The words I hear most are: I feel light. I feel recharged. I feel like myself again.

When I ask what made them feel that way, the answers shift. After a moment of thinking, people say things like:

  • I got in touch with a part of myself I had forgotten existed.
  • Somewhere between deadlines and responsibilities, I had lost that version of me.
  • I got in touch with the child in me.

Most participants find the opening activities unusual. Some find them a little silly. But soon they stop worrying about how they look; they stop performing, and they simply allow themselves to play.

What I have come to understand is that the joy people experience in these sessions is not something I give them. It is something they rediscover.

My job is to create a space where the body softens and the nervous system settles enough for that to happen.

The aliveness, the curiosity, the playfulness were always there. They were just buried under the pace of everyday life.

When did you last feel genuinely light at the end of something?

About the author

Angira in close portrait, smiling, her hair loose over one shoulder, wearing jhumka earrings and a patterned collar, a woven backdrop behind her. Black and white.

Angira Chakravorty Dasgupta

Founder, SVã flo

Angira is the creator of SVã flo – a Somatic Soul Integrated System that works through the body rather than around it. She is a faculty member at Kolkata Sanved, the TISS-affiliated institution where Dance Movement Therapy is taught in India.

Read more about Angira