaries of this work – living at the shelter and having no real work/life separation.  The truth is, that is because I’ve not really had anything to separate.  I don’t anticipate ever really having a clear line demarcating ‘work’ to one side and ‘life’ to the other, and not only because of my belief in non-binary thinking. As a therapist, as important as the boundaries are, I am in many ways my work.  This is the person I’ve always been, and I think this is especially the case when your career is what you love and are passionate about.  I used to have this discussion regularly with a former housemate of mine who is a musician.  We would talk about how you’re never done with the work when the work is what you love.  There’s always more practicing, more classes, more learning; and the line between work and play becomes blurry.  However, by placing myself in a shelter in Nepal, thousands of miles and a spotty wifi connection away from my home, my support network, my future plans, I’ve really mastered this merging of work and life into one inseparable mass.

This worked for me for about three months.  But as I passed my halfway mark here, it began to become even more apparent to me that it is increasingly important for me to have time that I am not wearing my therapist cloak – time to be a normal person with my own struggles and space and time to angst over them.  And even then, and as I’m so often reminded here when I do need that space and time, I’m a therapist, which to some (not me) I suppose means always feeling balanced and put together.  For some of the staff here, the work is their life.  Their home is the shelter.  They also do not clock out at 5pm and go home to their families or friends.  And so it has become my norm as well.  Except this is not my permanent life – legally it can’t be.  Immigration will throw me out of the country and make me return to my ‘actual life.’

Then my actual life reminded me that regardless of the distance, it waits for nothing.  Because we exist in relationship, and those with whom I’m in relationship have not hit some pause button while waiting for my return – some not even holding a space for me to return to – life has continued to happen, and it has finally found me.  It’s a reminder that this project is temporary (as is everything), and I will have to leave it and return home.

In my senior year of high school, my boyfriend at the time had to answer an essay question for the UNC Chapel Hill application about alumni Thomas Wolfe’s assertion that “You can’t go home again.”  I was terrified of him thinking about this question.  I was staying in New York, already having been accepted to Columbia.  If he believed that one could never return home, where would that leave us?  As it turned out, I didn’t have to worry about his thoughts on this for long - our relationship ended before we each started university, and we didn’t have to test it.  But it’s a question I’ve encountered many times since then, as I’ve moved through university, New York, India, London, Nepal, changing day jobs, changing careers, changing partners.  I’ve constantly navigated returns home, in which home is in many ways a new unknown.

None of us here really know exactly what home looks like.  These girls could be at the shelter for another couple or several years, or some could be taken home at any moment (and hopefully that home is now safe).  Some want nothing to do with their homes in the villages or their ‘past lives’.  For them, the shelter is home, Menuka their mother and the girls their sisters.  Others cannot think of anything but returning home, and they view their time here as something of a placeholder.  Either way, home is never the same, and coming to terms with that is a recurring theme in therapy.  Those who resist any acknowledgment of a past still must face the fact that they do have a past, and a really difficult and unfair one at that – one that does not define them, but which has shaped them.  Those who only wish to return to their past homes must anticipate what they are actually returning to: stigmas around sex; judgment that they’ve been involved in sex in the context of trafficking, potentially leading to shame; reminders that they  have been rescued while others from their villages may not have been; social and economic conditions – perhaps intensified by the stigmas – leaving them potentially vulnerable to trafficking again if their families cannot support them in reintegrating back into their communities.  It’s an uncomfortable position.  No one is homeless – everyone has a place to live and call home – but the sense of home and all that comes with it can still be elusive.

In a supervision session, in the midst of the collision of my ‘work’ and ‘life’, leaving me feeling untethered and unsure of what ‘home’ I even pictured returning to as I both await and dread closing this work, my supervisor reminded me of my own words in a previous session, of wanting to encourage my clients to find a home in their own bodies.  She reminded me that the body won’t pass, but circumstances will.  The trauma experienced by these girls has ended (physically, if not always emotionally), and they are still here.  My Nepali visa will end, and with it this project.  I will move on to whatever is next, and these girls will do the same. 

As I embrace my body as a home, and encourage my clients to do the same, I can be sure that none of us will be ‘returning’ home.  If we can place our sense of home in our selves, then home is where we are in the here and now. We are already home, and it is constantly changing because that’s what we do.  My body, encompassing my ‘work’ and ‘life’ and everything in between, has changed while I’ve been here.  And I’ve witnessed change, even if on a small scale, in the girls.  We exist in relationship – our bodies/selves, and therefore our concept of home, is made up of relationships.  Even when I’m gone, the existence of a relationship between myself and everyone here will persist, creating an added component of each of our selves. 

It’s easy to say or write.  But as I’ve written in previous posts, there is certainly a context in which the body is not felt as a home.  It’s something that I have struggled with in times of uncertainty, nevermind trauma. If the body doesn’t feel safe or healthy, then it’s no better than the house from which you were sold or where assault took place.  But there’s no escaping the body; there’s no external shelter in which to seek refuge from the unsafe body.  And this is why I dread the end of this project.  Because when I leave, the flow of girls in and out of the shelter will not end – trafficking and sexual assault is a problem here.  Embodied therapy is the shelter from the unsafe body – reframing the unsafe body as a stable, yet ever-changing home.  If it’s something I still need to practice – I, a trained therapist with a history of reflexive thinking in relationship with her body – then there is no reason to imagine it will come naturally or unassisted to these girls.  There will always be more work to do here, and there will never be enough time or resources.  I am a resource that has to end, and part of me looks forward to it, because I can, because this is not my whole life. But it has shaped me into who I am now, a person who also cannot imagine leaving this work behind.

