Most of us know how to stretch, sweat and squat. Far fewer of us know how to simply move – no steps, no reps, no mirror. Former ballroom dancer turned embodiment coach Katty H, founder of Shemotion, explains what intuitive movement actually is, and why a room full of women dancing like nobody’s watching might be the release you didn’t know you needed.
If you’ve ever tried to meditate and spent the whole time mentally scanning your to-do list, Katty H gets it.
“I never connected with the traditional way of meditating – sitting still, trying to quiet my mind and focus,” she says. “It just never felt natural to me.”
What did feel natural was dancing. Katty trained and performed in ballroom when she was younger – a style she describes as ‘obviously very structured’, from the steps and technique to the timing, presentation and performance.
She loved it, but it was still movement for an audience. Away from the dance floor, music became a form of therapy.
“If I had a difficult day or my mind was full of thoughts, I would put music on in my room and dance it out,” she says. “I would let my body express whatever I was feeling rather than trying to think my way through it.”
It wasn’t until she studied embodiment coaching that she understood why it worked.
“I realised that movement doesn’t have to be performed for anybody. It doesn’t have to look beautiful, follow choreography or achieve anything,” she says. “Movement can simply serve you.”
That idea became Shemotion, a 60-minute intuitive movement experience to help Gold Coast women get out of their heads and reconnect with themselves.
So, what on earth is intuitive movement? Put simply, it’s movement that’s led by how your body feels rather than how it looks – instinct over choreography, joy over precision. Katty’s take is that the right prompts, breath and movement can help us “stop analysing everything for a moment and actually listen to what our bodies are telling us.”
A session starts gently, with stretching, soft movement and breathwork to help everyone arrive in their body. Katty layers in simple coaching prompts – noticing where you’re holding tension that day, or simply observing “what is present without trying to fix it.”
“Then, the music becomes stronger, and we move into a much freer, more active part of the session,” Katty says, even describing this part of the class as having ‘a rave-like energy’. “It’s bigger, faster, stronger and sometimes a little chaotic – in a good way.”
The point is to physically express what you’re feeling, rather than holding it all inside. Katty sometimes guides hip and pelvic movement, which she says can feel surprisingly powerful.
“For some women, it has been a very long time since they have consciously moved that part of their body,” she says. Women often tell her it leaves them feeling more connected to their femininity – “softer in some moments, powerful in others.”
The biggest hurdle, Katty says, is in our heads. Worrying about how you look or whether you’re doing it right is the performance anxiety so many of us carry without realising. Though somewhere in the session, that tends to drop away.
“Women realise nobody is judging them,” Katty says. “There is nothing to get right. They are allowed to be raw, playful, feminine, powerful, silly or completely themselves.”
Some describe it as reconnecting with their inner child – the part of you that moved because it felt good.
The class winds down with grounding and a closing meditation, where you’re invited to notice your heartbeat, come back to your breath and “almost give yourself a hug from within.” For Katty, that final stretch is about gratitude. And for women who keep coming back, she notices the self-consciousness “becomes smaller and smaller.”
If you’re keen to try it, the kit list is short: comfortable clothes you can move in, a water bottle and a mat. Some Shemotion events leave time afterwards for tea and conversation, and coming solo is encouraged – there’s “no awkward networking and nobody is expected to share anything personal.”
And if the idea of dancing freely in a room full of strangers makes you want to hide?
“I would probably say that you are exactly the woman Shemotion was created for,” Katty says. You don’t need to know how to dance, or be particularly fit or flexible, and you can make movements smaller, slow down or stop whenever you need to.
“Women carry so much – work, families, responsibilities, relationships, expectations and a mind that very rarely stops,” she says. “For 60 minutes, I want women to have somewhere they can put all of that down.”
Find out more at www.shemotion.com.au.
