Gratitude Dance This Saturday Night at Yoga Shala

This month marks the 2nd anniversary of Ecstatic Dance in Spokane!! This month's Ecstatic Dance intention provides us an opportunity to celebrate our gratitude for the miraculous gift of our lives on this planet in this time of growth and transformation. So, come dance your Thank You! in a collective embrace of soul and body. Bring your Friend!

How can we express gratitude in our dance? We can let go of our cynicism, our attitudes of self-judgment and criticism. We can offer our dances of joy as a prayer for our tribe and the planet. We can dance with a recognition that we are all beautiful embodied beings, showing up in the fullness of our power, embracing grace as Movers of Light the to beat of our drums. We can express our hearts.

Ecstatic Dance is all about it!

Hope to see you on the dance floor!

Special Ecstatic Dance Event - Liz Temple comes to Spokane!

Hello, Dancers!

Since my first experience of dancing ecstatically in community in Hawaii a few years ago, I have been exploring various aspects of "movement as spiritual practice."  As my experience continues to deepen, I've discovered  tremendous wisdom and teaching in Gabrielle Roth's  5Rhythms map for ecstatic dance.  With its beginnings over twenty years ago, Gabrielle's dynamic work now moves globally in an rapidly growing, interconnected community of practice.  I first encountered that community at Burning Man last year, and then again in Olympia this past New Year's at Waves Studio .  Inspired by the energy of their community, I committed to bringing a connection to our fledgling community here, and began a conversation with Liz Temple, the owner and home teacher at Waves.  On Sunday, May 3rd, Liz will be joining us at Harmony Yoga for a special Sunday morning Sweat Your Prayers dance, followed by an afternoon session for those who want to experience 5Rhythms and move deeper into the potential of the work.  Liz is an exceptional teacher and DJ, and so I invite you and your friends to what I believe will be a heart-opening, joyous experience.  

Please email me at ian.daddio@gmail.com or call (509.990.6434 or 509.747.2993), if you would like to register for the afternoon session, or would like further information.   You can do either session or both.  The cost for Sweat Your Prayers is $15 and for Deep Waves $45.  There will be a $10 discount for those participating in both the morning and afternoon dance sessions.

Descriptions: 

Sweat Your Prayers

Sunday 10:30am -1 pm This class is drop in $15

This uplifting Sunday morning dance is the perfect antidote for our overburdened lives. This is a time to come together in community and do the practice of the 5Rhythms Wave. In Sweat Your Prayers, you are free to follow your own dance as we move through the rhythms of flowing, staccato, chaos, lyrical and stillness. After a warm-up dance we move through an uninterrupted wave of the 5Rhythms, freeing your body and opening your heart. Each person is free to dance alone or with others.

Deep Waves

Sunday 2:00pm - 5:00pm This class is $45, Registration requested

The 5Rhythms® are a dynamic map of the way energy moves. Just like light, sound, or ocean waves, a dancing body when moving freely passes through 5 distinct rhythmic patterns. We navigate this map by putting ourselves into motion, finding the shape of our bodies in each new moment, and releasing into our creative spirit. In this special day of in-depth discovery, we play with the elements of the map and discover new ways of being in motion.

When Movement Was Our Language

Here's a teaser line from a wonderful novel I'm reading right now, Night Train to Lisbon by Pascal Mercier: 

"Given that we can live only a small part of what there is in us--what happens to the rest?" 

Dance and creative movement are a way to experience "the rest"  in us.   Our interior universe mirrors our exterior universe,  and through our movement, we weave ourselves deeper into the space of who we are.  Here I find myself, 55 years old, a divorced male with a 30+ year professional career in one of the most rigid and conservative of all businesses, falling in love with ecstatic dancing.  This dancing isn't ballroom, latin, line, contra, hip hop, tango, or any  type of structured dance technique.  This dancing is spiritual practice, therapy, art, a way of creative expression.

Mary Starks Whitehouse, who founded dance therapy, said this in 1956!:

"We no longer know it but there was a time when movement was our language.  It was long ago and we can't remember, but we were born into an alien world in which the first movement was breathing--that sharp inflation of the lungs that brings the first cry."

When I use the language of movement, I feel poetry  inside me, an "imaginative awareness of experience expressed through meaning, sound, and rhythm."  Dancing with that awareness is the experience of my breath.  At the core of my experience, growing with my practice , is my stillpoint.   Gabrielle Roth, the founder and developer of the 5Rhythms dance practice, has said that the quickest way to still the mind is to move the body.  It really works for me!