Welcome back!
Belly Dance saved Suhaila Salimpour’s life. Just think what it can do for you! I knew Master Instructor Suhaila Salimpour, of the three generation Salimpour legacy, was the perfect person to join us on The Mommy-Muse Is In: Empowering Your Journey into Motherhood. Everyone who has been moved by her dance knows her skill, passion and dedication are unmatched. Here is some food for thought about the importance of this ancient art in our lives:
“I think that for women, having physical movement, physical strength, and power, they really associate it with having emotional power. When a woman, a girl, or a young lady doesn’t feel confident physically – and the focus is really about internal strength and being able to feel that they have choices and feel that they have rights – there is a break down in the soul. I think we go through this in many different times in our life, because we’re women and we constantly have to redefine ourselves.
I’m first generation Middle-Eastern, and my father was Muslim. As a young girl, in the household, we were very repressed. Being on stage was the only time I felt free and almost proud of being a girl. In my household, and on my father’s side of the family, my Dad was very sad that he had a girl. You kind of grow up with the feeling of, ‘Okay, I have to overcome.’ I was raised having to keep my eyes down, and never making contact with the men in the family because it was disrespectful, and kind of being seen but not heard. The women always ate last.
Being on stage made me feel confident and gave me a real inner peace that I was okay. I remember being a teenager, it gives you the confidence that you need as a young woman, that you don’t have in this culture today.
My daughter is almost eleven and I can see all her friends kind of starting to cave in, starting to develop. Not my daughter, because she doesn’t even know what the word “shame” means.
The community that it offers is invaluable. We don’t have a lot of community, anymore. I think that it’s been so important for her to see the sisterhood that is around belly dance. Belly dance is women for women. Even in the Middle East, the dance form is passed down from mother to daughter, aunt to niece, woman to woman.
I grew up watching my mom teach all women. I watched my auntie, from the old country, literally wait for the men to leave the house to go to work, and they would lock the doors, shut the blinds, move the coffee table over, put on Arabic music, and dance for each other.
It was their therapy. They don’t believe in therapists and shrinks. They just dance for each other and cry, and cook for each other. That’s the community that I offer my daughter. My studio is such a supportive, creative, and wonderful environment for all different shapes, all different sizes, all different age ranges. Isabella sees my mom, who is 82 years old and still teaching. She is my total goddess. I’m teaching and I’m 42. Now she’s almost 11 and she has her little group of belly dance kids’ class that she also teaches. You have three generations here.”
Ready to learn more? Check out The Belly Dance Prescription: Shake Your Hips AND Depression, then hop over to http://www.suhailaonlineclasses.com/ for your chance at 3 free days of unlimited classes in her NEW virtual studio!
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I really believe that if we stayed close to our families, if we followed our instincts and learned parenting by observation from several generations, it wouldn’t seem so difficult. We would just KNOW what to do, not because someone TOLD us, but because someone SHOWED us.
Great article – I can’t tell you how incredible the progress is when my coaching clients engage in movement coaching, not just talk-coaching. When we hike, do yoga, get in the water, do walking meditation, and engage our bodies, the progress forward goes at light speed.
Wow, you’ve just given me some great ideas to use in my own counseling practice