Speaker 1: 0:07

Welcome to Aging with Purpose and Passion, the podcast designed to inspire your greatness and thrive through life. Get ready to conquer your fears. Here's your host psychotherapist, coach and empowerment expert, Beverly Glazer.

Beverley Glazer: 0:30

Imagine unlocking your emotional pain through the simple act of movement. Welcome to Aging with Purpose and Passion. I'm Beverley Glazer, a transformational coach and catalyst empowering women to rewrite the rules, reclaim their voice and create the life they were meant to live, and you can find me on reinventimpossiblecom. Tony Bergins is an embodiment coach. She's a movement alchemist, a speaker, an author and founder of Journey Dance, a global movement that has enhanced thousands of lives. If you're feeling stuck or looking for healing, or ready to embrace your new chapter of life, this conversation is going to inspire you to rediscover your power the power of your body, your mind and your spirit, no matter how old you are. So keep listening. It's a joy to talk to you, tony.

Toni Bergins: 1:31

Thank you so much for having me. I just love your whole mission. I love passion and purpose and when you said, rewriting the rules of your life, I just love that so much because I'm doing that right today as we speak.

Beverley Glazer: 1:42

Exactly, we are on the same page and you talk a lot about pain, pain, pain, pain. Did you come from a painful childhood at all?

Toni Bergins: 1:54

Oh, do I talk about pain a lot? I'm curious.

Beverley Glazer: 1:57

Well, yes, we listen to pain through. You know the emotions. The movement Journey dance is all about that. It's letting it go.

Toni Bergins: 2:07

Yes, um, I actually grew up in a, in a household that was more how do I say it? Um, more repression than expression for some of us and more expression than repression for others of us. So certain members of the family were fully expressed in all of their anger, pain, misery, and then I was more the repressed one and then a super joyful little child. So I had to learn how to compartmentalize all that was happening around me at all times, and what it did was. It made me an incredible this is my gift of it. It made me an incredible observer and able to hold big spaces for people's big emotions. But it didn't give me the experience of expression of the emotions until I discovered the dance and that's where I was able to say, oh, I have so much stored material that has never been told, that has never been expressed, and I just verbally, it just doesn't. It's not the same for me as using the body and the emotions and the music and the expression to release and move through into this expressive form, where then it's heard by the dance floor, by the other dancers in the room, or just by yourself, or just by spirit, whatever you want to call that God mystical being. You know, and it's like I have my my my most popular expression is tell your story to the dance floor, so it's not repeated verbally to re-stimulate the trauma over and over again. It's moved through the space and then there's a feeling afterwards of clarity, of relief, of actually exuberance that you were able to like. You know, after a good cry how we feel after releasing anger or tension. We feel so much better and we do it in a safer, kind of contained way that isn't going to impact our lives, our persons, our people who we love in a negative way, which is what you know. My family of origin was a lot of explosive rage and then all of us kind of running and scattering to our rooms in the hideout and you know, later in life I didn't really have good, good, healthy ways to express my emotions. So I learned to repress and then I actually went fully into the bulimia kind of realm where that is about what I learned through my own study of my own body and many years of you know all different kinds of study, of trauma therapy and all the different things that I was kind of an empath, I was taking in all this material and I just did not know how to process it. I didn't have a way. I did run I was a runner in my teens but that was like running away, it wasn't running towards you.

Toni Bergins: 4:52

And then the act of this bulimia, which is so common now, and we look at it as like an eating disorder, and I actually think of it as an emotional disorder more than an eating disorder, and I actually think of it as an emotional disorder more than an eating disorder. I think of it as this is an emotional purge. It's a way of letting all the emotions leave and then being flooded with a positive you know, parasympathetic response. So we become addicted to the cycle of the purge. So it's different from the way people see eating disorders. For me, it wasn't about you know fat or thin or whatever the proper words are for saying, you know overweight or healthy or all the things that we're talking about now, because there's so much you know, there's so much material around that is anything healthy or unhealthy anymore in terms of you know all the different size stuff. But it was more about emotional weight, emotional heaviness, emotional not knowing what to do, confusion. So, anyway, I'm giving you a lot of my story at once, but I think that all the upbringing leads us to these different coping mechanisms.

