E4 S2 | Be in the Richness of Life as it Arises Through Your Body: Holly Wodetzki Shares How Her Embodied Dance Methodology Helps Women Come Back to Intense Aliveness in the Body

Welcome to Episode 4, Season 2 of the Sick and Seeking Podcast!

In this episode, I chat with Holly Wodetzki of Sensual Embodied Dance about the transformative power of dance in awakening a deep sense of aliveness in the body. Through her unique approach, Holly helps women reconnect with their innate vitality.

Conversation Highlights:

• From Yoga to Dance: Holly shares her journey from yoga to free-form dance and the richness it brings.
• Body Awareness: We discuss how tight areas in women’s bodies become prominent when encouraged to move toward pleasure.
• Erotic Pulse of Life: Holly explores eroticism as a vital pulse within us.
• Dissolving Boundaries: Dance practices can break down personal barriers, fostering unity with nature.
• Emotional Flow: We highlight the importance of intimacy with bodily sensations to allow life and emotions to flow.
• Releasing Tension: Dance enables women to let go and embrace life’s full spectrum.
• Chronic Pelvic Tension: Many women experience a disconnect from their lower bodies, leading to chronic tension.
• Embodiment and Music: Holly discusses the relationship between embodiment and dissociation, and how music evokes various emotional states.

Quotes:
“And the distinction between me and other is something that the mind draws. Through practice, you can dissolve those boundaries and feel a unity.”  

“When we let life move through us, things don’t get stuck, allowing us to avoid unexpressed emotional residue.” 

“Will you dance with this too? For those facing hardship, can you still engage, even in pain, recognizing it as part of your story?” - Holly Wodetzki

Connect with Holly:
Website | LinkedIn | Instagram | Facebook

Resources:
History of Butoh Dance
How to Use Music to Boost Motivation, Mood & Improve Learning | Huberman Lab Podcast

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Transcript

Leslie (00:01.234)

Hello, Holly, welcome to the Sick and Seeking Podcast.

Holly Wodetzki (00:05.354)

Hello, thanks for having me.

Leslie (00:07.702)

I have with me Holly Wadetsky of Sensual Embodied Dance. Well, Holly and I just met, and so I'm really excited to dive into this conversation because I know this woman has a lot of incredible knowledge to share about embodiment, movement, women's bodies and all the things. Now, this is a definite passion of mine, and so I have so much curiosity on this subject because I know that this type of movement practice has been really supportive and impactful in my life in so many ways.

So Holly, I mean, since we barely know each other, I guess let's start with like the origin story. Like how did this all come to be that you created this beautiful offering and business that you have now?

Holly Wodetzki (00:52.554)

Mm-hmm. It's a bit of a magical mystery to her, but I'll keep it short. I so now I teach sensory and body dance and teach people to train in that. And I started dancing not when I was a child. I think I was 21. So I'm not going to say like 20, 21 when I first started dancing. It was in Latin dance. And prior to that I was

not a dancer as far as I was concerned and super awkward and you know didn't have that sense of you know like being confident in my body by any stretch of the imagination and I but I was very into yoga and meditation and I was very rigorous and disciplined about how I approached a yoga practice that was you know very linear and it was about like holding poses for long periods of time and resting deeply into it and all of this

Leslie (01:21.866)

Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha

Holly Wodetzki (01:49.262)

And I just so happened to have a partner who suggested that since I was a woman, that maybe I would enjoy dancing instead of like doing two hours of yoga a day, that maybe you could like move your body, like feel like, you know, maybe you would enjoy that. And so I did that because I was like very rigid and disciplined about how I did things. And

Leslie (02:06.291)

Mm-hmm.

Holly Wodetzki (02:17.062)

I swapped out for an entire year, my yoga practice for putting music on shuffle. And for one hour a day, I just moved my body and I didn't have like, I was not drawing any on any prior experience of like how I should do that. I just was, I was applying the principles of, you know, like an inner awareness through yoga and, you know, having that introspective state and put the music on. And for one hour I would just dance.

Sometimes it would just be like swaying and sometimes it would be raging and I would do the premenstrual dance and I would do the angry dance and the sad dance and all of the things that just came up without any expectation of them being any particular way. And over the course of that 12 months, something woke up within me that was like so astonishing. And I felt connected to something

touched on before and I had never felt like so alive and intimate not only with my own body but with other people and nature and the world around me through moving my own body but it's like I was moving my body but my body would begin to extend beyond me and be the movement of the wind in the trees and the sky and everything being part of this kind of like bigger dance of life.

And so off the back of that, I was just like, oh my God, do women know about this? Do we know that we can dance? Like I was a bit of like a raving, like I was just so astonished at what the body could do. And so I started running weekly classes that were like just whoever I happened to tell and.

Leslie (03:47.754)

well.

Leslie (03:52.743)

I'm sorry.

Leslie (04:04.343)

Yeah.

Holly Wodetzki (04:15.054)

people who saw me after this one year, like saw me before and saw me after and were like, oh, what are you doing? Like, you're different, like what's going on? Like, and then I would say, I'm doing this dance thing. Like, it's so amazing. Do you want to come and do it with me? And so that's how the classes started. And I never intended that to be like a business venture or anything like that. I just was like, hey, let's get together every Wednesday.

