I only started dancing when I was 18.

That’s right! It is never too late to start dancing!

I had no flexibility and no muscle strength. It took a lot of work and motivation, but if you do it with love and excitement – everything is possible!

My belief is that we can never be perfect, we cannot be able to do everything there is in dance and it is completely unreasonable to punish ourselves if we are not able to. Keeping a humble mind and understanding that you are always, learning gives you freedom of expression.

Find your strengths and work on those. After you conquer them, you can slowly start expanding your comfort zone.

I used to have very low self-esteem.

For reasons in my childhood, I grew up with very low confidence. I have to say that dance is what changed it completely.

Dance is about freedom and letting go of judgement. Accepting yourself as you are, loving yourself for who you are.

Bellydance was crucial for developing my femininity. Being able to move my hips, my spine, being tall and graceful was a dream come true. It gave me something to love in myself. From there, improvisation did the rest.  

In fact, allowing yourself to dance “ugly” and “weird” is one of the best ways to come up with new amazing moves. That’s what we do exactly in our improvisation sessions. Getting used to dancing in a way that we find strange, and accepting it for what it is. Letting go of all the judgement, expectations of perfection, worries of what the others will say. Slowly, this letting go comes into your normal life, and you feel a sense of freedom.

I actually have a Master in Chemistry, which helps me understand well both the science and art in dance and movement. My teaching is a blend of artistic expression and understanding the biology and anatomy of our bodies.

Here is how that happened: 

I grew in the traditional strict society in Bulgaria, where people cannot earn enough making art. So as almost all completely confused teenagers I decided to study one of the things I was good at. But did I enjoy it – who asks you such questions?

The process of overcoming the stigma, admitting to myself that I want to dance as profession, and telling it to my family, was one of the hardest things I had to do. It took me more than 3 years, but it brought me so much wisdom. I feel that I was blind before, going after what I was told, living someone else’s life, not truly enjoying what I do. I felt lost, uncomfortable, yet scared to make the step to the unknown.

We are scared to make so many things we feel we really want to. It is the fear that we will not know the future, that we will not be stable, that we will not have a plan. But we don’t realize that all the ideas about future and stability are just fruit of our imagination and don’t actually exist, because in life – everything can happen.

So I thought – imagine if I need to spend the rest of my life doing something I don’t like just for stability, in the end maybe I end up not even having the stability… Imagine the regret I would have. And the fact is that living in instability makes instability the new stability. So after a year you don’t realize or feel it anymore. You just enjoy that you do what you love.

Now, I am not lost. I enjoy every day and am grateful that I can do what I love most.

And yet, my spine right now is healthier and stronger than it was before!

One wonderful teacher of mine told me once: Injuries teach us, you just need to pay attention.

In end of 2017 I dislocated my spine and could not dance or exercise for a few months. I was not warm enough and overdid it, and it happened. Not one, not two, but a dozen of them were dislocated. It is in such cases that you realize how essential every single part of the body is for movement. I could not sit, lay down, walk or lift anything without having huge pain in my back.

But I recovered fully and now my spine is stronger than ever!

After the physiotherapist put the vertebrae together and have me a few exercises, I was mostly on my own. I started researching exercises, feeling and testing on my body, until I completely cured my trauma, completely fixed my posture, and developed a good back strength.

This huge injury taught me how important it is to listen to your body’s limitations. I am extra careful of all of my student’s injuries and health concerns. This is why I am so careful with the warm up and the movements we do. This is why in class we improve our body mind connection and try to feel your limits. This is also why I started learning in depth about our anatomy in movement.

It is why I took a Lower Back Fascia and Level One Trainer certificate from the Franklin Method. It is why I keep learning daily of the way our body functions and how I can pass this knowledge to my students.

We all learn for all of our lives. I have a lot of knowledge to share with my students, but I can in no way say that I know it all. My students are my greatest teachers. They are all so different and fascinating.

In class, I often open the space to discuss, ask questions or just talk. I welcome all my students to talk to me completely openly about anything they need. I am ready to support them with what I can!

My goal in the end of a class is for my students to find their own ways. I believe that the job of a teacher is to gently guide a student on their own journey and not to show off or to make their students copy them.

I let my students explore movement with curiosity and I don’t expect them to do everything exactly like me. We all have very different bodies and have our own strengths and weaknesses. I always encourage my students to feel their bodies, notice what feels good and learn what their limits are.

Being true to yourself when you dance and move is one of the most important qualities in a good dancer or mover. And you cannot be true to yourself if you copy someone. You need to find yourself in the movement.

Of course, challenging oneself to go beyond their abilities is how improvement happens. But one needs to find their limits first and cross them patiently and carefully, so no injury or trauma takes place. It is a steady way to success!