Reflections from Somatic Dance Facilitator Training/Initiation.
It was about day 9 or 10 of the 11 days of dancing in the field of Somatic Dance that I had the feeling of being so embodied that the boundaries of my physical body felt like a matrix opening and a gentle spreading out into the space and the melding with all the beings around me. A sense of loosing my "self" to something more unified.
There was a moment of "oh fuck" within me. The pieces of me, of my body time and space were altering. It felt immense, odd and life changing.
And it was.
I decided quite early on into my broken leg journey to say yes to this training. When I reflect on my why of saying yes there were many parts.
My inner task manager saying "your leg will be healed by this time", a carrot dangled.
My forever perpetual need to study and grow and learn
A need for excitement and adventure
and a yearning to go deeper into the subterranean depths of my body and her incredible wisdom.
a desire to learn how to facilitate taking people deeper through somatics and movement.
a desire to learn how to DJ.
I also had a deep respect for the teacher and creatrix of Somatic Dance - Sarsha Hope.
It was a full bodied fuck yes.
Through the years of my own seeking, practices, learning and teaching I am aware of how we operate from a programmed mind/box and how there is another part of us, which I call soul that is crying, howling, stomping for more. She will show up in your dreams, she leads you into obstacles and possibilities to open, to free you, and most of the time this gets returned by freezing in our fear of change our fear of inadequacy, running from the immensity of following our inner impulses, of leaving the safety of the pack, and raging at the "system" that keeps us stuck.
But that system is not outside of you.
The mind will help to keep you small. The soul will show you that you are immense.. and divine.
We were reminded again and again over the lifetimes of dancing for 11 days that what shows up on the dance floor is what shows up in life.
Somatic Dance is somatic inquiry mixed with movement, presence and exploration.....
It is an invitation to enter the soma (the body) to undo the repetitive small tethered patterns we have been taught and constructed for reassurance, for acceptance, for peace.
Without words.
I have found that you cannot force your way out of the cage.... you have to follow her... you have to trust the undoing.... it is not rational.... it is beyond the beyond.
The dance welcomes you to trust, follow, feel, connect, respond, allow and most importantly to play.
To become.
Undone.
The training/initiation (as intense as any medicine journey) showed me where I hurt, where I protect, where I resist, where I close. And there is nothing wrong with any of those things if they are needed for actual protection. Its when they keep us in the illusion of separation and they keep us in smallness that we a missing the opportunity to live.
It was a marathon that slowly continued to dissolve me from fixed into open. Through the skin, the bones, the fluid body, the mouth. Day by day.. dance by dance and with the love of the whole living eco system which was all 23 of us initiates and the 6 divine doulas (Sarsha Hope - Founder, Stephen Blase - co-teacher (and the most healthy masculine presence I have ever known), Tia, Jacqui, Femke and Rachel.
Also the whenua/the land, the mountain/maunga Taranaki, the the ocean.... the sun.
Somatic Dance draws from Embodied Flow, 5Rhythms, Ecstatic Dance, Tantra, Eco Somatics, ritual and Somatic Therapy.
Like 5Rhythms and Open Floor there is a considered rhythm to the dance and to the flow of our training each day. A pulse of life.
Arriving
Flowing
Building
Peak
Expansion
Landing/Harmonizing.
There were so many weavings and rememberings that personally happened for me (and pretty much every other being) that four days post training I am still finding my new skin.
What I received from the training was family/whanau, trusting my dance to move me through my own shit, allowing myself to be fully seen (when there was nowhere to hide) a deep landing of how I want to continue to live my one wild crazy precious life. The web that connects everything, immense love and humbleness for all those humans who choose again and again to keep deepening the journey down and in, expanding and reclaiming.
And that transmission is everything.
Oh and the DJing was epic and so much fun and hopefully something to continue on with.
I am so excited to be able to offer this journey so watch out for it in the next couple of months!!
WE have come to be danced
not the nice invisible self conscious shuffle
but the matted hair flying voodoo mama
Sharman shakin' ancient bones dance
the strip us from our casings, return our wings
sharpen our claws and tongues dance
An excerpt of a poem by Jewel Mathieson from the Somatic Dance Teacher Training Manual
#somatictherapy #somaticdance #embodiedmovement #sweatyourprayers #embodiedinquiry #soulwork #ecosomatics
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