Godelieve Mukasarasi, founder of SEVOTA explains how she imagined the exercises.
“they were inspired by spirit guides but also by women themselves. I invented the techniques (we had no scientific references) and tried them out. I wanted and was proud to draw from Rwandan culture such as dancing and singing which can become self-healing exercises. The goal is to replace the bad with the good. ¨Par example, the songs and especially the refrains rebuild, the refrains bring inner peace”. And the same goes for dancing.
When we dance, we dance love, we dance peace, we dance cordiality and it transmits good things, improves our mood and therefore touches the brain and the heart by creating this cordiality between women.
The same goes for the Taping exercises that come from Sweden. It is about tapping with your fingers on the sensitive points of your hands or face…to get out of anger, out of sadness, out of guilt and to bring in positive energies. There is a Rwandan proverb that says “what is in the heart can be seen in the mouth and even in the eyes”.
And when you have that serenity, you can be healthy and take action. You can also avoid transgenerational trauma.
For some women it works fast, it’s a quick self-healing process. For others, it can take years.
I give advice to each woman and each one has her own continuous way to fight against violence against women, against impunity, the resilience of the state of well being, spiritual and corporal moral. I give them the opportunity to dress well and show the community that they have changed, that they are no longer victims. They are survivors and there are energies and tools to rebuild themselves and the Rwandan couple and community.
But healed women pass on their experiences to those who are slow to heal. And except during the genocide commemoration period in April, when healed women have anxiety attacks because they have bad memories of the past. Most of the time, they know how to deal with other women who have not yet gone through the healing journey. And talking about their problems helps the person to heal. Getting together to talk, to express oneself, brings the person out of loneliness.
When your brother hurts you, you mustn’t hurt him, you must do him good.
The meeting always ends with dancing. It’s like a remedy that heals the soul and the body at the same time, the heart, the brain too.
The smile heals, the good word heals, although I’ve experienced almost the same problems I have to show them that I’m with them, anyway.”
Photograph © Chris Schwagga
In the next episode the story of Christine and her family who rebuilt themselves thanks to the Sevota meetings.
Anne Pastor
