Healing from Healing: How Wellness Facilitators Find Balance on the Dance Floor
Most of us have probably heard of @healingfromhealing — the meme page that highlights and challenges the irony and problematic aspects of the wellness and spiritual world, especially through the lens of social media.
Let’s be real: poking fun at our own spiritual pursuits is sometimes the best way to stay grounded and humble. It reminds us to take a step back every now and then and ask ourselves — what is it that we’re seeking? Might we be doing something… problematic? Delulu? Are these modalities actually helping us, or are they creating more of a bubble and having the opposite effect?
Being in this world of “well-being” and “healing,” we got to thinking about other modalities that perhaps don’t fit quite so neatly into the conventional ways of connecting to ourselves and our inner worlds.
And of course, being in a place like Berlin, where techno and rave culture take precedence, it prompted us to reflect on dancing and clubbing — can this be a form of healing as well? When we’re feeling oversaturated with sound baths, cacao ceremonies, and the like, can dance floors be a place where we find “healing from healing”?
Here’s what some of our colleagues had to say…
Human Design Expert, Hypnosis and Sound Facilitator
What does "healing from healing" mean to you?
For me, life is about actually living, being myself and experiencing the full spectrum of life. Healing modalities can be wonderful tools to support that, but they shouldn’t become the entire focus of life or turn into another pressure to constantly fix or improve ourselves. Healing is meant to bring us back to living, not keep us stuck in the process of trying to heal.
As someone regularly holding space for others in "healing" spaces, how does raving and dance music hold space for your own healing?
Dancing gives me the space to come back to my body and completely let go of the outside noise. It’s where I reconnect with the present moment and that’s when my best ideas and insights usually flow in.
The Berlin techno scene, in particular, has always been a place of deep self-expression for me. I grew up feeling quite different from others, and within this community’s openness and acceptance, I finally found peace with who I am.
In what ways do you see raves and dancefloors becoming spaces for healing?
It really depends on how we approach these spaces. For some, they can be an escape that leads to disconnection but for others, they become portals for meditation, reflection, and self-discovery. I can see a shift happening in some ways: more awareness on the dance floor, more intention, and a growing sober rave community.
Cultural Anthropologist, Musician, Therapist, and founder of the Psychedelic Society Berlin (PSB)
What does "healing from healing" mean to you?
Healing from healing means to question the very idea of healing itself. From a critical and complex perspective, I like to ask what it really means to heal in a society obsessed with fixing itself. Today, healing has become a kind of prefabricated ritual: you go to yoga, you take ayahuasca, you do vipassana, you see a nutritionist, you go to the gym, to therapy... and then, "you healed".
But I don’t believe in that. I think if the system we live in wasn’t so cruel, competitive and exploitative, we wouldn’t need to heal so much in the first place. We have all been hurt by this world in different ways.
For me, healing from healing is to realize that healing is not a destination, but a deeply intimate and personal process. It doesn’t always happen by doing yoga or eating well. Sometimes it happens when you forgive. Or when you learn not to take life too seriously. Or when you turn your anger into something dignified and creative.
Healing is an act of authenticity. And when we heal from that honest and personal place, it also becomes a collective act. We become more open, more empathetic, more loving, and therefore more capable of supporting others to heal in their own way.
As someone regularly holding space for others in "healing" spaces, how does raving and dance music hold space for your own healing?
For me, raving and dance music are a way to come back to the body, to stop being the "facilitator" and just become part of the collective pulse. In the spaces I hold, I am often observing, holding others, attentive to their process. But on the dance floor, I let go. There are no words, no hierarchy, only movement, sweat and presence.
The rave is a place where the mind dissolves into rhythm. The border between self and others becomes... less evident.
In a way, it is like an electronic temazcal: you enter, you purify through dance, you cross something, and you come out changed. The body empties itself from what it holds inside: exhaustion, emotions, the weight of caring for others.
There I remember that healing is also joy, catharsis and laughter. Healing is not always serious or spiritual; sometimes it is losing yourself in the music until you remember you are alive.
I think the dancefloor is one of the last places in modern life where collective ecstasy is still allowed.
We live in a culture that represses the body, touch and free expression. In that context, the rave becomes a kind of secular sanctuary, a place where people release, connect and express without needing to define themselves.
