I was fortunate to have the opportunity to participate in an amazing movement experience this past weekend called Spiritweaves: Rites of Belonging given by Michael and Anneli Molin-Skelton, who live in Los Angeles. It was ecstatic dancing and I attended the Friday evening and Sunday sessions. As many of you know, I studied Yoga Trance Dance with Shiva Rea, who is one of the leading teachers of free-flow movement. Prior to my first Yoga Trance Dance with Shiva in early 2007, I had only danced in my more recent years when I would go out with friends to a club, and usually while consuming a few drinks. For the most part, though, I rarely danced since college, and really, I hardly danced since I stopped taking classical ballet at the age of 15, after studying and practicing it for 10 years. This is one of the things Shiva asks at the Trance Dance training is when did your dance first go underground? We were all born as dancers, or what I might call live wires, animated and in motion all the time, except for when we were sleeping.

Having received her Masters from UCLA in World Dance, Shiva, who has also been studying Yoga for more than 20 years, found that these two paths of movement are interconnected and as we become increasingly embodied they, inevitably, merge. Here is an incredible explanation written by Shiva:

Yoga Trance Dance is a meeting of two great rivers, yoga and dance, which come from and are united at the source. That infinite creative source is the One, uniting us all. Yoga and dance are two of the oldest paths back home. Like lovers, they can get separated. Even though we are all born as natural dancers (just watch a toddler instinctually respond to rhythm), dance can easily get swept under the seeming demands of 21st-century living. It is actually the fragmenting effects of modern lifestyles that inspired the union of Yoga Trance Dance. Due to all that sitting, standing, driving, cell phoning, computer or cyber time, we have this strange combination of being more physically bound while mentally scattered -- a body/mind split. Some of these effects can be felt as stiffness, rigidity, limited range of motion (even when exercising - as on the treadmill or weightlifting), or disembodiment (the “living from the neck up” phenomenon). The antidote: Our body needs to move and our internal state needs to be rejuvenated through meditation and ecstatic embodiment.

Dance and yoga, particularly hatha yoga, are ways of calling us back into our bodies to irrigate our being with life energy known in yoga as “prana.” Prana is the animating force - the energy of being alive - and is most clearly felt through breathing. From the yogic view, the great breath flowing through us all is intelligence or consciousness itself. With flow yoga, we let the intelligence of our breath lead movement - the way a sailor tacks with the wind. Trance dance has a similar focus. Rather than emphasizing an outward performance, the goal of trance dancing is to let your creative energy move through you - to be guided by spirit (or “spiritus,” which is the Latin root for inspiration - the place where lifebreath and enlivening creativity meet). Thus, in yoga trance dance, form serves spirit, structure supports intuition, yoga prepares you for free-form dance, and your dance opens your being for a greater experience of the unified self that is yoga.

This whole meeting of yoga and dance has deep roots within yoga as well as cross-cultural branches. Within yoga, all of the different energies of the One - - the gods and goddesses - are depicted as dancing. The universe is viewed as theCosmic Dance of Shiva -- Nataraja. Shiva Rea was given her name by her father, inspired by a powerful image of Nataraja. Lord Shiva is seen as the first teacher of both yoga and dance, the consummate yogi and prime mover, sometimes sublime, at other times wild, and always free. The Yogin follows the pulse of the inhalation and exhalation, the dancer, the beat.

The contemporary explorations of this state of rhythmic-induced meditation are reclaiming “trance” as an accessible experience of embodied communion where the observer dissolves into the power of now, the flow, the dance. Yoga Trance Dance aims to provide you with a “sadhana” (practice or means of realization) so that you can explore for yourself the potency of free-flow yoga and dance as well as music that can continue to water your life. Our intention is to bring greater fluidity, breath, range of motion, stamina for life, and embodied joy into our being and lives. In the words of the dancing mystic, Hafiz, “Now sweet one, be wise, Cast all your votes for dancing.”

What I attended this past weekend was ecstatic dance, which is slightly less instructed and guided than what I've experienced with Shiva. Michael and Anneli are true mystics, gifted healers and guides. It's difficult to put into the words just how powerful this experience was and continues to be for me. It was profoundly healing on so many levels. It reawakened in me how essential it is to dance and that when we open ourselves up to the inspired and intuitive Flow pulsating and moving through us, the breath itself is intoxicating and healing, we need no other potion to feel blissful. And, in fact, no other potion works, only the breath, or Spirit alone can guide us into Bliss. As I was writing before, my first Trance Dance with Shiva was in 2007. Last year, I studied Trance Dance with her in Venice, California, which was an incredible experience. But, since April of 2008, I have trance danced only one time and it was when I lead a trance dance myself here in Dallas. Attending the ecstatic dance last weekend had me realize and remember how important it is for me to dance on a regular basis. I can not imagine life, now, without experiecing this kind of movement. And, of course, just like Yoga, it is especially powerful when we open ourselves up to experiencing it with a community of people. After our dance on Sunday, I had the opportunity to share the recent hardship I've been through with the passing of my father with the group. It feels as though I was able to release so much of the heartache and struggle by just opening myself up to them and allowing myself to share the pain I was experiencing. This was one of the most powerful experiences of my life to feel the outpouring of love, support and blessings from so many people I had never met before, but in many ways, feel more connected to because of this intimate experience we shared by opening ourselves up to dancing and just being seen. That's also one of the things Shiva says is our greatest fear is the fear of being seen. I mean, really seen. You know, even all the stuff that we think we need to hide, like our sadness, pain, darkness, heartache, struggle, etc. One of the most incredible things was to be with a community of people where I didn't feel like I needed to hide, much like how I feel when I am instructing in Yoga class, and even moreso now, because of this incredible experience. I actually realized there is beauty in the pain and there is nothing I need to try to cover up any more.

Dance, when you're broken open.
Dance, if you've torn the bandage off.
Dance in the middle of the fighting.
Dance in your blood.
Dance, when you're perfectly free.
-- Jelaluddin Rumi (13th century)

After I shared about my father, this loving woman sitting next me actually said...dance your grief. And, so I will. Ecstatic dance, just like Yoga, will be a part of my life now. And, I'm happy to share that every Thursday night at Move Studio there is ecstatic dance. So, I hope to see you there, from time-to-time, and to share in the dance, your dance and my dance, with you. Oh, and happy June...the Summer Solstice is almost here and the expanding Light of Consciousness is shining its Grace upon each of us through our pain, which is liberating us into the purity of Bliss, the unbounded Consciousness, within each of us.

Namaste!
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