And sometimes there'd be no people, and sometimes there'd be like 10 people, and then sometimes it would just be like two people and one of them is my mom. And like it just very organically started happening and women were having similar experiences to me. And over that, what's now been 10 or 11 years of just like consistently practicing, I've like come to

like refine a process that obviously I also then, you know, investigated trauma and like theatrical aspects that you, you know, could gain in expression and all different education around the body and neuroscience and all these different aspects and found out through a lot of trial and error, what really works, what doesn't work, what women want to need.

part of that journey has been. So for maybe the first five or six years, I was approaching movement in a more general sense. And then I started to notice that anytime anything ventured towards like pleasure, sexuality, like all the shoulders would tense and the pelvis would tense. And there was a real like, oh, this is a real like, tightly held aspect within women's bodies. And so I had

through yoga and tantra practices that I had just personally experienced through that and tools and as much as I didn't want to be, you know, the erotic sexual person, I was like, I got something to offer here. And so my work has gone a lot in that direction in some ways around sensuality and the erotic and pleasure as a resource.

Holly Wodetzki (06:31.222)

Yeah, because that's just what I found has opened up the most for people. Because my view is of those aspects being really about our life force and about aliveness in the body and creativity, rather than like sexuality as a, you know, like genitals and intercourse, like a small concept. So, yeah, that's kind of how it happened.

Leslie (06:31.76)

No.

Holly Wodetzki (06:57.962)

And so now there's a methodology that has been born out of that, that has been extensively tested, that is very specific to how the nervous system can open to create plasticity and transformation.

Leslie (07:06.146)

Mmm.

Leslie (07:14.762)

Hmm. See, these are the moments where I'm like, and this is why I had Holly on my podcast. And I know I'm kind of feel like I did it for very personal reasons. And I'm actually not even gonna hide that because I'm not, I'm not gonna hide it. I needed to have this conversation because in this moment, I might've alluded to this Holly, I'm having so much fear about bringing.

Holly Wodetzki (07:20.637)

Hahaha

Holly Wodetzki (07:28.686)

I'm going to go ahead and close the video.

Leslie (07:39.642)

any sort of movement practice or any, whether I've been certified in it or I'm going to be, I'm like so nervous about doing it. So thank you for being an inspiration to me, like literally just to say like, I know in my bones how to move and the experiences that I've been through. And obviously I want to take care of people and do it in a very supportive way and guide people. Because there is a lot to experience when you go into the body. But I just, I really appreciate you showing me the way that it's like.

Sometimes just keep it really simple and just do it, even though you're freaked out. Maybe you're like, what am I doing? But I know it feels right, you know? So thank you. Thank you for that. Oh gosh, so it's like in this moment, having this conversation, I obviously needed that. So just wanted to point that out first. And I have myself participated in my own version of sensual and erotic movement. And I have seen that is.

Holly Wodetzki (08:18.266)

Yep. It's an eternal showing up process.

Leslie (08:36.986)

a big part of how you sort of moved, like you said, into your business. Or at least that's what I see now, because it's all over your business and your page and what have you. And I think that's so fascinating. And I take, I just would love to hear more about whether it's your methodology for transformation or a little bit more about this pleasure and the sexuality and the erotic piece about that being a life force and aliveness. Like, can you speak more to that?

Holly Wodetzki (09:02.386)

Yeah, so the central embodied dance methodology is not specific to sexuality. It can be used with children, with men, women, whoever. But there is a component that is intimacy with the body, that just happens to be like very magnetic and appealing from the outside, but that's not the

Holly Wodetzki (09:31.614)

the sort of other branch of my work which uses that methodology but specifically explores the erotic in the body and sexuality and what that means as a pulse of life. Like, you know, in many ways you can see life as, you know, this interplay of opposites, that is like the coming together and apart that is like inherently like

erotic, like nature is constantly like creating and birthing things and coming together and even when you eat a piece of food, it's like that's something outside of me and then I put it into my mouth and now we are one, which is like in my view is something very like there's something inherently like erotic about the coming together of two uniting into one and the pull the desire between things to come together.

So it's on a much broader perspective than, as I said, like genitals and intercourse. It's about the play of life, this erotic friction between opposites. So both of those works go in different directions, but what I find really beneficial in terms of women exploring their sexuality is that they find a...

incredible resource within themselves that connects them to life. Like that we are like of nature, the same play that is happening outside of us is happening inside of us and that there is this creative impulse within life and within our own bodies that we are ultimately not separate from even though you know our mind will create a distinction between this is me and this is other, this is outside.

separate to me, but that's just the mind creating a veil, like a distinction. And even in neuroscience, like that can, there's a state called transient hyperfrontality and people talk about it in when they enter into flow states that you feel this oneness that my body extends beyond the boundaries of just me and my physical experience and the world, that there is this, even if you think about

Holly Wodetzki (11:49.91)

like your hand and there's your hand and then there's around your hand. Like that's actually just like a molecular continuity of atoms between your body and what is around you. And that's the distinction between me and other is something that the mind draws. And you can through practice dissolve those boundaries a little bit and feel like there is actually a unity and an inherent interconnection.

between your body and life itself. And that just happens to have a very erotic feel in the body, rather than like, I know when people, when often you say sexuality, they think it's about like, oh, like women writhing on the floor and, you know, about getting wet and genitals and.

Leslie (12:29.918)

Mmm.

