I’m thrilled to announce that I discovered in New Zealand that I want to dedicate my life to the healing power of dance!
When you let go,
the natural flow of energy dances you.
It opens up the channels of the body
to clear away old emotional blockages,
believe systems that no longer serve and
memories the body has held onto
long after their usefulness disappeared.
We allow life to dance us again.
I’ll join the “5elements Dance Facilitator Training”, leaded by shamanka Malaika, in which I will learn how to make people aware of the 5 Ayurvedic elements (fire, water, earth, air and spirit) in and around them. I will learn which language I can use to take people deep inside themselves in the dance zone and which techniques I can use to handle catharsis and emotional release. I will learn how to use the breath, how to create sacred space and clear energy, how to use DJ programs and make setlists,… Here and here you can read the program of my training.
Why dance therapy?
Centuries ago, the play with rhythmic chant and movement became a religious rite to liberate man from the fear and burdens of separateness and death. The dance of the medicine man, priest or shaman belongs to the oldest form of medicine and psychotherapy, in which the common exaltation and release of tensions was able to change man’s physical and mental suffering, into a new option of health.
During the ages we’ve lost the embodied experience as a source of knowing. Influenced by the Cartesian view of separation between body/mind, human/nature and objective/subjective realities and under influence of Christianity, the western civilization succumbed by centuries of dualistic thought. The understanding of the human conditions narrowed and was placed in the controlling hands of specialists – clergy, scientists and doctors who held a ‘mechanistic’ instead of ‘holistic’ world view. They compartmentalized human needs and knowledge into separate areas of concern and deprived the body as lotus of experience.
The arts felt under the control of the wealthy and powerful, who used to represent the power structure, to provide superficial entertainment and sensual outlet. To a great extend the healing power of the arts has been lost. Art is nowadays another commodity on the marketplace, based on the criteria of entertainment, fads and manipulation, rather than on raising consciousness or solving social dilemmas.
The progression of human history is marked by the separation between body, mind and spirit and by the attempts to identify and heal these splits. The search for embodied living and holistic understanding in a highly technological world calls for a reintegration of ancient wisdom with the knowledge, skills and challenges of the present times. The cross-pollination between fields involved in this search has created new insights and discoveries that challenge the centuries-old splits between psychology, arts, medicine, education, politics and spirituality, resulting in new, interdisciplinary approaches.
In the beginning of the twentieth century, pioneering thinkers began to reintroduce the holistic perspective of our ancestors, thereby reclaiming the power of arts to heal, educate and facilitate consciousness. You had e.g. psychologue Reich that stated that “the entire history of the person is contained within the physical structure and organismic functioning. Traumatic events of life cause muscular contractions in the organism, that restrict the flow of orgone energy, the primordial cosmic energy basic to all life”. And Marian Whitehouse combined dance with Jungian psychotherapy in which the technique ‘active imagination’ is used. The client explores his dreams, symbols, archetypes and myths, to bring his unconscious level into the present. It was the start of ‘Authentic Movement’, one of the techniques that is used nowadays in dance therapy.
I do believe that movement and dance has the power to not only change individual lives, but as well to change whole the world. I’ve been an activist for years, using community art, working for the Young Green political party and squatting with anarchists. What bothered me was that we wanted to convince people to live differently in a rational way, with words and ideas. I feel that the big change can’t come only from the brain, from the thinking. We are all already so stuck in the thinking.
I feel the big change will happen when we start to move, to feel and to listen to our heart and body. When we become more aware of ourselves, our bodies and our lives. We would feel that what we eat is not good for our bodies and might stop supporting the capitalists industries that took over our lives. We would wake up from the dream state we are in, get away from our screen, look around us and really SEE the world and the people around us. The fear-creating media machine would have less grip on us. Imagine all what could happen if we start to move…
The path I danced during this world travel
Since I left Belgium in this journey, I had the chance to learn from different masters how they use the healing power of dance in their culture. Soon I’ll return to Belgium to study ‘dance therapy’ at the university of Ghent.
I explored the question: ‘When becomes movement dance?” with butoh master Katsura Kan in Japan.
Butoh is a Japanese contemporary dance wherein dancers are taking their body to pieces and then put it together again as a form, or a new social order even, that goes beyond language. Dancers with white painted bodies, empty themselves from cultural references to represent the human body and to find an answer to the question of who we are as a human beings. Through their performances Butoh dancers search for a personal and collective memory. They investigate taboo themes like death, eroticism, sex and mobilization of archaic pulsations. Butoh dancers have the ability to become something without just acting it, but also embody it. In this video Grabiel Roth (founder of ‘5Rythms’ dance) explains what is Butoh.
