Ralph Beaubrun: Dancing Your Way Back After a Toxic Marriage

Ralph Beaubrun keeps saying he does not understand what he did. He teaches a beginners dance class in Paris. People tell him it saved their life. Lisa spends this episode trying to explain to him what is actually happening in that room.

Ralph Beaubrun grew up in Haiti in a family of artists, and his mother pushed him toward an education instead, which is how he ended up in Bordeaux with a master's in mathematical engineering. He worked as an engineer for four years while taking classes and auditioning without telling her, then quit to chase a dream of dancing on tour. After two months of classes in Los Angeles and a long stretch of rejections at home, he took a job dancing for a then-unknown French singer, stayed seven years, and became her backing vocalist and a songwriter along the way. He started teaching in 2015 with five students.

This conversation is about what happens in his classes rather than about dance technique. Ralph describes deciding to build a class where nobody is put aside, because that is what had happened to him: not the strongest dancer in the room, not the one who looked the part, always at the back. He talks about not filming his choreography for years because he did not believe in himself, and about the first video his students pushed him to post going far beyond anything he expected.

For a listener coming out of an abusive relationship, the useful part is the mechanics. Lisa lays out why an hour and a half of following movement leaves no space for the spiral, what fun does to a body that has been running on stress hormones, and why community turns out to matter as much as the movement. Ralph adds his own answers to the objections: too old, too heavy, too self-conscious, nobody will look at you because everyone is busy with themselves. He tells the story of a student in her fifties whose mother told her to stop posting her videos, and what he said about whose insecurity that was. His instruction is simply to come once, then keep coming, and to accept that messing up is the work.

As always, this is strategic education, not legal or mental-health advice for your specific situation.

🎓 What you'll learn

• Why following choreography leaves the brain no room to spiral
• How joy and movement counterbalance a body running on stress hormones
• What a beginners class looks like when it is designed so nobody is put at the back
• The objections that keep people out: too old, too heavy, too self-conscious
• Why nobody in the room is judging you, and what actually happens in the mirror
• Messing up as the process rather than a reason to quit
• How a class becomes a community, and why that matters as much as the exercise
• What Ralph says to someone whose family belittles them for trying something new

⏱️ Chapters
0:00 Intro
1:00 How Lisa found Ralph, and losing the things you loved
3:00 Haiti, an engineering degree, and a mother who wanted a real job
7:00 Quitting the job, Los Angeles, and a long run of no's
11:00 Seven years touring, then being asked to teach
13:00 Building a class where nobody gets put at the back
15:00 The video that took off, and 90 people a class
19:00 "You are better than my therapist"
25:00 Too old, too heavy, too self-conscious: the objections
31:00 Messing up is the process, and noticing progress
37:00 A mother who told her daughter to stop posting
41:00 What gets a scared person onto the floor

Keep going 💜
Book a free 30-minute discovery call and we'll help you map your next steps: https://beentheregotout.com/call
📘 Been There Got Out: Toxic Relationships, High-Conflict Divorce, and How to Stay Sane Under Insane Circumstances — https://www.amazon.com/dp/194627495X
📘 Been There Got Out: When Your Ex Turns the Kids Against You (our parental-alienation book) — https://www.amazon.com/dp/1967674183
🔗 Ralph Beaubrun: https://en.ralphbeaubrun.com/
🔗 Ralph Beaubrun Dance Classes on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/ralphbeaubrundanceclasses/

About Been There Got Out
Chris Barry and Lisa Johnson are high-conflict divorce, custody, and co-parenting strategists, and the founders of Been There Got Out. They know these cases from the inside: both have successfully represented themselves in family court. Few attorneys have a playbook for a case like this — Chris and Lisa write yours with you, so you and your kids can get through it as unscathed as possible.