No Feeling Lasts Forever
I am currently in Arillas, on the Greek island of Corfu, where I just attended my first-ever Ecstatic Dance Wedding. This is the very same village where, back in 2018, the idea for an Ecstatic Dance DJ Training was born. As I write this, eight years and two months later, I am, in fact, sitting at the very same table where I started an email sign-up sheet for a DJ course that didn't even exist yet. This time, I am writing to a subscriber list of thousands, many of you alumni of the DJ course that we have now taught 19 times.
Of all those with whom I had the pleasure of sharing this wedding trip, I only knew Sophie when I first arrived here in 2018. The others are people I have collected along the way.
I met the bride, Vera, at an Ecstatic Dance DJ gathering here on Corfu last May, where I also met Natalia.
Pedro attended our DJ Training in Portugal in May 2025.
FX (yes, this is his actual name) was one of the sound team from Sophie's team at Ecstatic Dance Gathering France in July 2025, where I also met Alexia.
Mikaela is, of course, our DTM student liaison, but started out as an online DJ school student way back in 2022.
Sitting beneath the flower tree on the iconic Soundgarden dance floor, surrounded by this beautiful group of friends, tears streamed down my face because, as you all know, I really love rituals.
Vera and Imanuel sealed their vows with a Celtic handfasting and a Greek wedding dance, a beautiful reflection of the global nature of this community.
In that moment, I felt so deeply blessed to be part of this family: a group who were complete strangers to me when, years ago, I arrived in Arillas with nothing more than a dream of helping people create conscious dance communities far and wide.
This feeling, I reminded myself, won't last forever.
This is a longtime mantra of mine: “No feeling lasts forever.” It works in the good times. On days like the wedding, it reminds me that human connection and the people we celebrate with are not permanent. They are to be savoured and not taken for granted.
But it also works in the hard times, like in 2020, when the shutdown of most of the world meant cancelling the second DJ Training. That day, Cristina (DTM's first-ever student liaison) and I sat refunding every sign-up, in shock at the uncertainty the world faced.
Or in 2022, when the seemingly never-ending COVID restrictions prevented me from attending Renée Lacroix's wedding, the one that was supposed to be my first Ecstatic Dance wedding.
Or in 2024, when our Costa Rica Dance Forward retreat basically flopped, despite Clémentine finding us what seemed like the perfect venue in an idyllic jungle paradise.
Or recently, when we went from the high of a sold-out training in May to cancelling our Leadership Training due to record-low sign-ups in September.
For all these hard times, “no feeling lasts forever” reminds me that I will feel good again, successful again, confident again.
The more I navigate this inevitable cycle of ups and downs with this mantra in my heart, the easier it becomes to have faith in whatever is around the next corner.
But there is another precious resource which has built my resilience and made riding this magic carpet ride a lot easier, and this is the family I collected along the way.
There were so many times I wanted to quit. It was the people mentioned in this blog, and the hundreds of others who have not been mentioned, who reflected back to me that I had it in me to keep going.
As I soak in the final days on this beautiful island, where we will host an event next October (enough sign-ups willing!), having witnessed Vera and Imanuel's commitment to love, I ask myself, “How am I so blessed?” And it is very clear that, for me, in this precious life that I have built, the answer is simple... it's the dance.
If you click on all the names highlighted in blue in this post, you will find a human who has made a difference in the world by infusing their communities and lives with dance. They are my chosen family, as are you, dear reader. No matter how big or small your contribution to the evolution of the conscious dance movement, it matters, so keep going.
Whether you are in good times, and life feels as though it is flowing, or hard times, when you feel like you want to give up, remember, “No feeling lasts forever.”
I know beyond a doubt that, in a world currently fraught with so much worry about where humankind is headed, there are two things we will need to thrive: each other and the dance.
Join us for our upcoming trainings:
With Love,
Bernice & The DTM Team
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