Dancing...most natural

“Dance is your pulse, your heartbeat, your breathing.

It’s the rhythm of your life.

It’s the expression in time and movement,

in happiness, joy, sadness and envy.”

_Jacques D’Amroise

In the symphony that is our existence, when did we unlearn dance? When did we discard this ancient art leaving it to become alien, strange and challenging? Remember an infant we had rhythm, we had bounce, and we had joy. Sadly, for many along this journey of life, we have lost this innate connection with movement and the expression of our bodies, losing the pleasure that lies embedded in the act of dancing.

Dance is an ancient and integral part of the evolutionary journey. Rhythm has orchestrated our rise from crawling to standing, from stumbling to walking. In our collective history, movement and dance is more than just mere movement. It has been a celebration, a ritual of honour, that as accompanied and given meaning to every aspect of life. When words fail, dance has been communicating the ineffable through the poetry of motion.

To dance is natural. To dance is to unfurl the power of our primal nature, instincts that drive our full expression of life. It becomes the bridge that transcends the limitations that prevent us from reaching out to accompany our fellow travellers on this cosmic path. And beyond all this, dance becomes a cosmic conversation that allows us to witness the beauty of human expression as it harmonises within the greater cosmic dance. And in moments of ecstasy and sheer bliss, all barriers that separate us from one another and the vast cosmos dissolve, igniting a magic in us to be fully present and alive in this great mystery called life.

_Christos Daskalakos

metamorphic dance

“Dancing: The highest intelligence in the freest body.”

_Isadora Duncan

Through the rich mosaic that is our existence, Freud’s assertion that “anatomy is biography” seems to paint the colours that are our corporeal narrative. Each movement we make is a poetic cipher that has been etched into the fibres of our being by life’s experiences. Emotions are inscribed onto our bodies revealing their history through our habitual movement patterns unfolding into the choreography that is our dance.

When we embrace our dance we can unveil the silent scripts of our habitual movements, often returning delicately to those past moments which now are reflected in the present. Rolando Toro Araneda, creator of Biodanza, writes that once we have accessed the origin, we can never return to being the same. Dance is the fluid language that beckons us to engage with our own reflection and self-awareness unearthing the shadows that linger but no longer serve us.

Through the alchemy of movement, conscious dance becomes a powerful transformative force that unravels the past allowing the body to rewrite its narrative with new insight. Coloured by a palette of joy, ecstasy, and self-acceptance a cathartic metamorphosis takes place where dance does not become merely a reflection of our past autobiography but can guide us into a liberated harmonious future.

_Christos Daskalakos

dance your RHYTHM

“When the rhythm and the night ride, no heart can hide.”

_Steve Winwood

Rhythm, the heartbeat of dance, is a primal force that weaves itself through our dance as an ever-present conductor directing our movements, engaging our energy, and creating that beautiful expression of self that unfolds on the dance floor. Despite its fundamental role, we sometimes overlook or take for granted the essence of rhythm. For those who have grown distant from the innate connection with their bodies, the beat becomes elusive – especially when the mind dominates in our choreography. Regaining this connection to our body through the rhythm becomes a powerful act of self-discovery and expression.

Rhythm becomes a bridge that guides us to embrace the intuitive language of our dance – a journey that requires us to shed layers of self-consciousness, allowing the body to become the instrument attuned to intuition, creativity, and awareness. In this profound moment of connection, we escape the relentless chatter of the mind and find ourselves being present in the here-now. Free from the stories of the past or worries of the future we are able to respond authentically to the immediate present, drawing on the ancient and primal wisdom of our bodies.

Rhythm unfolds organically as a metaphor for navigating life as we find a harmonious relationship with the world around us. Through this dance we find and embrace trust. We surrender to the dance as a profound teacher and by letting go and trusting, we experience the blissful ability to embrace the dance of life itself.

_Christos Daskalakos

dance _ FLOW

“Time slows down. Self vanishes.

Action and Awareness merge.

Welcome to Flow.”

_Steven Kotler

When we focus on what we are doing, what we are doing becomes our purpose. It is as simple as that. On the other hand when we are focusing on purpose as an end goal means that we miss out experiencing the joy of doing – of living. Life becomes about focusing on specific moments of achievement which usually means that the rest of the time we are stressing and striving to achieve these. This way we miss out on the pleasure we can derive from living moment by moment engaged in our passion. When we turn our attention towards the journey, the becoming, the engaging with life, we enter into a state of flow which for many becomes blissful.

Dance is both a beautiful metaphor for this AND at the same time offers us practical experience. When the opening notes of the music begin and we take those first steps into the dance, our thoughts are not on the end chords that will bring our dance to some predetermined finale. Instead, we allow our hearts to open, feeling the beauty of each note, allowing our bodies to respond, our minds to quieten, and our souls to soar. When we surrender ourselves to the dance thus, we become the music, we become the dance, and we flow into that ecstatic space that is our COSMIC FLOW.

_Christos Daskalakos