Dancers in Tokyo/PeaceBody School

Embodied Leadership and the Dancing Path

“I would believe only in a God that knows how to Dance.”  -Friederich Nietzsche

“Are we human?  Are we dancing?”  ~The Killers

Why Dance?

It just makes sense.  When we dance, nothing is hidden.  We feel.  We love.  We connect.  We reflect.  We share joy.  We find our authentic inner impulses.  We see ourselves and others transparently.  We uplevel our physical, emotional, mental and spiritual being – all at the same time.

From the very beginning I have danced.  I have listened with my body to the shape and texture of nature and the unseen, to archetypal energies, and to the shadow play of the human psyche.  At the age of 13, I began locking myself into the wrestling room at my High School to find myself and God.  I danced as an act of self-preservation, of creation, of communication and of communion.  I created innumerable dances about spiritual states beyond name or form, about war and peace, and about the play of human relations.

I have danced because it was in me to do so – the most natural and unavoidable expression of my soul.[1]  I have danced because it is a listener’s path: away to follow and a way to lead.   For me, dance is a medicine, an alchemical practice that invites everything as the raw material and opportunity to create more life.  Through dance, I have a direct and personal conversation with with Creator and Creation.  And, I have a medium through which to conveyed this conversation as an offering to the world.   Through dance I co-create sacred community and collaborative leadership.  I transform and transmute the raw material of my emotions into art and self leadership.  With and through dance, I find the way to move forward in my life and to help others do the same.

Despite this amazing list of benefits, I have doubted the dance as a vehicle.  I have doubted its value and legitimacy as a way to “spend my time”, give my service and shape my life.  Why?  Because “the dancer” is not the image we are taught to hold for leadership or power.  Like most of us, I was taught to see the image of power in suits, stats and definable results.  In these terms, dance is “a luxury,” or “a girl’s thing,” or “a waste of time.”  As a career path, it is anything other than the effective, efficient, financially conservative pathway to success that was hoped of me as a promising young person.  In reality, dancing together has been a central practice for generating resonance and collectivized prayer in tribal communities for untold ages.  And, the truth, beauty and goodness it empowers are the very foundation for all that is valuable to a human life.

Thankfully, my soul’s stubborn power was stronger than these cultural stories.  The dance won, and has always been central to my life.  Sharing and spreading the practice of Dancing Freedom is at the heart of my sacred leadership.  It is a practice of prayer and presence that encircles and defines my personal conversation with god and my ministry in community.  Though my leadership mission has many faces other than dance, moving together is the centerless center at the middle of my altar – the Tao manifest as a practice unfolding in time.  My business, Dancing Freedom, supports people in personal transformation, leadership development and community building.  It works.  Dance is the place I, and many others, go to resource truth.

Originally posted on: http://maryshindler.wordpress.com/2011/10/11/dance-with-us/

the more I dance
the more I know this:

my body says yes!
it becomes clear

shake up what’s inside
and listen

its not hard
let go

take nothing personally

you were born
to move

you are fucking beautiful
thank you

don’t come to help
without first dancing with us

this is what I know about community:

the community was dancing before you
and will continue to dance when you’re gone

but if you’d like to dance with us,
welcome.

don’t take it personally
you’re just another body moving

but as we move together
different shapes and motions and expressions
breaking down
building up

nature is just as interested in death
as it is life

nature is just as interested in stillness
as it is motion

the more I dance,
I know all of this is true

and more than I will ever know

occupy your body, first.
then step into the world with that.

you’re not the same
and neither is the dance

because of you
because of your unique expression

yes, you’re following something bigger
but the choice of how to show up

is. all. you.

so, we need you.
dance with us.

[P.S. Check out Dancing Freedom trainings to dance with us in 2012... ]

Dancing On The Edge

We Are Evolution

(Excerpted from the book I am writing:  Dancing Freedom:  A Conscious Dancer’s Handbook)

“When a system is far from equilibrium, small islands of coherence in a sea of chaos have the capacity to lift the system to a higher order.”  ~ Ilya Prigogine

Evolution is the process through which change acts on living systems and through which living systems change – transcending and including previous patterns in a spiral pathway of increasing diversity, complexity and harmony.

Nothing ever stays the same.  Change is the eternal constant, and life is motion.  Life implies growth, maturation, decay, death and quiescence.  Death implies rebirth.  The journey through all of these phases is a moving journey.  Systems tend towards expansion and complexity, then fall apart, then cohere again.  Coherency is a point of simplicity, or pure presence, that allows for things to come together (to cohere) at a new order of evolution.