Holly Wodetzki (12:43.318)

you know, like seducing the opposite sex and performing and, you know, all of those different things. And my work takes a much broader view on like life as a creative impulse, as something that is the yearning to express and magnetise and create and unite and to come together in a part.

Leslie (13:08.606)

Mm-hmm. This is the first time I've ever heard someone describe sort of the different Feelings I've had when I did different types of movement practices So I really appreciate you sharing and bringing words to it because I'm like I could feel it for you And but to describe what that was like it's been it's always alluded me. So thank you for sharing that and Particularly for listeners of this podcast, you know when you have things that are not

working in your body as you might like it to work, or you might feel a certain way that you would prefer not to feel. This is why I wanted you to come on Holly to talk about these experiences in these states that are nuts, and we talked about this before. If you have chronic pain, can movement get rid of your chronic pain? I mean, probably not. It's probably still gonna be there, right? But what I always try to tell people, or at least my finding is,

Holly Wodetzki (13:59.928)

Yeah.

Leslie (14:04.222)

there's actually so much more there. Like you could maybe hold the fatigue, the pain, the whatever it is that day, and there could be so much more there underneath that. And they can all exist at the same moment is what I find. And then when you can hit those, what I call it almost like a transcendent state where I am connected to what I say is like a source of beyond a feeling, it's indescribable, except you did a great job describing it. Those are the moments that it just...

Holly Wodetzki (14:13.975)

I love you.

Leslie (14:32.19)

I want to share this to remind people that like, for as much as maybe we don't always want to be in our bodies, our bodies don't feel safe, our bodies can feel like the enemy, you know, if we can come back to them and get curious and have that bravery and that courage to go within, there is so much more to be found there. And so I just appreciate you sharing one aspect of that.

Holly Wodetzki (14:51.412)

Yeah.

Holly Wodetzki (14:54.778)

Yeah, yeah, it's like all those things can co-exist, like simultaneously in this intensity of life lived in the body. And you know, even I often use this phrase like excruciating ravishment. It's like the most ecstatic experiences I've ever had through dance, through like sex.

have been not, they're not all like lovely. They're like full of the richness of life. There's pain, there's like, I don't mean, I don't mean like sexual pain. There's like, but there's like the pain of your heart of the unexpressed things that you want to share with someone and there's like ugliness and there's beauty and all of those things like can meld together beyond the, I want this, I don't want this.

and be in the richness of life as it arises through your body.

Leslie (15:59.486)

of life as it arises in your body? Yes, yes, and yes. Now you don't know this, but I'm gonna quote you. I found this on your social media when your posts and it really spoke to me. You said, when we change how we move, we change how we feel, how we think, and how we perceive the world. I said a few more things and then you said, it's about how fully you can let life move through you, intimately, honestly, and artistically.

Holly Wodetzki (16:06.19)

Thanks for watching!

Holly Wodetzki (16:19.199)

I don't know.

Holly Wodetzki (16:28.322)

Hmm.

Leslie (16:30.462)

So, so true.

Holly Wodetzki (16:36.078)

Yeah. Did you want me to comment? Oh, I did. I can expand on it if you like. Yeah.

Leslie (16:37.626)

I don't even, I don't know. I was like, where do we go next? I feel like, and we're done with this, with. I would love you to, I was like, or we could just mic drop because I'm complete. Like this is, you know, it just, everything that you're saying, the things that I'm quoting you on, how you're speaking about movement, the body, it's, let's just keep going. Yes, comment, tell me more.

Holly Wodetzki (16:59.474)

Yeah. So when you move, I can't remember what I said, when you move your body, you move, change how you feel or change how you think. Yeah. Because your nervous system and your body mind, because there isn't actually a distinction, like in neuroscience, there's no distinction between the body and the mind. They're one, they're one system. That system of your nervous system.

Leslie (17:05.657)

If you think how we perceive the world. Yeah.

Holly Wodetzki (17:24.986)

influences and informs how you perceive everything, how you perceive things around you, who you are, what you feel, your pain, everything. And your nervous system runs in habitual patterns because it's always trying to conserve energy. It's not trying to like create new things, it's trying to, you know, make things reflexive. So when you introduce something new into the body, like for

I don't know, shaking your butt or like hip circles or, you know, like opening up through the chest. When you introduce new possibilities through movement into the body, then plasticity happens because you're having to put some intentional effort into trying out, you know, the new way that you're moving your body. And because you are introducing something new, the capacity to also experience something new happens. Like when you.

like shaking your butt, that's jiggling your butt cheeks for instance, a very important and advanced practice. You start to feel something different, oh that my pelvis has this like, capacity to be loose here, that things are moving in a different way and then you're connecting to a different type of energy in your body and a different spectrum of feeling and then

Leslie (18:28.714)

Yes, yes.

Absolutely, I agree.

Holly Wodetzki (18:53.706)

bubbles up and you start to, oh do you know what I thought shaking your ass was just like for like selling lingerie and being slutty and oh actually it has opened up all this space in my hips that made me cry because I have never like felt this part of my body before. Like it can, addressing the nervous system through movement can create like spillover effects into

every part of how you move, how you think and then how you interact with the world. So that's what sort of like the movement, offering a new way of being in the world through movement allows you to move through the world in a different way. And then what did I say after that? Something?

