If you walk past NaCoMo on a Tuesday or Thursday evening, you will likely hear the rumble of musical beats and joyful guffaws. What’s going on in there?
It’s the sound of Bellyfit with Brendalee Morgan, well known for her belly dancing but who has much more hidden behind those veils.
“It helps break barriers,” Morgan said about Bellyfit classes, “allowing people to feel closeness and connected.” The aerobic dance classes combine West African dance moves, bhangra, yoga, and pilates as well as belly dancing for an eclectic and challenging mix. Although the pace is fast, the point of the class isn’t just to get you sweating.
For Morgan, teaching and healing have been goals since she was a child. Bellyfit is the latest tool in her belt for helping people overcome obstacles within themselves as well as between each other.
Acceptance is something Morgan learned early on at the caring hands of her parents who supported her every accomplishment.
“My parents were proud of me whatever I did,” she recalled. When she was living by herself in a tent way up in the woods, her parents told her “we’re some proud of you.” Morgan believes her parents’ experience of hard times in Newfoundland made them fiercely supportive, instilling in her a strong sense of pride and self-confidence. That foundation also led her to the understanding that she needed to help break down the barriers that kept people from experiencing peace both within themselves and with others.
The expense of dance or other classes was never an option for the family who had little in the way of money. Instead, the Morgans headed into the trees, and camping made up a large part of Brendalee’s childhood. There within the woods she learned the joy of nature.
“When I was younger I loved to dance but never took any training,” Morgan confirmed. “While friends took dance classes I spent every weekend in the woods with my family learning.”
Morgan, a natural-born dancer, started belly dancing 19 years ago and has been teaching for 16 of those years. A Lebanese friend introduced a 13-year-old Morgan to the music and culture of belly dancing through a video and she fell in love with it right away.
“The women were all different sizes and shapes and there was no weirdness about it at all,” said Morgan, who saw the beauty and profound power of the dance. It was in Haida Gwaii where Morgan was taking a class that she was asked by her teacher to step up and teach. Her beautiful full-figured teacher would describe the move and Morgan would show it.
“Then…performance,” she told the Arrow Lakes News. “In little Charlotte city we would perform – six ladies and myself doing a solo in the middle.” The performance received an ovation, and changed Morgan’s life.
“I vowed to never stop belly dancing,” she said. And she didn’t, even during her schooling in holistic health.
It was through teaching that she learned what belly dancing meant to her, however.
“I could write a book about the transformations I’ve witnessed through learning to belly dance,” said Morgan. “It’s about having fun being in the moment and realizing we all are different shapes and sizes this is the beauty in being a woman.”
Like belly dancing, Morgan believes Bellyfit will help women of all different fitness levels not only enjoy dancing together but learn to feel comfortable in their own skin just as it is.
“Any fitness level can do it. The classes bring women together in a way that is nonjudgmental,” said Morgan. “You honour yourself by doing what you can do.” She sees the experience as a way to transform stigma into self-acceptance. Learning to laugh together is another way to feel a sense of community and social acceptance, something that happens regularly and spontaneously in the class.
Through a combination of fitness, affirmations, mudras and awareness, Morgan hopes to give women in her class the ability to let go of all barriers.
In the classes, complex choreography carried out in quick steps gets the heart rate up and the laughs rolling. It’s an attention-consuming hour with no room for the mind to wander about, an aspect that Morgan likens to walking meditation. Mindfulness of the body is at the heart of the instruction, and in that spirit, dancers learn mudras, hand gestures that have been used in traditional Indian practices to facilitate the flow of prana or life energy.
Morgan sees Bellyfit as just another extension of her holistic healing background, another layer of care she can offer. Its mindful, barrier-breaking qualities make it a (very) active form of healing that encourages women to make peace with their bodies and learn to love the skin they’re in.
Bellyfit classes are held at NaCoMo Tuesdays 6:30-7:30 p.m. and Fridays 9:15-10:15 a.m., and in Burton Mondays 7-8 p.m.
Correction: In the print edition, it was reported that Brendalee Morgan will be opening a health retreat in the spring. In fact, although it is a dream of hers to open a retreat, she will not be doing so in the foreseeable future.
