Soulrhythms Saturdays
“Between the head and feet of any given person is a billion miles of unexplored wilderness.” – Gabrielle Roth
You are welcome to dive into the exploration of body movement, body sensations and embodied feelings. You don’t need to know anything about dance and even physical fitness or agility doesn’t matter. You need only your natural curiosity, your willingness to move nd meet and change. The dance will take you if you let it, it will enchant you, it will transform you.
“Communities have danced ritual celebrations since time immemorial, but in the west we have made dance into a form of entertainment. However, in recent times “psychotherapeutic” dance therapy has been officialy approved as healing process. A study cited on the American Cancer Society website infers that dance and movement therapy can help with all kinds of emotional problems, especially boosting body image and self-esteem while reducing anxiety, isolation and depression.
Ecstatic dance has similar therapeutic effects. You may find 5 Rhythms is a good place to start. Its creator, Gabrielle Roth, began as a dance teacher and has studied and disseminated ecstatic dance for over 50 years.
“Dance is an art form and movement is a life form,” Roth says. She observed patterns in the way people moved and 5 Rhythms was conceived. The rhythms form a natural wave, building up through gentle “flow”; jagged “staccato” rhythm; peaking in the head-rolling frenzy of “chaos”; and then drawing you deeper into self-expression with “lyrical” beats; and finally meditative “stillness”. The different rhythms allow us to “put the entire psyche into motion. That is to say we need to be physically fluid, emotionally fluid, mentally fluid, and not locked into positions and beliefs and theories,” says Gabrielle. “
Source: The Guradian (https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2009/jul/21/ecstatic-dance)
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