When we navigate change consciously and coherently, we become agents of conscious evolution – literally, we are life, change and evolution being conscious of itself.  We are evolutionaries – shaping and being shaped by the growing edge of consciousness.  When we bring awareness to the process, we influence outcomes.

As we steward change, we are always either midwifing birth or hospicing death – both within ourselves and with others.  Each of us will do some of both as we facilitate Dancing Freedom.  Both things can be happening in the same group of people or in the same individual at the same time.  We hold space for this through love.  We hold safe space for the breakdown and the breakthrough by grounding, expanding to meet whatever IS, and resting in presence and compassion. We do not try to change what is happening.  We simply create coherent space through the balance of expansion (permission, invitation, invocation, inspiration) and containment (clear boundaries and agreements).

“The love we co-create together is an alchemical substance, and this substance can transform our cells and our world.  Love like this is coherence in action.”  ~Falco, founder of Dhamanhur

Evolution is happening.  It is happening whether we like it or not.  At this moment, it is heavily amplified by the human presence on the planet.  We have created an evolutionary crucible for ourselves and for all of life.  As conscious creators and members of the human family, it simply makes sense to BE THE COHERENCY.  We have the opportunity to engage evolution consciously – because we can.  This is the grace of having such large brains.  We have self-reflexivity and can make choices!  Because we are a species that is aware of itself and it’s creative relationship with it’s environment, we are uniquely poised to consciously co-create the next steps for our very young species and for all of life on planet earth, and perhaps for all of life in the universe.  We have brains large enough, and hearts big enough to co-create a path of harmony

We can do this by being coherent.

For a human being, coherency comes through:

• Grounding
• Personal Presence
• Collective Resonance
• Aligning with shift at all scales
• Developing an Awake Ego
• Cultivating Nomadic/Indigenous Mind

The Nomadic Consciousness or Indigenous Mind is RESPONSIVE to internal awareness and outer stimulus in a way that is in integrity with life.  Here are some qualities of this way of being:

• Non-fixety
• Source Wisdom
• Life Wisdom
• Body-presence
• Permeability with the Environment
• Wonder
• Responsivity
• Loyalty
• Providing Home
• Collectivity
• Self-responsibility
• Discernment
• Wise Seeing
• Humility
• Energetic & Emotional Ethics
• Compassion
• Containment
• Asking for Help
• Seeking Elders

Each of us is powerful beyond knowing.  We Are Evolution.  The Collective Consciousness of humanity is a system (or oversoul) that is evolving as WE change the ways in which we project, perceive and respond to reality.

Eden @ Sunset ~ Photo: Sean Stutchen

Last night we continued diving into sacred community.  We’ve been dancing to heal past wounds and to invoke the medicine we need to carry forward deepening relationship and collaboration with our fellow humans and all of our relations for the rest of our lives.

We are dancing what we have been shown as the way of healing – dancing in a space of transparency.  When we do dancing freedom, we can not be alone.  We can come into aloneness – dancing deeply in internal space.  But, if you cry, we hear you.  I I laugh, I influence you. I can not hide.  You can not hide.  We are together.  In this togetherness, each of us is praying his or her own prayer in connection with his or her creator and unique life path.  And yet, we are revealed as the same – as a circle.  Through this transparency and continuity, we are learning how to be better people – both individually and together.  We are learning how to bear and to celebrate our humanness and to dance that forward in an earthly way that is truly divine.

The Hopi Prophesy

from Oriah Mountain Dreamer

“Here is a river flowing now very fast.
It is so great and swift,
that there are those who will be afraid,
who will try to hold on to the shore,
they are being torn apart and will suffer greatly.
Know that the river has its destination.
The elders say we must let go of the shore,
push off into the middle of the river,
and keep our heads above water.
And I say see who is there with you and celebrate.
At this time in history we are to take nothing personally,
least of all ourselves, for the moment we do,
our spiritual growth and journey come to a halt.
The time of the lone wolf is over.
Gather yourselves.
Banish the word struggle from your attitude and vocabulary.
All that we do now must be done in a sacred manner and in celebration.
For we are the ones we have been waiting for.”

Step off the edge and REMEMBER

A “WISE FOOL” RANT – written in our closing ceremony to the Sierra Hot Springs Wise Fool Retreat last weekend… ah!  Thank you Community for the dances and the soul work!!!

Boredom is optional.  Turn it into play.  God consciousness blossoms through the turned back petals of illusion.   I love to be in the presence of open hearts.  Grief descends like water in the desert to sustain the marrow of my integrated love.  Bismilla!  I surrender everything that no longer serves the multidimensional simplicity of the miracle of me!