Toni Bergins: 5:49

And then that was the one I chose. And then, when it was no longer serving me and I felt like I was just destroying myself, I stepped into a state of okay. If I loved myself and truly loved myself and didn't allow all the negative programming to run my life, what would I do? What different behaviors would I choose? And the first one was oh, I have to stop. First of all, I have to stop this, have to stop the this purge cycle. Then I have to stop smoking. I was smoking cigarettes at 16. I was doing all the things. I have to stop drinking, like I mean, I just like everything I did was like anti me.

Toni Bergins: 6:22

And I realized that, luckily at like 23 and I started on this total spiritual path. Like I'm going to shift, I'm not going to be that person, I'm not going to fall into, you know, abusive cycle for the rest of my life. So that's been my whole goal is to teach people how do you get so into yourself, know yourself so well on a self mastery level, like I hate that word, but it's such a good word so that I say, oh, I'm feeling this feeling in my in my solar plexus. Ooh, I'm nervous, oh, I'm scared. Or I'm excited, or I'm I'm afraid, or, or I'm sad, and I'm not crying. I'm thinking about what I ate today. Like I, I use everything as like.

Toni Bergins: 7:01

Okay, if I loved myself fully, which I do what would I do next? What would I do next? How would I change my behavior, instead of letting the behavior run my life? Because addiction is that simple you just all of a sudden the cookies in your mouth and it's too late. Now you're having 12, you know whatever it is. So it could be anything from medical you know pills to you know, to all the different available substances that we have. So it's almost like a choice. I drew a line in the sand that this is my choice. I'm going to make this choice, and then, of course, you change your rules as you, as you evolve, right.

Beverley Glazer: 7:36

You didn't just fall into dance. What you did was you were a teacher first. You were following the yellow brick road. You did what you had to do. You went to college, yeah.

Toni Bergins: 7:48

And first I was working in New York city as a public relations person. I was like trying to be in the corporate world. Oh, that was really rough for me. I'm just not that person. But I loved the experiment of it. But then, you know, then I became a teacher, which I told, which I did tell you.

Toni Bergins: 8:02

And then, um, the dance thing was for my own healing purposes. You know, I went to Kripalu Center of Yoga and Health, which is just a Mecca of self-exploration, healing. Um, it's a very popular, uh yoga center for many years and there was a guru then and there were so many pieces to that puzzle that I won't go into right now. But, um, I had an experience that was an epiphany for me, one of those you know catharsis. You know catharsis of coming back, and the way I describe it is coming back into the body Like I had been disassociated for, you know, 23 years.

Beverley Glazer: 8:33

Right, so let me ask you, okay when did you become, now, a dancer, a professional dancer? You know, you were in New York City when did you discover dance?

Toni Bergins: 8:46

Yes, Well, I never considered myself a professional dancer, but this you know cause I'm not. I'm a professional dancer, but I'm not a professional dancer, I'm not a bot. I mean I took lots of classes and did all the things, but I couldn't count past 12. I was like I was in the class. I'll never forget it. I was like I found dance at Kripalu. I went to this dance class. I'd always loved to dance. I was a club girl. I mean, I love dance. Dance was my favorite thing in the world and I did aerobics and all that stuff During my bulimia years.

Toni Bergins: 9:13

I was heavily into aerobics and that was like Jack Lane back then and like I was into like Jeff Martin studios and I went to all the places where you had to reserve your spot, you know, because it was so competitive and I loved that stuff. I was very physical, but dance is different to me. Dance. When I went into this altered state of dance I was like, oh, this is not the same thing as following steps. So I did experiment with I wanted to be a professional dancer. Then I went to like I studied jazz, I studied African, I studied Afro-Haitian, I studied ballet. I went to like Limon, I went to everything in New York city and I was like I would get to, I would do beginner and then I would do a dance beginner and I'm like, nope, they're like well, you got to count past 12.

