Blog: Why Yoga-Dance?

WHAT IS IT?

Yoga-Dance is a Spiritual Mind-Body Fitness Program that has emerged from my 30-year spiritual practice and study, and my professional work as a dancer, choreographer, dance teacher and yoga instructor.

Yoga-Dance is an expression of the perfectly integrated practice for me! Sharing what I have developed, I find it resonates at a deep place for others too, who enjoy meditation, yoga, spirituality, fitness, dance and creative expression.

There are many fitness programs that assist in physical wellness, but do not address spiritual and emotional wellness. Yoga is a marvelous spiritual fitness tool, but it does not access the rich creative imagination within each soul yearning to express itself. I have found by adding the creative process to fitness and creating original movements in space, that cathartic, transformative and healing energy emerges.

Yoga-Dance first offers a specific discipline of movements, including conscious breathing, yoga, dance technique and chakra activations as a preparatory tool for improvisational dancing led by the guidance of your own Heart. The structured regimen of Yoga-Dance is for developing both the open state of mind as well as refined strength, coordination, flexibility and facility with which to engage in personal expression of the free dance of the soul.  This freedom to easily express myself creatively through a well-honed instrument is indescribably ecstatic.

VALUE OF TECHNIQUE

As a professional dancer I understand the value gained from the discipline of technique and practice. As my dance vocabulary and facility increases, I have far greater range of movement options with which to express myself, which is deeply gratifying. That is why my program offers a foundation of specific spiritually focused physical exercises to provide me with a highly tuned instrument for creative expression.

With that trained mind-body instrument the possibilities of what I can create and experience through movement and dance are infinite and miraculous. This is because dance as a medium of growth, healing and transformation is a perfect marriage of polarities; body and soul, Earth and Spirit, in which transcendence or transcen-DANCE can be experienced.

INTEGRATING POLARITIES

In this 3^rd dimension we live within a construct of duality and polarities: masculine-feminine, light-dark, Heaven-Earth, positive-negative, etc. Polarities are essential to life on Earth, but living within the balance of polarities is true harmonious living. In the separation consciousness that humans have been living in for a long time, each polarity is posed against the other rather than seen as essential aspects of the whole. For example, when the masculine polarity thinks it is better than the feminine polarity and must control Her, then both polarities are thrown out of balance.  These split polarities are extremely insidious within our psyches.

To create a whole and thriving life, all polarities must become integrated rather than held in opposition, in which one pole is perceived as “good” and the other “bad”. The human race is on the edge of the most auspicious transformation to an integrated Unity Consciousness. Yoga-Dance is a marvelous tool toward this end because by its very nature of expressing spirit through the body instrument, it integrates the Mother/Earth/body and Father/Spirit, which is a split we each must unify and heal within our own heart center.

The body is of the Earth; matter, mater, or Mother. The Mother is the creative matrix, the womb in which life develops. When life emerges from the womb, it comes forth out of the dark, like the seed germinating under the soil. When you give yourself the freedom to create and uniquely express in your body through dance, it is the celebration of the feminine polarity and the healing of a deep psychic split and deeply buried hatred of the beautiful dark creative matrix of the Divine Feminine. By connecting with Her simply through the activity of our dance expressions in the body, we tap into her limitless power available to us throughout all aspects of our lives.

Father comes from the Latin, Pater, which means pattern. The seed holds the pattern for the Oak tree, but it is the dark wet feminine soil of the Earth that the seed transforms from just the potential for life into an actual growing Oak tree. Even as the seedling sprouts and grows upward, it simultaneously grows in equal measure down under the soil as roots in the dark places of the feminine energy of the Earth. Both polarities are essential, the pattern/seed of the Father and the womb/soil of the Mother.

DANCE AS A HEALING TOOL

In yoga-dance, I take ideas, which are seeds or patterns, and express them through the movement of my body, which is an extension of Mother Earth, and becomes the womb to materialize these ideas into my physical reality. This is like the Oak tree becoming a physical form from the idea potential held within the seed. My dance becomes a powerful prayer. For example, if I desire to experience forgiveness, I take that idea and allow my heart to emotionalize the idea of forgiveness into physical movements. The physical experience of dancing these emotions, led by my creative imagination and inner wisdom, re-informs my mind of the emotional state of forgiveness. The seed idea of forgiveness that I desire to sprout in my consciousness, germinates from a potential into the reality of my experience through being physicalized through my creative movement.

There are endless ways to use this gift of Yoga-Dance for transformational purposes; like the exercise of expressing and experiencing each aspect of a given polarity, and then dancing the divine integration and balance of the two. In integration both poles are honored as essential and I can rest in balance at the center. I recognize I hold within me both aspects of a polarity, regardless of which pole I have chosen to identify with in my life. As a woman for example, I also have the masculine polarity within me and both poles are essential to my wholeness.

Another example from my experience in recent months has come through the spiritual practice of “sun-gazing”, in which I daily gaze directly at the sun in meditation during the final moments before the sun goes down. (Feel free to learn more about the specifics of this practice from my Sun-Gazing blog and on google). The practice has brought a deep understanding of the relationship of the polarities of Sun and Earth, Light and Dark and my immediate connection to these powerful interdependent forces. It has been a life-changing inner awakening in honoring these relationships within myself.  And in that “magic” hour, when day and night meet briefly, I dance this blessed union ecstatically.  I celebrate the relationship of Sun to Earth and Light to Dark, in which the gifts of daylight energy are assimilated in the night and the gifts of the dark time of growth creates greater capacity for receiving more light-energy the next day. The dance of nature is beautiful!

GOING DOWN AND IN

For years along my spiritual journey I gravitated toward the light and fled the dark. I focused on ascension in the Light, but the soul freedom I desired remained elusive. By grace, I now see an equal balance between the Light and Dark, going down into the hidden places of “wombing” –  the dark space of creation, as well as ascending up into the light. In fact, I cannot rise without going down and the dark is not “bad” as I had imagined, but rather the powerful feminine force of creation. In nature we see that the tree growing upward in the light is matched in equal measure by the roots that reach down in the dark Earth. By diving deep into my body/Mother Earth and embracing and expressing her dark mysteries, I experience my wholeness and light shines in the darkness.

Yoga-Dance is a holistic practice of spiritual physical fitness and a tool for personal inquiry into the deep mysteries within the soul through creative dance movement. Its objective is the integration of body-mind-soul-spirit and all that is fragmented or polarized within my consciousness. This integration is en-lightenment; the light going within.  What does the light (information/pattern) go within to? What is its container? It goes within to the dark womb space of the Divine Mother where creation happens. What a beautiful mysterious dance is the Yin-Yang matrix of this life. I look forward to exploring Yoga-Dance with you!