“When the Body Remembers: From Yoga’s First Whispers in the West to Somatic Dance as Modern Ritual”
When you picture an ancient movement practice that weaves spirit, body, and psyche back together, you might think of yoga.
In 1893, when Swami Vivekananda first brought yoga to the West, he did not lead sun salutations on rubber mats. He offered the heart of Vedanta instead—an invocation of innate divinity, religious unity, and the simple, radical idea that yoga is a practical path to inner truth. It began as a spoken transmission, a doorway into presence, before it ever became leggings and playlists.
My own doorway opened in 1995, at twenty‑one, in a carpeted Hatha class tucked inside a house in Virginia‑Highland. No branded outfits, no rows of identical mats—just breath, slow postures, and a circle of strangers sipping tea and eating fruit together after savasana. That space felt like a quiet temple inside a noisy world, and it became the beginning of my spiritual path, my first taste of sobriety, my first experience of truly turning toward my body and hearing my spirit.
Over time, I followed the heat of Bikram rooms and the rigor of repetition, meeting my fears and patterns in 105‑degree mirrors. I learned endurance. I learned how to stay. I also watched as yoga, around me, became louder, faster, thinner—more commodity than communion. Classes turned into crowded power flows where music drowned out the inner voice, where the body was pushed more than listened to, and the deeper teachings felt like ghosts at the edge of the room.
What my hunger kept asking for was something different: slow, feminine, earth‑rooted movement; a practice that welcomed emotion, honored the nervous system, and treated the body as oracle, not obstacle. A space for elders as well as beginners. A circle, not a performance. That longing is what led me back to dance—somatic, intuitive, ritualized movement—as a way to remember what yoga first carried across the ocean: that our bodies are already holy, and that healing begins when we dare to move as if that were true.
I am convinced that this practice is so important in our world today. To bring ourselves back into our bodies. Out of our minds stories. In a culture that rewards speed, numbing, and disconnection, saying yes to a practice like this can feel strange, even risky—just as yoga once did when it first arrived here, carried in on the language of ancient wisdom, cellular memory,divinity and inner truth. Yet beneath the noise of our timelines and to‑do lists, something ancient in us is still listening, still waiting to be remembered.
This is an invitation to that remembering. To step into a room where there are no perfect poses, no products to buy, no performance—only a circle of humans, moving and breathing together, returning to compassion and loving‑kindness as a lived, felt experience in the body.
This is my 2026 vision. I am stepping forward to initiate and inspire. So, I invite you to return to a sense of your own audaciousness. Step into something unknown and yet known. Join me on the spiritual dance floor. Let’s move into something new together. More details to come. I am working to find a space and time that will be consistent. This is the most difficult part for me. So, bear with me as I find my way!
Sending you a beaming light of Love straight into that beautiful heart of yours,
L E S L I E
P.S. please leave me any questions, feedback, comments. I love hearing from you all.