We are approaching Samhain, more commonly known as Halloween, when the veil between the living and the dead is the thinest. The wisdom that evolves us across generations is more readily available to us during this season and so is our resistance to this wisdom.
The costumes, the glucose spikes, the masks, the characters we let ourselves become at Halloween may deepen our journey or they may become an entertaining distraction from it. Perhaps we'll have the best of both worlds, we'll entertain ourselves with the truth while looking out from the costumes of the familiar! That's exactly the intention behind the ritual I am offering tomorrow on the New Moon, Celebrating the Artistry of the Dark Goddess, Wednesday, 6:30 to 8 pm, at Red Bean Studios. Register here!
I am often asked to lead Kali inspired rituals during this season. This year I'm recognizing that the ritual of the Dark Goddess is intimately connected to my studies of healing trauma with Peter Levine, author of "Waking the Tiger." The tiger in the nervous system is the one who pounces when someone attacks me. She is the one who pumps my heart fast and steady when I speak loudly. She is the one looking through my eyes when I trust that who I am is valuable. When she sleeps, people can smell it on me. The boundaries get fuzzy and protection feels like a draining task that fear has asked me to perform.
I recently joined a room of mental health professionals and therapists for a training with internationally recognized trauma expert, Peter Levine. He works with the children in Japan who survived the tsunami. He works with veterans returning from war and adults who grew up in concentration camps. I dare say he works courageously close to the Dark Goddess. Kali Ma, the hindu form of the Dark Goddess, destroys that which is untrue. For thousands of years people have invoked Her energy to destroy the energetic imprints of the events which did not honor our true value.
I'll be integrating the somatic technology that Levine uses to Wake the Tiger. He defines trauma, not as a result of a situation, but it is the result of the tiger sleeping during the situation. Kali, like rage, is often misunderstood and feared. Her limitless unapologetic freedom can be presented out of context, falsely legitimizing our unconscious lust and unexamined envy. We invoke her in this ritual with great respect and purpose. She is the Mother Nature energy at its most powerful-civilization-rumblin-core, she is the Goddess of death. She kills illusion. She expects us to be courageous and we have the opportunity to make her right.
Dark and Shadow are Not the Same
There is no Shadow inside a Mother's womb or in the Earth, there is only fertile Darkness, possibility, and transformation. The Shadow exists where light is actively obstructed. The energy we expend to prevent this area from seeing the light of day is energy that is no longer available for trust, love, and passion. Dark Goddess, we ask you to awaken the tiger inside us, to unfreeze the memories our body has accumlated as we grow our emotional and spiritual resources. We ask for psychological rejuventation that allows us to break cycles that have replaced trust, love, and passion.
Come adorned in black, ready to dance, come ready to release a part of you that is no longer you!
Chocolate and fruit will be served.
Tuesday, October 25, 2011
Wednesday, October 19, 2011
Submission
I've been creating "Submission," a solo dance performance for the Halloween Masquerade Puja Party on Saturday, Oct 29, at the annual Sacred Sexuality Round Up. I recently started offering classes after a 10 month break. I'm discovering that during the sabatical from creating classes, I was creating something less visible, a new way of experiencing myself. Now that I'm returning to teaching and choreographing dances the experience has changed. Tonight the solo came to visit me.
This solo cannot see. She can listen. She is willing, supple, and She does not scatter me as She moves me. She is Submission. She has come to speak to me this time not as a lover, not as an obstacle, not as the all mighty... in the familiar forms. She teaches me to surrender without collapsing.
She rotates my thighs slowly in the caves of my hip sockets. Her timing is just a touch more graceful than the timing of tentativeness. Then She whips me with movement in a way that is similar to ecstatic bowing, wrestling, chanting, whirling, flying on merry-go-rounds, vomitting violently, and head banging. She makes me feel the delicacy of my physicality.
There is some part of me that is not delicate and not physical, that I live from in these moments.
She touches me as air surrounding my warm skin. She tosses my spine at times just to assure Herself that I am not bracing or defending my posture. Ninety minutes into rehearsal She pops me out of the studio to sit and recognize Her with these words. I hope to receive Her again. I want Her to take me. I plan to go home and turn on the music and wait for Her to join me again. She is mentoring me to serve.
This solo cannot see. She can listen. She is willing, supple, and She does not scatter me as She moves me. She is Submission. She has come to speak to me this time not as a lover, not as an obstacle, not as the all mighty... in the familiar forms. She teaches me to surrender without collapsing.
She rotates my thighs slowly in the caves of my hip sockets. Her timing is just a touch more graceful than the timing of tentativeness. Then She whips me with movement in a way that is similar to ecstatic bowing, wrestling, chanting, whirling, flying on merry-go-rounds, vomitting violently, and head banging. She makes me feel the delicacy of my physicality.