“There are an infinity of ways in which you can move from that spot over there to here. But have you figured out those movements in your head, or are we seeing your soul in motion? Even that fleck at the tip of your nail embodies your soul… The essential thing is that your movements, even when you’re standing still, embody your soul at all times.” – Butoh founder Kazuo Ohno
I learned haka with Māori Ojasvin Kingi Davis & Iris Waimaania (Grandmothers Healing Haka) & Matiu Te Huki in New Zealand.
“HAKA is an ancient power dance practiced by Māori people from New Zealand. It is known to be vigorously expressed with strong vocal and dynamic body gestures. This art form not only can prepare your state of mind for battle, but it can also bring your mind toward the state of healing. It gives you empowerment and self-confidence. This power dance imparts wisdom and love to encourage people to remember their own cultural roots.” – Grandmothers Healing Haka
“A lot of people come with their pens and their books and they have read a lot and know everything. We start to say: “Well, your intellectual centre might know a lot, but then there is the heart centre where you FEEL the information, the morals, the values, your intuition. It’s another world, another level. The haka creates family, you do it together, you move together, you create rhythm together and slowly you come in the body. And the body is working with the nervous system, so you can connect to this world and this nature. Everything is written in the body and you are activating the DNA that holds ancient ancestral memories, of all their past experiences. So you are opening up this huge consciousness which is much bigger than this intellect in the head. We need the intellect, it is part of who we are, but we don’t need it to govern all of this other levels of consciousness that it doesn’t understand. The intellectual centre doesn’t understand what is love, but you will feel it in the heart and you will experience it in the body.” – Ojesvin (21:07 in this movie)
Haka is teached to children in New Zealand high schools. It is a powerful tool to gain self confidence and release emotions like anger. Very important skills in New Zealand’s macho culture. Like chief Inia says in this short, BEAUTIFUL haka documentary to the boys he is teaching to: “You fallas have got the haka sorted out. We’ve got the kupu, we’ve got the words, we’ve got the actions. Ka pai? Now we are gonna take it to another level. It’s gonna come from inside. Ka pai? Don’t leave anything in the tank boys. From here (points to his heart), not from their (points to his head). From here.”
I recieved classes from Sufi master Shabda Kahn, a direct disciple of Murchid Samuel Lewis, the founder of ‘Dances of Universal Peace”.
Lewis was inspired by his teacher Ruth St. Denis, a modern dance pioneer, that would empty herself to disappear so the sacred dance would enter her. All that she conveyed in her movement was the living presence of the One she invoked through her body.
“For too long we lived constantly in two worlds, in body and in spirit but… we are not made of one substance and our body of another. The whole scheme of things in reality is not two, but One. I call for a new, vital expression that will bring humanity into a closer, more harmonious relationship with the One who created our bodies as well as our souls.” – Ruth St. Denis (1879 –1968)
Lewis was a sufist, a mysticist. The roots motivation in mysticism is to free yourself from the illusion that there is a separation between you and God/existence. Mysticists belief that direct knowledge of God, spiritual truth or ultimate reality can be gained through personal experience, through your body and breath. “Know yourself and you’ll know God”.
Lewis gathered spiritual dances and breathing techniques from whole over the world. Out of a song, mantra or chant comes a simple, meditative circle dance, wherein the participants learn to bring the breath, mind, heart and body into harmony as they dance in community. Concentrating on a sacred phrase and the movement of everyone together, touches your being in a deeper and deeper way, creating an expanded sense of the self. So the illusion of separation between you and existence/God disappears.
I joined a trance dance inspired by the Sundance of the native Americans.
The Sundance is a ceremony practiced differently by several North American Indian Nations, including dancing, singing and drumming, the experience of sweat lodge rituals, vision quests, fasting and, in some cases, piercing the body as a representative of the sacrifice that the individual makes for the good of the tribe.
The Sundance is held by each tribe once a year at the time of the Summer Solstice. The community dances together in a circle for several days to pray for healing and the renewal of their relationship with the land, with Mother Earth and with all beings, including the beings from the spirit world. The Sundance shows the continuity between life and death. There is no true end to life. It’s just a cycle of symbolic and true deaths and rebirths.
The dance I joined was introduced by Kailash Kokopelli that has been recognized as a tribal brother and bridgemaker by indigenous people of America. We danced together on the beats of his drum and the beats of our heart. In this trance inducing dance we made every step a prayer, to plant seeds of intention into the soil and to give and receive energy from Mother Earth.
I witnessed and participated in dance rituals with tribes in the Solomon Islands and Vanuatu, danced with Indians in the Holi Festival of Colours, felt the healing power of dancing on drumbeats around big fires,… And more dance experiences are coming up, to form me as a dance therapist!
Yūgen 