First of all, I want to say a heartfelt thank you to the Movement Medicine Sponsorship Fund for the financial support that made it possible for me to participate in the Long Dance.
Now I can truly express how much it meant to me.
Taking part in the ceremony opened me to an immense source of positive energy within myself. The 72-hour dance structure allowed me to reach those blocked places deep inside that had slowed down my life, filled it with sadness, and undermined my motivation to do anything. At the very bottom, I found that essence - that joy of being alive, the desire to act, and a genuine, natural smile on my face.
I had felt this place within me once before, but something happened that caused me to lose access to it.
For the past several years, I have been searching for the way back to that place, but until now I had not been able to reach it. It was the Long Dance Ceremony that finally made it possible.
My resilient inner dancer finally had the chance to awaken - from the deepest core of my being.
I feel immense gratitude that I was able to participate, and that such a place and such a practice exist - one that supports diving into the depths of our own experiences, including those that are often painful.
Every process, even those that reach the deepest layers of my being and can sometimes be very challenging, supports my growth and improves the quality of my life and my sense of fulfillment.
Movement Medicine has helped me transform many aspects of my life in a therapeutic way over the past few years. I cannot say the same about traditional therapy. After therapy, I often felt that I needed something capable of reaching deeper - to the root, to the true cause - than simply expanding my intellectual understanding and awareness.
Movement Medicine broadens my understanding of myself and my body. It creates awareness while also offering a living practice - an opportunity to truly feel everything happening within me, to sense my body and emotions, to expand, and sometimes to curl inward, witnessing with a wider perspective how my inner life shapes my outer life.
Since the ceremony, I feel that I want to live a life close to myself - filled with movement, dance, and music. I have seen that such a life is truly possible, that it is within reach. It isn’t something detached from reality. It is something I want to move towards.
During the ceremony, I encountered the soul of my father, who passed away about a year ago. Our relationship was never truly good - in fact, we barely had one at all. When he was dying, I didn’t fully realize how serious the situation was, and I never got the chance to speak with him or say goodbye. Afterwards, it was simply too late.
While I was dancing, he appeared and danced with me. Later, during a practice of saying goodbye to loved ones, a powerful process unfolded within me. I was finally able to receive answers to questions that had accompanied me throughout my entire life. It was deeply healing. In the end, I felt an overwhelming love coming from the essence of my father - a love he had never been able to express while he was alive.
I share this because I want people to understand how deeply this practice can take us, if we sincerely allow ourselves to open to it.
I would also like to share something about fasting during the ceremony.
Before attending, I was very afraid that I had signed up for the full fast. Fasting had never been part of my life before.
I was afraid I wouldn’t be able to cope with hunger, that I would suffer terrible headaches. I was also worried that my anger would surface because of the hunger and explode, making both me and those around me uncomfortable.
To my surprise, none of those fears became reality.
If anything had become too difficult, support was always available. Ultimately, the responsibility and the choice of how to care for myself remained in my own hands.
The fast turned out to be much lighter and easier than I had imagined when I chose the full version. This experience shifted something fundamental in my system.
I live with severe obesity, and I know it is not simply the result of poor eating habits. I have long known that it is also connected to stored emotions and a form of protection. What had been difficult was reaching the true cause and accepting it without judgment - simply acknowledging that this is how things are now, while also recognizing that I have the freedom to choose how I want them to be.
The details of that part of my story I will keep to myself.
What I would like to share, however, is that through participating in the ceremony and completing the fast, I immediately lost 5 kilograms. I also discovered that my body had not been properly hydrated, even though I had been drinking plenty of water. I now drink water with electrolytes.
After the fast, I still didn’t feel much desire to eat, and even now my need for food is significantly smaller. Most importantly, for the first time I truly experienced what physical hunger feels like through my digestive system, rather than through my mind. I also discovered what genuine satiety feels like - something I had struggled to recognize for a very long time.
Since returning home, I have started fasting one day each week and naturally eating much less. There is still work ahead of me to understand what my obesity has truly been about, but I now feel that I have access to the real cause.
Some people might say, “It’s just dancing.”
And yet, there is space there for so much more - if we are willing to embrace it and approach it as a therapeutic practice.
This is my story from this part of my Movement Medicine journey, experienced during the Long Dance Ceremony 2026.
Marta Kończak
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