And so I find myself again straddling some blurry line between my ‘real’ life and my life here that I am really and actually living.  Yearning for the comforts I know as a result of an unfair life advantage, while existing in my current reality, hoping to make even small changes in the realities of the girls here.  This reality is as temporary as any other, though.  The only real constant for me, is me – my body – as I go from one reality to another, colliding with others along the way.

As always, to help fund this project, please donate here.  I have taken on this work strictly as a volunteer, with no funding, sponsorship or stipends from any organisations, at great financial cost to myself.  Your donations help to cover my flights, medical expenses, visa fees, and costs of professional clinical supervision as required by the ADMP UK to help hold and support the therapeutic work.

All the words are not enough.

My MA dissertation was titled “A feminist investigation of the facilitation of embodied agency in Dance Movement Psychotherapy with trauma survivors who have experienced external control.”  It was 26,200 words over 67 pages plus a 10-minute solo dance performance exploring my research process and response to the material.  I came in 2 words under the maximum allowance, and that was after cutting out pages and abbreviating and hyphenating at every possible turn.  I have a lot to say on the topic.

My discussion and solo performance focused on the sense of body control/ownership and vulnerability on a continuum – the acceptance of the fact that we are constantly constructing and re-constructing the distribution of control/ownership and vulnerability we feel in relationship to others and our environment.  The distribution changes depending on and contributes to our body politics and our lived experience (which have also been intra-actively[1] shaped by and with our body politics – it’s the whole never-ending reflection of a reflection in mirror concept). 

I came to the project as a privileged, educated, white, American woman from stable home, where I had grown up with a strong sense of identity, safety, and control over my body.  In my research process, I explored in movement what it might be like to ‘try on’ different experiences and constructions of body politics as described by my research participants (experienced DMPs who have worked with survivors of relational trauma).  While the embodied experience I’ve described was enlightening, and at times emotionally difficult and scary, I still had the experience in the safety and comfort of my own body in a dance studio in my university.  I improvised movement around ideas and descriptions presented to me by others.  The embodied experience was very strong, but still one level removed.

Now I am face-to-face with the clients my research participants had experienced.  I am not feeling the experiences of other DMPs, I am the DMP experiencing the clients.  And while many of the sensations and embodied felt-sense experiences I’ve had remind me of and bring me back to improvised movement sessions I conducted with myself during my research process, it’s not in the safety of a university dance studio anymore.  It’s full on feeling into the experience of a person who has had completely different life experiences than I have and trying to understand how to give them a sense of something else. 

In my dissertation, I explored in movement the question, ‘How do I know my body is a home?’.  I have over 26,000 words to discuss my engagement with this idea verbally and in movement.  But now I am revisiting it in a new context, and the stakes feel so much higher.  What would it really be like to have no sense of safety inside or outside of my body?  It leaves me feeling completely empty, lost and like I could just blow away.  This is an excerpt from an embodied movement response I included in my dissertation in response to the question:

But what if my body is not safe? And with this question, everything changed. The warmth and nourishment was gone, replaced with something foreign, toxic. I wanted to pull my insides out and scrape off my skin. I collapsed, feeling empty and nauseous. I felt helpless - heavy and weightless at the same time. And without any way to escape, I cried. Time and space ceased to exist. I tried to move my arms by throwing weight into them, but I no longer felt that I had permission to put them anywhere. This isn’t me, this isn’t my story. … Slowly, I used all my strength to drag myself somewhere else, somewhere safe, where I could come back to my safe body.

The words resonate now more than ever, but they also feel insufficient.  It feels so real when I’m with a person who may feel that way all the time.  And it’s still not my story.  I can still bring myself back to safety; my body is still safe.  But it takes more to bring myself back in this context, where I’m literally surrounded by those who may have a much more first-hand experience of what I have the luxury ‘try on’ and ‘take off.’ 

I’m still finding the balance in my self-care where I feel safe myself to try on this experience again in improvised movement and bring myself out of it, without feeling guilt that I can bring myself out of it.  After all, what resources would I be able to offer the girls if I did not have the experience of bringing myself out of these sensations?  But where I can get stuck is the embodied knowledge that I have a representation of safety in my body to return to.  The girls here have a multitude of phrases and mantras reminding themselves that they are strong, healthy and beautiful.  And while I fully believe in the power of mantras – telling yourself you’re beautiful every day will help you to believe you’re beautiful – still, they are words.  And what I am asking these girls to do is to create an entirely new experience in their bodies, something they may have never felt before.  What does safe feel like if you have no concept of safety?  Having someone tell you you’re safe a million times can be meaningless if you don’t have an embodied understanding of safe. 

