Tony Nickalls' Story

2016

During a separation that eventually led to divorce, a friend suggested I try yoga - something I had never before considered. I began practicing a couple of times a week, and from there, I was invited to a local weekly ecstatic dance event. Slowly, through both yoga and dance, I began to reconnect with my body.

Photograph credit Carrie Branovan

In the summer of 2019, divorced and in the 43rd year of my corporate career, I attended an ecstatic dance event in Milwaukee where I met Carrie Branovan. Carrie mentioned she was organizing a Movement Medicine weekend in Chicago, called “Presence of Heart,” with David Mooney. After deciding to attend, she invited me to create an altar for the Water direction. It was a deeply memorable beginning to my Movement Medicine journey, though none of us knew then of the coming lockdowns.

When the world shut down in the spring of 2020, Carrie responded by organizing Movement Medicine courses online. Through lockdown, the online community and the powerful guidance of teachers like David Mooney and Jo Hardy I received a lifeline. I remain profoundly grateful for how those online gatherings made dance meaningful even when we couldn’t gather in person.

Photograph credit Carrie Branovan

As the summer of 2020 arrived, Carrie began offering Movement Medicine inspired experiences in nature at a beautiful reserve called Spirit Lake in Mequon, just north of Milwaukee. Using silent disco headsets, we danced in the pine forest, surrounded by native prairie flowers, the quiet presence of the lake, and the gentle breezes. These gatherings were crucial in shaping my understanding of dance as a form of healing. Safely held in nature, they helped deepen my connection to this practice, especially during such a transformative time.

The combination of the online courses and forest dances helped me realize how essential dance is to my life. Movement, both on my own and in community, became a powerful form of medicine.

2020 continued to bring changes. My corporate career came to an end, and I knew I needed structure in my days after decades of work. So, I set a rhythm: every day, I would dance for an hour, paint for an hour, and work on my living space for an hour. For a full year, I danced daily to music by King Crimson. As time passed, more Movement Medicine courses followed,

including Encounter (three parts), a shamanic practice taught by Ya’Acov Darling Khan, and Phoenix Rising, which I took twice.

Around this time, I also completed a 200-hour yoga teacher training. It was a stretch for me, studying in a way I hadn’t in decades, but the grounding nature of movement and body awareness helped. I continue to revisit my notes and recordings, from both types of classes, to expand my learning. By 2021, I began teaching yoga in Milwaukee, which has since grown to seven weekly practices in 2024. The cross-pollination of yoga, dance, and Movement Medicine has been invaluable, leading me to a deeper understanding of the unity of body, mind, and spirit, the essence of our species, Sapiens.

Writing is how I process my learning, not just listening. The visual diagrams used in Movement Medicine, the mandala, the elements, the cardinal directions, have also helped me a great deal. I’ve even begun crafting painted wooden staffs for dancing, representing the elements of Earth, Water, Fire and Air. These staffs have become focal points in my practice, symbolizing the unity of body, mind, heart, and spirit. I’ve hung them in the art gallery I opened in 2022, which showcases emerging artists from Wisconsin whose work carries a message. This gallery, Aquae Nguvu, “of water spirit” in Latin and Swahili, echoes my deep connection to the element of water.

Element Staffs made by Tony Nickalls

Water has always been a profound metaphor for life:

• The stillness of a lake

• The flow of a gentle stream,

• The unstoppable force of a flooded river.

I’ve come to accept that life is about surrendering to what I cannot control, learning to let go, and finding gratitude and forgiveness amid the constant flux. In 2023, I suffered a herniated disc that limited my mobility for dance and yoga. It was a humbling experience, but it taught me to care for my body in new ways and to embrace my current abilities, however limited they may be.

And yet, through all this study, reflection, and creative work, the most vital part of my dance experience continues to be the live, in-person dances led by Carrie at Spirit Lake. The land, now part of a land trust, has a sacred history, once used for ceremonies by indigenous peoples and as a spiritual retreat by an order of nuns. Surrounded by many trees (planted by humans rather than ancient growth) and a vast meadow, the energy of the place is palpable. It is a perfect space to practice presence and connection.

As Carrie often says, these last few years have been a “saturn return”, a time of deep transformation. I continue to reflect on the powerful guidance and support from those around me, as I explore what it means to live like water, adapting, flowing, and embracing the inevitable changes in life.