From my amazing friend and colleague Adam Barley, a master 5Rhythms teacher in England. His words resonate deeply with me… passing them on. And yes, Gabrielle’s books are genius. So much wisdom in her glorious life on earth. Adelle
“To listen to the no-sound of the breath, expanding into the stillness and spaciousness that brings.
To tune into the same consciousness we find when we dance – aware of the body, it’s instincts and hunches about timing, space, and pace.
To allow the free flow and creative expression of our feelings in and out of relationship with others, including more body-awareness and embodied communication with our friends, lovers, and enemies, remembering how to speak straight from the heart, and listen with everything we have.
To totally engage in the moment to moment teachings and alchemy that the events of our lives are constantly giving us – whether in a brush with a stranger, an intimacy with our family, a conflict with a friend, or encounters with birth, death, sex, money, and creative endeavor. All the stuff of life has the potential for deep and profound personal evolution, both as healing and growth. Whether you dance daily at home, weekly at your local class, or in periodic high-octane blasts at workshops, a strong practice will create and strengthen pathways in your body-heart-mind that make this kind of engagement more readily available. Gabrielle Roth, the founder of this practice, communicated this kind of engagement with life so beautifully in all three of her books. (If you haven’t read them, just do it. They’re brilliant.) There’s something about movement practices that do this particularly well I think. Because they’re rooted in the body, they create pathways within us, new neural networks, that engage us with ourselves and each other in a very ‘whole’ way. Then off the dance floor those same pathways quite naturally get used to engage us in some mysterious way with life, allowing it to affect us more deeply and teach us more vibrantly, shaking us loose from our moorings of social convention, constantly nudging us awake.
Nudge me awake. More please. Next step. I’m waking up again. A little more. Listen. Yes. Now. Take a breath. This is it. Let love in. Let myself show. Let life hurt me. Let life bless me. Let go, let go, let go. Let go of letting go and stick with something long enough for creation to happen. Let this be. Here we come.
All these things happen all the time. There is no need for a dance floor. No need to move in a way that would look weird whilst shopping for vegetables at the market.
Now is the moment of power.” Adam Barley
Adam’s website: http://www.adambarley.com/