This week’s Dance First Member Spotlight is from Rachel Goodman!
Hello Conscious Dancer Community!
I am a resilience consultant, facilitator, and speaker from Canada. I am also a movement, vocal, and visual artist.
In 2020, I suddenly had to learn many skills to get my work online. Before COVID times, my business had grown by in-person word of mouth. I’m a Gen Xer who started high school with a typewriter and has been living on a tiny island of 850 people for the past decade. I had very little online presence before the pandemic.
I knew what I wanted to teach about – movement remedies for stored embodied trauma – and felt well poised to get started. I felt so passionate about what I had to share and like nothing could stop me. I was so driven, staying up all night while I perfected my video skills, took many courses on how to show up best online, and so on.
I served thousands of people and got my movement remedies to 15 countries around the world. My teachings about trauma-informed care and the present-based, body-based movement remedies I designed are being used to help people worldwide.
I am so thankful that I was able to reach many people online. It has been an enormous learning curve. I am starting to navigate my way into what is next for me, as sharing those movement remedies has felt like a big life purpose for me. I have decided to make a video and eBook of them to be freely distributed to help people.
I am at a milestone in my career, where I’ve now been teaching holistic wellness for 25 years. I’ve been at the leading edge of merging art and fitness into creating wellness the whole time. It’s exciting! I find I am leaning more and more into the art side of my work, having spent the past 25 years more on the fitness side. So I have been asking myself, what is it that I feel like doing?
I have learned that I prefer business by referral to building a big online presence. Thankfully, I have a large worldwide network now!
I love facilitating groups in arts-based processes to optimize joyful embodiment and thriving. I’ve been beta testing my class “Anchoring Bliss Experiential” at different times during the past year and a half. It’s a 75-minute structure that is movement-based and dances through my 12 Keys of Wellness while inspired by imagery & music and culminates in affirmative poetry.
I also have much to share about resilience and enjoy helping caregivers show up optimally for themselves and those they care for. I offer “Rebalance Experiential for Caregivers,” which is a group program to help caregivers dynamically rebalance and serve from a full cup.
I also sing, dance, and make art. I have been studying color and design and integrating my learning into my 33 years of experience making jewelry. I love creating wearable art.
I feel like I’ve been able to serve the world well during a difficult time, and I completed a significant chapter of what I came here to do. As humans, we evolve as we offer our gifts to the world, then we can ask ourselves what is next? So now, I am focussing on what will bring me the most joy. I know that will also help me enhance harmony and beauty in the world.
I like to use my BLISS model to live and lead intentionally: Be in the potent now; Lead by example; Integrate daily; Stand in self-care; Set your anchor.
When we embody thriving, we anchor bliss.
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Rachel is passionate about helping people find relief and resilience so that they can embody thriving. She has 25 years of experience teaching holistic wellness, and as a caring innovator has taught tens of thousands of people worldwide. She has an MA in Expressive Arts Therapy, a BFA in Dance, and multiple fitness & wellness certifications. Her specialties include helping people find resilience from stress & post-traumatic stress, and guiding elders & caregivers to optimize wellness. Rachel is a dancer, vocalist, and visual artist who emphasizes the power of creativity, improvisation, and play in enhancing well-being. As an award-winning speaker she shares a message of hope.
