Welcome to the Micro-Dance School! If you are stuck in a chair amidst all this madness and looking to slap yourself back to sanity with your own body’s magic, rhythm and heart, this short dance lesson is for you.
If you’ve sat in meditation, “listened to your body” and “regulated” yourself only to think, “what is this horsecrap?”—I’ve been there with you. “Calm down and accept the status quo,” is not in my vocabulary, whether it’s coming out of my mouth or inside my head.
Feeling overwhelmed, discouraged or furious about the atrocities happening to the world, your community and yourself isn’t something to quiet down. It’s a heart looking to break open to something more true. That’s a lifetime of being Roma: seeing people abandon their humanity for insanity. But we keep dancing.
A Life With Impact-Driven Dance
My journey with impact-driven dance began before I was born with my mother’s step dancing. Her movement and heartbeat were how I came into the world, and some of my earliest memories are of my father waltzing me around the floor in his arms. This was the foundation of a dance path that matured into solo percussive performance.
For Roma and Sinti families who created and carry traditions like Welsh clogging, American Clogging, Flamenco or Hungarian step dance, this is a familiar story—and one that has survived traumas of slavery and forced labor in wooden shoes, fetters and chains. As I publish in my academic research through this folk medicine we transformed hardships into dances the world still cherishes today.
Somatic rhythmic stimulation has also been a part of child-rearing across many human cultures throughout time. Early childhood music and dance educators know that these simple songs and dances are doing far more than what they appear to be. As Dr John Feierabend observed, they also began rapidly disappearing in the second-half of the 20th century. As a result of this loss in the lives of infants and children, we are seeing the consequences in our growing inability to feel and move the body as well as a decline in fluency in how we touch the world.
But the brain is very plastic and all is not lost. Many of us are stubborn and hold on. And now modern medicine is beginning to understand the value of rhythmic touch, tapping on the body and the wisdom of dance. Together, we can turn the tide in this trend by introducing short body-rhythm exercises into the pulse of daily life.
Micro-Dance is informed by decades of research, a career as an embodied engineer and four decades of dancing I’m sharing with you to help you build a daily practice of touch, rhythm and play.
Seated Is a Target
This practice is intended for moments when dance isn’t usually done—or even thought of—which is often when we need to keep moving the most. In modern culture, being seated is a target.
In chairs, we become passive and vulnerable to information overload, overthinking, and corporate mind-fracking propagated through invasive technologies and constant streams of influence. Body tapping bypasses these endless layers of over-analysis mixed with desensitization, reaching the nervous system directly.
As I detail in my PhD dissertation, dance is how I re-regulated after trauma. In 2013 and 2014, I went through a PTSD treatment program at NYU. Alongside clinical work, it was dance practiced with agency over time that helped me get my body back. Later, when I still struggled with regulation, Emotional Freedom Techniques (EFT), a tapping-based somatic practice, reached something talk therapy hadn't quite touched. In a very isolated time in my life, it gave dances with my family back to me. It left me with questions I’m still asking, and exploring with you.
And let me just throw out there again as I did in this Gypsy Fires letter, it’s never too late to dance with your father and listen to songs from your mother. To have your fingers and toes counted. To be dandled on their knee. To bounce around the world.
In the video below, our first lesson begins with a short seated somatic exercise: alternating chest tapping paired with a simple statement of self in place. It’s your introduction to Neuro-Percussive Micro-Dance™ (NPMD), my step-by-step framework for rebuilding rhythmic, impact-driven somatic play into your life.
Step-by-Step Instructions
This is a short seated dance alternating chest tapping in rhythm. Over the tapping, we say three simple words: “I am here” in whatever language you’d like. That’s it. That’s the whole piece. “I am here” is the exact kind of orienting phrase trauma-informed practice uses to bring us back to the present.
Stand or sit however you feel comfortable. Remove any bulky clothing, jewelry or scarves that you might be covering your chest.
Place your hands on your chest. Rest your right hand on the right mid to upper chest but definitely below the collar bone and your left hand in the same position on the left side of your chest.
Take a deep breath. Try expanding the ribs fully and take multiple breaths if you need to. Our ribs can get stuck and restrict motion, so deep breathing can help release that tension. Feel your hands move with the breath with every rise and fall.
Begin tapping your chest, alternating your hands. Begin with a light touch of just the finger tips and work up to a gentle but audible slap with the fingers together, hitting the chest flat.
Find the Rhythm: Continue alternating your right and left palm flat against your upper chest. Experiment how fast or slow you can go and if there is any rhythm you like to play with.
I am here: Over the sound of the tapping, say three simple words out loud or in a whisper: “I am here.”
Repeat for 1 to 2 minutes whenever you feel overwhelmed, trapped in screens, or disconnected from your body.
Integrate this into your daily life. I’ll do this many times a day, but often only for 10-20 seconds. I find it especially helpful when I need to change my mood or reset after completing a task.
Watch the short practice video below. You can keep it light or take it as deep as you need today.
How This Neuro-Percussive Micro-Dance™ Works in the Body
Bilateral Regulation: Alternating chest impact provides patterned, left-right sensory input to the brain, much like the “butterfly hug” used in trauma therapy or Emotional Freedom Techniques (EFT). This disrupts active anxiety loops in the central nervous system.
Palmar & Chest Mechanoreceptors: Sharp, rhythmic contact stimulates deep sensory receptors (Pacinian corpuscles) embedded in the fascia of your chest and hands, sending rapid tactile signals that ground your body map.
Vagal Orienting Cues: Pairing physical contact with the phrase “I am here” engages the ventral vagal system. It acts as a neurological safety cue, signaling to your brain that you are no longer in danger or freeze.
Thank you for joining me today.
Happy slapping!
Russell
Up next:
Micro-Dance 2 builds on this foundation with finger-snapping, heightened awareness and spatial expansion.