Altered State Ecstatic Transformation

Ecstatic Dance has been a powerful part of my personal practice/process for the last 10 years.

There is something so profound about being with a large group (the class I go to with Michael Skelton and Jo Cobett usually has around 200 people in it) and feeling that tribal opening into free-form expression, mutual support, and ecstatic states of vibrating energetic release.

It is also extremely grounding, stress-relieving, cardiovascular and an amazing process to move through that relational space with otheres of attraction, repulsiion, insecurity, celebration, sensuality, vulnerability, boundaries etc…

For the last year and a half I have been integrating ecstatic dance into my Friday night yoga classes and on my retreats - it has been reallly fun to include live drummers and other musicians, and also to further develop my DJ skills to include this additional layer of commmunity practice.

Who out there is integrating yoga and ecstatic dance in their personal  practice or teaching pallette?

How about ecstatic dance with any other healing discipline?

Re: Altered State Ecstatic Transformation

Julian, would you be able to say something about how ecstatic dance serves as a transformative practice for you?  It has been a number of years since I've done any dancing, but I used to dance for hours at a time – especially while living in Korea.  And before going to Korea, I had regular drum circles, jam sessions, and dances at my house in Sedona.  I always felt wonderful after either experience – whether just dancing with others, or opening up space in a different way by making communal music together.  It was freeing, envigorating, opening, joyful, etc.  But I have not looked at or really even experienced either practice as an aid in vertical development or transformation.  Can you tell me more about what you do and how it serves transformation?

Best wishes,

Balder

Re: Altered State Ecstatic Transformation

Oh, this is so cool … eager to read more about this ecstatic dance groovaliciousness, Julian!

While I've never thought of it explicitly as a practice, dance has always been a part of my life, be it sweating to funk in the basement parties of my childhood, joining some spontaneous free-form eruption at a large outdoor rock concert, jumping to great live ska at a nightclub, marching with a kick-ass samba drum troupe during an anti-war demonstration, bowing and bending in a Sufi circle, making a fool of myself to “Baby Got Back” at a wedding reception, or simply taking a long, skippingly brisk walk with carnival music playing in my headphones …

I really do love that tribal, communal oomph that comes out when everyone gets up and dances – and then returning home and falling in bed exhausted, only to continue dancing during dreamtime!

So I would love to hear more about this as a healing practice – and find out if there are people meeting to do this kind of thing in my area …

Let's dance,
Mary

Re: Altered State Ecstatic Transformation

hey mary and bruce - thanks for making it over here…

yeah it is fun huh?

well the community i have been dancing with plays within the structure of gabriel roth’s five rhythms approach.

the 5 rhythms take you through a journey that expresses 5 different energies or moods - the group goes on a kind of contemporary shamanic journey together.

the movement is all free -form but withi this over arching form.

the facilitators will choose music in the moment that speaks to what is happeing in the room and use themes and/or poetry in the same way.

what i have found over time is a deepening relationship to unselfconscious spontaneity, an abiity to work with painful feelngs, in-the-moment conection with others that can be exquisitely archetypal and a powerful way to do a kind of active imagination meets psychodrama kind of exploration…… it gets pretty juicy!

grief, anger, sensuality, compassion, insecurity, playfulness all arise and are expressed or make you get stuck and have to tay present with that - and behind all of it at times the witnessing awaeness of anica - the everchanging flow of the dance…

so yes this ecstatic dance is fun and juicy and a serious practice with transformational possibilities…..

it has been amazing to be with a core group for around a decade - true experiential group process!

so i answer to your technical question bruce - i think the spiritual and psychological lines of development (yo go Integral on y’all) can be affected in a way that promotes verticle growth - also the sense of postconventional communal experience that draws on the best of a kind of tribal belongingness and primal energy along with contemporary open-ness and exploration…

Re: Altered State Ecstatic Transformation

Hi, Julian,

It is a lot of fun.  I have done some Gabriel Roth-style expressive dance while at JFKU, during a course or two on somatic awareness.  I remember several powerful and moving experiences doing expressive body movement at school, either working with a partner, or else jamming out with a class to Gabriel Roth's (or other similar artists') music.  I definitely see therapeutic value in this kind of work play, but I would like to hear more from you or others on the type of transformation that it might also facilitate.