It reminds me of the question people ask themselves to know if they’re in love with someone.  The general response is that you ‘just know.’  But if you’ve never had the experience, how do you know it?  How do you identify that some feeling or sensation you have is actually love?  How do you trust yourself to know you’re right that the feeling is love?  I know what safe feels like in my body, and I know how to get there.  But many of these girls may not. 

Academically speaking, I have so many to words about finding safety and body ownership, about reducing a sense of vulnerability.  But I can’t exactly hand someone a feeling for her to hold and possess, and I can only understand how she is actually feeling through some embodied approximation of my own feelings. If you’ve never felt safe, a new feeling of ‘safe’ might be unsettling, and therefore scary to actually stay with long enough to know that you like it.  The idea of a body ownership-vulnerability continuum is so big, but the actual facilitating of an embodied sense of a safe balance between the two is a much slower and more difficult process than 26,000 words can relay.  The change has to be embodied, but it must also be able to be discussed and engaged with verbally.  This does add an additional challenge in the language barrier.  How to communicate embodied agency to a girl who speaks a different embodied and verbal language from me? 

This makes me think about Beatrice Allegranti’s[2],[3] discussions of kinaesthetic intersubjectivity – the sharing of intersubjective processes in movement.  But when someone is not yet empowered enough to engage in expressive movement for themselves, I turn to the kinaesthetic intersubjective relationship that happens on a neurological level through the Mirror Neuron System as explored by Vittorio Gallese[4].  In short, he and his team discovered that when monkeys view other monkeys performing goal-oriented movements, motor neurons in the witnessing monkey’s brain fire as if they are actually performing the same movement.  (There is also evidence that a mirror neuron network exists in the human brain.)

This is not to say that kinaesthetic intersubjective processes are not happening already, even if the girls are not engaging in what I might view as expressive i movement.  There is always movement happening, from our breath to our heartbeat, eye movements, and all other micro-movements.  Kinaesthetic intersubjectivity is experienced in even the smallest levels of movement, and that is what I am working with in these instances now on a therapeutic level. 

But it makes me wonder, how else can I perhaps use my ability to use dance and movement to ‘feel into’ and ‘move within’ the experiences of others to demonstrate and facilitate an embodied intersubjective experience of agency, safety, and ownership in a therapeutic context to help the client to have some kind of embodied understanding of an experience they have maybe never had?  The answer is, I don’t really know; that’s probably the premise for my future PhD, the proposal for which I had every intention of completing while doing my work here before I had an embodied understanding of how much physical and emotional energy and time would be taken up by this work.  Don’t worry (she tells herself), the proposal is coming, but must first be informed by this experience.

As always, if you would like to donate to help fund this voluntary work, please click here.  All donations go to help me cover the costs of flights, visa fees, health and medical expenses, and professional supervision as required by the Association of Dance Movement Psychotherapy UK to help to support and hold the therapeutic work.

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[1] Barad, K. (2003) Posthumanist performativity: toward an understanding of how matter comes to matter. Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society. 28(3) pp. 801-831.

[2] Allegranti, B. (2015a) Corporeal Entanglements: Implications for the Therapeutic Relationship. In: Through the Looking Glass: Dimensions of Reflection in the Arts Therapies. Plymouth: University of Plymouth Press. pp. 89-98.

[3] Allegranti, B. (2015b) Allegranti, B. (2015) Embodied Performances: Sexuality, Gender, Bodies. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.

[4] For example: Gallese, V. (2009) Mirror neurons, embodied simulation and the neural basis of social identification.  Psychoanalytic Dialogues. 19 pp.519-36.

Boundaries.

I’ve had two weeks back at the shelter home now, which has provided me with an opportunity to settle in a bit and begin to develop some kind of relationship with the girls here.  In that time, I was also able to attend the beautiful wedding ceremony and reception of one of the Raksha Nepal staff. 

Monsoon season officially started on 29th June, and it’s no joke.  While I’m sure the most dramatic rains are still to come, we’ve seen rain every day (sometimes all day) from then.  My timeline for travel to the next district is still TBD, as the rains affect transport to and within these districts.  My intended next district – and the furthest away – involves crossing a river on foot over which there is no bridge.  This makes access to it impossible during floods.  In addition, as I’ve already discovered in other districts, bus rides are complicated in rainy conditions, even without flooding.  The roads in and around the villages are primarily dirt, causing nearly unbearable dust in dry conditions, and mud resulting in sliding and incapacitated buses in wet. 

In the meantime, I’m very happy spending time at the shelter home.  The girls in the DMP sessions are beginning to get a better sense of how they can use therapy, and are starting to embrace it not only as a therapeutic space for free dancing, but a safe place for using the body and movement to explore some of the thoughts and feelings that are more easily avoided in keeping up their busy daily schedules. 

