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The Dance Temple Habit: An Exercise in Full-Bodied Dance Magic

Posted on:  Nov 27, 2016 @ 10:00 Posted in:  Everyday Magic, Path Basics, Pathwork

Deep, transformative magic waits for us in our flesh and bones form. Our body is a treasury of primal wisdom and sensate knowledge that speaks to us through the language of movement and sensation. Wondrously, one of the best, most joyful ways to access this treasure trove is through inspired, ecstatic dance.

Breathe in the music. Surrender to the movements that naturally arise within you. Explore your body’s sensate wisdom. This is the transformative magic of dance.

I am infinitely blessed to be part of Dance Temple where my dancing tribe gathers each week, under the guidance of brilliant priestess-facilitators, to dive deep and wild into our body’s transformative magic through free-form movement.

This same magic is as close as the privacy of your own living space, where you can dive deep and wild into the dance temple of your own sacred body. This pathwork exercise guides you in the delicious process of creating your own dance temple experience.

For this exercise, choose at least thirty minutes of music that speaks deeply to your body and soul. It can be slow, fast or a mix. Don’t include your preferred dance music or your favorite songs. You want to discover and inhabit your body in new ways, not slip into your existing patterns of movement.
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Dance Temple Moments: The Primal Wisdom of Body

Posted on:  Nov 25, 2016 @ 10:00 Posted in:  Everyday Magic, Path Basics, Pathwork

The air is hot and moist, charged with the moving forms of fifty plus fully-embodied, dancing human-creatures. I remove my glasses; with my compromised vision, the outer world becomes a soft-edged, fluid sensuality woven of sound, scent, energy and the minutia of muscle, bone, breath and sweat.

Step onto the Dance Temple floor with me. Surrender to the music. Dance the body’s primal wisdom. Be changed by the minutia of muscle, bone, breath and sweat.

This is Dance Temple, a place of free-form, authentic movement. Our brilliant, inspired priestess-facilitators lightly guide our process, setting our shared focus and helping us to inhabit this moment together. The rules are simple: move however you want, don’t talk on the dance floor, and respect yourself and each other.

When I step into this temple space, I leave behind the orderly matrix of mind and surrender myself to the primal wisdom and knowledge that is my body. I let my body dance me, dance the music, and dance the collective vibe.

What is deep, deep inside rises to the surface and speaks in the spiraling of my spine, the rotating of my shoulder blades, the gyrating of my hips, the reaching and extension of my limbs, and the fluttering of my fingers. I am liquid me, joyfully, ecstatically, powerfully present and free.

I cannot speak for the inner process of others, but what I witness around me are exquisitely beautiful people, of different ages, shapes, colors and gender options, totally giving themselves over to the music and the moment. This is diversity in motion — a kaleidoscope of swaying, bopping, twirling, grooving bodies, each with a dance as unique as their fingerprints.

Every single time I attend Dance Temple, the same revelation comes to me: we are changing the world, we, me, this wild, delicious tribe of dancing beings.

I cannot tell you how or why, just that I feel an exquisite rightness inside of me and in our togetherness, a kind of collective homecoming within our moving, inspired flesh. Whatever emerges from this fusion is pure love, pure joy and pure magic, the very stuff that can heal our souls and transform our world.

We need more Dance Temple moments in our lives, where we stop talking, start grooving and let our body do its unique, delicious thing, speaking in its sensate language of movement and dance. Our bodies know what we need to heal, grow and flourish. Our bodies know how to be with other bodies in a place of self-expression and respect. Our bodies know how to cultivate joy, make love and weave beauty.

Maybe, just maybe, the thing that can change our world is as simple as embracing the dance temple which is our own sacred body, with its unique form of expressive movement and profound range of sensate knowing. Alone and with our dancing tribe, we can move and groove, waking and shaking things up, and finding our way home together.

Related Post: The Dance Temple Habit: An Exercise in Full-Bodied Dance Magic

 Photo Credit: Christopher Campbell on Unsplash

Tale of the Lost Daughter: The Spell of Dance

Posted on:  Nov 23, 2016 @ 10:00 Posted in:  From the Tale

 Photo Credit: William Randles on Unsplash