Contact Improvisation - A Dance of Life

Last Friday we shared an evening of contact improvisation dance.

Contact is a form of dance in which we use our bodies to communicate with one another. It revolves around the dialogue regarding the alignment of our centers, about offering to support another's and for the other to trust you enough to place him or herself onto your center.

Interactions that take place in this dance are metaphors for life. For instance, the need to listen. But in this form, as it is a dance, the need to listen is about listening with your body to the bodies around you. As I move through the space, and encounter others, a dialogue ensues about whether I wish to take your weight, about how I wish to do so, and for how long. Whether you move in towards me offering, or away, removing.

Just as in Tango, the couple communicates via their centers, by keeping them aligned and in a certain relationship, and thus can move together. In contact, it consists of an interaction of taking and giving, of supporting and being supported.

Resistance is the way to hurting yourself or someone else. Resistance causes pain. Use the energy coming at you to flow into the new configuration. Each movement being an amalgam of your desire and interaction with your environment. Both have necessary constraints which will affect the outcome.

Julian...
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Soul Journeys and Sacred Dances - workshop

Dance expertise is not necessary as we enter our body spaces through movement. We will look at our poetic inner landscapes and protect our spaces. We will use our hearts intelligence as
we encounter The Serpent of our Inner Power :))

The ability to move from our 3D world into an altered state where original healing occurs,
is a valuable skill. Exploring our inner realms with confidence and support, a space appears
where dreams are born and choices made.

$80
- Please put in a deposit by 10th Aug. If you have a problem with payment, let us know and we can make a sliding scale arrangement with pleasure :)

Bring a packed lunch, your journal, something to lay down on and a covering. Wear comfy clothes.

email Susan at [email protected]
or Lyn at [email protected]
or call (203) 623-6026

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Wise Council

“The soul, when accustomed to superfluous things acquires a strong habit of desiring others which are necessary neither for the preservation of the individual nor for that of the species. This desire is without limit; whilst things which are necessary are few, and restricted within certain bounds. Lay this well to heart, reflect on it again and again; that which is superfluous is without end (and therefore the desire for it also without limit).

What more can I say? Since I read this piece, it has pervaded my consciousness.

Thus you desire to have your vessels of silver, but golden vessels are better; others even have vessels studded with sapphires, emeralds, or rubies.

I understood the desire for the faster car, and the bigger house and more money. Now I begin to look for it in my life...

Those, therefore, who are ignorant of this truth, that the desire for superfluous things is without limit, are constantly in trouble and pain.

What I understand from this then is that this is one of the existential causes of our discomfort. This gives me a place to look for my own desires for superfluous things.

When they thus meet with the consequences of their course they complain of the judgements of God; they go so far as to say that God’s power is insufficient, because He has given to this Universe the properties which they imagine cause these evils.

Moses Maimonides 1190 from "The Book of Jewish Thoughts"

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from my writings.

cranial sacral body tides
ink on paper

Complexity theory and quantum physics have shown the primal uncertainty of our understanding of being in this world. Explorations of how the brain functions and neuropsychology during a shaman’s journey link Heidegger’s debate that understanding is “always ahead of itself” thus projecting expectations that interpretation attempts to clarify. Physicist Von Neuman’s contribution, asserts that “we futuristically collapse a wave function in ways that cause a fundamental, unknowable disturbance in the system”...creating and spontaneously bringing into existence something that did not exist before. Therefore, it can be said that we “know” already, what the synecdoches and metaphors mean, when they are retrieved from our inner conscious by a shaman artist who brings them forth in creation.

Lyn




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Shamanic Journey workshop in the Eastern Cape.

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Journey work

This morning I received an SMS from a friend of mine. He has been struggling for a long time now trying to find a steady source of income for himself and his family. A number of months ago, his Rabbi encouraged him to put more effort into the spiritual side of his life. By this, the Rabbi meant attend services more often, say your prayers twice a day, and lay the 'tefillin' every morning. He did lay tefillin for a little while, but soon tired of that.

Since then, he began to see me to do some inner journey work. It is a form of journey work called the "Merkava Descent" that has been handed down to me from ancient Hebraic traditions. We spent a number of session descending into his inner spaces and working in there, rearranging, investigating, shedding some light on what is often regarded as the shadow, the unknown, unconscious aspect of our existence.

Recently we have begun to meet in a group to practise a similar technique. And as group prayer is know to be more effective than praying alone, so this journeying held withing the safety and support of the group - similar to voodoo rituals - is know to be more efficacious.

So in conclusion,.

Inner work produces results in the outer. The only problem is, because of the non-linearity of the relationship, the relationship cannot be scientifically (by the present methods of science, anyway) proven. Science cannot say whether there is any "factual connection".

I ask, what if science had to make an effort to prove this connection. I mean a "real" effort. Just as from the belief in Democritus' concept of the atom, we have produced this wonderful, and useful, edifice to modern physics, some of it of practical use and a lot of it very speculative. What if we truly believed there was a connection between the inner and the outer, and we used the same type of mathematics (or something similar) that we have been using to describe the inner world of the atom to describe this essential non-linear, chaotic and unpredictable relationship.

Julian

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The Alchemy of the Feminine in Shamanism

Join us on Sunday, 10th April from 10 till 3pm

At Alive Dance School
16 Palmer Rd, Muizenberg, Cape Town

We will open with the directions of the Medicine Wheel and then journey to meet and connect with our Mother Earth.
Learn how to protect and clear ourselves with Medicine Spaces.
Bring a small bundle of your personal jewelery. We will play awhile in the realms of our Divine Feminine archetypes. Lovely and surprising.
We will meet and say "hello" to the Inner Serpent energy of our belly's in Sacred Dance.

Please wear your ceremonial regalia if you have.

Men are welcome to join in an outer circle.

Bring a cushion, lunch and beverage.

Donation of R150 or best can do :)

More info: email [email protected] or phone 0832313704
RSVP please.

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