Leslie (19:42.522)

Oh, you said, I mean, you pretty much remembered it, which is incredible because, I mean, you have a lot of posts and this one wasn't the top one. And then you said, it's about how fully you can let life move through you. Oh my God, when you said that, I was like, oh, that's what it is. And then you said, intimately, honestly, artistically.

Holly Wodetzki (19:56.023)

Yeah.

Yeah, so my work is very big on expression because there's a very important part of first sensitizing and being intimate with what you feel, but then having the capacity to express full life to move through you. If I am holding my shoulders tightly against the body, how much can I express the life moving through me? Whereas if I've opened the capacity to, I know I'm doing things on the video that I know you.

people listening, I'm sorry, I realize you can't see.

Leslie (20:31.108)

It's really delightful and lovely. So they'll just have to use their mind to imagine.

Holly Wodetzki (20:35.214)

But if things are locked down in the body, for whatever reason, from trauma, from stress, we all have tension in our body in different ways. Life can only express itself through you to the capacity that your body is available to make those expressions, both physically, emotionally, in your voice, all of those different things. So...

the more that we're able to introduce new possibilities of movement into the body so that we're not just moving in our habitual ruts in the habitual ways that have led us to where we are for better or worse. And then also practice the capacity to express the full spectrum of life so that when I feel sad, I don't hold it in, I allow sadness to be the expression. When I feel...

Leslie (21:11.191)

Mm-hmm.

Holly Wodetzki (21:29.106)

frustrated that my body can do the dance of frustration and that be part of the expression of life and it doesn't mean that you have to um you know if you like feel rage the expression of life is rage coming over me right now and I happen to be in a post office I'm not saying that like you just like let yourself go that there's a time and place for everything

But when we have that capacity to let life move through us, then things don't get stuck. We don't get the residue of unexpressed experiences and emotions stuck in our body that then sometimes fester and sometimes cause sickness, or sometimes they leak out in really dysfunctional ways, like major and minor.

Leslie (22:16.167)

Yes. Oh my gosh, yes. I wasn't trying to cut you off. I was just guessing. Because this was one of my biggest, I guess, learnings, teachings, whatever it is, from the woman, Erin, who was on my podcast. And just letting those things move through me. So many parts of myself, just through culture, family, just what I thought I should be as a female, shut a lot of that.

Holly Wodetzki (22:17.276)

Yeah.

Holly Wodetzki (22:20.706)

Hahaha.

Leslie (22:41.842)

stuck down and I just wouldn't really like let it go. I just kind of I'm a shover in her and just hold her on her kind of thing. I mean so I know that can be a pattern at least for me that's how it showed up and I imagine others.

Holly Wodetzki (22:49.626)

Yes, so much.

Holly Wodetzki (22:55.022)

Oh, I will tell you from working with a decade, for over a decade with women, everybody. Like you're certainly not alone in the lids that we put on different things that are acceptable or not acceptable. Like I found this my personal joy, but also something that I found very positive is like women being given the opportunity.

Leslie (23:00.764)

Okay. All right.

Holly Wodetzki (23:24.194)

to express them as themselves, as disgusting. Like to find moments where, you know, there's context and a practice around it, but like be disgusting. Just dance the dance of being absolutely, abhorrently disgusting, because women have been told constantly, put together nice, pretty and proper, ma-ma-ma, and like sometimes you just wanna be like, oh, I'm just.

Leslie (23:29.27)

Mm.

Holly Wodetzki (23:49.298)

all of the grotesqueness of life and like rotting carcasses in nature because that is part of nature too. And like...

Leslie (23:52.452)

Ah.

Leslie (23:56.73)

It's... yeah. I mean, it's part of us. We are nature. Oh.

Holly Wodetzki (23:59.594)

And there is such a liberation from the like constantly holding, oh, everything has to be pretty and I've been told to be good and nice and pleasing. And like, if you wanna embody the full spectrum of what's possible in this experience, which I frame as like, you know, becoming like nature, like the feminine in all of us men, women, whoever.

Leslie (24:10.742)

Mmm.

Holly Wodetzki (24:27.178)

like is becoming like nature, everything that is in nature is also in us, like the beauty, the grotesque, the suffering, the sublime, like that's all there and can we move and dance with it all, like make art with our life.

Leslie (24:46.666)

Yes, absolutely. And you know, I've done a lot of moomoo practices and I've never been asked to dance grotesquely. So I am like, oh man, that would be a good one.

Holly Wodetzki (24:54.319)

Hahaha!

Holly Wodetzki (25:00.172)

You could Google, there's a whole genre from Japan called butou dance. And it's about exploring like shadow spaces in the grotesque and it's absolutely horrifyingly terrific and captivating. And you can Google it if you're curious.

Leslie (25:05.31)

Uh huh.

Leslie (25:15.018)

Um, uh, be right back. I'm going to go do that right now. Um, so fascinating. It's so interesting. I mean, even just you saying that I'm just imagining like how like, you know, belly must be tucked in shoulders must be back. Let the, you know, press the chest out. You want to be visually appealing. You don't know. I'm just like, Oh my God. I didn't even think about like, Oh, that feels so good. Like I'm into it. I'd be like, well, let it all just hang out. Like.

