Dancing your Heart Chakra

“The power of love to change bodies is legendary, built into folklore, common sense, and everyday experience. Love moves the flesh, it pushes matter around.... Throughout history, ‘tender loving care’ has uniformly been recognized as a valuable element in healing.” - Larry Dossey

The focus of tonight’s class is to access and dance with the energy center of our heart. The heart chakra (energy center) is located in the center of the chest at the breastbone. It is considered the emotional center and gateway of love, compassion and joy. We will sense the beat of our heart and the love that originates and spirals out of this energy center to fill our entire body and our world.

The Institute of Heart Math, a nonprofit research center that has been studying the electromagnetic energy generated by emotions and the human heart for over a decade, recently found that:
“Compared to the electromagnetic field produced by the brain, the electrical component of the heart’s field is about 60 times greater in amplitude, and permeates every cell of the body. The magnetic component is approximately 5,000 times stronger than the brain’s magnetic field and can be detected several feet away from the body with sensitive magentometers.”

Come dance your heart energy tonight from 5:30pm – 6:30pm at Open Flight Studio in the University District.

Sensing and Presence

The focus of tonight’s Gentle Nia and Nia 5 Stages class is cultivating presence through tracking the sensations of pleasure and pain in the body. The simple definition of presence is the state of being present. We’ll be using our breath and the art of sensing to cultivate presence with our bodies. And with this spirit of attention, to make any necessary modifications in our movements to move towards pleasure. Class is from 5pm - 6pm at the Civetta Dance Space in Greenwood.

Triple P

"Dancers aren't made of their technique, but their passion." - Source Unknown

The focus of this morning’s Nia class is dancing your passion to the routine Passion using pleasure as your guide. Triple P!

There are two definitions of passion that I invite you to work with today:

- Passion as a powerful or compelling emotion or feeling. For Nia, I invite you to choose love.

- Passion as boundless enthusiasm.

Join me this morning in infusing our movements with pleasure, emotion, feeling and boundless enthusiasm for the dance. Class at 11am at Fresh Fitness and Dance in Wallingford.

Appreciation as an Act of Love

“When you look at love, you're looking into the face of appreciation.” - Unknown

One of the last things Anna Halprin said to us this weekend was something like “do one thing to honor and show reverence for your body every single day. Your body is all you have.” This reminded me of a quote I saw yesterday on the IDEA Facebook page: “Take care of your body. It's the only place you have to live. - Jim Rohn.”

I show reverence for my body through conscious and loving movement. I dance with pleasure and joy as my faithful guides. I spend at least five minutes per day practicing the Nia 5 Stages. It is my morning ritual. With this practice, I lovingly allow for my body to return to alignment every morning. How do you show your body appreciation?

The focus of tonight’s class is appreciating our bodies as an act of love. Tonight we will show appreciation through movement the Nia way - with love, pleasure and Joy.

Join me for class from 6pm – 7pm at Delilah’s Belly Dance Studio in Fremont.

Exploring Relationships

I had a profoundly moving experience at the Anna Halprin workshop this past weekend. The experience has inspired me to return to movement and dance with new levels of awareness and depth. I will write more extensively about my experience later on.

"Articulating the body as a fine instrument is just step one. When you motivate the use of a particular area of the body, it begins to stimulate feelings, which begin to stimulate images, which begin to connect with your own personal experiences within your life theme. In this way it becomes a total education. I call [what I teach] ‘integrative movement,’ by which I mean movement that integrates all the parts." – Anna Halprin

We did a lot of work with partners at the workshop, often working in pairs but sometimes in larger groups. We also spent a lot of time exploring polarities with movement and sensation such as front-back, left-right, up-down, gravity-levity, and tight-loose. I had a keen awareness of the relationship between my body parts, body sensations, my sense of self in the space, and interaction with my partners. I also received insight into the stories my body tells as I move.

I noticed, with wonder and awe, how initiating an upward movement from my hand created length in my waist whereas initiating the same upward movement with my elbow created length in my ribcage. I noticed how this sensation deepened my breath and brought with it feelings of love and expansion.

Don't worry, we won't be trying this move in class :)

It is still February and thus all of my classes will focus on an aspect of Love. Most people associate love with being in relationship whether that is to ones self or another.

Tonight, our class focus will be on exploring relationships with our bodies. This could be as simple as exploring how a movement in one body part affects another part or it could be as deep as how our movements affect our emotional lives.

I invite you to join me exploring the many levels of relationships tonight. Class is from 6:30pm – 7:30pm at Fresh Fitness and Dance in Wallingford.

On a Movement Adventure

“Through art and dance we reclaim our primal heritage and move towards a more embodied future.” - Anna Halprin

I am headed on a movement adventure. This weekend I will be participating in a special weekend workshop with Anna Halprin. The focus of the workshop is on the intelligence of the body and our ability to create personal and collective dances that have meaning. The weekend will include movement rituals and other somatic experiences beneath the beautiful redwood trees in Marin. I have been looking forward to this weekend for months and hope it will make me a better person, teacher and student of movement as a healing art.

More about Anna Halprin:

Elise Tissot-Storey

Elise Tissot-Storey will be teaching the routine "Butterfly" tonight and tomorrow. I have not taught this routine yet but I can tell you that Elise teaches it so beautifully! She teaches with such grace and heart. I thoroughly enjoy dancing with Elise. She has inspired me to learn this routine. Come dance Butterfly with her while I am in San Francisco!

Classes are canceled on Sunday, February 20th and Monday, February 21st.

I return to Seattle next week and am looking forward to resuming my regular teaching schedule on Thursday, February 24th!

Effortless Passion

Tonight I am debuting the routine “Passion.” The focus of this routine is dancing your body from a place of effortlessness and love.

There is a lot of repetition in this routine and an opportunity to ease into each movement.

Effortlessness is a conscious choice to take the path of least resistance. It’s the sensation of allowing, gliding and riding the energy of our movements.

Love is energy. When you infuse your dance with love, movement can become effortless.

I encourage you to find the effortlessness in moving your body with joy and love. After all, dancing, fun, joy and love should be and can be effortless when we consciously choose it.

Join me for an effortless class tonight from 6:30pm – 7:30pm at Fresh Fitness and Dance in Wallingford.