ND-MAcCHM student Miquella Young shares her journey to promote connection through the mind-body-spirit to improve health.

Miquella Young started dancing when she was 10-years old. Since then, she has explored ways to use dance as a meditative art form to enhance mental and physical well-being.

Over the last decade, the National University of Natural Medicine (NUNM) student’s somatic practice of movement meditation has encouraged a greater connection to the body, mind and spirit.

Young, who is in her sixth-year at NUNM, describes somatic practice as the exercise of embodiment, bringing one closer to their inner landscape to forge a greater connection to the outside world.

Blending various aspects of dance and meditation into her career, Young has taught Taiji at the Mindfulness, Compassion and Resilience Conference for two years in a row, studied Kriya Yoga in India, and traveled internationally with a dance film company where she practiced synergy with the natural world.

Young’s somatic practice has encompassed a variety of works, such as the Alexander Technique, Feldenkrais Method, Somatic Re-education, mind-body centering, and contact improvisation, and draws heavily on principles learned through her studies in Chinese and naturopathic medicine.

In her own words, Young shares her journey of integrating the somatic practice of mindful movement into her life to cultivate vitality and improve health:

What’s gotten me through almost six years of medical school, while also mothering a toddler, is an ever-deepening love and regular practice of mind-body medicine. It mingles two of my lifelong passions, health and dance. I’ve always believed true health is born from integration of the spirit, with the body and mind. Health, in fact, is a dance. It’s one that moves with intrinsic body rhythms like our heartbeat, breath, and circadian rhythms, as well as environmental rhythms such as the seasons, moon cycle and solar year. 

From a naturopathic perspective, it’s the vis medicatrix naturae, or the healing power of nature, that can move us toward health. Somatic practices are a form of meditative movement that helps us get in touch with the vis through direct experience of the body. To heal ourselves, we need to feel into the places where our body harbors stress and let it go. It takes time to unravel knots, move inertia, and as Professor Brant Stickley, LAc., says, “excavate the tendrils of congestion.” From a Chinese medical perspective, this place of ease and harmony that we access in somatic practices is wuwei and is akin to what is known in the Western vernacular as a “flow state.” Somatic work is the practice of embodiment. It requires cultivation of the more subtle, interoceptive senses to experience the body’s anatomy from within.

“For the spirit, somatic practices breed more authentic self-expression, as they become a practice in creating ephemeral art. Taking time to tend to the relationship with your body is a radical act of self-care and can happen within just five minutes of daily meditation.”

For me, it was a pretty rad adventure to find it’s nothing like the textbooks say it is. When these interoceptive skills are learned through practice, they quite naturally translate to everyday life. Chinese philosophy describes it best in the concept of Yin and Yang. Yin symbolizes stillness and the material body, and Yang refers to movement and the functionality of the body. We need the seed of stillness within movement, as it creates peace amidst our inner landscape of continuously evolving thoughts and emotions. We also need the seed of movement within stillness, as it quiets the mind and body to observe the vis as it does its healing work—to experience wuwei as effortless action. 

Somatic practices not only regulate the nervous system but also have the potential to gently introduce a deeper relationship between mind and body. Trauma can show up as a block to going inward. We know now that trauma can be somaticized, with the potential to create chronic, debilitating physical and mental health challenges. Thanks to the work of trauma experts like Gabor Mate, Peter Levine and Besser van der Kolk, this wisdom has been brought to the forefront of human consciousness. Somatic practice can release trauma from the body’s memory and help neutralize our mental space.  

On a physical level, these movement therapies have the power to shift patterns in how we move, change our posture, and even prevent re-injury. On a mental-emotional level, regular practice can create potent change in one’s self-image, self-confidence, and relationship to both pain and pleasure. For the spirit, somatic practices breed more authentic self-expression, as they become a practice in creating ephemeral art. Taking time to tend to the relationship with your body is a radical act of self-care and can happen within just five minutes of daily meditation.  

I believe it’s our responsibility as practitioners in natural medicine to take our own cultivation seriously and nurture the mind-body-spirit complex. The more aligned we are with ourselves and our environment, the greater the medicine we can offer both our patients and community.  

Miquella Young is a sixth-year student pursuing a dual-degree in the Doctor of Naturopathic Medicine and Master of Acupuncture with a Chinese Herbal Medicine Specialization programs at NUNM. Miquella has been a dancer for over 18 years and held a personal meditation practice for over a decade.