And that's what's interesting too, when I talk to people and I say, I do this movement practice or I dance, like I think people, yeah, I think steps and coordination and you wanna look a certain way. I'm like, actually, no, it's not always gonna look pretty. It's not gonna be in rhythm. It's gonna be something and it's probably not what you're thinking it's gonna be.

Holly Wodetzki (25:56.709)

Yeah.

Holly Wodetzki (26:04.302)

Yeah, I almost regret saying dance, right? Because when I say dance, I don't mean dance as in hip up, down, slide, great vibe. I mean like the dance of life, like the atoms vibrating, galaxy swirling, and all those movements happening within our own body in a really interconnected way. Like that to me is what dance is when I refer to dance.

Leslie (26:26.77)

Yes. Yes, yes, yes. I understand. Thank you for clarifying. Kiss anyone who had any confusion. Can you speak to me more about, again, I should have quoted you, but more about, particularly for women, the lower body, the hips. Tell me more about why it's so important that we, not important, but like, I know a lot of women's hips are tight and there's not a lot of fluidity there. Talk to me a little bit about that.

Holly Wodetzki (26:33.051)

One.

Holly Wodetzki (26:43.146)

Mmm.

Holly Wodetzki (26:50.314)

But.

Holly Wodetzki (26:53.774)

Yeah, oh, where to begin? I think it's very multifaceted how we arrived at a stage where many, maybe even most women have chronic pelvic tension and that it's normalized, you know, that women in their 20s can have incontinence and like that.

Leslie (26:56.85)

Hahaha

Holly Wodetzki (27:23.222)

isn't that's fine, but it's not normal. It's not the healthy state. I don't know if you want to cut this out. I'm going somewhere intensively. Let me start again.

Leslie (27:34.756)

Okay, let's start again. So we just said the whole thing about the hips. Is there anything you want to share about that? Go.

Holly Wodetzki (27:40.234)

Yeah, I do want to share about the hips. So where to start? The lower body really connects us to like an incredible vitality through the legs and through the pelvis and our womb and pleasure and all of these different things. And it's multifactorial of why we are disconnect, like the majority of women feel quite disconnected from their lower body and have chronic pelvic tension from.

you know, like reasons of modernity that we sit in chairs all the time, instead of squatting, that, you know, there's a lot of sexual trauma that women have endured, that there's not so much space to feel your emotions and your pelvic floor tightens and holds emotions. Anyone who's worked with kind of dearmoring their cervix, like, there's a lot of emotions in your pelvic floor and in your cervix.

held there unless they're kind of actively released. Like you think about when you're stressed or you get a fright or you're anxious, like mostly your butt is clenched. Like there's a holding, a holding. And then like you mentioned before about like sucking in the belly and holding things together and just from so many different directions. And there's, you know, experts in this field who

Leslie (28:47.989)

Yeah.

Holly Wodetzki (29:06.094)

articulate it much better than I do. There's so many factors that are informing this tightness in the hips. I see a huge part of that being just the disconnect from people's sexuality. It feels scary to connect with that powerful energy. It feels unwelcome. It feels shameful. There's pain there. There's trauma there. There's all these things. It's like better just not to feel.

and hold it all under. So it's understandable that, you know, why that happens consciously or unconsciously, but also it's the seat of pleasure and creativity and finding your voice and having emotional fluidity and like connecting to what I arguably think are like the most exquisite parts of being a woman and your vitality and

you know, the grounding, all of those things happen when you connect to the lower body. But often when we dance, like even if you think about western dance, like if you think about sort of the ballet tap jazz kind of thing, and you look at those people dancing, everything is, again I'm doing things on video that I know you can't see, everything is very lifted and up and the arms are up and they're gesturing up.

Leslie (30:24.958)

Hahaha

Holly Wodetzki (30:32.25)

And there's this, and I see when people are in my classes and they're starting to dissociate, everything goes up. Like their hands go up, their body goes up. And it's not always the case that if you're dancing with your arms above your head, you're dissociating, of course. But there's this like up and leaving. And so a lot of my work is like, how do we go through movement back down in circling the pelvis with your heels planted into the ground?

that you're touching your body and feeling like, I'm here and now in this body, not up in the air and in the clouds and in my mind and out of my body. So a lot is like, how do you bring it back and connect to those feelings that maybe don't feel safe to explore or they feel taboo or they have religious shame connected to them or whatever it is and find a capacity and cultivate a capacity in your body to be able to.

gradually unfold and unravel the tension in the body. So that energy is free, is free to move both the physical tension, but also the emotional tension. And because if you think of like tension being the condensation, like a condensed ball of energy, it's tight, like if you squeeze your fist really tight, it takes a lot of energy and the energy is all concentrated in that area.

And then you start to relax it. All that energy relaxes, you rediscover, oh, there's so much aliveness there. It was just tight. It was all balled up into my left hip or my bum cheek or whatever it is. And then it can flow and then it's available in the body. And that feels really good. Really, really good. And women will say like, it feels like pleasure. It feels like...

something very erotic, but it's not necessarily erotic. It's just an intense aliveness in the body.

Leslie (32:30.954)

Hmm. That's so interesting because this is a lot of what I hear from other people who do the work, the sort of work that you're doing. This, yeah, having more access to all of yourself, of all of, yeah, all of you. And so I know you were just touching upon that. And I guess, of course, I'm having my very selfish moment here. I'm like, do I know what that feels like?

Holly Wodetzki (32:45.698)

How are you?

