Movement is the key. When you move every day, you enter a state of flow. Flow brings energy, energy brings inspiration, inspiration brings joy. If you need momentum in your life or work, movement starts the ball rolling.
Today, more than ever, wellness is at the forefront of societal discussions. From mental health to physical well-being, women are making significant strides in bringing about change, introducing innovative solutions, and setting new standards. Despite facing unique challenges, they break barriers, inspire communities, and are reshaping the very definition of health and wellness. In this series called women in wellness we are talking to women doctors, nurses, nutritionists, therapists, fitness trainers, researchers, health experts, coaches, and other wellness professionals to share their stories and insights. As a part of this series, we had the pleasure of interviewing Toni Bergins.
Toni Bergins is on a mission to get people into their bodies to feel, heal, expand their bandwidth, end perfectionism, stop the “not good enough” crisis, and inspire them to express their authentic uniqueness in a world that needs all our healing now. Toni, MEd, is founder and director of JourneyDance®, author of EMBODY: Feel, Heal & Transform Your Life Through Movement, is an artistic alchemist and passionate catalyst for people to transform their angst into art and their vulnerability into strength. Over the past 27 years, she has helped thousands of people find a new sense of self-esteem, inner wisdom, emotional health, spiritual practice, and total well-being. She leads an international team of over 1500 JourneyDance facilitators, spreading joy, healing, and passion for life. Toni has a popular instructional JourneyDance DVD, a series of online courses, and a private practice in her Embodied Transformations Method. Her sense of humor and authenticity makes JourneyDance® programs accessible to all. Learn more at journeydance.com.
Thank you so much for joining us in this interview series! Our readers would love to “get to know you” better. Can you share your “backstory” with us?
ONE DANCE CHANGED MY LIFE!
While I was in grad school at NYU for a Master’s in Education, my body image issues, disordered eating, self-abuse, and severe mental negativity came to a head. I was working my way through school at a public relations firm, but I’d become obsessed with exercise and dieting. Self-hatred ran deep in my family of origin. I was conditioned into a perfectionist mindset that meant I would never be good enough. My self-worth was only felt through external approval.
No one knew what I was going through behind my mask. Underneath I knew I had some serious problems and I needed help. In a search for hope, I went to many therapists but it wasn’t until I met a Gestalt therapist that I was able to get back into my body and uncover my childhood trauma and the dysfunction I was trying to hide with my perfectionism.
To deepen my healing, I decided to go to Kripalu Center for Yoga and Health for a personal retreat. While participating in a dance/movement session, doing free-form dance, I experienced a monumental moment. I found myself, literally, crying on the floor in a puddle of tears and realizations. I felt self-love for the very first time and suddenly realized I could heal what I thought was brokenness!
Once I’d experienced how self-love made life so much better I was hooked. From that moment on, dance became an integral part of my life. On the dance floor, I felt my sensations, my sensuality, my whole being, and I fell in love with my body and my life.
And then everything in my life started to fall into place. I began studying every type of movement I could and started teaching classes. I came to have deeper understanding about my own healing, and I witnessed others having deep healing experiences of their own. That’s when I knew I needed to offer this so that others could heal like I did.
I created JourneyDance, and my team and I have worked with over 1,500 people to help them change the course of their lives.
I owe it all to finding my body on the dance floor for the first time.
Can you share the most interesting story that happened to you since you started your career? What were the main lessons or takeaways from that story?
When I came back into my body, I realized I’d been living in my head in an “out of body” state in which I was stuffing down and numbing my feelings. Coming home to my body and getting to know myself on the deepest level was key to my own self-mastery and having healthy relationships with others. Once I uncovered this realization — that knowing ourselves is our greatest power and that we have choice in our reactions — I was able to move forward into my career of helping others connect to their own power.
It has been said that our mistakes can be our greatest teachers. Can you share a story about a mistake you made when you were first starting? Can you tell us what lesson you learned from that?
