Separating culture from method from insight is key, in meditation and spiritual pursuits.
The same as separating your love for your teachers personality from their insight.

This is a pin, for me to come back to, and unpack more fully, at a later time.

Remember my dear friends.

We are a collective.

Many people have experienced interconnection, in a real and felt way, for the first time in their lives.

They woke up to interconnection as something more than a construct... but rather a felt, recognized, noticed experience.

And it's scared them.

For alot of people, their first introduction to interconnection has been through a world-wide panic response.

Let me repeat.

Their first introduction to interconnection has been through panic.

We can shift that.

This is a time to recognize the collective intelligence we are all contributing to.

Rather than getting annoyed at someone who does things different than you... you can recognize that they carry a different type of brain, and they are attending to reality in a different way... which means they have gifts you don't have.

And you can start looking for those gifts inside them... and inside yourselves.

Some people are excellent 3rd-person perspective people. They are great at collecting research and evidence. GOOD. let them be the people that provide you with the covid-19 info that you can trust.

Others are incredible 2nd person perspective people. They know how to understand their friends... they can listen... they can hold space for your hearts.... Reach out to them for support.

Others are incredible 1st person perspective people. They can write beautiful poetry or stories. Indulge in their humour or arts.

Ask yourself... where can I ask for help? 
And ask yourself "where can i notice my gifts and give them?"

Like me remembering that I love meditation... and I can inspire my friends to make this self-isolation into a meditation retreat.

Please consider sharing this post to remind people that everyone has a gift and its your job to figure out what your gifts are. and finding other peoples gifts, especially those who are different than you.

This is a facebook post that covers my first teaching in my community sharing circles series. Please consider joining discussions like these. 

                                                                                                                                                           photo: Mohammad Nohassi

In the same way one must learn the alphabet and vocabulary before they can spontaneously express poetry, so too one must learn the vocabulary of the body, before one can express their  truth through movement.

When a musician learns scales they build that musical repertoire into their bones. The movement repertoire or body vocabulary are things like understanding joints, ligaments, expansion, contraction, compression, release. Effort actions from Laban's systems, and 5 Rhythms from Gabrielle Roth. We learn what dimensions of space the body can move within and the quality of movement through those dimensions.

We can then take a psychological approach. What movement-qualities am I comfortable with? What movement types do I avoid? What happens to my body, my heart, my mind, when I push myself into new territory? Do I turn away? Do I dive in? Do I fight against emotional release?

​Big Dance is derived from the word BIG. Big with a capitol BE. I have a personal relationship to this word as I worked with a Zen Master through a 16 step Koan practice.

"And what word would you use to describe this awareness?" Junpo asked?

My heart was pounding. My ribs were tight. My breath was deep. My skin was glistening.

"Big". I held his gaze.

He and his eyes smiled. "Do we give it to her?" he called out to Zendo. 

"YES!" They roared in laughter.

"Big. Big with a capitol BE" he laughed.

You see Big, was the word that I was using to refer to the awareness of the unbreakable, imperturbable, vast, ever present, spacious awareness that is always accessible, even if we sometimes forget it's there.

This awareness of awareness itself is known by many athletes, dancers, artists, trauma survivors, busy mothers, fathers, business people. It is an ever present stillness that never disappears, no matter how much activity, chaos, conflict, beauty, arousal, laughter, is present. This stillness is a stillness that runs so deep, it can't help but express it's own joy through the impulse to flicker and dance and come alive.

Big Dance is the collective dance that emerges between multiple people who have accessed this imperturbable stillness, and have surrendered entirely to the movements that begin to move through their bodies, from that stillness.

In bringing this authentic movement from one's individual expression, to weaving it through a collective space, a dance bigger than you, starts to emerge. A dance bigger than your day, your opinions, your trauma, this life time.

Big Dance is the dance of collective intelligence that is dying to express itself and transform itself in the container of the movement space. Big Dance brings fourth our ancestors' wisdoms, pains, revelations, from being dormant in our bones.

Big Dance is primal. It becomes musical as our feet, our hands, our breathing, our voices start to weave themselves together, the same way bullrushes sing to rivers as the winds call from the thunders and birds cry for their mothers.

Big Dance lends itself to Big Song. Big Song, creates Big Dance.

From the landscape of our bodies, comes trails, like scales, to deeper dimensions of ourselves. You can never do it wrong, you can only listen deeper, surrender more.

photo by levi guzman.

We are all drawn to different types of music. Some of us love the low and heavy vibrations of grunge metal, while other's flow and sway to the quiet and kindness of a piano instrumental, with layers of ocean and rainfall. Many of us love the sharp cadence of 90's rap and the slurring sounds of whatever hip-hop is today.

Each of these music styles have a different effect on your mind and on your body. If you learn to tune into the effects the music has on your unique configuration of bio-chemistry, you can start using this to your advantage.

You can use music carry you through a tough work-day when you have no energy. You can use music to calm you down after a big fight. You can use music to bring you to stillness and breathing, or you can use it to break you out of your tense muscles and into freedom.

All music genres evoke different body patterns and movement bias' from all people.

Some music sends you turning in circles. Other music has you bopping your head. Other music has you rippling your spine from side to side as your eyes have a soft gaze. 

While most musicians don't have any idea the impact of the their style of music on the crowd, any good DJ, musician, and dance facilitator can see the shift and changes in the crowd, depending on what music is played. They can also see that different types of people respond to to different types of songs!

We are all drawn to different music (and thus different movements) and learning when to push ourselves into "new music territory" can be the perfect way to wake our body's up for better health!

This is a very simple glimpse at what ancient civilizations have been harnessing and working with, long before we ever had science to measure it.

When you come to class, you will see how I work with my student's particular bias's and tendencies, I curate and create music playlists to help elicit the most powerful and useful movements you and the group need, to help break out of your comfort zone and into the transformation zone.

Sometimes it's about expressing deep struggle. Sometimes it's about embodying greater happiness. Sometimes it's about controlled, taught movements, sometimes it's about total spontaneity.  All of our personalities have bais' towards one of these over the other. And all of our personalities are made to be expanded and explored.

Over time, you yourself will  become more and more in-tune to the music and the powerful expression and power and vulnerability you can have access to.

Keep your eyes open for other blogs where I tell you about how movement can help you move through blocked Chakras, trauma from birth and even just release toxins and provide lymphatic drainage, amoung countless other health possibilities!

Written by:
Alexandra Tataryn
@originalbody__ on Instagram and Facebook