Leslie (32:54.946)

Like, I, you know, I was like, maybe was I just like ready to go? And I just like, here we go. Let's at least at all. Let's release it all and go for it. But I just don't know. I think it's such an interesting way to describe it. So I guess I'm just ruminating on that because this is a thing I hear over and over again. Yeah. That was just a, that was a random thought, a personal random thought. Um, Wow. The, the chronic clenching and the going up and out of your body.

Holly Wodetzki (33:17.695)

Mmm.

Leslie (33:23.194)

Yes, so that's a really, really fascinating piece too. Gosh.

Holly Wodetzki (33:24.202)

Yeah, that's a big one.

Yeah, because as you know, like, from the work that you do, is, you know, it's very easy to just live like your body is made to walk your head around. And many people live like that because it's easy just to dissociate and rationalize, but you also lose all of the richness of your experience and also the neglect of your body can lead to, well...

Leslie (33:40.062)

Hmm.

Holly Wodetzki (33:56.866)

Things of neglect.

Leslie (33:58.43)

Yeah, cuts us off from our intuition, cuts us off from so much of like you were just saying, our life force. That's why I want to have these conversations and bring them to this podcast as another opportunity for particularly people who just don't always want to be in their bodies. Look, my body was having a bad day yesterday. It's so interesting. I was talking about this with someone who was also on my podcast named Dawn.

Holly Wodetzki (34:02.039)

Mmm.

Holly Wodetzki (34:05.846)

Yeah.

Holly Wodetzki (34:17.815)

Yeah.

Leslie (34:28.61)

When you have a chronic condition, just by nature of things not going as you would like in your body, you become actually really fine-tuned to sensations. You actually become really good at knowing that, oh my gosh, something's a bit off today. And you have to just sort of develop that capacity over time.

Holly Wodetzki (34:42.179)

Yeah.

Holly Wodetzki (34:46.364)

Mmm.

Leslie (34:50.918)

Sometimes you already know something's already limping along and not doing well, so you try to remind yourself, like, wait, is this a really bad thing going on? I'm just gonna kinda put it on the back of my, I know I felt that sensation, ooh, that's kinda weird, I'll put it on the back of my back burner for now, even though I knew that happened. Is this connected to the big issue, or is this just like, I didn't have enough water today? So it's like, it's interesting, because you have, particularly with bodies, that we're trying to get everything back into vitality and function and all that stuff.

Holly Wodetzki (35:06.711)

Mm-hmm.

Leslie (35:20.614)

It's like we have this awareness just by nature of having to be able to read our bodies and kind of know what's happening. What's so fascinating is we're like, okay, I mentally noted that my right hip hurts or my kidneys feels like this, or like my chronic pain is back and it's like really flared today. But then we're like, and wipe my hands, I'm good. I don't wanna do any more feeling today, like done.

Holly Wodetzki (35:24.858)

Mmm.

Yeah.

Holly Wodetzki (35:44.47)

Yeah. And I think that's, I think that's very reasonable and important. When you're like, you know, we're both interested in embodiment. The opposite of embodiment is dissociation. Dissociation is not a bad thing in itself. Like it's a very important thing that when you are in pain, your body has the capacity to manage that by checking out.

Leslie (35:54.738)

Yes.

Holly Wodetzki (36:11.874)

Sometimes we all do that. Like whether you had lived with a chronic illness and pain or not, like everybody sits down and watch Netflix and forgets about the world every now and then. So I think a useful frame for that is obviously when you're in pain, you don't want to be in your body. Reasonable and understandable.

Leslie (36:12.712)

Yeah.

Leslie (36:23.156)

Yes.

Holly Wodetzki (36:36.31)

The practice could be is how do you sort of pendulate between

Tapping out because it's all too much, reasonable. And also finding ways to resource pleasure from your body. So that it doesn't, the association doesn't need to be that every time I feel in my body, it's painful, or it's hard, or it's exhausting. That there could also be, how do I connect with my body in the direction of pleasure specifically?

Like, does it mean that, you know, like, most of the time, I would just, you know, depending on the severity of your situation, most of the time, I'm like not wanting to feel that much, but every afternoon I'm just gonna like rub oil down my legs and massage them and nurture a connection to my body in the capacity that I feel that I have. Or does it mean that

you express an emotion that feels at the forefront. Like maybe it is the expression of like, fucking sick of this, like, I just want it to all go away. Like, can you do that dance for five minutes and then end. And then if you, if like, that's enough, that's enough. Great, good practice. Like you can only do what you have a capacity to do and the...

imposition on the body to extend past what you feel you have capacity to is never going to help. Like I teach my graduates this all the time, is like if you force or impose either as a facilitator or on yourself to push into things past what you have capacity to, you're actually doing damage. That is not helping you be a more embodied person. So whilst we're sharing all these things about embodiment,

Holly Wodetzki (38:42.462)

Each person has to have the agency to be like, do you know what, this is enough now, this is too much and draw the boundary there.

Leslie (38:55.067)

Absolutely.

Holly Wodetzki (38:57.978)

Yeah, I know that there is some tonight.

Leslie (39:00.942)

No, no, no. This is all the things and the areas. I have so much curiosity. I mean, obviously I'm coming from a chronic condition sort of bent and healing, but as it meets you and all your work with the sensuality, the erotic, the pleasure, it's a really fascinating nexus, I think, to be in. And so I think that's why I just, I could talk about these topics and these things all day long. I wanted to know if there's anything else

Holly Wodetzki (39:20.682)

Hmm. Yeah.

