Years ago one of my spiritual teachers said to me, “Valerie, dance is food for you.” If dance is food for you too, let’s share a meal, or two, together.
Music
I love music! For my dance journeys I play all kinds of bootie shaking, foot-stomping, soul-inspiring music from world beats, to funk, conscious hip hop, yoga beat, swing, house, reggae, pop, R&B, dance, electronic, jazz, and more. I like to play danceable and beat-accessible music.
What is Conscious Dance?
African proverb: “If you can walk you can dance…”
Conscious dance is a moving meditation. It’s free-form, expressive, and improvisational dance. There are no prescribed steps. It’s dancing from the inside out. As the late poet, Mary Oliver, said, “You only have to let the soft animal of your body: love what it loves.” During the course of an evening you may dance on your own, with a partner, in a group, or all of the above. We dance barefoot, sober (substance-free) and without verbal conversation.
Experiential Learning
“…a peace treaty between the mind and the body is long overdue.” -Nina Simons, Nature, Culture & The Sacred
Dance and vocal sound healing are pathways for experiential learning. Because movement and intuitive vocalizations are both body-based, they ask all of who we are to become engaged in a given exploration. What we do, we tend to remember. We get to connect with long lost parts of ourselves which have been existing on the margins of our awareness. The backgrounding of our monkey minds and the foregrounding of the rest of who we are, for some of us, might mean: feeling our body’s pleasures and pains, connecting with our gut sense, acknowledging emotions, and for others yet it may be hearing for the first time messages from the divine within.
Offerings/Workshops
Hopi saying: “To watch us dance is to hear our hearts speak.”
Dance Journeys, Grieve, Pray, Love: Mind-Body Healing Rituals for Mother Earth and her Creatures and Journeying with the BEEs
“Between the head and feet of any given person is a billion miles of unexplored wilderness.” – Gabrielle Roth