Even if it doesn't foster stage growth, I think there are plenty of other good reasons to do it, so I'm not questioning its value at all.  One reason I used to dance a lot was just because it was fun, and I loved entering the “zone” after an hour or two and then going home to crash into bed with my body flushed out and deeply relaxed.  I think we can and should celebrate our being and our being-together, opening and exploring the richness of our bodies and minds, without having to be focused on vertical transformation all the time.  (A focus which Integral consciously or unconsciously fosters).

Talking about this, I realize how I've really been neglecting my body in the last few years.  I am still doing some body work, but it is mild and gentle and doesn't take me to those dynamic, wild places that I used to enter after hours of dancing.  Lately, I've been feeling a need to focus more on nurturing and opening my embodied awareness – and in fact, have been planning for the last week or two to start a thread on one of my pods on TSK and Embodiment, since it has some interesting approaches and ideas – so the “sprouting” of your new pod is timely for me.  (I look forward to reading about the experiences and practices of people who are more actively engaged in this area).

Best wishes,

Balder

Re: Altered State Ecstatic Transformation

Hey Julian, Bruce, Mary

It sure feels nice 'n homely in a cool, funky kind of way down here just now :o)

I've just recently started doing 5 Rhythms after years of thinking about it … and there's no question, I and various of my bodies are expressing themselves a lot more freely as a result.

Two very dear friends, Ya'Acov and Susannah Darling-Kahn, are the main 5 Rhythms teachers in the UK, probably Europe. They've just recently disenfranchised themselves from Gabrielle Roth's organisation and set up thir own school, the School of Movement Medicine.

Since last June I've been offering/giving craniosacral sessions to the participants on their ongoing residential courses. I'm deeply impressed with what I've observed: the richness in depth of process work that is skillfully as well as powerfully facilitated on these courses, and the ways that participants are obviously benefitting, growing, flowering.

For me it's a real joy to work with the students … their systems are, in general, so much more open and fluid than the average person's … and they're both familiar with, as well as very keen to engage with, their process. We do a session of inner dance together, then they go off for another session in the class  :o)

I'm aware of KW's distinction between what's transformative work/practice as opposed to what's translative. For me, when there's developmental growth, whether it's viewed as 'upward' development of lines or in some other way, this is transformation. How that's measured or calibrated is someone else's forte, not mine — but I guess I view it that transformation is usually a slow, gradual affair, and that once people are moving that way they tend not to fall back. It may still be early days for me in terms of observing/witnessing 5 Rhythms students and teachers, but my instinct is that it can be powerfully transformative work.

Lol

Re: Altered State Ecstatic Transformation

It's funny.  Just talking about this I feel a kind of longing.  My feet start jumping around under my desk in this veal fattening pen at work.  My body is hungry for this!

Re: Altered State Ecstatic Transformation

I know, I know! Earlier today (oops, yesterday by now) I simply had to go on a very long brisk walk with Calypso Rose in my walkman …

Re: Altered State Ecstatic Transformation

I don't have many years of yoga. I did do bikram yoga for almost 3 months going 5 times a week several years ago. I started Nia Technique  at my gym and doing power yoga and hatha yoga. Took my 2nd class last week, my first was 8 years ago. I felt completely stress free and my body wasn't so rigid but wanted to move in different ways afterwards.
What I think happens in terms of transformation over a period of time is that there is definately more of a connection to the body. I'm one that lives in my mind since I do most of my work on the computer in front of a screen.  For the most part my body stays still without much movement except for my hands and fingers.  It's easy to get lost in the headspace, so to speak and forget about the body. When I have to move as in yoga and Nia I have to connect with my body but I notice that my mind is also involved as well and most of the time I notice how I have neglected my body because I can feel where my tensions are located.  As these tensions are released from my body I also observe my anxiety about what happened during the day is also released.

I can also say this about meditating, I notice tensions in my body and where in my mentalscape it connects to. Usually I hold lots of tension in my lower jaw and have to practice relaxing and when I do there's a relaxation in my mind as well.


I can't imagine letting these tensions build up in my mentalscape and my bodyscape. I'm already stiff as it is working in front of the computer so I enjoy a lot of bodywork, yoga, running, swimming, weight lifting, hiking, walking, Nia, and etc.  So I think yoga and dance keep you connected to your body and to your mind.

Re: Altered State Ecstatic Transformation

ill put it simply from my point of view.. i never ever feel as beautiful or free as when i dance.. i put the music on.. close my eyes and let it flow…