Holly Wodetzki (39:28.214)

Mmm.

Leslie (39:30.77)

That's on your mind that you want to share about your work.

Holly Wodetzki (39:35.266)

Hmm. I mean, I have so many things to share. I'd love to share a practice that maybe like a really easy mini practice that I think people can try and I have noticed it's been very helpful for women that I've worked with who have chronic pain and it's very, very simple. It's simply finding a wall.

Leslie (39:41.667)

This is your moment.

Leslie (39:57.297)

Hmm.

Holly Wodetzki (40:03.634)

or it could be a railing or a bench, but a wall works really well. And leaning into that wall, and just for, you know, like one song or so, and it doesn't really matter what the music is, but it doesn't need to be particularly flavoursome, is to lean into that wall, like really give yourself to fall into the wall, and to just move and explore your spine and your back and the back of your arms, the back of your head.

in connection with the wall as somewhat of a metaphor for being supported. That in contrast to the structure of the wall that is hopefully not going to fall down, you know, like that there's this stable wall that is supporting you and that you can lean into it and in contrast your body has a greater capacity to be in flow and in movement.

where the wall is still and unwavering. And it's a very simple practice, but I have heard from like many women, particularly with back pain or like lower back things, that just having the pressure and the resistance of the wall there allows their body to open up in ways that it doesn't quite get if you're just freestanding or the floor maybe is...

kind of similar, but it's like you're using the wall like someone hugging you. It's like applying pressure over your whole surface of your skin. And yeah, it has some capacity to open things up and relieve holding because the wall holds physically some of the things. So you could.

Leslie (41:35.487)

Mmm.

Holly Wodetzki (41:56.458)

Anyone who's listening, if you feel inclined for a bit of a wall dance, it looks weird, but it feels really good.

Leslie (42:02.879)

Like we said earlier, it might not look pretty and that's not the point here. This is about internal sensation, embodiment. It's funny you say that. One of the movement practice that I began with years ago, I loved being on the wall, loved a wall, loved a wall to push against, to rub against. I know everyone's going to be like, what are these ladies talking about? Doesn't matter, go try it.

Holly Wodetzki (42:17.368)

Mmm. Yeah.

Holly Wodetzki (42:25.954)

Yeah, there's a lot, you know, you can talk about, oh, well, you know, it activates your proprioceptive system that's, you know, connected to your somatosensory system, and that's why it does this and that. And like, you can explain it. And if you, you know, you want to go out there and teach people about it, maybe you learn that background thing. But mostly just experience it. Like, it's really easy. Let people have a wall nearby to them, like lean in and roll around on it.

Leslie (42:48.138)

Just... So... ..

Holly Wodetzki (42:55.85)

and yeah, find out what magical things having a wall can do.

Leslie (42:59.87)

Seriously, I'm so glad you said that. I'm gonna go to my wall later. This is a little bit of a left field question. And again, I'm asking out my curiosity. So I'd be curious to know your thoughts on this. Again, Holly and I don't know each other and I'm still learning about her work. You mentioned music. I am curious to know about your thoughts about.

Holly Wodetzki (43:03.478)

Hehehe

Holly Wodetzki (43:07.064)

Yeah.

Holly Wodetzki (43:15.062)

Ooh, that's good. I like it.

Leslie (43:21.462)

music and its connection to movement and maybe the type of work that you do. I am so fascinated by this topic and a lot of people just do not talk about music. And to me music, for me when I do movement practice, the music for me is a big component of it. So I'd love to hear your thoughts and your experience about music and movement.

Holly Wodetzki (43:41.182)

Yeah, oh music. I think music is almost as like powerful as movement in terms of that specific more to like the emotional side of movement, like the movement of your emotions say rather than the movement of your body, but they obviously play together. I listened to an amazing podcast on the Huberman Lab about music recently. If people want to look up, it's

not so long ago, I think it's called the power of music by on the human lab podcast. And I was blown away and like, I have loved music. I'd be mixing music and collecting music, you know, through this whole journey, cause I agree with you. It's incredibly powerful. And the things on this podcast, I podcast, I was like, Oh, this is even more phenomenal than I had come across, like neurologically, what music does to the body.

Leslie (44:38.666)

Mm-hmm.

Holly Wodetzki (44:40.074)

Um, I find great value in practicing to a very wide variety of music. I love music that

has the capacity to like evoke different emotional states. And in the similar way that, you know, I mentioned about introducing the body to new movements to open up facets, you can also introduce different music to the body that makes you move in a different way. Like if you listen to African music, you move very differently to if you're listening to classical music. And that gives you

more access to the possibilities of how you express yourself. And obviously the emotionality that can be evoked through particular music and then move through maybe grief or rage or something that feels difficult to connect with and be facilitated by music. But most of all, I really, and I say this,

you know, in my classes and methodology, because we have a section that is part of the six step methodology, the last section when you prepared the body is about coming onto the dance floor and like just moving with whatever life, you know, however it wants to move through you without not to heal yourself, not to become a better person, not to...

unwind your nervous system not for any other purpose but to like be intimate with life and how it wants to move through you in that moment. And in those sections of the class I always have a very diverse sequence of music and they say like this part is going to be all different music you may hate some of the music you may love some of the music and just like in life you will hate parts of it and you will love parts of it.