Toni Bergins: 9:56

You can't get. So I'd be like one and two and three and four, five, six, seven, eight, and then they'd be on the other side of the room and I'd be like, oh crap. So the guy was like you're so adorable, you're so great, you're so physically, you know, ready for this. But you're, you don't have the count. And then I realized, oh, this is not what I want. I don't want to be and I love. Trust me, if I could have been, I would have been, but it wasn't my path.

Toni Bergins: 10:19

My path was to go into more of a shamanic, alchemic, transformational, altered state realm. So then I went back to that experience I had and I said, oh, I have to do this, I have to do free dance with music and close my eyes and go into States. And then I slowly, over many years, after training, I trained at Kripalu. I trained with Dan Levin in 1994. I trained with um all the journey, all the teachers at Kripalu. Um, I even did, I did some partial training with Mega and Niteshvar I trained with and I trained with some of the most. So it's just wonderful people with incredible skills at emotional, like how we bring the emotions to the dance floor, where it's about the movement, not about the performance. So there's no mirrors in anything that I do.

Beverley Glazer: 11:04

Now with Zoom mirrors, of course, but let's talk now about Journey Dance. And that is your baby? Yes, and how long have you been doing journey dance, teaching journey dance? This is a following. Now, all over the world, thousands of people do journey dance for everyone, listening what is journey?

Toni Bergins: 11:26

dance. So journey dance is a. It's a process of embodiment and emotional empowerment, expression and actually spiritual connection. So it's a dance where I take people on a journey and I've taught many I'm almost up to 2000 teachers, which is just so exciting I think we're at like 1850 or something that I've ever taken my training program, the teacher training, which is different from all the other programs, but basically I teach people how do you get into your body, how do you like roll around on the floor and become this like creature that isn't just a talking head or an emotional mess, right, we think of ourselves in many cases as like I'm just mental, or I'm shut down emotionally, or I'm so emotional my stuff's all over the place, I have no control. How do you like step into the body and say, okay, oh, I can feel what's going on now? It's a totally different awareness to go from the head to heart, to body. So I start with embodiment, then I move into awakening. How do we awaken our energy? How do we become these vital, you know, like vibrant beings? There's all this energy in the body. So I teach people how to awaken the energy.

Toni Bergins: 12:30

Then I go into this self-hypnosis piece where I'm helping people step in Like look at your own hand, look at your own, look at your, look at how you move. You're a beautiful creature. You have to learn to appreciate your body. We go into appreciation, then connection with others If you're dancing with others, or just connection with all the different. You know rhythms and I bring in like more rhythm. And then we go into the emotional expression. So there's a whole emotional expression component and it's curated. It's not a wild like everyone starts screaming and running around, you know crying. It's not like that, it's a slow build. Okay, how do I access what's going on in my life? So I say what's going on in your life right now? Tell your story of the dance floor. Then I bring in all kinds of elements, kinds of elements you know, is it grief, is it anger? What is happening? And then we express it through the music different types of music for this section. It's so beautiful, it's my favorite thing.

Toni Bergins: 13:16

Then I go into what I call the alchemy, which is transmuting all of that, and saying, okay, how do I take all these emotions and compost it right, turn it into something good, turn it into something. Say what am I learning here? What am I what? How do I let this go and what am I learning here? What am I what? How do I let this go? And how do I see? How do I transmute this into something like let's take, for example, generational trauma. Right here we are. If you decide you want to heal your generational trauma, it's a choice. It's not, it's not like, oh, this is going to happen, no problem, easy peasy. I got this. Now, this is a choice and it's work. So I say okay, across.

