Liberate:

-          ‘Set (someone) free from imprisonment, slavery or oppression’

-          ‘To release (someone) from a situation which limits freedom of thought or behaviour’

(Definitions from Oxforddictionaries.com)

I live in a small town in Somerset, nicely situated amongst the countryside as well as busier towns and helpful amenities, with my parents and older brother. I have a boyfriend who lives in a town near Bristol and have a part time job in a café. From this, it appears that I am most definitely free from ‘imprisonment, slavery or oppression’ and it would seem that I am not in a ‘situation which limits freedom of thought or behaviour’.

Sometimes though, it doesn’t feel that way. Sometimes it feels like I am trapped by my own anxieties, fears, situation, body image, the list goes on. Often, I feel the need to be liberated. To be freed.

Fitness, dance, cooking, eating with friends and family, walking in the countryside or by the sea and drinking a nice cuppa are all things that I find liberating. They help me to forget my inhibitions, worries, perfectionisms, and they help me to feel free to be me.

Dance and fitness in particular have helped me in this way.

Dance allows me to express myself – not necessarily to an audience, but just on my own practicing or choreographing liberates me, enabling me to get immersed in whatever it is I am thinking about when dancing. Immersed in my thoughts and bringing them outwards, out of my body. Release… (which is apparently a synonym for Liberate). Then when I do perform, I can communicate this canvas of released thoughts, feelings, emotions or stories to the audience. Before I know it, I have shown them pieces of my own imagination or thoughts etc. which I may not have dared to otherwise. How liberating.

Fitness allows me to live. I feel freedom to move throughout the day, to push myself and my body, to socialise and to have time on my own. I find I forget myself when I exercise and over time I realise I have grown in confidence in many ways through it. This confidence has liberated me and I now feel much more able to meet new people and accept me for who I am, just as I am.

Well, there’s a long way to go but I know that with life’s little beauties like dance and fitness I can feel liberated from all the constraints or pressures going on. I wonder what you find liberating?