Holly Wodetzki (46:48.29)

But the question is always, will you dance with this too? And I think for people who are sick and or have loved ones that are sick or going through very difficult things, the question is still, can I dance with this too? Even when it is so painful, would I also dance with this too? And that doesn't mean like, dance, dance in the sense, you know.

Leslie (47:17.01)

Mm-hmm.

Holly Wodetzki (47:17.27)

that we spoke about before, but in the biggest sense of like, this being part of my story that doesn't define who I am, but this is part of this moment. And can I dance even when it's so hard and I'm in pain?

Holly Wodetzki (47:37.41)

Yeah, because life has like horrible things. And we still have to dance.

Leslie (47:44.998)

Yeah.

Holly Wodetzki (47:46.506)

Otherwise you close off to life, which is a choice. You can do that.

Leslie (47:51.004)

Yeah.

Holly Wodetzki (47:52.27)

that it's a choice in the moment. And it's not that you shouldn't take a rest and slow down and only dance as much as you have the capacity to, like whether that's, you know, you've done nonlinear, like Michaela says, like just moving your fingers or your toes, like to whatever degree you can still engage in the dance of life.

Leslie (47:55.846)

Mm-hmm.

Leslie (48:14.418)

Yeah. Yeah, the dance doesn't need to be some giant stomping big arms thing. It can be.

Holly Wodetzki (48:21.582)

when you're in it all. It can be like just swaying and breathing and feeling like what's there to be in that moment. Or like being out in the sunshine and like dance of like the breeze and your skin. Like simple moments of dance.

Leslie (48:34.316)

Bye.

Leslie (48:46.682)

I love what you just said. I cannot re-quote you and thank goodness this is recorded so I can listen to it again and again because I think that's what also always brought me back to movement practice and it's just, it helps me, like it sounds so cliche, like you were just saying, it's like the dance of life. So no matter where I am or what's going on with me, movement just helps me recheck back in and get sort of like current. Sometimes I know what's going on very clearly and I need to just.

feel all that and other times it just brings me back into all the things that are swirling inside me. So many parts that I didn't even realize or recognize or even there to find in that moment. So I just what a beautiful way to describe it. And thank you for sharing about the music. I love how you said that sometimes it's difficult to connect with emotions and the music can...

help you do that. So thank you. That was like, I've just been waiting for someone else to say it. Like, is anyone going to talk about the music? Is anyone going to talk about the potency of music here? Because every kind of teacher training or you know, people I've worked with, it kind of sort of just like the loss over this part. So thank you for

Holly Wodetzki (50:00.862)

Super powerful. If you like, I can, I'll drop a playlist in your show notes. Yeah. Very good music is like cooking a good meal for someone in my opinion.

Leslie (50:06.662)

Don't, don't, don't tease me with such things!

Leslie (50:14.534)

Um, I feel the same way. Like I have curated a very large song, like lists of songs I should say. And there's some moments where I was like, is this public? Can someone find it? I feel like I should share this with someone. Like before I got on, I was listening to songs that, you know, just, they were, they just, they're songs I love to move to before I even got into this conversation. And I had a whole note that was like, I feel like I should share this with people. Maybe Holly wants to know some of my songs, so please.

Holly Wodetzki (50:26.868)

Yeah.

Holly Wodetzki (50:39.774)

I do. Please.

Leslie (50:41.502)

Share with me your playlist. Thank you, thank you, thank you, so that we can share it with everyone else. And I think this would be a great moment to sort of wrap up the conversation and just have you share with people, how they can find you, are there options to work with you and all of that good stuff.

Holly Wodetzki (50:57.826)

Yeah, so my website is centralembodiedance.com and I teach a facilitator training in this six-step methodology of central embodied dance and it's online and starting in March 2024. And people can also join me online for three hour sessions that take you through the full methodology that's really like an adventure for three hours online.

They're sprinkled throughout the year. People can find them through the website. And then if by any chance someone was local to Brisbane in Australia, all of my other branch of work called the Red Kamala, where it's more about this devotional erotic dance and communion with life a little bit more on the sexuality side of things happens in person. Yeah, as well. You can find all of that through my social media and through the website.

Leslie (51:55.883)

I want to be in Brisbane. I want to come. I'm gonna make that happen. That's a dream where I like travel and I'm like, well Holly has her thing and I'm gonna go to it. So watch this space.

Holly Wodetzki (51:57.602)

I'm sorry.

Holly Wodetzki (52:05.886)

Yeah, well there is if anyone was really looking for an in person option, there's a rich a five day retreat in May next year in a beautiful part of Australia.

Leslie (52:20.391)

Okay, you've heard it here. Check out Holly's website. And I'm excited because I'm hoping I get to come to one of your online offerings soon. So I'm very pumped. Thank you. I'm very excited. So Holly, I think that's it. Thank you so much for coming today.

Holly Wodetzki (52:24.215)

I'm sorry.

Holly Wodetzki (52:29.662)

Nina, please, you're very welcome.

Holly Wodetzki (52:37.494)

Thanks Leslie for inviting me. It's been lovely talking to you.

Leslie (52:41.066)

I know, likewise, likewise.