Toni Bergins: 13:53

I am a game changer, so I'm going to stop the cycles of violence in my family. I'm not going to perpetuate what's been, what's happened to me from the past. So we get us into the present moment by acknowledging the past, embracing it, you know, really exploring it. How is it? How did it affect me? But it's all nonverbal. You know it's all on the dance floor. So I'm asking people so put that old story into this fire that we're going to create, into this ceremonial fire. We all have fire in our lineage. Every culture has fire and how did we use it? In different ways, and every culture has it. Pretty much every people of the world has used fire in some way. So I think that's a very good universal archetype.

Beverley Glazer: 14:32

So, Toni, let me just stop you right here. If somebody is coming to the class, and is it only for young people? Is it for older people? Okay, so what is the range of people or the level of dance that they need to know? Can you just walk into the room Like what happens, Walk us through it step by step? What is that about? Because it can be very very threatening for people.

Toni Bergins: 15:01

Yep, I'm taking you on that journey right now.

Speaker 1: 15:03

So here we are at Alchemy. So any age exactly.

Toni Bergins: 15:05

So any age I mean I have, I mean I would say like 16 would be the low. I mean. There are kids that come but I don't think they have a lot of baggage to release. So for them it's more just a fun wild ride, like, wow, we're dancing with scarves, you know. But for people who are, you know, at any age I mean I work with people who are going through transition One of the things about Kripalu that I love on Tuesday, you know, you'll just be kind of like, okay, I'm going to trust that everything's going to be all right and I'm going to just go for this and there's nothing to be afraid of.

Toni Bergins: 15:39

I've been doing it for 27 years. You're good, and if emotions come up, they're like going to therapy. You know, if you go to therapy or go to a coach, you know that you're going to be challenged. It's not like you're walking in there for some easy, you know cakewalk and you're going to have the magic bullet. You're going to have to go in and do the work. So journey dance is very similar to that. So here we are at the mountain, into the center, and then we're all going to become the opposite. What would the elixir of the mountain be and we're going to dance over it and it's just totally free form. There's no.

Toni Bergins: 16:21

I do offer a lot of structure. So there's movements. I give movement suggestions so you're not like just lost in a sea of you know people, you're actually. You're being guided, you're being gently guided through the whole process. So it's kind of like a hypnotherapeutic process.

Toni Bergins: 16:36

And then, after we do our transmutation dance, where we like move this thing, we use this fire element and we move it into, we start to feel an ecstatic joy and then we dance with our heart. We come into the heart and then we go into prayer, which I call. You know, I use the word prayer. My religion that I grew up in is not really use that word, so it doesn't have a lot of charge for me, but a lot of religions have a lot of charge around that word. But I still like that word because it means to me that we're saying I'm going to focus my attention on something right now. That's all. That's what prayer is to me. What am I focusing my attention and my intention on? And I'll dance my prayer, slow motion, super energy. I teach people all about their energy body and then we go into deep relaxation. So it's got an arc like a double arc to it and any age, any level of ability, it doesn't matter.

Toni Bergins: 17:30

You just modify to your own body or you push yourself into a new, you know, a new level of fitness. You know if that's what you want to do, you can go faster, you can go slower, like it's very modifiable for all bodies. I do do a lot of floor work, so if you can't get on the floor then you can do that sitting in a chair or roll or leaning against the wall. So there are lots of different modifications you can do.

Toni Bergins: 17:50

But it is a it is a dance form, so there is movement to it. Some people do it from a wheelchair and you know they they do it with their imagination. Some people do it laying down. I mean it has a journeying quality as well. So there's kind of two roads you could take if you're not a quote dancer and you don't have to be a dancer to do it. It's more like you just have to be willing to move, because when you shake like we do, shaking we do. I mean there's so many different pieces to it, but all of these somatics, all of these things have been proven now somatically to create shift in the body. You know we did it all before. There was all the science behind everything. You know I've been doing it for years and years Now. There's a science to everything. So if you really if you want to find the science, you can. You can look up how every single movement affects the body, from stretching to shaking, to rolling and pouring. I mean it's amazing.

