Decolonizing the Dancer’s Pelvis

Have you ever wondered how the history of your ancestors affects the way you dance today?

When I was somewhere around three years old, I had the most profound realization that I, perhaps, will ever have.

Seated in front of a tri-paneled mirror, I recall staring into my reflection, and my mother’s reflection behind me. In that moment, I became acutely aware that she, too, had a mother. And that that mother had a mother; and that that mother had a mother; and that the mother’s mother’s mother also had a mother.

I’m not joking when I recount this story, as my own mother will so often quote this story to me. She will modulate her voice to that of a three year old’s and repeat my words: “I have a mamma. That mamma has a mamma. That mamma has a mamma. That mamma has a mamma!”

Nineteen years later, I imagine all these mothers and daughters nestled into one another; in warm, enveloping forms somewhat akin to Russian nesting dolls. Every daughter she has ever been and every mother we will ever be is nestled somewhere deep beneath my skin, and your skin, and your daughter’s skin, and your mother’s skin. Every mother that ever was– from the time of the first mother– sighs with relief each morning as you open your eyes.

There is a profound beauty in acknowledging the weight of ancestry we carry. But there is also sadness and grief, for just as much as the love and hope of every mother lives inside us, their pain does too. Our bodies are living histories of what our mothers survived, and of what we battle. Inked into the very organelles of our cells are storybooks of triumph and defeat; of unbearable grief and indelible love.

The concept of generation trauma is not a new one. The American Psychological Association dates this concept to 1966, where it was first mentioned by Dr. Vivian M. Rakoff with regards to the children of Holocaust survivors. However, the concept of emotional stress being stored in the body is perhaps a newer concept in Western world.

For context, the concept of the bodily energies being intertwined with emotional states is a fundamental concept of yoga. The life force that sustains us in each breath is known as prana, and literature on yoga describes the three basic psychological states– gunas– as the following: sattvic, or a balanced state of being, rajasic, or an agitated state, and tamasic, or a state of lethargy/depression. Accordingly, yoga– as performed in the ancient Indian tradition, and not in the whitewashed Western form– offers methods to clear the body’s energetic centers, and thereby balance the emotions by means of performing physical activity.

I believe that as women, and especially as Women of Color, we store a great deal of generational pain and newfound grief in our pelvis. I speak as an individual of Indian origin when I say that our history as a race of people in the last 150 years was defined by violence, famine, rape, and colonization. This history rings true for individuals of so many other nationalities. Just as our ancestors’ land no longer belonged to them, their bodies– their beings, their practices– didn’t either. I speak for the traditions of Indian dance and music when I say that so many gems of our culture were lost because their practice was outlawed.

Just as you are the product of every mother who ever came before you, you hold their pain too. You hold their wisdom and their love, but also their pain.

The pelvic region is instrumental for women in many ways. Scientifically, the pelvic region houses our uterus and ovaries, and while a woman is not– and should never be– defined by her organs, it is this that allows us to create new life. The sacrum supports the spine from the lowest point of the torso, while the pelvic girdle cradles our pelvic organs. Psychologically, the pelvis is implicated in cases of post-traumatic stress disorder in women.

One study conducted in 2022 by Charlotte Louise Wall (University of Bolton, UK), Jerome Carson (University of Bolton, UK), Gill Brown (University College Birmingham, UK), and Robin Bailey (University of Bolton, UK) examined a sample of 132 women aged 16 to 45+. Within this sample of women and girls, the highest percentage of women with unexplained chronic pelvic pain were women living with PTSD. While it is important to remember that correlation is not always causation, this study included a Kruskal-Wallis H statistical test to confirm that the cause of the pelvic pain experienced is directly related to the amount of PTSD symptoms experienced. Unsurprisingly, this test yielded the following results of a Kruskal-Wallis H = 8.14 and p = .017. For my non-statistics-familiar readers, this means that the researchers statistically confirmed that individuals with unknown pelvic pain experience higher levels of PTSD symptoms.

There are so many intertwining issues at play when we consider women’s pelvic health, and while I wish I could discuss all of the interdisciplinary factors, I think it would be best to examine how this relates to us as dancers.

Thus far, we’ve established that the weight of our ancestor’s experiences lives within our bodies, and ghosts of their pain– as well as our own emotional experiences– tend to manifest within our pelvic region. How does this impact the way we dance, or our connection to dance?

While many schools of dance and genres of dance styles will have different theories as to where movement originates from, I think it is safe to say that the pelvic region is the backbone of movement. The control that dancers need to execute over their spine begins all the way from the lowest point of the lumbar spine, just as control of the core similarly comes from pelvic floor muscles. Not to mention, the openness of the hips is integral in the basic positions of so many dance styles– Bharatanatyam, Ballet, African dance styles, among others.

But when we are unfamiliar with the generational pain we carry, we store it unknowingly. It hides, nestled between the crevices of our organs, burrowing its teeth into our sacrums and wrapping its hands around our wombs. We become guarded, tense, and closed within this region of the body, because all the available space within our pelvis is filled to the brim with these ghosts.

Dance is at once a hugely psychological and emotional experience. The release of positive neurotransmitters as a result of physical movement is leveraged with the emotional connection to difficult themes you may be portraying as a dancer, and all of this combined is leveraged with the weight of centuries of emotions we harbor in the pelvis and hips.

Perhaps your relative inflexibilty in your hips that you have been dealing with for the past two decades is not a reflection of your ligaments, but rather a reflection of your great-grandmother’s survival.

I encourage you to spend some time with this thought, and contemplate what you may be storing in your body. It may be that you do not relate to this phenomenon whatsoever– and that is okay! The thought experiment is still worth going through, for who knows what you will discover about yourself?

There are infinite selves within our bodies, and we owe it to ourselves to try to know them as best as we can. It is my belief that “self-love” cannot occur without “self-knowledge”– and this means knowing and loving every self you have been and will be.

But again– maybe I’m wrong. At the end of the day, these are nothing but my humble observations which may crumble under the test of time. In the spirit of learning together and growing together, I would love to hear your thoughts and experiences with regards to this subject. Please feel free to reach out to me, as I love to hear from my readers. You fuel my growth, and I desperately hope that my words are helpful to you in your journey to grow towards becoming the healthiest, strongest dancer you can be.

Until next time, dancers, when I promise I will actually finish up our knee series (for real this time!!!).

Yours truly,

Radha (the 2025 model)

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