7 Key Points To Know Before Your First Class
& the reasons behind each key point to get the full benefit of your practice.
1. Why Create Your Movement Meditation Space?
2. Why Blindfold or Close Our Eyes During Movement Meditation?
- Blindfold will help you stay within your body
- Blindfold will help you minimize distractions and mind activity
Our eyes are the window to our soul. we observe most of the world with your eyes. we make decisions and judgement based on what we see outside of us.
when you close your eyes, you close the door, the window to the outside world. when we are aware that our eyes are closed, our mind still works, random thoughts come in it's very natural. This is the difference between sleepiness and awakening.
Most of the time, when your body and mind are tired and exhausted and in pain, sleep is the best medicine and it brings you comfort. Sleep time is healing time for your body, but we can't sleep all the time we know that with closing our eyes, we shut down the outside world and go within, if we are not totally asleep.
Now, consciously if you close your eyes and be able to get the same or even better result as a sleeping body, that would be to monitor your thoughts and focus on your being, your awareness to your present place.
I've never experienced it, but I'm guessing a blind person is more aware than I am, just because they rely on their other senses that is probably much stronger than mind.
so when we close our eyes then dance, we shut down the world outside and focus on the inside. We don't worry about who is out there, what do they think about me and the blindfold will tell them what I'm doing.
Give your mind a rest.
Let go and focus on your breath and body. Focus on the tension areas of your body and bring healing and nurturing thoughts to that area. Be gentle with your pain areas, open arms, turn, play as if no one is watching. One of my guests said after the dance that " I felt like a child again."
And this is who we are. I don't know what adulthood does not people but it takes away the happy child within and hid it somewhere and with that our true happiness gets buried under layers of rules, roles, responsibilities, politics and chaos of our normal life. That's what we're doing. We close our eyes and dance to wake up that happy child inside you. Hope you get to experience it some time soon.
3. Why Wear a Name Tag?
- to focus on your imagination NOT on your thoughts
- to refocus your thoughts on your name tag
- to have a new identity for the duration of your practice
We know ourselves by our name, ethnicity, color, next of kin as of somebody's daughter, somebody's sister, our gender is specific, at least for most of us. Then we have a city, a language, a past, a country to identify ourselves with.
Most of the time, it's these identities that is causing us a lot of stress and pain. I guess the hardest part of being a celebrity is that you can't be or do whatever you want in public because someone will have another kind of interpretation and they can get in trouble for nothing.
However, when I'm asking you to put on a name tag on yourself when you dance, I'm asking you to let go of all your other identities that you are associating with. If you are bare naked on an island and an alien come in contat with you, you are at face value - no identity, no history - just now.
When you dance, I want you to think you have no association with your old identity. Your new name is around your neck which will help you to start/ perform from a blank or clean slate.
So what can be your name or identity for the practice?
All the names are the names of nature or natural things that you can most resonate with. It's your happy place or you are the happiest to be one of them or in it's presence. Just like the example earlier, if you are alone on an island, where would you stay? what is your happy place? Alone a river, in the woods, on top of mountains, lush green hills, the ocean, the beach, a snowy mountain or in the rain.
You could be a lion or an eagle, a rose or a lavender, a cloud or fog as long as it is your happy place because this happy place serves another purpose also.
When you are dancing, your mind will go off track, you have one action to do... go back to your happy place that is on your name tag.
4. What Music Represents With Our Body Movement?
- will help you to acknowledge your emotions
- will help you move your body to the beat - body to respond to respond to each piece and each beat which resembles your life events
- how you respond to different events of your life
"music is food of the soul and "dance is the hidden language of the soul" said Arthur Schopenhauer and Martha Graham, American dancer and German philosopher who was born o 1788 in Poland.
I'm not going into details and benefits of dance or music, but I'll share with you my experience of dancing to the same music for seven consecutive days with my eyes closed.
Each piece of music has a story. it has a beginning, the rise and the ending just the same as our emotional response to our life events. Let's say you get sick and don't know what's wrong with you, that's the beginning. You have a somewhat fearful, sad and curious about it. then you go to the doctor and he or she says you have a big problem, that's your emotions change to anger, depression and anxiousness... then, you find the cure and your emotions change to hopeful, humble, vulnerable, powerful, strong and happy.
Music plays with these same emotions from beginning to the end. It begins, it rises your emotions then it settles you back to harmony. Some pieces of music matches your current emotional state, and you start to surrender all your emotions and let that music play with your imagination on the dance floor.
Music is capable of doing that all the time. but we, our body, is not ready or available to enjoy the full benefit of this two way communication.
Give your soul food and let your soul speak to you through dance at least 1/2 an hour. If you are engaged, it seems like 5 minutes, and if you are not, it feels like it's never ending.
this only happens if you are able to surrender and let go of your world affairs, your ego and identity, your critical thinking aside, you have practiced soulful dance and if you continue this also can be used as a coping mechanism to how you respond to your life events; how you choose to act fast and correct instead of react and impulse decision that you might regret later.
I choose to reduce the seriousness of life by dancing to the beat of world music and engage with my soul at the same time.
5. How to Move Our Body?
- using your space - clear boundaries in small spaces
- be with your breath and body
- pay attention to any parts of your body that is tense or has pain
- stretch, bend, lie down, jump, reach, turn, twist, clap, make sounds - as it comes to you
the movement does not have any structure. It's a free flowing movement with no rules. You have the freedom of moving it any way it's comfortable for your body without fear of judgement or fear of doing it wrong.
If you are thinking about how to move, or compare yourself with the person next to you, you are not doing it right. If you let go and imagine nobody is watching you OR you don't care about anyone watching you, then you are good.
Other than that, let the music move your body. Let your bones, muscles and structure decide how to move. The goal is to feel good with the movements.
How does your body respond to the nature's sudden changes. Imagine, you are in your happy place, but all of a sudden your happy place becomes disastrous. The tsunami, earthquake, or tornado happen, the rain brings floods, or lack of rain brings disasters. The playful snowy mountain slides and takes a village under. The river overflows, the lion attacks, or the eagle is caught in a cage. This is all happening in your imagination, but in reality, it will subconsciously tell you that life has turns and twists or ups and downs that you'll need to respond as quickly to adapt and survive. How your body moves with different circumstances? Generally, we know that open body open arms means expansion, hope, happiness and closed down body means retreat, sadness or anger on the dance floor.
For this reason, even though you don't want to take your pains on the dance floor, pain appears in your imagination just because pain is part of your normal and real life. Our goal is not to feel pain or discomfort, but to know what to do if there's pain or discomfort. We need to know 1. pain is normal 2. it's only for a short time, and 3. How I deal with the pain is my choice.
So each sone is a new slate of emotions that your body will move to it's beat. It's unpredictable just like life itself.
This is the one situation that you are not told what to do, but to figure it out by yourself on the dance floor.
6. What to Do During Sitting Mindful Meditation?
- Breathing and body relaxation
- awareness with senses
- affirmations & imagination
- gratitude
- mindful meditation with open eyes - sitting or walking just observing without judgement. Observe people, birds, sounds, colors, trees, the ocean, the distance between you and everything else, the wind, the pattern of the waves, the texture of the ocean surface, the clouds, the pattern of the clouds
7. Why Write Our Meditation Experience?
- Not to forget things that come to you
- reminder of your true self and deep desires, hopes, regrets, anger, and other feelings
- notice your manifestation come to life - how what you imagine today can be a reality in a short time