Beverley Glazer: 18:37

Right, right. So how does everybody feel? I know the answer to this one, but when you're talking about it, you just are. You're in your body Everything, the movement, the feeling, everything. How do people feel when they walk out of a class like that?

Toni Bergins: 18:54

Well, they definitely want to hug, I tell you, they hug, they hug each other, they hug me, they hug their teacher. There's so many teachers out there. They, they just feel incredibly connected, connected and grounded and present. Like at the end of class was yesterday. I said you just take this feeling, this feeling of completely expressed self, like you know nothing held back, just just released, and they just feel I said bring it into every self what this feels like. Maybe it feels like peace to you, maybe it feels like love to you, maybe it feels like expansion to you. So I like to give people lots of opportunity to make it their own. It's not like what I say or what the teacher says is what you're going to feel, it's what you feel. Some people cry and they have to cry for hours. They've opened up a valve of, of emotional release. It needs to happen. I think that's also very healthy and you know you modify that. You know you, you take care of yourself, drink a ton of water and you keep letting the emotions move through you. I will say, in my personal healing, I am, I was not a big crier because I was very good at stuffing and compartmentalizing.

Toni Bergins: 19:57

I was stuffing with food I was stuffing, the emotions I was stuffing. I can't go into all the stories about my family. Many of them are still alive, so I love them. I love them so much. They're all still alive in my personal, my unit, my family unit and I love them so much.

Toni Bergins: 20:14

And I learned how to compartmentalize. I learned how to disassociate. I learned how to compartmentalize. I learned how to disassociate. I learned how to yell and scream. I learned all the things right, we all learned.

Toni Bergins: 20:20

But I chose I was going to be super calm and neutral whenever possible and only explode, like if I didn't express myself. Then I would sometimes explode and I was not healthy for anyone who I loved. So I worked on this for years and years. So for me to cry and have a big release was such a big deal. I know so many people I mean I teach every single week, twice or three times a week, and when people cry they are so grateful they're not angry that I made them cry.

Toni Bergins: 20:48

I made a joke the other day. I said, yeah, I get paid to make people cry and they all laughed because people were crying and it was getting very, very emotional and when someone else cries it gives you permission to cry and so on and so forth. And crying is literally an act of releasing. It's an act of releasing the emotional constraint on the body, cause we're meant to flow. We're meant to flow whether it's anger. Some people cry because they're angry and they don't express their anger. So it gets. You know, you know all this. It gets twisted and morphed.

Beverley Glazer: 21:15

So you know all this as a as a very obviously you're an experienced this is wonderful for people who are all bottled, bottled up, for people who just can walk into a room it's not threatening and just to take the risk that you could do something different and you can get some result out of it. So I think the operative word really is take the risk. You know, very often we've been to coaches, we've been to therapists, we've been to so many different people to get help We've read self-help books, all kinds of things. This is another modality. And not to get help We've read self-help books, all kinds of things. This is another modality. And not to fear it and this is something that I'm seeing as well. You know we can be very threatened that we don't look good, that our bodies aren't good. People are looking at us. We don't have dancers bodies. So take the risk that you could do something different to liberate yourself. And, as Tony said, you're never too old and you can do this in a wheelchair. That's really something. Thank you, tony.