Upon meeting these girls initially, I was struck with what I saw.  I’m aware that because of the somatic experiences of trauma, some severely traumatized people are not able to tolerate aerobic or physical activity, as the arousal that these activities provoke in the body can closely resemble the states of autonomic arousal that was present during the traumatic experience(s).  The body, unable to properly separate the sensations of exercise and fight/flight, can launch into flashbacks and dissociations.  These girls, however, appeared happy and energetic.  They love to dance and exercise, and issues of touch do not seem problematic (there is plenty of hugging, hair-braiding, and other forms of “good touch” that they are drawn to with each other).  On the surface, they seem quick to trust new people (at least me, a new woman to whom the shelter staff has already given approval).  For the most part, they are a picture of well-adjusted, resilient children and adolescents.  And there is good reason for that.  The shelter is a safe, loving, clean, supportive place that offers plenty of activities and resources. (To be clear, I am not the only psychological support offered to the girls at the shelter - Raksha Nepal provides access to psychologists in Kathmandu.  I am, however, their closest access to psychological support geographically, making it potentially their most regular at this point in their processes.)  But as we begin to explore some deeper work, it is becoming clear to me there is more there. 

This makes me think a lot about boundaries – what they show and don’t show; who they trust or don’t trust; appropriate and inappropriate touch; dancing for fun and exercise, dancing for emotional processing, and dancing to escape; processing and avoiding; recovery and recovered; nervous system arousal and stress responses.  The issue of boundaries is one I feel I am dealing with constantly in my own parallel process here. 

Boundaries can be explored as distributions between barriers and points of exposure.  One evokes an image of blocking out, while the other a more open point of contact.  For example, our skin is simultaneously our last barrier and our first point of contact between self and other – one which the mosquitoes here are continuously violating.  An embodied understanding of the boundary between reality and memory/fantasy is an integral part of the recovery process.  Equally important is an embodied sense of self – where the self/body begins and ends, and how close (physically and emotionally) others are allowed or welcome.  The establishment of boundaries is an important part of trauma recovery.  However, boundaries are fluid and ever-changing.  I am continuously re-evaluating my own boundaries in the work here, from my boundaries between work and ‘home;’ my relationship with the girls; the lines between therapeutic dance, dance/life skill teaching, and DMP; teacher and therapist; language; culture; private and public; and the list goes on.

I’m living in the shelter with these girls.  I have my own room, but I cannot so much as go to make myself a cup of tea without passing a collection of girls asking if we’ll have dance today.  The girls often behave in a way as if I am in a position of constantly giving to them.  But what they may not realise is how much I am also relying on them.  I rely on them to translate for me.  I eat with them – the food which they have prepared for me.  We are constantly available to and involved with each other. 

They are so excited for what I am offering, and they’re used to being busy nearly all the time, that I find myself wondering about their boundaries between being busy and having downtime -  a struggle that resonates well with me in any environment, but perhaps even more so here.  My time away from them is mostly spent in my room.  And in my room are my computer begging me to write copious notes and plenty of books and articles on DMP, group processes, trauma, and cross-cultural therapeutic work, which are all so tempting to delve into in the many instances that I don’t feel like I fully know what I’m dealing with. 

The shelter provides its own boundary, and while I can leave it, going anywhere else can be its own production in terms of transportation and timing, and I don’t have much reason to go anywhere else.  This brings up for me the boundary between worker and tourist.  I am definitely a tourist in Nepal – I don’t know the language or culture, I cannot eat large quantities of rice, my clothes and skin colour scream ‘westerner,’ my visa and inability to be paid for my work even tells me so.  But I’m working, and working enough that I don’t actually have the time to properly explore any of the country for pleasure, as a tourist would do.

It’s easy to feel lonely and isolated in this environment, but my most immediate access to other people is to my clients and students.  There is in some way a sense of always being ‘on,’ as I’m technically always at work.  But this is my home right now, as it is the home of the girls and staff.  And so for that reason, the line between home and work is a blurry one.  Anyone who’s ever run into a teacher outside of school may understand the awkwardness of what that relationship is outside of a classroom.  And while my therapist back home and I may have discussions about how we might handle running into each other in public, outside of therapy sessions, it is generally accepted that everyone here is in therapy with me, but that we just don’t discuss the contents of a session. 

 As the girls begin to embrace therapy with me, I am seeing all the work there is to do – an impossible amount for 6 months.  Where is the boundary for who would best benefit from individual and group therapy, and how can I accommodate that in the limited time of a day, and of my visa allowance?  In a therapy session, everything that happens is information.  But the input of information doesn’t stop just because the therapy session is over.  Where is the boundary between what is ‘fair game’ to address in therapy and what the therapist or teacher really has no business knowing or seeing?  And this goes both ways.  I am not only their therapist or teacher, but an actual living and breathing human being of whom they see many different sides.  My underwear hangs on the same clothes line as theirs to dry.  I’ve never seen my therapist’s underwear, and I think it would be strange if I did.

All that said, I feel that the sense of boundaries here is different from what I’m used to anyway.  A closed door does not mean the same thing.  In my stays in the districts, unless my door is locked (which is not always an option), my room seems to be community territory at any time.  Their concept of boundaries seems so much looser and different to mine.  In some ways that’s useful, as they likely don’t view the fluidity I’m experiencing as strange or off-putting.  At the same time, facilitating a sense of personal, body, and emotional boundaries necessary to their recovery may be more difficult if they don’t have much experience with reflecting on or determining their own boundaries in any way.  And therein lies more boundaries – cultural and language.

