Move Like You Are Meant To
What the world's dances teach us about moving without back pain
Years ago, when surgery failed to resolve Esther Gokhale's back pain, she went looking for answers in the places where back pain is rare — communities in West Africa, Portugal, India, and Brazil. She watched how people there sat, walked, carried, and bent. And she watched them dance.
What she found is that a culture's traditional dances are a kind of living fossil record. Long after our natural everyday posture has been eroded by poorly designed chairs and car seats — and a century of "stand up straight" — the healthy natural architecture of the human body is still preserved in traditional dance: a tall spine, open shoulders, externally rotated legs, an anteverted pelvis. You cannot skillfully dance samba, the Charleston, or a West African step without these elements of our universal human blueprint. Good posture habits are baked into the movements.
On US National Dance Day, we invite you to travel the world of dance with Esther and experience the posture and movement habits that are your birthright.
Dance is a way to reclaim your body's natural alignment — without it ever feeling like "posture practice." In this special, live, interactive workshop, we'll help you rediscover how your body is designed to move — without pain — through the lens of the world's dances. We'll see dances from around the world, notice the same healthy shapes appearing again and again, and understand why these movement patterns are associated with healthy, resilient bodies. This is your own posture — your birthright — reflected back to you in dance.
You do not need rhythm. You do not need experience. Two left feet are welcome. And if you'd rather watch — or move with your video turned off — that's completely fine too. This is as much anthropology as it is dance.
In this free one-hour workshop you will:
- 🌍 Travel the world through dance with Esther and our teachers.
- 🌿 Discover the shared patterns of movement found across pain-free cultures the world over.
- 💡 Learn what to look for — a tall spine, open shoulders, externally rotated legs, an anteverted pelvis — and why these shapes protect the body.
- 💃 Try a simple step and feel healthy movement from the inside — no experience needed.
- ✨ Feel the lift in mood, energy, and aliveness that comes with moving well.