Fire lights slowly within as I soften into sex.  I am butterflying through this death cycle, remembering the spark that arises in the empty fullness of tender ecstasy.

I long for love.  Yet, creativity knows itself first and best through self-seduction – moment to moment slowing down to taste wonder again.

Beyond Illusion – this wise fool dances as a goddess in supple majesty – a liquid crystal at the center of community.

New Vision opens in the mirror of you – friends, fools, true hearts – broken open and authentic and whole.

I’ve found new relaxation and courage in this blessed circle of love.

~s.s.

Osaka Dance

Osaka heats up.
Cicadas cry memories
as ancestors sleep.

Dancers feel freedom,
original rembrance,
cellular wholeness.

Sweat drops prayer beads
dissapearing instantly
created, destroyed.

We cry in one heart -
liberation in motion -
stillness exhalted.

(August 5, 2009)

Living Breathing Peace happens in living, breathing, dancing relationships with

• Body
• Mind
• Family
• Community
• Culture
• Ecology (Earth)
• The Divine

The Sevenfold Peace is a ancient-modern and ultra-useful map that describes the inter-subjectivity of peace – the truth that peace within does not translate into a peaceful world unless we make it real in our relationships to specific things.  The seven realms of Body, Mind, Family, Community, Culture, Ecology and The Divine are the arenas where our inner state of peace (or lack of peace) moves outward into the world through our energy and our actions.

Ancient Essenes lived and taught these teaching about the pragmatic, relationship driven process and mystery of creating peace.  The Essenes were a community of peacemakers who were connected with Jesus, Mary and the beginnings of Christ Consciousness on the planet.  They were totally committed to living in harmony with everything.  The Essenes understood that to be and create peace in the world, we BOTH need to find peace within ourselves AND that we have to live peace in our relationships over time in all seven of these spheres of the world.

If you are not at peace with your family, or your body or your culture, how can you really create peace?  This is a simple and very powerful teaching for you to work with.

The body is the vehicle or chariot of this peace, the mind is the director and the heart is the engine or sacred fire at the center.

In Dancing Freedom, we work directly with the body, with mindfullness, with intention and with emotional release to heal and harmonize the way each of us live and dance the Seven Fold Peace in our lives.  The core practice is to PAY ATTENTION to how we feel in relationship to each realm, and to meet the parts of us that do not feel forgiveness, harmony or love.  We meet our fears.  We bring them in so that they can be loved.  And then, we dance forwards towards greater harmony.

Wholeness is a Process.

We never “get there.”  Where is “there?”  Where were “you” while you were trying to get “there?”  Every day, we wake up in the ceaseless flow of time and have a new opportunity to love what is, to shape our thoughts through love.  Each and every moment, we have the ability to CHOOSE how we interpret, respond to and act in our life situations, with our bodies, our emotions, our relationships.  Wholeness may happen in transcendent and timeless moments, but the process of translating that experience into an ongoing living process is where the rubber hits the road in living oneness.  Choice is something that happens again and again, until a state or a habit becomes a trait, taking us to a new octave on the evolutionary spiral.  Then, we will be offered new opportunities to embrace and to choose as we travel the next loop on the spiral.

BEING MORE ALIVE!

Inner Connection and Outer Expression

We are dynamic creators of the dancing Universe.  We do this both through being and becoming.  Our consciousness has the dual capacity to feel and sense our being through inner connection AND to create and act our becoming through outer expression.  This is a core Somatic principle; consciousness, well being and emotional, mental and energetic intelligence grow in accordance with the LIVELY INTERPLAY of our interior capacity to feel ourselves AND our external capacity to express what we feel.   In this way, the universe is literally birthing itself through each of us at every moment.

The Living God lives in us as we allow ourselves to align with our divine human potential: with ALL of our FEELINGS AND EMOTIONS, and with the positive states of  joy, bliss, compassion, power, inspiration, passion, truth and unconditional love.  Holographically speaking, Source is within each of us, AND here to be expressed through us.  Dynamic, joyous and empowered living emerges from a creative and fluid interface of the inner and the outer – a dance with the hogogram.

Inner connection is found through sensing and feeling – listening and being present with our inner experiences.  As we connecting to this finely tuned presence, we call forth action – outer expression in dynamic harmony with the interior world.  In the practice of Dancing Freedom, the Inner Dance deepens our relationship and skill in sensing and feeling, while the Outer Dance helps us receive information from beyond the self and to connect and express with others.

A Great Article on the Universe as a Hologram