Welcome! I’m Nada.
Life is challenging, at best. For many, our bodies have become functional vessels to just carry us through our busy and overwhelmed lives. Often people are not aware of how much our bodies reflect the challenges within and without. Women and girls especially are taught to disconnect from their bodies, often manifesting shame, low self esteem, and poor body image.
So I am here to assist you in a healthier version of you. I am here to help you to live more freely in your body, to feel more joyfully connected to others, to know you are not alone, to find healing in earth’s medicine and our ancestor’s ways, to be seen, heard, and understood.
Let me tell you a bit of my story.
When I was a young girl, I had been athletic and enjoyed dancing but, like many girls somewhere in adolescence, I lost the ability to be comfortable in my own body. In fact, I had become so uncomfortable that as a young woman I found the simple act of walking across my college campus to be unnerving.
Somehow, deep inside, I knew that dancing was the remedy. I nervously signed up for a Modern Dance class, then another, and another as I began feeling more alive in a way I had never before. As I moved my body in new ways, new worlds of possibilities opened up in me and for me. When I learned of Dance/Movement Therapy, something resonated completely. As a major in Psychology, I could not believe that there was actually a profession that would combine my new love of dance with my desire to help others!
It makes sense. Movement is our first language.
Our bodies carry and hold our life stories from birth on. We exist in our whole moving body selves, not just our thinking head selves. How we move through life is a reflection of how we move (or not move) in our bodies. Our personalities, ways of interacting, traumas, triumphs and struggles are all held in our musculature, movement preferences, and body attitude. Even though movement and dance are profoundly healing, and have been for humans for thousands of years, many aren’t aware of the power that movement has to help us understand ourselves, move through emotional and psychological pain and into a life of greater wholeness, authenticity, and joy. I’ve experienced in my own life, and have been honored to witness it in others, the transformation we can all go through when we deeply enter and engage our whole moving selves in order to live more fully with and in the world.
I’ve had the honor to witness many healing transformations.
In my work as a Dance/Movement Psychotherapist these past twenty-seven years, many have learned to more fully occupy their place in the world instead of retreating into their minds and old entrenched patterns. Women have moved through depressive states, stressful life transitions, traumas, to find a new purpose in life. Girls have found a place to safely explore their changing bodies in ways that support and strengthen them. By focusing on the body/mind/spirit connection new pathways of connection, understanding, healing, and growth can lead you to a life lived more fully and freely.
Dancing is in our DNA.
Not only are we born moving and dancing as central to our way of communicating and relating, all of our ancestral communities danced together. Throughout all ages and cultures, traditional circle dances were used to honor the divine, to heal, to affirm connection to the earth and each other, to build community and celebrate rites of passages and life transitions. I strongly promote ritual circle dance as a form of embodied community mental and whole health. So many that have joined me have experienced profound shifts in awareness, healing, connection, and wholeness. Healing in ways that are deeply rooted and held.
Would you like to have a healthier, stronger connection with your body, mind, and spirit?
Are you going through a life-transition and would like support and guidance through this challenging time? Are you looking to connect with an embodied community through the joys and wisdom of ancient traditions of dance? Need a healing, transformative, and supportive embodied women’s group that is rooted in the present and guided by women’s ancient traditions? Looking for support and wellness for your daughter? Interested in herbal living as part of your healing lifestyle? As one takes steps toward healing, all feel the benefit. There are many possibilities and I know we will find what best fits your needs, visions, and goals. If you are interested in my individual services, I offer a half hour free phone consultation.
Whereever you find yourself today, I would be honored to create a safe and healing space for you.
Plants were our first medicine!
Like a web connecting continuously, my life and holistic practice also incorporates the use of herbalism. Herbalism has a long historical use in supporting the healing function of the whole self. It was all of our ancestors first medicine! Although as a young girl, I always found solace in nature. I never knew the more specific and integral healing properties of the plants or understood the earth and its being as sacred. Western medicine with its emphasis on antibiotics and surgeries and separation of body and mind was how my ailments were handled only to set the stage for other chronic issues later in my adult life. As I started turning towards more natural sustaining healing methods, herbs became more prominent part of my life. Again I was amazed at how what brought me such solace and healing as a young girl had even deeper ‘hidden’ healing layers. It didn’t surprise me to find out later that my Croatian grandmother was a home herbalist. My concept of healing took on new forms as the world of nature and the plants became so alive for me. I began a long winding path of self-study and more formal studies that continue today. I incorporate herbalism made from sustainable wild foraged (by me) and organic herbs and herbal products into my Dancing WEB offerings.
Healing is a Way of Life
Healing is not something that just happens; healing is a way of life; a life steeped of moment to moment choices, practices, and connections. I am here to assist in weaving those connections into a more fulfilling expansive integrated purposeful joy-filled life.
Our home is our body. The earth is our current address. Let’s fully live here so we can live life and give to life our fullest.
With almost 30 years of practice, trained as a New York Licensed Creative Arts Therapist, and a Nationally Board Certified Dance Movement Psychotherapist, I offer an experienced holistic creative approach to therapy. I have worked in a variety of settings including inpatient psychiatric hospitals, mental health clinics, nursing homes, day treatment centers, a women’s homeless shelter, crisis counseling centers, and school/community-based
As a clinician, I utilize movement and body-based awareness practices to encompass the whole self in the therapeutic process. I have worked with a range of physical and mental health conditions from acute psychosis to mild mood disorders. I have worked with a range of populations but specialize in working with women, pre/adolescent and adolescent girls, and children.
Presently, I am faculty for the Dance/Movement Therapy Graduate program at Sarah Lawrence College, per diem Creative Arts Therapist in adult acute inpatient psychiatry at Montefiore Medical Center, Dance/Movement Therapist at The Academy House and the Director of the Dancing WEB.
Everything in the universe has rhythm.
Everything dances.
-Maya Angelou
Nada Khodlova MA, BC-DMT, LCAT
646-633-8052
Beacon, New York
www.thedancingweb.com
www.facebook.com/thedancingweb
https://www.instagram.com/thedancingweb
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