Body Joy – Bella Dreizler

Tuning in with interest to a lot of talk this last year about the influx of Ecstatic Dance into communities and the effect this has on other dance practices that are already flourishing. This whole sad conversation about territory and who will prevail and which is better. Really people, we are talking about dance here and I say the more dance the better.

Let’s get some clear definitions going here though. To me, Ecstatic Dance is the big old generic term for what people have been doing for thousands of years. Around bon fires, accompanied by drums, people have moved to the beat before anybody thought to give it a name. But in the current use of the term I think some people equate Ecstatic Dance with DJ-ed music, sometimes, but not always, unvaried in tempo or genre, and no verbal instruction. A space where you are free to “do your own thing”, never have to take a partner or move in a way other than what your own internal compass dictates.

Now there are many established forms of the generic use of the term Ecstatic Dance – 5Rhythms, Soul Motion, Contact Improv, Zumba, NIA – maybe because us Western creatures like to get all heady and start defining things, make up complex systems where an embodied intuition originally seemed to be enough. But I actually think this is a good development; because of how we live, many of us benefit from having some form, some invitation to movement, some instruction. Many of us suffer from some degree of disconnect with our body and its incredible possibility for movement. If you are reading this, you are sitting, completely in your head, in front of a computer, the exact state I am in as I write this. We spend a friggin’ amount of time in this heady place, some of us more than others.

Here’s what I see when I’m looking out on the dance floor, corroborated by what I feel when I am out there myself. We all have our signature moves. If I’m on my own out there and actually engage in my 5Rhythms practice – walking through the space, body parts, feeling my weight & fluidity, expressing clear moves, letting go of whatever I am holding on to – well, on a good day, sometimes new stuff emerges, always a delight. I like it even better when a teacher offers up some suggestions in my willing ear. I crave that! Never really understood the big old resistance some people have about that. Like they are so self-sufficient, so instruction-adverse that they have no space for trying on something someone deems interesting. What is the big deal? I am eternally grateful for skilled guidance.

And there is one more thing I have to say, because 5Rhythms practice is so close to my heart. I’m pretty sure I could have spent the last 10 years unguided on an Ecstatic Dance floor and had a great time. But I would not be where I am today. I learned the language of this practice by showing up many hours and trying on just about every verbal invitation. And then I took that language to the workshop maps and did the work I needed to do for years. My body is softer, my heart is more open, my mind is way more free, my soul has found an expression it was yearning for and my spirit is palpable in a way only grace could deliver.

So let’s not quibble about what is best here. Only you can know. And you’ll know for sure if you stick with a particular practice for about a year and keep showing up no matter what. Because when it gets sticky or gets boring or gets frustrating there is usually some pretty ripe and juicy stuff right around the corner. And sometimes it helps to have some support for the discoveries that are just waiting to happen. I know this is true.

Let’s keep moving it…bella

We’d have to be blind to miss the big message of the season: everything is beginning anew. Weeds spontaneously erupt wherever there is an opportune nook; tendrils unfurl on branch tips you could have sworn were dead; even the air is crisp and pollinated.

The following quotes are from Such Singing in Wild Branches by Mary Oliver, full text is posted on the blog:

“…I was filled with gladness-
and that’s when it happened,
when I seemed to float,
to be, myself, a wing or a tree-
the sands in the glass stopped…
…while gravity sprinkled upward
like rain rising…”

Right here, in our chair, we can begin anew with gravity, our lifetime companion. Rock the pelvis all around, feel the response of the heart center and the head. We can keep exploring until we settle into a way of being that naturally stacks these three centers and feels like “gravity sprinkled upward, like rain rising”. We can begin anew in this moment, invite a sense of ease.

In this new place, we might soften the floor of the pelvis, relax the shoulders and mouth and let the page blur under a soft gaze, for just a few precious seconds.

“Such soft and solemn and perfect music
doesn’t last
for more than a few moments.”

Sometimes, if we fall into a gravity assisted ease and just relax, when we lightly touch the breath instead of defaulting to the unending thought parade, we might be rewarded with a sense of spaciousness, delivery to the mystery.

