Through boodhid, We Return to Ourselves

For many of us, our bodies have not always felt like safe places. We’ve been taught to critique them, control them, or ignore them entirely. Movement offers something different. It asks: What if your body is not a problem to solve, but a home to return to?

Most people walk into my classes thinking the goal is to do the steps “correctly,” to perform the boodhid as ‘it should be done.’ But that’s never been my focus. What matters is how you move through your own body, how you inhabit it, and how you claim your space. When you choose to boodh with confidence, you decide how much space to take. You decide how loudly or softly to show up. You decide when to be bold and when to be tender. That choice-making is what matters. It builds a kind of internal authority that it follows you beyond the four walls of my studio and into the way you walk through the world, the way you speak, and the way you inhabit yourself. We can all learn technique and steps, but for me, the real lesson is: allowing yourself to make mistakes, enjoying the process of learning, and showing up with confidence both when you’re skilled and when you’re not. This is the message I want to share, the principle I hope carries beyond the dance floor and into every part of our lives. For me, this is what returning to yourself means.

At its core, buraanbur — or boodhid , is the practice of ownership in the most practical sense, the only person who gets to decide how your body moves, how it occupies space, and how it responds is you. In a world that continually asks women to shrink, soften, or discipline themselves into acceptability, boodhid and the art of buraanbur is a deliberate refusal to be made small.

The circle, the durbaan, the women around you — they hold you, reflect you, amplify you. But this is not just for the room. The rhythm you carry in your body presses into your spine, moves through your limbs, and settles in the way you inhabit the world. That movement, that presence, is yours to keep. Let it remind you, always, that you occupy space on your own terms, take all of that into your everyday life and no matter what you do, never ever stop dancing.