Uncovering meaning in gestures

This evening I had 3 really strong sets of gestures that appeared in my dance. I observe the gestures, or movements, that my body produces while dancing to see if there is an emotion or desire that is expressing itself outside my consciousness. The first recognizable one this evening was sweeping, wiping away old debris, cleaning the path, making way for the new. The second set is one that often appears for me - cutting. And finally the 3rd set was expressing, speaking truth, letting out what is held inside, seen in movements with my hands and limbs, taking something from inside and pushing it out into the world to be shared.

Each of these gestures is a symbol for me and if I "stay with them" (here I mean to keep repeating the gesture until it really settles in the body), my consciousness will usually find some meaning in them, some inner voice that wants expression.

Take note of your gestures. They are the body's language.

Community of dancers

Each week at Dance Your Bones, our dance collective finishes the session with a closing circle where members are free to stay and share anything they'd like, whether it is an experience they had dancing, something happening in their lives, or an upcoming event. This week there was an undeniably common enthusiasm for the evening. People were joyful, laughing with one another, and everyone was very talkative. It had been a high energy wave and the presence of a few more younger members recently has definitely contributed to that.

I noticed how much people were dancing with one another, in small groups of 3 to 5, playing and having fun. A mother and pregnant daughter danced a moving image of support and love. There have been some children joining us regularly too, and they are always delightful to watch as they naturally respond to a room full of moving, happy adults.

The shared community we have is very important to most dancers. We need one another in order to practice this form of meditation. Yes, we could dance alone, and I sometimes do; however it is always completely different when you dance in a group. The increased energy of bodies around you helps you to release and move past the barriers of the rational mind I have been commenting about.

So I am not only working within myself to find freedom from rational mind, but I am also spurring others on to do the same. When I move my energy higher, other bodies will also vibrate more quickly. When I engage another dancer in a dialogue, I am influenced by what they are bringing to our duet. We are co-creators of the dance each night, having a shared experience even while we are each having our own private inner experience too.

I first learned about the importance of community as a child in my family church. It is interesting to see how community expresses itself in this secular (but still spiritual) practice of moving meditation.

Disembodied rationalism

Happy New Year to all my dancing friends. I celebrated the new year at Winter Solstice but I am enjoying the time today to relax and do some blogging.

I am answering the DYB friend who asked about "disembodied rationalism" or "rationality". This is not my term, rather one used in philosophy, particularly phenomenology, and of course in feminist philosophy. It refers to the Western/Cartesian concept of the mind-body split which is not present in many other cultures. You will find it referred to in discussions about religion, law, and a wide range of areas exploring the role of the human body in cognition. You can google the term and find a huge amount of literature, scholarly and popular, blogs, and books.

Embodiment is the opposite of course, integrating mind and body (and emotions), or going even further, as some suggest that the dividing lines between body and mind might even be misunderstood, based on centuries of dualistic thinking in our culture. Listen to this US neurobiologist Antonio Damasio on Big Think talk about current research into the way brain and body are involved in emotion.

http://bigthink.com/ideas/23022

So when I am journalling here about experiences "in" my body, I am not talking about mindlessness -
Watch Lil Jon's "Get Outta Your Mind" (warning, not a clean version) about mindlessness
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=041h-1_5yfo
Sometimes you have to be mindless to break the stronghold that rational thinking keeps us locked in
(by the way, I love that song!).

I am talking about not letting "rational" mind control the experience. I am training it to take a side seat when asked to, for the purposes of my own freedom and wellbeing. So that it can play a role as an important ally in my expanding consciousness, but not dominate the process. Rationalism is not God ruling over the temple of my body.

I will bring a copy of Spretnak's chapter on embodied/goddess religion to dance this week for anyone who'd like to read a sample of feminist thought on embodiment.

Healing Dance Network

Thanks to 'libramoon' at Healing Dance Network for putting me in touch with their group (see her comment last post).

Here is a quote from one of the network postings, where they mention the "embodied mind".  Some friends at Dance Your Bones have been asking about the "disembodied rationalism" I mentioned in a previous post and I will speak more to that in tomorrow's post, but here is an interesting quote and link to research on choreography and neuroscience by UK researcher Glenna Batson.

"Particularly relevant are the ways dancers physicalize thought. Dance is a prime example that cognition is for action."

