The origin story of Mana Movement

5 years ago there was just a girl who liked to dance, who was being supported by other people and didn’t have much of a goal or focus, other than being wildly obsessed with exploring movement through her body.

One day, she decided to video herself doing a very simple spinal articulation exercise that she posted on social media, because she loved sharing her little dance videos on her IG.

This little spinal wave video blew up and she received message after message from all sorts of people who were curious what this practice was and how they could learn it. She was shocked.

And as someone who likes to listen and follow inspiration, she decided to respond to this spark of interest by diving into the creation of a practice that could help people all around the world gain more fluidity, mobility, and awareness in their body.

She spent hours in her practice space exploring different movement patterns, all focused on circles, spirals, and waves. She drew from her classical ballet training, her years of modern dance training, her education in somatic dance and kinesthetic awareness, and her understanding of energy body and spiritual activation.

She wanted to create something that was simple, accessible, and yet highly effective in awakening life force energy , activating the physical body, creating more fluidity and mobility, and that felt really really good…

Once she had created a first draft practice, she became curious of how these movements would feel to other women, with different body types, different levels of experience and flexibility… would they like it too?

So she offered free focus groups, inviting women to come every day for a week to be guided through these different movements. And at the end, they would fill out a survey- which movements worked/didn’t work? What feelings and sensations arrived? How did you feel afterwards in comparison to when you started?

And from this feedback, she re-crafted the practice until something was birthed that felt right. It did all the things. And it resonated with her soul.

Now for a name…. “Something” Movement.

What is the essence? It awakens and reconnects you with the natural life force energy that is flowing through you at every moment, with every breath… it activates your mana…

But no, she couldn’t call it Mana Movement. Because Mana was her name. What would people think?!

So she thought and thought more and more, trying to find another word that meant the same thing in just as poetic of a way… Yet she couldn’t find it. Nothing else was right. Nothing else hit the nail on the head quite like it… So she surrendered.

And the name birthed through as Mana Movement:

Movement that activates your mana, the natural life force energy that each one of us contains, yet so many have disconnected from.

Movement that reconnects you with the natural flow of power surging through your body with every breath.

Movement that allows you to cultivate, direct, and transform this raw power into usable creative potential…

Of course there was no coincidence that her new found passion aligned with her own chosen name. A name she chose because that was EXACTLY what she had decided she wanted to be. She wanted to fully embody HER mana. To become the walking talking dancing embodiment of life force energy.

So now was the moment. After months of crafting and creating the practice. After an ego confronting journey of surrendering to the name.Now was the moment to find a way to get this to the people… oh all the wild potential of teaching classes, and workshops, and traveling around festivals to spread it wide and far!

But then… at the very same moment, the world shut down, and everyone was stuck at home. Okeeeey.

This girl wasn’t particularly tech savvy. She was a creature of the land. She was an artist and a lover of being immersed in the sensual world. She didn’t even own a computer.

But what she DID have was an ability to be like a river- to adapt and change course, to surrender and flow in the direction that life was offerings in the moment… ironically, all skills cultivated through the MANA Movement practice. And thus was birthed the MANA Movement Online Program.

The first time launched, she gathered almost 100 women from around the world to dive into a 3-week journey through this simple yet powerful practice.An immersion of devotion. A program of homecoming. An experience of remembering the power of slowing down and arriving in life as a ritual.

Fast forward to a few years later, and hundreds more of women gathered time after time…

Life-changing. Transformational. A homecoming to the true self. A remembrance of power. A practice that keeps giving and giving, taking us deeper and deeper.

Then through the years, birthed new Mana Movement Programs- Foundations, Maternity, confiDance, each with its own flavor and essence, reaching THOUSANDS of women around the world.

And then the requests started flowing in for a Mana Movement Teacher Training as women because inspired and passionate to help spread this simple yet deeply profound practice to their own communities and in their own languages…

And so here we arrive, and it is just the beginning. As the nature of mana, the double taurus never-ending cycle of energy flowing in and out and up and down, expanding into the next evolution…