Vallejo dancer uses experience with chronic illness to heal through dance

VALLEJO — A Vallejo woman is trying to help others with chronic illnesses heal and address racial disparities in the healthcare system through a dance healing class she started in June.

Tyese Wortham lived with chronic Lyme disease for 25 years before she was diagnosed. Tired of chasing after a cure, she said, “at some point you just have to start living.” 

So she created her own healthcare toolkit that draws on her dance background, yoga training and the healing techniques she developed throughout her Lyme journey.

She founded Thriving With Lyme, an organization that seeks to bring “visibility to Lyme disease and other complex, multi-systemic chronic illnesses and conditions in black and brown communities.”

Through Thriving With Lyme, Wortham teaches her  Afro Body Love class, which is about body liberation and empowerment through dance healing, accompanied by rhythms of the African diaspora. “It really centers the Black and brown experience,” she said. “I'm using music that is about Black empowerment and liberation.”

She will teach  Afro Body Love on select Saturdays at the Vallejo Dance Shop. Starting in January, the classes will be held monthly on Mondays at the Vallejo Community Center. The classes are based on Wortham’s “pillars of healing” — movement as medicine, community as care, nervous system reset and brain retraining. 

Wortham said she offers Afro Body Love to others who are seeking community as they go on their health, wellness and healing journey. “For years I suffered in silence, one, because I didn't know what was going on, and two, because I never saw myself reflected in the Lyme forums or conferences, doctors or practitioners,” she said. “I wondered how many others who look like me are also suffering silently with this disease and other similar illnesses.”

Wortham has had a long career in community-based arts organizations and has danced with several groups over the years, including Emesè: Messengers of the African Diaspora. She has performed in the Palace of Fine Arts, Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, and the War Memorial Opera House in San Francisco.

She was bitten by a tick during her first camping trip with the Girls Scouts when she was 10 years old. She did not develop the classic bullseye rash symptom and did not receive the early treatment that would have prevented her Lyme disease from becoming chronic. A naturopath she consulted 25 years later suggested that an underlying infection could be the cause of her recurring health problems, and she was finally diagnosed.

She also suffers from endometriosis, a condition in which tissue similar to the lining of the uterus grows outside the uterus. After surgery, her doctors told her that damaged nerves could continue to send pain signals to her brain even with all of the endometriosis removed.

Wortham said that chronically ill people tend to lose a sense of control. Her classes are designed to help people listen to and regain trust in their bodies. “It's just been really beautiful to see folks feel welcome in their bodies, no matter where they're at in their journey, whether they identify as an able bodied person or not, whether they identify as a white person or not, everyone is just really feeling welcomed,” she said.

Each class begins in stillness with breathing exercises designed to slow down the heart rate and relax the nervous system. It progresses to gentle yoga stretches to align the body, and a pause for what  Wortham calls a “joy download” before the dance portion of the class, which continues with accessible, repetitive movement combinations of African-based and inspired folkloric and popular dance from Cuba, Peru, Brazil, Haiti, and the U.S. 

The class is for people of all abilities, so there’s no judgment if some need to move slowly or take a break.

“We gradually begin to get our heart rates up as I journey folks through songs of body love and body worthiness and body celebration, liberation, empowerment and appreciation,” Wortham said. “Our journey ends in a circle as we connect with joy in community. It's a super fun class. After class, we oftentimes go out to lunch to hang out, you know, build community.”

Wortham said she also hopes that her classes will help address gender and racial bias in the medical field that tends to discount symptoms reported by women and people of color, and often delays diagnosis and proper treatment.

“I really needed community. I needed to really be around my people, you know, people who look like me,” Wortham said. “So I created this space to be a movement space of belonging for Black and brown folks, and I'm constantly just working on making space more inclusive across gender and body type, ability and age, so that it really centers the Black and brown experience.”