And then there are the boundaries between my different roles here.  Dance is inherently therapeutic.  But there’s dancing to feel happy and forget your problems, dancing to learn steps (and in the case of the PSI methodology, life skills), and dancing to process things that may not yet be accessible in words.  I am a part of all three of those here.  And they all overlap.  It feels important for me to differentiate between them for my own self-care.  In some sense, I am a therapist all the time because I am a person who is a therapist - in the same way that I am always American, even if I live in England or travel to Nepal.  But I cannot actively be a therapist all the time – it would be unmanageable. 

Sometimes I want to just dance for fun, too – but when I do that here, it’s with my students and clients – who are one and the same.  When teaching technique, choreographed steps and a curriculum of life skills which are unknown to the girls here, there must be rules and consequences and order – it’s a classroom setting with a clear structure of authority.  But in therapy, the aim is more democratic, and the basic boundaries are around safety and confidentiality, with everything that happens in the space being co-created and informative.  These varying aspects of using dance are best viewed as points of exposure rather than barriers; they can work well together and support each other, but identifying where one ends and the other begins is difficult.  And as I’ve said, a framework of boundaries is important, especially for those who are recovering from traumatic experiences. 

But in what seems like a culture very based in an illusion of hard boundaries: - right and wrong, firm definitions between castes, public and private, male and female roles - perhaps the confusion that I’m experiencing in setting boundaries with them is a beneficial part of their process of developing and determining boundaries for themselves.  After all, the work in its entirety is meant to push against the boundaries within which women and girls have been placed in this traditional culture.  Finding, distinguishing and testing boundaries is a process.  Hopefully by exploring the process together, the girls are developing an implicit embodied sense of determining and setting boundaries, in all its movement and fluidity.   

As always, if you would like to help fund this voluntary project, please visit my gofundme page here.

This is hard.

Is my blog supposed to be all about how wonderful and life-changing this experience is?  To be clear, it is both of those things.  But also, this is hard.  This is harder than I even imagined it would be. I have been inspired, amazed, horrified, frustrated, angry and confused by what I’ve experienced so far.  I have felt proud, guilty, lucky, empowered, helpless, too demanding, too permissive, too academic, not academic enough, lonely, isolated, vulnerable, good at my job, bad at my job, social, anti-social, energised, and exhausted.  And I think I experience all of these daily.

When I moved to London, I had this sense of feeling like an outsider.  As soon as I opened my mouth, people would ask where I was from (and then usually ask me about my thoughts on Trump upon finding out I was American, but that’s another story).  I know this was mostly meant out of curiosity and genuine interest, as London is a very international city, and I was far from the only person sporting a different accent.  But it is an immediate way of acknowledging that I’m not from there.  It took months for me to feel like I really belonged there, but London did eventually become home – thanks in large part to my incredible support network of women on my MA course and in my flat, groups of people with whom I immediately had something in common.  I came to terms with being a foreigner, and in some senses even enjoyed it.  It felt important to experience being an outsider.  As a white American woman, I haven’t often had the experience of being in the minority of anything.  And in London, my level of ‘otherness’ is mild - I have to open my mouth to be outed, and even then I at least speak some version of the same language. 

But here, everything about me screams “you don’t belong here!”  From my skin colour, to my language, to the amount of luggage I carry with me for a two week stay in a rural district, to my inability to drink the same water as everyone else, or my struggling to survive on only dal bhat and curry, to my electronics and my attachment to them.  Mostly, I am a novelty American dancer person who doesn’t eat enough rice, can list roughly 50-60 Nepali words to the amusement of others, and from whom everyone wants to learn dance. 

I am spending a lot of time in very rural Nepal these days.  The girls in the shelter in Kathmandu are in school for the better part of their days, and so Raksha Nepal has chosen to utilise my skills in their outreach program in rural districts to empower young women identified as high risk for trafficking, forced prostitution, and sexual violence.  My periods in each district are short – a mere two weeks.  This involves two full days allotted for traveling (up, down and around mountains in buses on narrow roads, often made of dirt – or more likely mud now that the rainy season is approaching) and a short 10 days of work as a DMP and Promethean Spark Life Coach. 

I’m not positive that everyone in these villages has seen a real life white person before.  Needless to say, English is hardly spoken.  I am able to communicate with some people (most notably my Social Mobiliser in each district – my host, guide, and the Raksha Nepal representative who provides non-dance related life skills and economic training to the girls on a regular basis).  However the communication is often stilted – both speaking in very short words and sentences in an effort to understand and be understood.  A support network in my own language doesn’t exist outside of my phone – and that is reliant on the availability of data and electricity, which are not always reliable. 

In the last district, I got sick and really struggled to explain that curry is a very strong flavour for an American sick stomach.  Rice, curry and dal are their staples -  if I was sick surely I needed to be eating more of these things to keep up my strength, not less.  And my lovely and hospitable hosts worked so hard to try and find food I could keep down, and insisted I go see a doctor (which I did.  I’m fine now).  In the midst of this I continued to run sessions.  45 minutes walking up, down and around hills to work with girls who know nothing about me, but are excited for my presence, who don’t speak any English, and have a world of completely different life experiences from me.  And then in 10 days, I’m meant to provide life skills coaching and therapy, adjust to a new district, climate, host family, learn the names and get to know 25 new girls, and try to leave some kind of lasting impression amidst their expectations that I will somehow teach them some magic trick to be successful and perpetually happy.