“It’s one of those magical places wise people
like to talk about….
Listen, everyone has a chance.
Is it spring?…
does your own soul need comforting?
Quick then-open the door and fly on your
heavy feet; the song
may already be drifting away.”

Let’s fall into practice this week with ease, with relaxation, with the spaciousness that comes from letting go of all that remains from the dead of winter, all that no longer serves us. Let’s throw it on the dance compost heap and feel what is sprouting. Two opportunities: Spring Waves begins Thursday, pre-enroll for best value or drop in. Sweat Your Prayers is Easter Sunday. What a way to start this holy-day. Details in sidebar.

Take a chance. Comfort the soul. Fly on heavy feet…this is the magical place… love, bella

A pause from the 24/7, feeling held in this extended moment of grace, just sitting in this whole day with a long list of to-do and not tending to it much. The scattered remnants of a three day workshop litter the landscape and the clutter just makes me smile instead of cringe. Dirty laundry, a sink full of dishes, tired bones…and a completely satisfied body, full up heart and empty mind. A long afternoon nap. Yes.

Sometimes this is the outcome of immersing in a long extended practice. Sometimes the outcome is anything but this: a stirring up, a stripping away, an OMG what now sense. Not feeling so good about this. And either state is a good thing.

This is actually what we investigated during this Light & Shadow weekend. It is the whole package that makes us human: the way we can be so incredibly fluid one moment and then drag our butts around in the next. The way we can cut though our day with the clarity of a samurai and then turn right around and be an uptight cretin a minute later. The way we know how to shake things off one day and then run around trying to control the world the next.

It put me on to one of my favorite Bella characters. I call her the Energizer Bunny. The crazy woman who bounces through some hours like a dented ping pong ball thinking that if she just keeps going things will stay under control. And then, when that doesn’t work, when it builds to that impossible inevitable chaotic peak, well she can just take herself out by falling into confusion…what’d you say? What just happened? I don’t get it…again. And I love her, she gets so much done in the world, and she takes care of herself the best she knows how. And it has worked fairly well for a long and full life. But she’s on the observation block for a bit and I would like to see her taking more time to re-charge those batteries.

I am grateful to Kathy Altman who brilliantly led this investigation with so much tenderness and skill, to the Sacramento crew who made it such a seamless experience for us all and to the amazing people who showed up so completely and gave it their all (including the rest who showed up for the rockin’ Sweat on Sunday). I am so blessed by this community.

That being said, there is no class this Thursday but we start up again with 5Rhythms Spring Waves on April 5, running 10 weeks. See sidebar for pre-enrollment or register on the first night. Pre-enrollment is the most cost effective way to practice and drop ins are still welcome. Sweat Your Prayers on Sunday is with Eugene Hedlund at the helm. I’ll be out there moving with you.

Writing from this taking a breather place….love, bella

I am sitting in a Mill Valley room, my 87 year-old father snoozing in the next bed over. We came down from Sac this morning during the weather break and hiked the Tennessee Valley trail to the Pacific. How special it is to do this with the man who taught me to love hiking, noticing every little thing the earth offers up, every different wildflower, those wild looking reeds, the stands of eucalyptus, the whole experience wrapped inside a peek-a-boo sun and the cold whip of wind. Precious time. The day before this one, a priceless 24 hours with 4 generations: a walk in McKinley Park, dinner together, the Railroad Museum, simply passing the time.

Mostly I float around in the world vaguely rootless, it is like that for so many of us in the New World. We leave home as soon as we can and carve our own independent paths in the world. We anchor ourselves in community of our own making, people we choose for one reason or another, people of our own liking. In this brave new world, if we get uncomfortable, it is possible to ditch the communities we create for ourselves by simply dropping out or moving away. In the old days, our need for community was filled by our own flesh and blood and it didn’t matter if these people were perhaps not your preferred company, they were yours and you hung with them.

There is something so exquisite in this family experience for us. It goes right to the heart of the happiness question. When we think that our happiness depends on how the people around us behave (if only…[fill in the blank]…) or how we believe we are being treated by others (if only…[fill in the blank]…), we are in for big heap of suffering. When we spend time with family, there is no way around this. We simple cannot discard them. And as we stay with, as we hang in there, as we ride the roller coaster, in the end we are rewarded with the big one: what it means to truly love and be loved. Which is not always easy. Which might take a lifetime to appreciate. Which is totally worth it. Which is maybe why we were put on this earth to begin with.

