“We should not feel
embarrassed by our difficulties, only by our failures to grow
anything beautiful from them. “ ~Alain De Botton
The author and poet Robert Bly says, “go where a man's wound is and that is where his greatest
gifts lie”. He nailed it. As a creativity expert, I consistently
see how we spend a great deal of time covering up our best parts,
thinking them strange or unlovable. Tara Brach, the author of
Radical Acceptance, calls our belief in being less-than, the
“Trance of Unworthiness”. When we are so mired in our
self-loathing, we are indeed in a trance, zoned out and believing the
sadistic propaganda of the mind. Buddhist teacher and poet, Mark Nepo says: ”We waste so much energy trying to cover up who we are
when beneath every attitude is the want to be loved, and beneath
every anger is a wound to be healed and beneath every sadness is the
fear that there will not be enough time. Our challenge each day is
not to get dressed to face the world but to unglove ourselves.” I am here to teach you a
few fun and easy ways to get ungloved, unmasked, and authentic. It
all starts inside; in the body.
“There is a gem in
the mountain of your body. Seek that mine.”
Rumi
Over the last two decades,
I have found a place to take my feelings of unworthiness. And that
place is the dance floor. I continue to study many movement
forms including; authentic movement, dance therapy, Jungian
Expressive Arts, modern dance, African dance, Qigong, contact
improvisation. Very carefully, I have created a mindfulness-based healing system
that uses dance and movement as it core. I call this system Dance
Your Bliss. With it, we can be surprised again and again by where
our work takes us and what kind of person we are becoming as we
follow it. What can we really learn from our bodies? You might
ask... I believe that the body serves as a metaphor for our
entire life experience. Roberta was a 58 year-old woman who was very
shy and disconnected from her body. She looked so uncomfortable the
first day of our workshop that I expected her to leave. But she stuck
around. By the close of the workshop, she was brimming with the new
beginning that she had created. She not only could love herself –
and her body so much more, she felt creative, expressive and alive.
But this happens all the time.
In my work, I have danced with
hundreds, possibly thousands of people, but I especially love leading
those who do not see themselves as dancers, those who deeply want to
feel beautiful in the home of their bodies. Becky emailed me several
times before my weekend workshop, terrified she would be the “fattest
person in the room.” She hadn't danced in years, and couldn't
imagine moving in the much bigger body that she now lived in. She
imagined the awful shame that the workshop might bring on. Instead,
she was able to contact a level of beauty, confidence and sexiness
that shocked her. I remember the beautiful expression on her face
when she began moving. I could see the narrative in her changing, and
by the end of the workshop, she was not only beautiful and more
confident, she shared with me that she deeply wanted to lead this
kind of work. And she is.
I have a keen and deeply intuitive
ability to support and help heal those who are plagued by shame,
especially body-related shame. Together, we create a new physical map
and script for how they can and will live in these vessels. I love
bearing witness to someone who felt stiff, disconnected from their
body, leave a workshop with a whole new tool-kit of moves, stretches,
and a new story about their body. When we move with authenticity, we
can discover and re-cover our inner dancer and creative genius.
When I teach, I show my students a new
way to be in – and possibly change and restore - their body's
structure, so they can have a different way of experiencing, moving
and acting. As my great teacher Daria Halprin says; “It is as if
each body part, as well as the duets, choruses, and symphonies
between and among the body parts, has a particular piece of a story
to tell. Exploring part by part, we uncover and reveal a whole
picture of our lives.” We are born on a dance floor called
experience. Life is our partner. I support people in developing a new
relationship with this ever-present magnificent and tragic partner.
What do we do in Dance Your Bliss?
Dance Your Bliss employs a full range of the creative arts: movement/dance, drama, voice, painting, poetry and other forms of writing, ritual and performance. I use a blend of modern dance, gentle yoga, mindfulness meditation, contact improv, authentic movement and body-mind centering. I want everyone to find a new relationship with their body. There are so many wonderful, accessible movement forms for all of us. As you know, creating a free and protected space is crucial in the therapeutic relationship. Safety and freedom are two main ingredients in opening up creativity and the creation of the play space. The thrust of my workshops is to ignite the creative process in each person through the use of expressive techniques which bring on healing and growth.
Why not follow the path that is
beckoning you? Why not acknowledge that yo are already on your way
home. ~David Whyte, The Three Marriages
When
we dance we can access preverbal experiences. When the unconscious
leads, creative energy begins to flow back into our lives and balance
the suffering of life with one's creative potential. My
partner Ben loves to play Cricket. That is his bliss. (it doesn't have to be dance). For you it might be golf or swimming or lifting weights or T'ai Chi. I ask my
students to find what they love – that which gives them pleasure,
and to do it. Every day.
There
is a crack.
A crack in everything.
It's how the light gets in.
~Leonard Cohen
A crack in everything.
It's how the light gets in.
~Leonard Cohen
We have this built in, absolutely
incredible gift –that we constantly forget about. We are housed in
these wonderful bodies, that we spend far too much time judging, or
downright hating. To be able to move our bodies is pure pleasure. If
one is dealing with chronic pain, there are very gentle and extremely
powerful tools. In any creative outlet we have permission to let down
our masks. My hope is to create a safe space for people to journey
to a more joyful self through dance. Using the 108 structures in
Dance Your Bliss allows the whole body to be restored to a
state of unity and balance. It is intended as a healing method and
expressive arts system that connects us deeply and profoundly to
life, each other, and the magic and power in every moment, even the
“ordinary” ones. We fall in love with life. I say this as an
extreme skeptic.
He
who feel it, knows it more.
~Bob
Marley
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