Let's Keep Dancing!

“Life is not about waiting for the storm to pass,

it’s about learning to dance in the storm.”

_Vivian Greene

As the pandemic has pressed on, we have found innovative ways to come together and dance. There have been dances of gratitude, dances of support, dances that connect, as a way of encouraging people to dance the blues of this pandemic away.

At VisVita we have always strived to introduce everyone to dance. I am totally committed to this DANCE PROJECT as I believe it has the power to sustain, grow our life, but more importantly is a powerful way to combat the enemies of our time; separation, stress and fatigue.

It is hard to keep dancing when life throws us a curved ball – but it is in times like these that it is better not to insulate and keep away. Dance, music and especially the social connections that we enjoy bring us together to celebrate life, to feel ourselves in our body, and to feel the joy of life.

My message this week is – KEEP DANCING not matter what!
- Stay connected
- Stay in the flow of living

_Christos Daskalakos

Equinox Dance

"Whatever you can do ,or dream you can do begin it.

Boldness has genius, power and magic in it.."

- Goethe

Equinox speaks of the inevitable cycle of existence. It speaks of balance and the natural progression, and introspection. This is a time of the change of seasons heralding in a new phase. Summer is on its way and nature begins to grow and blossom again. The ultimate creation of nature expressing itself.

Conscious dance is also about creativity - the ability to continuously create and recreate our life. We discard the old, conserve what is valuable and create the new.

In the dance we embody this change without having to rationalise it. Each dance movement we make opens up possibilities and in that moment we instinctively move to create our next dance movement, then the next and then the next. Without planning or thinking our body know instinctively where to dance next. This way we enter the flow of life without planning, thinking or judgement. Dance stimulates our natural instincts and wisdom to conserve life and to keep evolving. Being in the dance, is to experience the cycles of life by being present in the dance, enjoying the dance and detaching our self from any outcome or expectation. Dance is being in the being.

_Christos Daskalakos

dancing at the CENTER

 

“There are shortcuts to happiness, and dancing is one of them.”

_Vicki Baum

How often do we become distracted by life? Not LIFE but the everyday goings on around us. We get drawn into the details which sometimes turn out not to have been as important as we thought. We usually treat our issues and problems in a similar way – that is we blow them out of proportion; they dominate our emotions and thoughts and often lead to paralysis – a freeze on life. That is because we can’t always know the answers and as much as we try very often it is simply impossible to figure things out in a rational and logical way. When we engage in that kind of thinking we are really using linear thinking which is comparable to computer programming. If we haven’t fed the data in, it’s not going to appear miraculously.

BUT, luckily for us there is a way to access deeper intelligence and knowledge. The wealth of knowledge held in our subconscious based on a lifetime of experience. And, the wealth of knowledge we have access to in our world, but which for whatever reason, we don’t seem to notice.

To gain access, we need to stop the mind. We need to shift our focus from the periphery of life and dance towards the core of our being. When we dance at the centre, we bypass the logical and rational parts of our mind. What that means is that we are able to disconnect from any beliefs we may hold, memories of the past, or old and reliable habits. Dance brings us into the present moment where our mind, body and heart are interacting with our experience in the here and now. Our reaction to what is required in the moment of the dance is based on real time creativity. Moment by moment as we move we sense what comes next without directing or planning the dance. This capacity we have allows us to release new possibilities for life. And sometimes in the moment, we have an AHA! We gain insight, and we can approach life differently. Often these insights come from deep understanding and allow us to relook at the issues and problems around us in a new way. And sometimes they even just go away as we connect with joy and ecstasy in the dance.

_Christos Daskalakos

Navigating LIFE through the DANCE

 

“If you fell down yesterday, stand up today.”

_H G Wells

The day started with Drew calling me to wish VisVita a Happy Birthday. One of the many voices that that have encouraged and supported this dance project over the years.

On the 7th September we celebrate 16 years of dance, laughter and fun. Also tears and sometimes challenging moments. But that is life!