There is some part of me that is not delicate and not physical, that I live from in these moments.
She touches me as air surrounding my warm skin. She tosses my spine at times just to assure Herself that I am not bracing or defending my posture. Ninety minutes into rehearsal She pops me out of the studio to sit and recognize Her with these words. I hope to receive Her again. I want Her to take me. I plan to go home and turn on the music and wait for Her to join me again. She is mentoring me to serve.
Wednesday, October 12, 2011
Walking Back In
My body felt warm and relaxed after two hours dancing in the studio. Each week for the past 4 weeks I had come to open my body with new movement and to untangle the memories and definitions that constricted who I am when I dance. As I left the studio I touched the elevator down button and turned to my phone. A young blonde woman leaned against the wall smiling at me. "This may be strange but..." I looked up to see who was speaking. "Did you dance at Arlington Center for Dance?" she asked.
"Yes." I answered simply, summing up ages 6 to 18 of professional ballet training 3 to 8 hours a day, 6 days a week in a small school 5 hours away in Virginia. "I know who you are," she was beaming. I didn't recognize her face but I started to open as if I had, knowing that she was aware of such a huge part of my life before I moved to NYC for dance.
Just 3 weeks prior I had called a Healing Circle for Dancers in this very studio after many burning converesations with dancers who had left the dance world and in some way left a part of themselves still in it. "You probably know my father more than you know me," she gave me his name and then hers. Her father used to fly the scrims in and out during our tech rehearsals and performances. Yes, I believe I had heard the director calling his name for years. Here his daughter stood before me at the doorway to the dance studio.
"Are you dancing now?" I asked. She explained that she had left when she was 12. She "walked out," her hands gestured a sweeping "X" across her body. "I mean I walked out completely." She went on to say that she recently started social dance, swing, but it wasn't "real dance." Her eyes and tone suggested that I would agree, having shared the same strict definition of dance from our backgrounds. But I didn't. I was so happy that she was opening a new relationship with dance 15 years later. "And now these crazy people," she swung a hand toward the studio already filling with the next group of dancers, "actually convinced me to perform." She looked undeniably happy.
She started to repeat again that she "walked out, I mean walked out" on dance. "Yes," I nodded, "that's very common. I'm so happy you are reconnecting to the part of you that loved dance before our studio defined it." She had no idea the syncronicity of her seeing me in this studio at this time of the week where I come regularly to "walk back in" to dance, whole. "I'm so glad you said something to me," I said as she turned to enter the studio.
I have always loved dance more than anything, even when someone else was describing what it was and what it wasn't. But these days there is a phenomenal choreography of dancers dispursing for 10, 15 years, and then slowly turning to face back to the center. "Steve, can you fly the scrim in for the next scene? Raise the lights on stage right, we want to see their glowing faces."
"Yes." I answered simply, summing up ages 6 to 18 of professional ballet training 3 to 8 hours a day, 6 days a week in a small school 5 hours away in Virginia. "I know who you are," she was beaming. I didn't recognize her face but I started to open as if I had, knowing that she was aware of such a huge part of my life before I moved to NYC for dance.
Just 3 weeks prior I had called a Healing Circle for Dancers in this very studio after many burning converesations with dancers who had left the dance world and in some way left a part of themselves still in it. "You probably know my father more than you know me," she gave me his name and then hers. Her father used to fly the scrims in and out during our tech rehearsals and performances. Yes, I believe I had heard the director calling his name for years. Here his daughter stood before me at the doorway to the dance studio.
"Are you dancing now?" I asked. She explained that she had left when she was 12. She "walked out," her hands gestured a sweeping "X" across her body. "I mean I walked out completely." She went on to say that she recently started social dance, swing, but it wasn't "real dance." Her eyes and tone suggested that I would agree, having shared the same strict definition of dance from our backgrounds. But I didn't. I was so happy that she was opening a new relationship with dance 15 years later. "And now these crazy people," she swung a hand toward the studio already filling with the next group of dancers, "actually convinced me to perform." She looked undeniably happy.
She started to repeat again that she "walked out, I mean walked out" on dance. "Yes," I nodded, "that's very common. I'm so happy you are reconnecting to the part of you that loved dance before our studio defined it." She had no idea the syncronicity of her seeing me in this studio at this time of the week where I come regularly to "walk back in" to dance, whole. "I'm so glad you said something to me," I said as she turned to enter the studio.
I have always loved dance more than anything, even when someone else was describing what it was and what it wasn't. But these days there is a phenomenal choreography of dancers dispursing for 10, 15 years, and then slowly turning to face back to the center. "Steve, can you fly the scrim in for the next scene? Raise the lights on stage right, we want to see their glowing faces."
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