Naiada Dubard Barbosa
Movement Medicine Dancer
I am deeply grateful for the experience of being guided by you with such kindness, precision, and grounded firmness. That combination allowed me to feel truly safe, safe enough to enter the inner process very deeply. Even now, I have the sense that I am only aware of perhaps ten percent of what actually happened. As you said, it needs time to integrate.
There were two moments when you crossed my path during the workshop. The last was just before leaving the space of work. You stopped and faced me, and suddenly I lost all my words. I couldn’t speak. This often happens to me when I feel a profound connection and recognition, something beyond language.
Later, on the way home, I spoke with Solange and discovered that the same thing had happened to her some years ago. That recognition touched me deeply.
You don’t know this, but I am Brazilian, and I have been living in France for about fifteen years. I met Solange three or four years ago, and since then we have danced together weekly. I share this because, without her, I could never have imagined attending a workshop called Shaman’s Body.
For a long time, I avoided anything related to shamanism in Europe. I had seen people pretending, adopting postures that felt empty or disrespectful, and it created a strong feeling of aversion in me. Almost revolt. I hope you can understand what I mean.
I am a therapist, and I know that my emotions are my own responsibility. They tell me about my inner world, my many parts, and the inheritance I carry from my ancestors. I come from a complex and powerful lineage: indigenous, Black, and European, born from beauty and violence, from colonisation and the massacre of original peoples.
For many years, I could not hold this complexity inside me. I cut myself off from it completely. Later came shame: shame that I had not truly learned our real history, shame that social value is still placed on European ancestry, and then, as if to complete the picture, I found myself living in France.
For a long time, I protected my heart from the pain of all this. After years of therapy, something began to soften. Dancing weekly with Solange has increased my capacity to accept all emotions coming out and putting them in movement allows every emotion to flow and transform itself naturally.
In the last six months, I made a conscious decision to add the work with my voice to discover it in the movement and in my body. To my surprise, in one of those sessions, images arose of Indigenous people in ritual. I saw them dancing on red clay soil, and I broke down in tears. It was clear: the time had come to reconnect with my roots and my ancestors.
And then came this workshop.
Through the grace of your presence, I felt supported and encouraged to go further, into a deep and strong process of healing. From Friday to Saturday night, I dreamed of my grandparents. An intention formed clearly within me: to see, remember, and honour all the lines of my ancestors, and with their guidance, to live a creative life.
I feel held by that support now. I am profoundly grateful. Tears of gratitude still come, and I feel blessed.
Last but not least, your integrity and the respectful way you guided both the process and the ceremony felt like a balm to my heart. What I experienced was reconciliation and inner peace.
I am grateful. I have the sense that this is only the beginning of a new chapter, grounded on my roots, accepting myself wholely, a new possibility of connection that moves directly from heart to heart is possible.
Naiada