Rumi says it for us all:

The pull of what you really love is strong this week, especially on the dance floor. Come out for the last Thursday Winter Waves before we take a one week break and start Spring Waves. Come out and dance Friday, Saturday and Sunday to explore Light & Shadow (see family commentary above) and come to Sweat Your Prayers on Sunday morning, augmented with live drumming and song. “It will not lead you astray.”

Love, bella

“There is only one world, the world pressing against you at this minute. There is only one minute in which you are alive, this minute here and now. The only way to live is by accepting each minute as an unrepeatable miracle.” – Storm Jameson

We go in and out of stay-awake strategies and I have been all about mindfulness lately, relentless in fact. Some of this unwavering attention is born of frustration: exasperation with myself and my wily ways plus the added vexation of witnessing students facing the same beast. I have a whole rant about the ways we are not here, strategies for arriving, and the momentary bliss of being here. I notice how we drift around these three territories and wonder if this depends on our mindfulness or is it just the human predicament? I feel some self-imposed pressure to stay on it enough to track my status on this slippery slope.

But wait, something’s missing here. I sense an undercurrent: if we can’t track well, if we can’t practice being mindful, then something is wrong. Or worse, if we do track well and decide we’re coming up short then we are morally obligated to fix ourselves. This is the way we just add on to the pile we have been erecting over a lifetime…just not good enough and need to work on that. This self-flogging moment is a great signal to attune to what might balance this attitude. We do want to be mindful and we might invoke a quality of spaciousness around that, become permeable with the allowing of all that entails. How ‘bout if we wake up to ourselves and also melt open our hearts, offer ourselves abiding compassion as if we were our own best mommy, a soft bed that mindfulness can snuggle down into.

There is a very crafty back door to abiding compassion: noticing what is right. We can start actively looking for the “unrepeatable miracles.” If we are looking for the opposite – what is wrong here, what is not working, what do I need to fix – we are a far cry from compassion, we aren’t even on the same planet. And so we can be anywhere – home, classroom, shopping mall, freeway – and notice what is good, what’s working really well, what is beautiful, what is thriving and alive. If we whole-heartedly seek out this quality, we are being mindful and compassionate in the same moment. And that is a good thing.

Come to class this week – Thursday Yin at noon and 5Rhythms at 6:30; Sunday 10:00 Sweat Your Prayers with Juliette – for practice attuning to what is beautiful, what is good, what is thriving and alive. Come as if your life depended on it. It does.

March 15 is the final day for the $130 pre-enrollment class price for 10 weeks of Thursday night Spring Waves…way more cost effective than $20 drop in. And we still have room for you in Light & Shadow, coming up so soon now March 25-26, sign up online.

Unrepeatable miracles…love, bella

For the last couple years I’ve been working with Stacy Hayden who has coached, cajoled and carried me into cyberspace, spreading the word about the work I offer.  Social networking, web design, promotional materials…it is a brave new world out there and I am grateful to have this brilliant young person holding my hand.  So I trusted her when she said let’s throw a new web site up but I wondered why we needed to.  Clearly though, the organizing, the re-writes, the photography…the whole process clarifies and invigorates the Body Joy world.  Take a look, surf around, enjoy.  And for those of you who have been teetering on the March 23-26 workshop fence, especially click on workshops and waste no time enrolling in Light & Shadow.  5Rhythms doesn’t get any juicier than this in Sacramento!

Presence is really the bottom line of our practice on the mat and the dance floor.  When we experience the beauty of it in practice, we begin to more fully show up in the rest of our lives.  My investigation this week led me to break it down into these three energetic states:

Not Here: There are so many variations on this theme and the biggest hurdle, the first stepping stone, the entry to the whole topic is knowing we are not here.  This might seem obvious but it is a huge leap in consciousness when we begin to catch ourselves asleep at the wheel.  Once we start to notice, there are infinite variations on this theme.  Sometimes we are simply resistant to being here, thank you very much, just don’t want to show up right now. Other times we would like to be here but we are seduced by distraction, often in the form of obsessive thinking: past stuff, future planning, judgments, stories.  Sometimes we are deeply mired in feeling states—grief, anger, fear—and cannot find our way clear to that precious witness place.  Please add your own favorites.