Does this sound like I’m complaining?  I know it’s a privilege to be here doing this work.  There has not been a moment here that I have not felt reminded of how incredibly fortunate I am to have everything in my life I’ve ever had, beginning with the pure luck of being born where and to whom I was.  I love this work, and I think it’s so important.  And instead of questioning if I’m making any difference at all, I’m constantly trying to understand how I can make the most lasting (albeit small) difference by updating and improving the program I’m offering in each district, while continuously adjusting to the individual needs of each group.  I’m not complaining.  But this is hard.  It just is.

I’ve struggled with the idea that my abilities as a teacher and therapist may be ultimately less important than the fact that I’m here at all.  I think I came here wanting to be some super capable therapist who could help these girls through some meaningful process.  And I do still have hopes that I am doing that in some way, especially with the girls at the shelter with whom I have the opportunity to do more longer term work.  But the fact that someone would travel so far to work so closely with them at all is probably one of the biggest senses of empowerment I can give them – simply that they’re worth the trip.  And they are.  I know it, but my whole point in being here really is to help them know it for themselves.  And what better way to show them than to actually be here putting in the work every day?  This is what the PSI life coaching and DMP are about – having the embodied experience to know it’s true.  

The truth is, that’s the best place I can start.  As much as I don’t want to admit that the kind of person I am may be more useful to these girls than the kind of therapist I am, that’s probably true.  Although I have to acknowledge that the kind of person I am is a therapist (among other things).  There’s no separating those two points.  The kind of person I am has of course influenced the kind of therapist I am; the kind of person I am led me to become a DMP in the first place, instead of continuing as a professional dancer, or pursuing anything else in the world that would probably be more lucrative.  I’m here, whether they are appreciative and excited or miserable and defiant.  There’s an unconditionality to that that I get the sense they are not accustomed to in the villages.

I feel as though much of what is making this experience difficult for me – being singled out at every turn as a different, being so far and out of literal and digital reach from a support network of friends and family while doing difficult and emotionally draining work – is likely the first part of what makes me useful here.  They have no idea how difficult this might be for me, but they do know I’ve come a long way and they view me as an expert.  While I have certainly spent plenty of time questioning my actual level of ‘expertise,’ I’m happy for them to trust me.  Because how special is it to have an expert travel 7,500 miles to be with you?  My discomfort with being such an outsider and having such high expectations put on me are precisely their first lesson in how worthwhile they are.  It’s a power dynamic I’m still figuring out exactly how to manage.

This work is hard.  The language and cultural barriers are isolating, and after a month, I’m still very much adjusting.  I am grateful to all of you who are offering support in all the digital ways possible.  You are a big part of my self-care.  I don’t think I ever truly realised how emotionally necessary it is to be continuously connected in some way to people with whom I share a culture and can speak my native language.  I’m aware in the current global climate of refugees and immigrants, that that luxury is not available to everybody.  It is one more thing I can count myself lucky for having, even and especially in the moments when it is not as available as I would like.

As usual, if you would like to offer financial support to this project in addition to what you’ve already shown by reading this blog, please follow the link here.

Big steps. Small room.

With the #metoo movement getting so much coverage in the US and UK, I can’t help but feel the difference between the social environments I’ve come from and Nepal.   The girls and women here have a way to go before people will be listening and responding with such attention.  Menuka Thapa, the founder of Raksha Nepal is a loving, badass, outspoken feminist who takes girls into her shelter and is developing programs around the country to help them and other women get back on their feet and avoid trafficking all together.  She is constantly fighting this battle, and I believe it will be the influence of her and those like her that will help create a generation of women who will fight back with vigor.  I am not pioneering anything, but I am thrilled to be a part of the movement created by women like Menuka Thapa, and to help move it forward by including the moving body in the process.

I have a sense from my work in the first district that this fight is still in its early days.  Empowering women so they feel confident and strong enough to speak up is a long road, fighting thousands of years of cultural limitations.  A week or so into my program, as the girls are beginning to open up to me more, I have become aware of the reality of their lives.  These young women, all from farming families, all want to have careers – singers, dancers, fashion designers, army soldiers, police officers, social workers, business women, teachers, lawyers, nurses, doctors.  Until they leave home and get a job to earn their own money, they are under their parents’ control.  The next step, traditionally, would be for them to marry and then be under their husband’s control.  However, seeing how married life works for women, many of these girls either are not making marriage a priority, or they flat out don’t ever want to marry. 

“Married life is terrible,” I have heard.  Apparently, once a woman is married, she completely loses her independence (unless she marries straight out of her parents’ house, then she never really has independence to lose).  Married women are not allowed to walk or converse freely.  They do not leave their property without their husbands.  The discrimination between daughters and sons is extreme, with sons having all sorts of freedom, and daughters met only with limits and boundaries.  Neither schooling nor learning transferable skills are prioritized for girls.