A great learning of mine came from a “mistake” I made early on in teaching my workshops. I was working with the idea of forgiveness and suggesting that people begin a forgiveness process in order to heal. I listened deeply to my students and found that some things aren’t forgivable — and that to try to force forgiveness is unhealthy. I learned from this that the most important lesson is to forgive ourselves. Then, in time, when difficult situations and traumas are processed, felt, held, and digested, forgiveness may be able to happen.
Let’s jump to our main focus. When it comes to health and wellness, how is the work you are doing helping to make a bigger impact in the world?
My goal is to help people get back into their bodies and really fall in love with their bodies and themselves. By expanding our bandwidth for feeling and expressing, we learn to accept ourselves on a new level. Life becomes authentic and we get out of perfectionism and self-criticism. When we can feel joy on a regular basis through the movement and music, we can remember it in our very cells and have greater resilience for the other more difficult emotions. We can move the emotions on the dancefloor, and not take them out on each other! You can tell you story to the dancefloor without judgment or consequences. I teach: Resilience — Joy = Suffering; while Resilience + Joy = Empowerment.
Can you share your top five “lifestyle tweaks” that you believe will help support people’s journey towards better wellbeing?
1. Movement is the key. When you move every day, you enter a state of flow. Flow brings energy, energy brings inspiration, inspiration brings joy. If you need momentum in your life or work, movement starts the ball rolling.
2. It’s ok and necessary to feel your feelings, the anger, the grief, the excitement, the frustration, the sadness, and the joy. Everything is part of you, connected, layered and needs to be processed. Let these move, e-motion, as energy in motion through the body. Then you can come back to your center, clear and open. You can do this through movement and music on your own terms.
3. Make music your BFF. When you need a mood shift, you can literally change your vibe so easily with your musical choice. If you need to release emotion, play something to help you bring the emotion forth. If you want joy, play a favorite of yours, or just search for uplifting music. Music is vibration and so are you.
4. Shake it out and release physical stress. We take on stress in our daily lives, and through shaking, bouncing, and pulsing we can let it go and bring the body back to state of health.
5. Dance every day. When you come into your body and dance, subconsciously you learn that you are the creator of every experience that you’re in. Owning the energy in your body and becoming the master of it is the beginning of creating your exterior world.
If you could start a movement that would bring the most amount of wellness to the most amount of people, what would that be?
My movement is already in motion — healing our mind/body/emotional system and reclaiming ourselves one dance at a time. JourneyDance is a movement that is touching thousands of lives with a growing body of leaders.
Sustainability, veganism, mental health, and environmental changes are big topics at the moment. Which one of these causes is dearest to you, and why?
Mental health is definitely the most important cause to me. Everything we experience in our lives stems from the state of our mental health. Healing our psyche and becoming more conscious is essential to living more fulfilling and balanced lives.
We’re currently facing one of the greatest crises of our time — a crisis of the mind. We live in a world of energy, and our thoughts shape our physical and emotional realities. To create healthier, more beautiful lives, we need to shift our thinking and focus on nurturing our inner worlds. By prioritizing mental health, we can bring about profound changes in ourselves and, ultimately, the world around us.
What is the best way for our readers to further follow your work online?
www.journeydance.com, www.tonibergins.com
Thank you for these fantastic insights! We wish you continued success and good health.
About the Interviewer: Wanda Malhotra is a wellness entrepreneur, lifestyle journalist, and the CEO of Crunchy Mama Box, a mission-driven platform promoting conscious living. CMB empowers individuals with educational resources and vetted products to help them make informed choices. Passionate about social causes like environmental preservation and animal welfare, Wanda writes about clean beauty, wellness, nutrition, social impact and sustainability, simplifying wellness with curated resources. Join Wanda and the Crunchy Mama Box community in embracing a healthier, more sustainable lifestyle at CrunchyMamaBox.com .