Arriving: Now we know we are not here and we want to be so we commence trying.  Out in the real world me might have our own strategies: connect with the breath, feel our feet on the ground, soften our gaze, expand our visual field.  When we are in class there are invitations, varied instructions, offerings that we can try on, bring our attention to, focus with.  Some of them work better for us than others.  Those are the ones we practice out in the world.  In this state of Arriving we are often conscious of the struggle as we catch ourselves sliding right back into Not Here with a frequency that can be discouraging.  But this is rich and fertile territory and every time we return to Arriving is an incredibly golden moment.

Here: Now as much as we would like to believe that this is our goal, that this is where we should be getting more often if we were good at this…well, that is just not my personal experience.  And from what I understand, long periods of blissful Here-ness are not attainable by most.  But I love those moments of presence, those blips of clear, uncluttered focus.  There is a brief soft aaaah and then as soon as we notice it, note it, mark it…that’s how fast we are plunked back into Arriving.

And so it goes.  On the cushion, on the yoga mat, on the dance floor we drift around through these three states.  Practice often delivers us to more time in our lives Arriving and Here.  Here are three opportunities this week to spend time waking up together: 

Let’s move together somewhere this week and practice arriving…

love, bella

Back on U.S. soil this morning with so much moving through me that I could write about: the glory of the Costa Rican land, the gleanings from Medicine Dance, the impact of the wonderful people I met.  And yet the last three days I spent at Pacha Mama intrigue me, how can I express the truth about a strangely ambiguous experience? 

After Blue Spirit I was invited north to this intentional community by a dance therapist I had been moving with through the week, a transplanted Israeli, raising her family and living her dreams in this enchanted jungle setting.  There were stunning things about this place – the gorgeous beach, the tropical setting, the loving people, the diverse transformation and optimal health workshops.  And, as synchronicity would have it, people I already knew or had connections with through the rhythms, through the yoga, through California, everyone doing the good work.  Everyday I was held in meditation, in yoga, in dance, nourished by clean simple food and vibrantly awake companionship.  So much incredible light.  But something felt amiss; I was faintly aware, just below-the-belt of looming shadow. 

At satsang I listened to the man who brought Osho’s dream to the jungle and it was a stretch to continue to stay open, listen, not jump to judgment.  But my instincts were screaming and the talk left me with a disturbing and murky impression.  There is a great deal of medicine (drug) ritual woven into some of the experiences in this place: trance dances and journeys with every prescription known to man.  There is opulence side-by-side with close to the bone living, a dubious money energy.  And how to name this pervasive spacey quality? 

I took this opportunity to feel how light and shadow can live side by side, how a twilight undercurrent can seductively feel like brilliant enlightenment. How we long for things to be black and white, right or wrong but how often ambiguity is the truth.  How we can actually believe we are relaxed and fluid when we are really quite stuck, even inert.  How we can be quite certain we are being clear and precise but deep inside we are locked rigid and clinging to a form that has long since died. How we can think we are free, have let go of everything holding us back when we are really quite confused or doing everything we can to control the situation for some cheap appearance of freedom. How we can mistake blissed out for spaced out and emptiness and universal source connection for drop dead numb.

I took all this in and still it was an awesome experience.  Every night I saw the sun disappear into the Pacific and the crescent moon make it’s dip a few hours later.  I was drawn to the allure of place, spirit, myth, community and stayed curious about how all this light could co-exist with the shadow.  It felt like a preparation for the dance weekend ahead and I invite you to join us for this deep dive: Light & Shadow with Kathy Altman March 23-25.  Dancers are enrolled from the east coast and from Canada and it amazes me to have the most senior teacher in the practice other than Gabrielle here in our backyard.  Let’s feel together the way the shadow is woven so deeply into our lives, our relationships, our community and what we can learn from this mystery.  Our dance focuses our attention, with attention comes discernment, with discernment comes awareness, with awareness comes freedom.  Let’s dance/wake up together.

