JUNE 2008
New York group
Registration
Sacred Dances Teacher
"What you cannot discover in your own body,
you will not discover in any place of the world..."
- Idris Lahore
For the experience of oneness in movement, or wholeness, it is necessary to first find within ourselves the proper alignment, the proper balance between tensions and relaxation and to maintain attention and the ability to observe. And so, we place our center of gravity into the watcher again and again, without criticising, analysing, comparing, but just watching. This sounds simple, and it is, but difficult also. To watch without judgement, our thoughts, actions, is the knack, for so often our judgements or desires come in, and in that moment our consciousness closes.
Movements belong to a hygiene of inner life, an inner discipline, a door to freedom.. Through them we see our life, our oscillation between the external world and the inner world. Through them, we are searching a balance where we can have "one eye out and one eye in:" not being taken and overwhelmed by outside events or people, and not with drawing into the deepest recesses of ourselves, unable to communicate and to act.
While practising the movements we try to keep one eye on the outer forms, the lines and files, the rhythm and spirit given by the music, and one eye beyond the visible, into the subtleties of energy movement, impulses, inner spirit and archetype of the movement, its effects, the emotions and thoughts that arise.
At first we realise how small is our scope of attention, a few seconds, and then, the mechanical train of our thoughts takes us away. This is reflected immediately by a "mistake" in the outer form , or a mechanicalness that takes away the true grace inherent to these movements. This is mirroring the daily life of most people, manipulated through joys and pains, according to the strings that are pulled by the wheel of life. But by and by, with a quality of attention becoming more sustained and subtle - which is a question of practice and intention - another vision is reveled. It is a new sensation of the body, not in its different fragments, but as a whole vibrating living being. And the journey through places unreachable up to now begins, the discovery of the treasures hidden in this body, "the lotus paradise." That experience of wholeness is grace descending, the gift of consciousness through the body.