The boar (Varaha, Sukara) is an ancient invocation in many cultures. We find the boar in the 12,000 year old pillars at Gobekli Tepe and amongst the ancient temples and sites in India. The boar invocation is a central practice in Chatushpada or the four-footed or four dimensions of consciousness in body-led spirituality.
Read MoreDance is ephemeral, it is not easily a "product" and this makes it more difficult for us to recognise it as a legitimate manifestation. My sense is that dance underpins everything other manifestation—that sense you have of your movement within you is a signal of this truth. I feel recognising dance as a way of expressing your inner impulses in these times may lead you to other forms eventually...
Read MoreOver centuries of linear, mind-led knowledge systems and spiritual traditions, we have lost the attending to the multi-dimensional nature of reality. In body-led dance inquiry there is a practice called chatushpada which literally means four-footed but which also signals four dimensions of awareness or consciousness. In practice this means holding at least four parts in any encounter with reality which removes a simplistic linear interpretation.
Read MoreThe upside down Ashvatta tree is an ancient invocation of the sacred body that dates back to at least 8-10,000 years in the artefacts from Indus Valley civilisation. In this invocation, the body is experienced as the upside down Ashvatta tree. The enigmatic reversal proposed in this practice is at the heart of body-led spirituality.
Read MoreWhen I was a young philosophy student under my traditional teacher, I remember saying to him one particularly busy week that I did not have time for spiritual contemplation. He asked me what else asked my energy and attention. And I listed many important things—family commitments, work demands, social events and the like. And he gently asked me why I felt that spirituality was separate to “other” priorities. Does that mean that the rest of my life is un-spiritual he asked.
Read MoreNight is an endangered domain in our times! Goddess Ratri, the Goddess of Night, has all but disappeared in our material and spiritual invocations. We celebrate light, light-divinities and lighted gadgets that rob us of sleep. And darkness and Night become dispensable.
Read MoreDance is not just movement, it is movement that has the power to be a language. It has its own dynamics of time, space, weight and shape that, when understood in their fullness, allows us to manifest meaning and expression far beyond the capacity of verbal languages. In its most expansive expressions, like ritual dance, dance functions as embodied symbols that connect us across space and time, and through this awakens timelessness and fleshes the Divine. Ritual dance renders the Divine intimate.
Read MoreNature is experienced as “Rasa”, the taste beyond the performance, the sensation that is invoked by the dancer and which is equally experienced by the “spectators” of the performance. Rasa unites dancer and spectator, dissolving duality in a shared domain of sensation. In this union, all dualities dissolve. The mind dissolves into the Rasa and becomes one with Nature Consciousness.
Read MoreThe creative dimension of co-creation is something we overlook in our times when creativity is considered “non-essential”. The nature of moving with the Divine is dance because the movement is not of a functional nature as the mind would propose, but is an aesthetic manifestation. This is almost impossible for us to consider in these times when we have separated the functional from the creative and prioritized the functional as more essential to life than artistic manifestations. And this is the tragedy of the times we live in.
Read MoreVery often in my classes and individual sessions I hear from women how they are already practising embodied spiritual traditions but still feel disconnected from their bodies. It takes some unraveling for them to experience the difference between simply embodying a practice and a body-led inquiry as life.
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