Come to the floor with me this Thursday for yin at noon, 5Rhythms at 6:30 and receive a big dollop of the natural medicine that movement provides.  More big medicine at Yoga Seed on Saturday: 3 hours of Letting Go…maybe this is your moment to investigate some essential self care practices.  And I will be so grateful to be on the floor with all of you on Sunday when Betty returns to hold us in Sweat Your Prayers.

Feeling it… love, bella

They call it “la pura vida” in Costa Rica, a place with one of the highest per capita happiness ratios on the planet and also a “blue region”, those pockets where many live past 100 years.  I feel like I’ve been here for years or maybe in some other lifetime. Is there a world out there with news and cars and people flying around doing their day, a place where a simple shallow conversational exchange is possible, where howler monkeys do not make themselves known at ungodly hours, where the sun’s intensity does not blind you with its beauty and the air is not so humid that hair frizzes in the most unbecoming ways, where every direction you turn is not screaming with unadulterated tropical beauty painted in fierce shades of blue and green and pink and purple?  I feel like I have forgotten what home is like.

Maybe this is what is engaging me so deeply, especially when you add it to being in 5 Rhythms practice in the most incredibly demanding way. A teacher who unapologetically slaps you upside the head with the purity of the discipline: no artfully contrived exercises, no carefully crafted progressive lesson plans, no conscious musical waves that play like easily transitioned suites.   Nope, the music has no possible thought of pleasing you or not.  Much of the time I am challenged to create my own wave with whatever is offered.  The instruction is an honest and unrelenting demand to stay present, get real, wake up, sometimes delivered in a humor-laced harangue and sometimes in a desperate plea as if our lives depended on it…which they do. 

He has a merciless commitment to the rhythm of chaos with lots of stillness, untold number of tracks in support of this rhythm of surrender.  The music makes no pretense of cajoling you or seducing you, just keeps making its demanding challenge and this has created for me a space of shamanic delivery to deep story-less zones, places words cannot describe because this quality of surrender is way out beyond language.  Insight this morning came after a long dance(see above…) after which we sat with a partner, verbally explored what is most challenging in our lives and then offered a 10 minute dance prayer to support our partner in this trial.   

It is only Tuesday and I am grateful to the yoga that supports 2 ½ more days of this intensity.  And so are many other dancers.  It is pure joy to get up early and do my own practice on this little wooden platform in the jungle.  At 7:15 we gather in our big space surrounded on three sides by open air, long ocean and mountain views, big sky, wafting breezes. We sink together into the quiet beauty of the yin…it is the absolute perfect compliment to Medicine Dance.  There are plans forming for me to lead a shorter practice down on the beach to salute the setting sun…today for the first time.  We’ll see.  Tomorrow a day off…horseback riding on the beach, dinner at an open-air restaurant that sports a dance floor on the sand.  This is truly a dream come true. 

I heard that Sunday’s Sweat Your Prayers with Betty was great.  This Thursday Juliette is calling up spirit through the rhythm of stillness and on Sunday Jennifer Burner comes back to lead.  Monday and Thursday yoga have wonderful subs as well.  Flying home in a week…seems like years from now.  Bringing home a big fat dollop of this medicine. 

Loving you…bella

As the sun dipped on the shortest day of the year I taped an empty sheet of white to my wall and inquired into The State of the Union. I divided the paper in five sections: Body, Heart, Mind, Soul, Spirit. I cracked open my laptop and clicked on a slow flow song and reached in there, curious about the state of my body. Muscles hug onto my bones, strong and limber, the effect of a balanced yoga practice, despite persistent left knee pain. Skin sags in new places but it is serving me better, the trouble of the past few years receding. A few extra pounds stare at me in the mirror and try to mess with my self-esteem. I feel the grace of my weight moving fluidly.

My heart? I put on a pulsing rhythm and feel softer, quieter, more settled at the core than ever. More intensity around particular emotions: blessed, restless, tender, wronged, dynamic, unsure, liberated, resentful. And this is a good thing…to feel with potency. Connection within me, with you, with us more transparently simple, yet fraught with the challenge of a stronger witness. Who judges some of the time. I rock to the beat of my own gentle heart.