Beverley Glazer: 22:30

Tony Bergins is a trailblazing embodiment coach, a movement alchemist, a speaker, an author and the founder of Journey Dance, a global movement that has enhanced thousands of lives. For 25 years, tony has guided people to release stored emotions, break free from limiting patterns and to reconnect to their authentic selves. Here are some takeaways from this episode Let go of perfection. Give yourself the freedom to embrace who you are. Physical movement can help you process emotions and feel connected to yourself. Set healthy boundaries. Learning to say no is crucial to your peace of mind and transformation and healing takes time, and movement is vital to that process. If you've been feeling stuck in your life, here are a few things that you could do right now. Take a few minutes every day to move your body, whether it's dancing, stretching. Just focus on how it feels and stop being hard on yourself. Be more compassionate instead. Take a deep breath when you're overwhelmed and give yourself a moment to be grounded. For similar episodes on healing through the arts, check out episodes 107 and 120 of Aging with Purpose and Passion.

Beverley Glazer: 24:01

And, if you love travel, listen to the Ageless Traveler podcast and subscribe to Travel Tuesday newsletter. The Ageless Traveler is the number one resource for active travelers 60 plus, and it's hosted by Adriane Berg, whose mission is to ensure that you never, ever, stop traveling. That link is going to be in the show notes, too. So where can people learn more about you? Tony, you have a book. I think you have an audio book as well. Tell us you know your links. Where can people find more about you? Take your classes, find more about your facilitators when?

Toni Bergins: 24:42

Absolutely. Thank you so much. I just I, I, I adore you. I think you're just amazing. I'm so happy you're helping so many people take risks, cause that was the key thing you said was to take a risk. So take a risk and go check out either journeydancecom or tonybergenscom. That's where all my book portal is located. So my book is called embody, feel, heal and transform your life through movement. It's on audible and where all books are sold as well.

Toni Bergins: 25:05

And I did do the audio, which was so what a practice, what a process that was. And I put music in it. So I went and found all this beautiful music that I could purchase and then play for people. So if you do the audio, you can actually dance with me right there, like in your car while you're driving. Just keep your hands on the wheel and whatever. Whenever you're listening.

Toni Bergins: 25:24

And I do retreats as well.

Toni Bergins: 25:26

I have a whole new program called Bucket List with Toni, and we're doing Costa Rica, we're doing Portugal, we're gonna do Greece, we're gonna go places and we're gonna dance while we're in all these locations.

Toni Bergins: 25:35

I have my teacher training that's coming up very soon. If anyone's interested in joining us, we have cohort groups that we take through a whole year transformational process and people come out of that with such confidence and so much self-love and then so much ability to serve and to step into communities that need this, this kind of work, and there's just so many, so many opportunities to be of service at this point in the world. So so I say, why not turn your, turn your passion into you know, something that you can really do in your life and spend time on it, especially if it's dance or movement or even just psychological exploration, because journey dance has a lot of psychodrama mixed in. And I do have a work that I call sacred drama, where I take people through sacred drama processes where we unpack material through theater, which is, I'm all about take the inside and put it on the outside, you know, like in a in a different way from storytelling. Yeah

Toni Bergins: 26:25

And Right, so we can find you online and I teach Journey every Dance Tuesday on zoom. There's a whole journey dance and there's also all my teachers not my teachers all the teachers are now being listed on our new we have a new listing site for them, which is gorgeous. It's being built right now as we speak, and

Toni Bergins: 26:42

Journey Dance website. You type in facilitator.

Beverley Glazer: 26:47

that link, it's going to be in the show notes and it's also reinventimpossible. com to be on my site too. That's reinventedpossiblecom. And so, my friends, what's next for you? Are you just going through the motions or are you actually living a life that you love? Get my free guide to go from stuck to unstoppable, and that's also going to be in the show notes below. You can connect with me, beverly Glazer, on all social media platforms and in my positive group of women on Facebook. That's Women Over 50 Rock, and thank you for listening. I love that. If you enjoyed this conversation, subscribe, drop us a review and send it to a friend, and remember you only have one life, so live it with purpose and passion.

Speaker 1: 27:42

Thank you for joining us. You can connect with Bev on her website, reinventimpossiblecom and, while you're there, join our newsletter subscribe so you don't miss an episode. Until next time, keep aging with purpose and passion and celebrate life.