"The processes of dance making are a unique form of embodied thinking and offer a unique window into our capacity for creativity and design. Today cognitive neuroscience has chosen dance as its muse. Over the last decade a rich dialogue has developed between neuroscientists and dancers. The dialogue addresses many issues around "embodied cognitiona" TM, in a movement-based art form that impact(s) widely on intelligentsia and society at large."

http://seadnetwork.files.wordpress.com/2012/11/batson_final.pdf

Doesn't this speak to what we are expeiencing at Dance Your Bones? We may not be choreographing dance for observers, but we are spontaneously composing dances each week, and then letting them go like prayers. "Sweat your prayers". http://www.danceyourbones.com/

Interesting to note that the world is reflecting on this as well. It makes me feel more commited to pressing forward with my own "meditation in movement" exploration. I hope it compels you too.

The longest night

Solstice has passed now, the longest night of the year. I like the darkness of these long nights. A solstice ceremony at friends last night has reminded me of the needed rest that happens in the winter. Dark, cold nights draw me into my home, into myself, away from the busy world.

I wish I could go visit old Methusaleh in California. He holds the secret to long life, conserving his energy deep inside. I think I will dance a dance of stillness in his honour when the session resumes next week, and to remember the long night.

Methusaleh is said to be nearly 5,000 years old

http://www.mnn.com/earth-matters/wilderness-resources/photos/the-worlds-10-oldest-living-trees/methuselah

Restoring balance

Tonight as I was dancing, I was observing myself as I was healing myself.  By this, I mean I was actively noting how my mood was changing and the trigger thoughts that were connected to the changes. I had been feeling depressed, my thoughts caught up in old past defeats that were really draining my energy.

Sometimes when I practice ecstatic dance, I simply move and I don't worry about consciousness. But most of the time I try to watch what is happening in my inner world while I am moving. And tonight I observed my body shedding anger and hurt.

Daily pressures of Western ways of work take away my balance.  I had been feeling my strengths were not respected at my workplace, and the pressures of producing a large volume of work for an employer.

Towards the end of the session, I was simply standing rooted to one spot, waving like seaweed in the ocean current, feeling my knees, hips, and spine become supple, dropping my anger like scales falling off as I undulated. I must have stood like that for 5 to 10 minutes.

By the time I was done, I felt completely restored, the bad day behind me, and at peace.

Trance dance

I am very interested in how dancing can help me attain a state of meditation that I can only describe as a conscious trance. I don't always find that state as a result of the wave (the Five Rhythms flow of music), or I may only enter it partially, but I do find I can achieve it more and more frequently after 3 years of practicing ecstatic dance.

Some would call this trance dance but when I was younger and attended trance dance raves, I would experience the crowd as moving towards an unconscious state, not a higher consciousness. It was full of Freud's libidinal energy that I talked about in my last post. Looking back, I would now say I - and perhaps the others dancing with me - we were emptying our minds to a state of nothingness, just a living body moving to rhythm. Emptying is a common term when we think of meditation. I am not saying what we did was a bad thing, it just isn't what I am practicing now when I move with an engaged imaginative mind. Or perhaps what ecopsychologist Laura Sewell called the 5th skill of ecological perception - the intentional use of imagination.

I went looking recently for some video clips that might capture a visual of this process. I started with Western yoga trance dance as it is often seen as related to ecstatic dance.  Here is a link to American Shiva Rea's "liberation dance", much like Gabriel Roth's Five Rhythms videos.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=boFGjvtmxEk&feature=fvwrel

Rea has built onto her career in yoga, expanding into dance. When I watch her videos, I notice some similarity to our practice but like Roth, she chooses to film beautiful, young, able-bodied dancers on a white sand beach in order to market her product and so the movement takes on the inevitable aura of being staged for the camera. But when she says she is "dancing for healing, dancing for life, dancing for truth", I have to admit we share a common goal.

Then there is Osho's Dynamic Meditation, a cathartic method designed for Westerners who have difficulty meditating but that avoids the pitfalls of Latihan. His method also uses dance but he encourages the practitioner to avoid rhythm in the early stages of the practice. Instead of trying to watch the mind, Osho says "throw out your garbage rather than wasting time in watching it" and so movement/dance clears away the debris so that one can meditate. This clip shows someone moving through all 5 phases of the program.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t5Ao--mbIho

One more. Check out this voodoo dancing from Togo, in still photography. These images by Alan Tobey from 2008 capture the inner world of the dancer without us actually knowing what they are seeing in their imaginative minds. The dancers seem unconcerned about how their dance "looks".

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6b17j9zpR_M

I will post more about voodoo dance later.