who am I - WHEN I DANCE?

“I am a drunkard from another tavern. 

 I dance to a silent tune. 

 I am the symphony of stars.”

_RUMI

When we are open to our experiences of life, inevitably we can turn our attention inwards to start seeing ourselves within the experience – a kind of meta-experience. This is when we are both involved in the story but also detached at the same time as if seeing the story from a distance, objectively and in a different way. This form of inquiry invites a profound and experiential learning about the deepest essence of personhood. Who are you – really? In our familiar surroundings, involved in the day-to-day running of life, we don’t often get the time or luxury to stop and take stock.

Dance is a space that automatically separates us from the normal. It takes us out of conventional operation mode. We don’t walk, we leap, we turn and sometimes expand into unknown movements. This gives us an opportunity to explore qualities within ourselves that are not readily know to us through our familiar, everyday sense of identity.

Dance liberates creativity as we explore effortless the possibilities of becoming someone other than who or what we normally are. Dancing in relationship to others, enhances empathy and compassion so that we form new relationships with the world around us – including ourselves! Dance is ephemeral, transient, and fleeting so that we may not feel the impact immediately. However, as we dance, our awareness shifts to a deeper quality of presence in which a spacious, unencumbered sense of self arises moment by moment out of the deep ocean of being. The miracle of dance is that over time, the me we experience in the dance slowly permeates all illusions of separation and who I am in the dance, becomes who I am.

_Christos Daskalakos

dance FOCUS

“Always remember, your focus determines your reality.”

_George Lucas

Dance is expansive, dance is fun, and dance opens up lots of possibilities. However, in this creative chaos, dance also requires the dancer to have the ability to really focus. If we are not focused on the dance and what is taking place in the present, we may just fall over! To dance is to inhabit a body that is in continuous movement and ever changing positions.

For example, as we move through space we are experiencing different perspectives of our immediate surroundings, the room, the people and ourselves. And yet there is a part of us that retains focus so that we don’t bump into people or dissolve into chaos.

Focus becomes a key element. As we focus on our dancing body, we inevitably expand our awareness to feeling and thinking. The focus we bring to our self is integrated. Sitting behind a desk engages our thinking but our body cramps, stiffens and distorts in its limited range of movement. Listening to a piece of music may evoke feelings but if we remain motionless the emotions are literally stuck in our body, with nowhere to go. Inevitably when we bring everything into alignment through the dance our focus on self is expanded, we learn, we heal and we connect with creative insight.

_Christos Daskalakos

Dance is a CONSPIRACY of LOVE

“The most subversive of all disciplines is based on the joy of living,

the right to love and to contact…”

_Rolando Toro Araneda

Love is a universal field to which we all have access. It exists beyond time and space and we have the capacity to connect into this field when we are open to doing so. It’s quite a nice concept because it means that we don’t have to go out there seeking something called love – it exists and we just need to connect.

Love in action is the conscious moment when we do just that. For me, to dance is a conscious love in action for myself. It allows me access to the heart of my being and from there to connect with everything around me. To dance with others is to share this experience. In the dance, we can connect with undifferentiated love – the pure energy of love that holds everything together.

It is difficult to dance with someone and at the same time hold negative feelings. But to let go of these takes courage. To let love flow takes courage. To reach out and dance with another sometimes can be the most courageous act of love.

Christos Daskalakos