By Heather Matthews
Staff Writer

Lisa Olsen, owner and founder of Bliss Healing Arts Center, teaches sensual dance, which she said helps women feel more in touch with their feminine energies. (Mirror/Heather Matthews)

From the moment you open the door to the Bliss Healing Arts Center, you feel more relaxed and at ease. The row of huge windows lets the bright sunshine run across the hardwood floors, while the flowing white curtains quietly blow in the breeze. The brightly hued walls are cheery and warm.

While Bliss Healing offers reiki readings, yoga classes, spiritual consultations and classes in meditation and psychic development, dance is owner and founder Lisa Olsen’s passion. Bliss Healing offers classes in belly dancing and sensual dance, and also holds trance dances.

“I’ve danced my whole life,” she said. “When I was a kid I would always spin around the house whenever I heard music, and I spent four years as an exotic dancer.”

While she loves to dance, her experiences as an exotic dancer “shut her down” until she later started her healing work by taking reiki and belly dancing classes.

“I had a new way of thinking,” she said. “It was really healing for myself. I realized that I had to live my life a little bit differently and that I had a real purpose.”

Olsen had never tried belly dancing before, but from the moment she began taking classes, she knew it was her future.

“It was like remembering to do something,” she said. “It felt like I was home. I never want to not do this. It’s so much fun and empowering.”

Although Olsen does not teach the belly dance classes at Bliss Healing, she instructs her students in sensual dance ­ a class that helps a woman move her body however she wants to move it and feel more sexual, sensual and in touch with her inner feminine energies.

Olsen said the classes help women of all ages, shapes and sizes to appreciate their bodies for what they are. After taking a dance class at Bliss Healing, women often move and walk in a completely different manner ­ with more grace and confidence, and a little gusto, Olsen said.

“Women have been taught that they are supposed to be small, they are supposed to be quiet,” she said. “It helps women shift that mindset.”

Helping women be more at ease with their sexuality and the way their body moves doesn’t mean Olsen is teaching them how to be sleazy, she said.

“It doesn’t have to be racy, sleazy or vulgar,” she said. “It’s just a way to express yourself. We’re just trying to uncover their sensual nature. There’s no pressure, no nudity, no judgment.”

The Bliss Healing Arts Center opened on April 30, but there is still a lot of work to be done, Olsen said. She plans to create a healing room where local practitioners and healers can rent space, decorate the walls with more local art and expand the dance floor.

“I’m a visionary for sure,” she said.

Olsen is determined to stick to her original vision of a brightly colored, inspirational place for women to feel safe and heal while exploring new ways to express themselves.

“It’s a place for women to get slinky and have a lot of fun,” she said. “It’s about empowerment, too. Once they start moving in a way foreign to them, they start discovering things about themselves. It’s a very deeply healing experience, just like belly dance was for me.”

Bliss Healing is located in the Waumbec Mill Building, 250 Commercial St. For a class and workshop schedule or more information, visitwww.blisshealing.com or call 624-0080.

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