Ecstatic Dance
Ecstatic Dance is a free-form, non-verbal, movement journey, held in a safe and sacred container. It’s a place where we can be our unique selves and also connected to a common source. You’re not learning moves. You’re listening to your body and letting it lead. There are no mirrors, and no substances involved. Just music and movement.
A session usually moves through a musical arc, starting slow, rising in energy, and gradually bringing you back to stillness. The structure is intentional, helping your nervous system ease into expression and come out on the other side feeling grounded. This intuitive, embodied experience is a mindful practice.
Community Ecstatic Dance
Everyone is welcome to join in this safe, inclusive, non-verbal, kind-hearted space for expression! No experience needed. We start with grounding breathwork or a short guided meditation. Then, the music begins, carefully selected to guide you through peaks and valleys of energy. Some people dance hard, some barely move. Some close their eyes for the whole session. The space is there for you to be with your body however you need to.
Goddess Dance
Calling all Goddesses! Lalalalalalalala!!!! Join other authentic, juicy, wondrous women dancing in darkness and light, beauty and sisterhood! Cultivate skills that support your dance as a practice of movement medicine, conscious awakening and deep self-care. This dance takes inspiration from the ancient temple dancers, of various spiritual traditions, who used their body as cyphers for wisdom transmissions. Women’s circles allow for sharing, support, and feelings of safety within a non-judgmental environment. Dare to be "witnessed" in your Goddess presence! Bring water and wear comfortable clothes that express your Feminine Divine.
Facilitator Notes
Back in the late 1990's I started attending community drum circles where I found people drumming and dancing wild and free. I began exploring movement and ways to reach these states of ecstatic bliss. While living on the road, I rolled into a late-night soup kitchen out of the back of Govinda's restaurant (L.A.) where the Hare Krishna community would feed people the end-of-day prasada. a friendly monk invited me into the temple to show me around and invited me to attend some services, in hopes I would join the community and become a devotee. So, like any curious, hippy, seeker of enlightenment might have, I went. Those services were inspiring. I experienced worshipping God through music, chanting and dancing. The ragas would start slow and meditative and build into a wave that took everyone in the room, to a peak of transcendental ecstatic bliss! This led me to finding other community groups to ecstatically dance with, based on Gabriella Roth's "5-Rhythms" work and Goddess "Shakti" Dance. I love to slip into trance states as I move. The body takes the mind on a journey through the psyche where i receive deep insights for my life and my becoming.
Dancing in the cosmos - Abby