Pole Dancing Saved My Life: Reclaiming My Body, My Trust, and My Power After Trauma

Pole dancing saved my life - Controversial title ay! I never imagined I’d be the kind of person to say “pole dancing saved my life” — but here I am, spinning, inverting (almost), bruised and proud, and saying it with my whole chest.

When you live through trauma — especially complex trauma, relational trauma, or abuse — you often learn, on some deep level, that your body is not a safe place to be. That your instincts are wrong. That your “no” doesn’t matter. That your body is only valuable to others, not to you. Over time, the disconnection between body and self can become so normal that you forget what it even feels like to be in your body. You move through life in fragments — head, heart, body — never quite speaking the same language.

I found pole dancing at a time when I was numb. I had spent years in therapy learning how to speak the truth of what I’d been through. I could name it. I could think about it. I could even help others. But I couldn’t feel safe in my own skin. I didn’t trust myself. I didn’t trust my body. And I had no idea how to come back to it.

Learning to Trust My Body Again

Pole dancing asks you to do something revolutionary after trauma: it asks you to be in your body and listen to it.

Not just listen, but move with it, support it, balance it, hang from it, suspend it upside down while clinging to a vertical piece of metal. It asks you to believe your body — to trust that if you grip here and push there, you will hold yourself up. It requires presence, patience, and an entirely new kind of self-trust.

This is not easy when your body has been a site of harm, fear, or shame. The first time I tried to climb the pole, my inner critic screamed:
You’re not strong enough. You’re too heavy. You’re going to fall. You’re ridiculous.

But I kept coming back. And slowly, things began to shift. Each spin, each climb, each crash-mat fail became a lesson in learning to stay — in discomfort, in effort, in visibility. I started to notice how my body was speaking to me — not in words, but in sensations, limits, capacities, desire. I was building a relationship. I was learning how to be in partnership with myself.

The Somatics of Safety and Power

From a somatic perspective, pole is a full-body recalibration. Trauma is stored in the nervous system, not just in the mind. Our muscles hold memory. Our fascia, posture, breath, and movement patterns all reflect our survival strategies.

Pole dancing interrupts this. It invites new movement, new strength, new balance. It activates the parasympathetic nervous system through slow, controlled breath and flow. It shifts us from freeze to fire, from collapse to climb.

You can’t dissociate and pole at the same time — not well, anyway. You have to feel your hands gripping the pole, your thighs squeezing, your core firing. You have to be here. And that, for many of us, is the most healing part: we get to be here.

The Power of Community

But it wasn’t just the movement that healed me — it was the people.

Pole communities are often made up of misfits and survivors. People who have lived through things. People who know what it’s like to feel out of place, and who make damn sure no one else feels that way when they walk through the door.

In my pole studio, I met people of all sizes, genders, ages, and backgrounds. And I was cheered on — not despite my body, but with it. We clapped when someone nailed their first spin, or slid off the pole dramatically, or cried after climbing two inches higher than they did last week.

It was the kind of space where strength looked like sweat and struggle, not perfection. Where sensuality wasn’t something you had to perform for others, but something you got to reclaim for yourself. Where nobody cared what your trauma story was — just that you were here, you were trying, and you were brave.

Reclaiming Pleasure, Power, and Presence

Pole dancing didn’t erase my trauma. That’s not how healing works. But it gave me access to something I didn’t know I could have again: pleasure. Pride. Agency.

It gave me a relationship with my body that wasn’t based on punishment or shame or control — but on trust.

It reminded me that I am allowed to take up space. To be powerful. To move in ways that feel good. To be witnessed. To belong.

And most of all, it reminded me that healing doesn’t have to look clinical, quiet, or neat. Sometimes it looks like glitter, bruises, upside-down screaming, and laughing so hard you forget your pain for a moment.

If You’re Healing, and You’re Curious…

Try it. You don’t have to be strong or flexible or confident. You just have to be open.

Find a studio that feels safe and inclusive. Go with a friend or go alone. Wear what you’re comfortable in. Let yourself be new. Let yourself be awkward. Let yourself come home.

Because healing is not just about talking through what happened to you — it’s about embodying something new. And sometimes, that starts with a spin.