The young women in this program are very open that they do not want to live a ‘traditional’ life.  They must work extra hard to become educated, pass all of their certifications and qualifications, and find a job before they will have the freedom to do, think and feel what they want.  We are working to empower them in preparation for the effort it will take to reach that point successfully.  Raksha Nepal has created this program so that those in pursuit of social and economic independence will not need to support themselves with prostitution or be vulnerable to trafficking.  Some of the girls are still quite young – 14 or 15.  In a world where the fight for independence is difficult, it will take a lot of desire and motivation for them to not become discouraged and give in to a life that they do not want.

And so imagine my fury when we arrived at the training center today and were led to a tiny room – maybe 12’ x 12’ – maybe – with a desk and benches (and a dead mouse) – for a group of 25 girls to dance in.  We have been in one of two other rooms so far.  One smaller than the other, but both workable.  The largest room has Raksha Nepal posters and information on the walls – clearly their normal room.  And yet today, despite the other (male, talking-only) training groups (about agriculture, an admittedly important skill) we were relegated to an office best suited for a 4-person sit-down meeting.  This was a metaphor for the value of women’s empowerment here.  Despite this program already running for 9 months, we do not have a dedicated regular space.  It implies a rejection of female empowerment, and in this case, a rejection of the use of the body for expression.  This is supposed to be their safe space to embrace empowerment.  If they can’t have that in the training center, then where?

I know that expressing my anger in certain ways would face different consequences here (and for my host organization) than if I were in the US or UK.  I also know it’s unacceptable for the girls to display this anger.  Being pushed aside for men’s groups is standard practice and they are used to it.  Their words said they were angry, too, although I could not see any trace of it in their bodies.  I wonder if they are maybe so used to not being allowed to display anger that even when given permission to show anger in their bodies and on their faces (granted only by me, a temporary fixture in their lives from an entirely different culture), they still struggle.  If you’ve spent your life suppressing signs of your true negative feelings, your body may literally not know what to do with them.  After all, what can they do?  This is just the way it is.  What would be the use of expelling so much energy in a pointless expression of anger if no one will listen, care or take it seriously?  This is where I believe learning to engage with the body in an emotionally and physically safe way is important.  The road is long, and it important that these girls can recognize the feelings they have and respond appropriately and efficiently.  Without recognition of their feelings, they may not respond at all; without practice engaging with their feelings, they may be overtaken by their emotions and respond unsafely or irresponsibly. 

There was no way to change our current situation in the moment (a metaphor for life?).  We were in a small room and needed to figure out how to dance in it as a group.  We could not create a bigger room, but we could fight back against the small room.  We split into groups and spent each session practicing how loud we could be –  musically and verbally – and how much space we could take up with our bodies.  I encouraged them to dance as full out as ever against the adversity.  I had secret hopes that the noise we were making would disrupt the business going on in surrounding offices (our usual rooms are in their own buildings).  We had a lot of spectators, but no complaints.  At least we drew some attention.  (To be clear, this was a life coaching dance session, not a therapy session.  I do not allow spectators for therapy sessions).

But the point we were making was clear to us.  We are here to disrupt.  It’s a delicate subject, because I have been explicit that I am not here to advocate a rebellion.  The way I show my anger and the words I use must be chosen so carefully.  I cannot encourage they run away from their parents’ homes or disrupt their family situation in a way that would interfere with food production or the economic status of their household.  Even if I felt that would be safe, I would not be here to support or guide them as they faced the consequences.  And the consequences could be severe.  Leaving home without sufficient skills, knowledge or money could lead them right into forced prostitution or abusive relationships.  But this is the time to ‘practice’ getting angry and responding in an appropriately disruptive way, so that they do have the tools to leave when it is safe.  They can hopefully begin to see where the disruptions in the dominant discourse must happen.  And if they are not able to get angry themselves, whether because of their emotional capacity or their social boundaries, then they can see me be angry on their behalf.  They face a very slow process, and the path to get there is long and strategic.  They must acquire the skills, education and finances to make the changes in the future.  And we must deliver those skills and education and keep them motivated to stay on track. 

It will be no surprise to anyone who had any interaction with me during the second year of my MA degree that I feel that embodying agency is an essential part of the strategy.  Using the body to help these girls develop a sense of ownership over their own bodies and feelings is a necessary step in the fight to empower women.  Even in a small room.

Back to the Body

Today I head out to start my first project here in Nepal.  I will be heading out to 5 different rural districts to create, set up and run a two-week program for adolescent girls who have been identified as either high risk for or survivors of sexual violence, forced prostitution and trafficking.  During this short time in each district, I will deliver a combination of life coaching sessions and Dance Movement Psychotherapy workshops to support these girls.  I will be focusing on the facilitation of a sense of agency and body ownership as well as skills to help prepare these girls to live empowered and economically independent lives – skills such as goal setting, self-care, teamwork and leadership, and embracing creativity. 

