Unraveling PMDD, One Dance at a Time
How reconnecting with my body through dance became a sacred part of healing my symptoms
Brett Buchert · March 17, 2025
Was there ever a point in your life when you stopped dancing?
For me, it was coincidentally around the time my periods and PMDD started (or not so coincidentally).
When I was a little girl, I loved to dance. You probably did too.
I coveted my small collection of leotards, and subjected my parents to many a dance performance, often with my older sister, sometimes with our cats in arms, or a microphone, or a guitar I didn't even know how to play.
It was fun. It felt good. It felt free.
Along the path of growing up, I stopped dancing. I remember other kids laughing at me and saying I couldn't dance. I was lanky, all elbows and knees and had no rhythm. They were right, I wasn't good, so I guess I shouldn't dance…
I hope you never stopped dancing. But if you're like me and stopped at some point, it's high time for a reclamation.
Dancing is one of our most primal forms of human expression. It's sacred in so many cultures and connects us back through history to our ancestors.
I believe dance is good for all people, but for women in particular, it holds a special power.
For thousands of years, women have danced in ritual—whether in worship, moon circles, or rites of passage like a young girl's first bleed. Women's bodies have also been historically shamed, suppressed, and objectified—dance deemed too sexual, too tempting, too sinful, and limited only to formal, controlled styles—stripping away its intuitive, embodied nature.
It's time we dance again.
I started to dance again as I unraveled my PMDD. Dancing helped me unravel my PMDD. Now, it's a tool, honestly a sacred practice, I turn to whenever my energy feels stuck and needs to MOVE.
And the kids were wrong, I can dance. We all can! I didn't have to be good at it to do it. None of us do. And fascinatingly as I tuned into my own feminine rhythm within me (my menstrual cycle), the more the rhythm of music could flow through me too. Coincidence? I don't think so.
When you get the chance to sit it out or dance, I hope you'll dance.
