Greetings Sisters of Life,

We will begin gathering in our circles of dance next week, sisters new and old coming together as the classes of Heavy Hips Tribal Belly Dance commence in 2007. What are we looking for here, what do we think this dance will make of us? As you make this choice for yourself either again or for the first time what beliefs, ideas, wounds and realizations undergird your decision to move deeper into belly dancing or begin it? I've been musing on the expectations and hopes that women bring when they come to Heavy Hips classes and I invite you to muse on it as well.

I realize that I'm moving into my 9th year of teaching - and have to continue to reflect and dig deep into my practice of mindful conscientious intentional movement to create meaning from this work for both myself and to offer to you. I realize that its not up to me to fulfill your expectations and that when we reflect on our feeling states - that is; what we are looking to heal, or to create, or to set up as ego identitiy as in who we are (I'm a belly dancer, I'm a feminist, I'm and environmentalist, I'm a witch, I'm a yogini, etc) - then we can really begin to soften and create space inside our body, mind spirit selves to experience OUR life in its fullness. Its the awareness of what you project and bring that is such important information to us and creates the state of "being awake and present". If we explore and discover that the reason I want to do this dance is for example because - I don't feel sensual and beautiful or because I spend all my time giving to others and not to myself, or because I'm filled with self loathing - that is exactly the information when held as you begin to move your body and come into the community, that will inform your state of presence and the quality of experience you will have. We want to be aware of our experience as we are having it and aware how our mind and feelings color that experience.

When I ask "why are you here, what do you expect to happen to you" in the circle, many rich and poignant responsed unfold from within the body of woman. I hear and witness strong feelings around body image from women of all ages and backgrounds, feelings of shame, inadequacy, lack of sensuality or beauty as well as desires to get stronger and more aware of their physical sense. Many women come whose work is heady and disembodied or they haven't felt themselves in their body in a long time- living disassociatively, lost in the activity of mind. We leave our body for many reasons, sexual abuse past or present, weight issues, wounds of the heart, feeling that we don't have anything to contribute to enrich our community and greater world. Even some spiritual paths create a goal of being not in the body - that the body is gross and material and bad.

Many woman also share that they want to move their bodies a certain way, in the snakey earth centered spirals, circles and figure 8"s, finding strength and power that originates in the womb and hips and thus points to a philosophical reasoning that originates in creating and preserving life and love. Why????? Because we want to reclaim something that has been taken away through over 6000 years of patriarchal philosophy, mores and social infrastructure that has reified culture over nature, man over woman, dominance over equality and private rights over communal.

Belly dance comes from the original experience of giving birth, and from witnessing that birth initiates a cycle of life - a natural circle from dark incubation, to germination, young sprouting, force of life thrusting generative growth, to ecstatic fullness of flowering, to soft fading beauty, desire to rest, resting and degenerating, finally to withering and decomposition into fertile dark. The movements that accompany birth do not originate from the individual per se but from the force of the living force that cannot be held back. WE are the instruments of creative power and we can practice that realization to its fullest potentional by becoming aware of our bodies, how it moves and how it holds in its cells the very feeling states that we may hide or that we make conscious, and how our cells being of the very same material of all things and the original universe carry life awareness in them. We lay our own fears so deeply into our cells and bodies, but the secet is that our hopes and desires to contribute to the well being of all is more original in us and its that - that we try to contact and nurture through the dance.

This contact and nurturance will manifest as bodily strength, coordination, flow, a feeling of self knowing, an increased sense of healthy body image and love and gratitude for ones body, a joy in being a carrier of the promise that all feeling states are good information, and that all of us are extrememly creative beings. WE cannot control what happens in another person or living thing, but we can become comfortable with a lack of control and well practiced in choosing our own personal response to all stimuli. WE can choose to be aware of why we are drawn to this dance, aware of what we are expecting it to make of us. We can experience every moment in class as fresh and new and a possibility to discover what is held and experienced in the body and the heart - learn how we hold emotions and possiblity in our physical being. We can discover that we can have a soft open heart that can embrace all experience, thus leading the way for us to have love and kindness for all beings and inviting us into a lifestyle that is daily and moment to moment sacred, rich, sentient.

I dance to celebrate, to heal, to discover, to feel, to communicate, to be a vessel, to move in a dance with others, to go with the next wave of life and then the next and then the next - just like one must in the act of giving birth. It is not me or Heavy HIps Tribal Belly Dance that will make something of you, but what you bring to it and your mindful being as you move yourself through the classes that will be the experience that you have. Hopefully the experience you have will be one that you are grateful for, that creates a more authentic and alive you - a more awake you in body and mind and soul. We have a great tendency to be asleep in our lives with all our distractions safe inside and outside of us. But that is not our true yearning. Our true yearning is to contribute to the well being of all - to the community, to the wellness and wholeness and healing of our living Gaia - thus giving the most to ourself as we do so. Towards this experience and reality your conscious practice in something as simple as a dance class can be a great vehicle for change. "She changes everything she touches and everything she touches changes."

I invite you to muse on your expectations and conceptions of belly dance, to explore your presumptions as well as your hopes and ideas about what it will make of you. And I invite you to move with me in class as both of us - you and I discover who/what we truly are and invite you to choose to practice our creative power as loving members of the universal community.

In gratitude and curiosity I look forward to this next circle of dance.
Palika