I click on a fast track and let my body go. I make the climb upstairs to a mind so engaged in 2011, from writing the book to deepening in the yoga to continuing bravely on the teaching path. Long time sitting meditation practice unchanged: no breakthroughs, just day after day of the same old head-trips. They are so tiresome. But my discipline, my dedication never wavers. I shake into emptiness.

I find a light beat so I can feel it all at once and the state of the union feels mostly clear and strong. Sometimes the heart out of sync when the head falls into confusion but often only a few breaths to bring me back to alignment and I see such strong expression of my soul’s purpose. Why I am here in this moment in time is never a question… I am driven to move, to ignite movement in others and to write. In so many ways dreams are manifesting, it feels like a miracle but I know it is the outcome of practice and luck.

The music stills and spirit calls me out on this notion of practice, tells me I am sitting on spirit’s edge when I practice and that my attachment to discipline gets in the way of direct experience and that I need to be outdoors more, that the call of the wild is dim within these four walls. I listen deeply.

And so to this end, I leave in a few days for a week in the desert: hiking, stars, rock climbing, hot water…food for the spirit. I see the threads of the 2011 state of the union shaping 2012. I’ll be home from the desert for two days then fly to Manhattan for time with a global band of 5Rhythms teachers feeding each other on inspired tidbits under the guidance of Gabrielle and Jonathon. Inspiration to keep the call of the teaching path strong as we embark into winter: Thursdays start June 12 and weekly Sunday Sweats start June 15. January Sunday teachers: Bella, Claire Alexander and Juliette Kunin. Let this journey begin. The drumming was so awesome on Friday night, I am working on integrating that in some more. Stay tuned. I am purposefully strengthening the writing thread from January to May 2012 with Lori Salzman: a bay area committed series that pairs my dancing with my writing. I have poured the majority of my writing energy into this weekly essay for six years now. This year the book Letting Go took me on a side journey. I want to allow this writing workshop to shake me out of habits and see where the writing might take me. Stay tuned. And this other soul’s purpose? To ignite movement in others? 2011 continued to hone me and I felt the closest when I was teaching yoga in connection with 5Rhythms: at Harbin, in Marin, in Olympia. It feels like so many threads of my life have been weaving to create these moments and now I will be in Costa Rica February 18-25 holding the Yin Yoga piece for Medicine Dance with Jonathon Horan. I don’t know where I am going with all this…stay tuned.

I invite you to take a few moments of reflection for yourself to acknowledge another year ending. Tape that paper on the wall. Get up and move it. Feel where you have been and cultivate a sense of wonder about where that might be leading. Wiggle inside the cocoon that binds us in the inevitable parade of have tos. Yield to living in real time…blessings of the season….bella

Five years ago we held the first Winter Solstice Celebration dance over at Clunie. It was a Thursday night and some drummers came to play along with the CDs. I loved that energy and so did many others. For a while, I turned off the recorded music and we were held by the live percussion alone. For me, moving to live drumming is the ultimate support. There is something about it that reaches deeply and as our culture turns more and more toward the technology fix, it is a relief to feel the organic, vibrancy of the original beat, the call of the wild.

As fate would have it, I recently connected with that same drummer from years ago. And he has been on his own journey toward dance, totally intrigued with what it takes to play along with recorded music. Last week I was at an event in the bay area that was just what I envision for this Friday night. Skilled live drummers playing under and behind the recorded music and then from time to time, coming out front as the CD fades out, a three way following and leading experience: drummers, DJ, dancers.

This Friday night, let’s create that energy together in Sacramento for the last Sweat Your Prayers of 2011. Dance in the dawn of the solstice, the promise of lengthening days, the possibility of warmth, of light. David Whyte writes:

“I awoke this morning in the gold light
turning this way and that
thinking for a moment
it was one day like any other.
But the veil had gone
from my darkened heart
and I thought
it must have been the quiet
candlelight that filled my room…”

Please note that the live drumming is by invitation only! And be there for the debut of Dance Delicious 2011, this year’s wave compilation, a gift for you from me.

Thursdays start up again January 12, deep discount available on the Winter Series until December 19; see sidebar for link. You can sign up for the series or drop in any night for $20.

Let’s dance in the gold light this week…
love, bella