De-powering Labels
When you start to dance, the biggest challenge is simply to find your limbs. If you don’t fall (too many times), you can call it a success. It’s not pretty, it doesn’t look elegant, but it’s a necessary step toward getting it right. You improve because you train: you learn to execute movements with more coordination, you teach your brain, rewire your nervous system. Learning inevitably sets you on a path toward complexity. You start thinking in boxes: today I’ll work on my spinning technique, tomorrow on legwork.
If you are persistent, all that practice converges into beautiful, coherent movement - shaped for the public eye, but also movement that simply feels good. This is when a dancer steps into the advanced stage.
I remember this so distinctly: after 13 years of practicing social dance, I went to my first 5Rhythms class. 5Rythms movement is all about listening to yourself and “moving free,” which is honestly the most stressful thing you can ask of a dancer trained for structure and figures. I stood there trying to decode the music, using the arm positions I already knew, doing the “center thing” so I wouldn’t fall, mentally checking my spinning technique.
Then a song came on that I just loved - something clicked. I found myself slightly off balance, and then something unexpected happened: I messed up my spinning technique and… didn’t fall. It felt completely different. I secretly hoped my social dance teacher wouldn’t see me, but I kept going. It felt curiously right. I felt my movement instead of analyzing it. I allowed myself to “make a mistake,” and my body didn’t punish me for it.
That was the moment I learned a new kind of trust with my body: when I let go and feel the movement, I cannot fall or fail in any meaningful way.
In BDSM spaces I often get asked about my labels. Some ask directly (“so are you a Dom?”) and others do it more discreetly (“oh, you’re still working on your Fetlife profile?”). People seem confused when I answer the label-question by “It depends on the connection”. I respect those who identify strongly with a label, but for me, the question pushes me back into those early social dance days of boxed thinking and memories of Big Spin Falls.
I once met a guy at a playparty who didn’t run when I said I preferred to “go with the flow” instead of doing the full pre-negotiation script. During our play, perfectly attuned to the moment, he pulled out his ropes and tied me into a pain position. It dropped me instantly into a beautiful space in my body, and the flow continued effortlessly. Had we negotiated “properly,” I would have told him the truth: I don’t actually like ropes. Usually, I find them boring and annoying. But that night, the ropes - and his skill, his timing, his connection with me - offered a rich, unexpected experience.
After we played, we talked. It turned out he doesn’t particularly enjoy pain - but he enjoyed it from me. His body surrendered; he opened and slipped into another dimension with me as his guide. It was beautiful to witness, and even more beautiful to experience. He went home feeling more empowered, more full.
We so often navigate with labels - labels that create expectations and replace simple listening, attention and presence. Moving between the frames of “what I know works” and “what I fantasize about” can pull us away from reality, away from the moment of genuine connection between my body and my partner’s.
No one starts dancing by stepping onto the stage of the Royal Ballet and “just embodying the majestic movement of the swan.” And certainly no one is expected to instantly know my boundaries or triggers. But with attention, attunement, communication, and true connection, we can give each other so much more than labels ever could.
“We should grow like a tree that likewise does not know its law. We tie ourselves up with intentions, not mindful of the fact that intention is the limitation, yes, the exclusion of life.”
― C.G. Jung, The Red Book: A Reader's Edition