We can navigate this incredible life through the dance. Our movement adds richness and depth to our experience. We interact and experience life through movement and dance. Dance integrates our wholeness so that we are fully engaged. We can express emotion but also shift and transmute these. We can express our stories but also re-form these and write new ones. We dance with others and this also gives us the opportunity to establish and enrich our relationships.

Dance holds up a mirror and we see our self and are then able to become the artist of our own life as we weave the magic through the dance, we explore, we feel and we create.

VisVita is a place to connect to this dance, a place to connect to others and a place to connect to self. This is the project – to provide a safe and contained space for everyone to experience the joy of life. It has held open the doors to everyone who wished to be part of this and will always continue to welcome anyone who ventures through them.

So Drew thanks for the reminder, and to everyone else who has supported VisVita and made this possible over the past sixteen years – THANK YOU!

_Christos Daskalakos

re-structuring DANCES

“The only way to make sense of change is to plunge into it, 

move with it, and join the dance.”

_Alan Watts

To restructure is to arrange things differently. When we look at life we sometimes think we have to change something or transform it. Actually just becoming conscious of the patterns and habits in our life allows a shift to happen. We don’t have to rush into change – we just have to become more awake.

The dance is a wonderful medium for making us more aware. Are we dancing the same old same old? Do we approach the dance in a habitual way …OR…do we allow ourselves the opportunity to enter the dance fresh. When we are in the moment dancing as if we are doing it for the first time – then the opportunity arises for old patterns, beliefs and systems to slowly melt away – we are restructured by the dance.

When we shift our dancing and let go out thinking, it leads us gradually into deeper contact and permission to believe in the goodness of our instinctive passions and to express the emotions that arise from that experience. Using music and movement to create integrative dance experiences has a profoundly re-balancing effect on our bodies and psyche. Our fellow dancers in a group become the healing matrix where transformation happens, as we open up to each other and allow ourselves to express our feelings and passion more authentically.

_Christos Daskalakos

FUNTASIA ~the art of living a fun-filled life

“Trust me you can dance”

_VODKA

How often do we permit our self to have some FUN?

During difficult and stressful times this may sound a little flippant – someone who is always having fun is maybe not taking life seriously some would say. However FUN holds a very important place as it is the activities that gives a mechanism for people to soothe the stressful situation of everyday life and relax.

The Greek word for fun ‘διασκέδαση’ has an etymology which literally means ‘shred and toss away the accumulation of anxiety, unhappiness, and boredom. And as Zorba the Greek advocates….DANCE!

Dance literally shifts our position – we can dance our way from anxiety to peace, from sadness to joy, from indifference to joy of living. The emotions that are stuck in our body and come to feel like old friends can be shifted so that our inner mood changes. Through the dance we let the feelings flow till we reach a place where we can connect with ecstasy and bliss. That is an incredibly powerful and amazingly special place in our dance – when we surrender to life, and it becomes FUN.

_Christos Daskalakos

Integration Dances

“Mind-body integration is more than a personal health strategy. 

 It is a movement of consciousness that can change the world.”

_Matthew Sanford

• Feeling scattered?
• Feeling fragmented?
• Feeling disconnected?

One of the amazing gifts of dance is that we get to experience the feeling of being integrated. The opposite of scattered, fragmented or disconnected is to feel a sense of wholeness, fullness, and a sense of being fully present. The dance provides a beautiful space for us to feel connected to ourselves in a deeper and more meaningful way.

This is the perfect antidote to the topsy-turvy world we are currently speeding through. Sometimes when we lose our equilibrium in life we find that we act in strange ways that ordinarily our head or our heart would not align with. We feel something and do something contrary to our gut feelings. We think something and do something contrary to our rationality.

In the dance we have access and experience ourselves with a greater sense of awareness so that we feel that we can re-direct life and bring everything back on course. We align our body from head to toe with grace and movement. And in this doing we embody our natural self allowing us to integrate our mind, body and feelings again.

_Christos Daskalakos