The past few months of carting back and forth between different cities and states around the US - waiting for the visa gods to decide my most recent visa fate – have been both nourishing, as I have had a chance to catch up with family I don’t see regularly enough, and also taxing.  In the process, I realise I’ve become very wrapped up in my head.  And now off I go to work in an embodied[1] way with a collection of young women who speak little to no English and may not have the capacity at this point in time to feel very embodied themselves.  It will be my responsibility to communicate with them with few words, and to hold for them the weight and concept of embodiment, as they take steps to slowly embrace it themselves.  Those who have experienced trauma often feel their bodies are not their own, or that they do not have permission to use it as they like.  Too heavy a focus on embracing the body at once can be overwhelming, while ignoring it perpetuates the problem.  I must have a constant sense of my own relationship with my body and a keen awareness of how I am imparting that to the girls.  It’s time to get back in touch with my own body, and my best tool for that is movement:

As I finish packing a few clothes, supplies to keep me clean and healthy in rural Nepal, and a library’s worth of reference books, I have started to feel a bit overwhelmed by this project that is unlike anything I’ve undertaken before. Fighting the urge to ignore the nervous sensation in my stomach in order to only feel the strength I am ‘supposed’ to model for these girls, I give in to the complex mix of emotions I am actually having.  As I allow myself to move through this, I feel vulnerable.  I keep circling back to two arm movements: one that involves a sense of enveloping or hugging into myself, and another as if lifting some imaginary weight to carry over my head. My arms feel weak and unable to manage it, and so I bend my knees and engage my whole body.  And sure enough, my arms remain over my head, and I do not drop this imaginary thing.  And I know that as long as I don’t lose sight and sense of my own body – it’s strength and equally its vulnerability – I will find the tools to support these girls and myself.[2]

As I question what possible strength I can impart to these girls who have experienced and survived so much more hardship than I can possibly imagine, I must continue to find my way back to my body, my training, and my own self-care.  I am lucky to have been born into the circumstances I was and raised in the family I have.  And the opportunities I have had as a result of that good fortune have given me a different version of strength than these young women have had to show.  That is what I have to offer these brave young women.

And with that, I would like to wish my mom a very happy birthday today.  Her love, strength, support and guidance have given me the tools that I hope to share with the girls here Nepal.  I love you, Mom.

As always, if you'd like to contribute to funding this volunteer experience, please click here.  Thank you so much to those who have donated!

[1] I use the terms ‘embodied’ and ‘embodiment’ to describe a sense of “‘being in’ and developing a relationship with our bodies” (Allegranti, 2015 Allegranti, B. (2015) Embodied Performances: Sexuality, Gender, Bodies.  Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan., p. 2).

[2] At times in this blog – as in life – I will have no better way to describe my experience than in my embodied response, a description of my sensations and movement as I ‘move through’ ideas, concepts or thinking.  This is a practice I embraced in my DMP MA course, and is inspired by the work of Beatrice Allegranti.  These excerpts of embodied response will be written in italics.

Welcome to Nepal. How did I get here?

Welcome to my blog following my experience as a Dance Movement Psychotherapist and Promethean Spark Life Coach in a sex trafficking shelter in Nepal.

A  quick introduction here to explain a bit about what's going on.  As many of you may know, I recently graduated with my MA in Dance Movement Psychotherapy.  My research focused on the facilitation of embodied agency in trauma survivors who have experienced external control.  The idea of using the body and its movements to reclaim a sense of ownership over the body that was forcefully taken by another seems to me an obvious approach to trauma work.  While certainly not a new idea - Bessel van der Kolk, Babette Rothschild, Amber Elizabeth Gray, David Alan Harris and Sabine Koch to name a few therapists who have published work embracing the body's role in trauma and trauma treatment - it is still gaining momentum.  (CBT is still one of the two most common approaches to trauma treatment according to the NICE Guidelines). 

With this in mind, I have endeavored to implement this approach with those who would not otherwise receive this kind of support.  My previous work with Promethean Spark International (PSI), a nonprofit organisation that uses dance and the performing arts to teach essential life skills to impoverished youth around the world, led me to a Nepali trafficking shelter, Raksha Nepal (RN).  PSI recently piloted their life coaching methodology at RN, and it was met with great enthusiasm.  PSI has sent me as their first representative to offer life coaching through dance for an extended period of time.  In addition to the PSI program, I will be able to offer Dance Movement Psychotherapy on a regular basis to further support the girls in their healing from psychological trauma as a result of sex trafficking, forced prostitution, sexual assault and rape, and sexual abuse.  Because of the nature of therapeutic process and the development of a therapeutic relationship, especially between a therapist and clients of completely different cultures, I felt it was important to extend the normal stay of a PSI volunteer from 3 months to 5.  During this time, I will be living in the safe home with the girls, eating with them at mealtimes, and embracing their day-to-day routine.

As of now, I've just arrived and am acclimating to the time and culture change as I prepare to begin the therapy and coaching programs.  Keep updated with my progress by following this blog.  Photos shared on it will be carefully selected, and at times sparse, in order to protect the identities of my clients.

This project is completely voluntary, and absent of any scholarships, grants, stipends or outside funding of any kind.  I have begun a fundraising campaign to which you can contribute here.  Please donate if you can, and share this blog and the fundraising page far and wide.  Let's work together to raise awareness about sexual violence and trafficking, and support the use of dance, movement and the body to help treat the trauma experienced by its survivors.