Many raves are recovering a ritual dimension: the music is curated like a story, the crowd becomes a tribe, and something sacred happens through the repetition of rhythm. There is no guide, but somehow everyone is guiding each other. There is no clear goal, but we all know we are searching for something: connection, release, presence or silence inside the noise.
In what ways do you see raves and dancefloors becoming spaces for healing?
I see raves as mirrors of our ancestral need for trance and togetherness. And when they are held with care and consciousness, they can become true spaces of emotional and social healing. A rave doesn’t replace traditional ritual, but it reminds us that the spirit also dances, and that movement is another form of prayer.
By the way... I also believe that raves can become spaces of avoidance, retraumatizing and individualization. It depends on complex issues: the specific energy of the organizers and the place (if it's only for profit or not), the amount of understanding about responsible drug use and harm reduction, the underlying criticism of capitalistic dynamics. Let's not romanticize raving. If a rave is done only for profit, or if drugs without education are rampant, or if invited artists only reproduce known formulas without authenticity and originality, then the effect may be completely the opposite to healing.
Founder of PSYCHEDELIC BREATH® and Breathwork Expert
What does healing from healing mean to you?
I sometimes feel that some of us don’t know when to stop healing. Of course, it’s so amazing and so important to have an awareness that healing is available and that there are certain parts within us that want healing and can heal in this lifetime. With your newsletter and interviews you contribute to that fact, that people get to know healers.
Yet I feel that there is a belief that we need to keep healing and that there’s never an end to healing and that’s what I disagree with. There is also a lot within us that is already healed and can live a full life and create from there.
As someone regularly holding space for others in "healing" spaces, how does raving and dance music hold space for your own healing?
I spent the whole summer working on my teacher trainings: recording in the studio, training new teachers and hosting live events. And I started to feel really overworked. I was feeling really numb and felt that I needed to go dance. Last weekend, I finally found myself back on a dance floor - at a Pyramid Party actually with a lot of crazy different forms of raving and spiritual work.
For me, raving solves a lot of heavy emotions, they get transformed and my energy goes up. I felt really almost sick in my body before, I came out and my energy had lifted like 99% just from the dance and the rave. Afterall, PSYCHEDELIC BREATH® was born on the dance floor and was taught on the dance floor in my early years with it. It was born on the dance floor because that’s where I get insights, crazy downloads, intuitive hits, what is it I want to create, with whom do I want to do it, who do I want to collaborate with, this all came on the dance floor and electronic music which is the DNA of PSYCHEDELIC BREATH® is my remedy. When a beat kicks in, I’m in and I’m up.
In what ways do you see raves and dancefloors becoming spaces for healing?
I think raves and dance floors are already healing places. If you look at the festival scene, there has been an incredible development already. When I started teaching PSYCHEDELIC BREATH®, I was the first one to say I want breathwork on the main stage on the dance floor, out of the spiritual corner so we can make it more accessible for more people who randomly stumble upon it and afterwards can stray into the dance.
What I also see is that we become free when we dance. It’s an ancient practice. We tap into a rhythm, energy rises, we set energy in motion - same as we do in breathwork - through dance and the frequencies of music. There’s community, there’s a whole tribe of connection available. I can say that most of my friends and all of my boyfriends I collected on the dance floor because there are no words needed, we express and meet each other with our energy bodies and that sometimes speaks more than a thousand words.
Teacher, Musician, Artist and Founder of Pyramid Party
What does “healing from healing” mean to you?
For me, healing from healing personally brings up the hermit archetype. I think in Berlin we have a great gift to heal as a community. However, for me I need to balance this with extended meditation in silence and alone outside the city. So healing from healing for me as a space holder in Berlin is going out and coming in… giving myself extended time in isolation away from other voices to tune into the deepest parts of me.
My partner of ten years is my hypnotherapist and teacher. He whispered in my ear “we are all one” ten years ago and it changed my life. His regular hypnotherapy sessions and teachings have shaped me into who I am today. His love, teaching and hypnosis sessions is the moon behind the sun.
As someone regularly holding space for others in "healing" spaces, how does raving and dance music hold space for your own healing?
Raving and dance music allow me to experience an elevated version of myself. It allows me to connect with also a very animalistic version of myself. I see it as a place where my feminine and masculine can dance and talk together.
In what ways do you see raves and dancefloors becoming spaces for healing?
I see raves and dance floors as a place where we can experience collective joy, ecstasy and creation. I see it as a place where we can remember that we are all one. I see it as a place where we can dance into existence a collective vision of peace.
