Why dance? What is ecstatic dance? Is it different than “regular” dancing? Does it have to be?
In the simplest of answers, no it does not have to be different than regular dancing. Does dancing make you feel joy? Do you follow your own movements to inspire your own dance moves? Well then, this is the beginning of ecstatic dancing.
Now imagine you are in a space with only a few others in the room who are there with the same purpose. Imagine you have enough space around you to spread out as you desire without having to stand shoulder to shoulder as you would at a club or other typical night time event. How would your body move then? How would it move knowing that no one is looking at you, or judging you because we are all there for the same purpose? Self expression through dance.
Are bodies hold so much. The yogi’s new this and created the asanas (physical postures of yoga) as a way to stretch out any discomforts in the body so that they could sit in meditation for longer periods of time as a way to strengthen their minds, and reach a state of bliss. Imagine ecstatic dance as an opportunity to release tensions in the body without rules, and doing so to an amazing sound track. When we let go of our minds and let the body follow, we end up in a state of flow. It is this state that is called Ecstatic. Do we always reach this state in our practise? No, not necessarily. Just like sometimes when we sit to meditate, we get caught in our thoughts and need to return to our breathe over and over again. The point is more or less we continue our practise. It is strengthening our minds and bodies to release and remember the human experience can experience this bliss and ecstatic state.
I hope you follow your inner call to seek out this this practice for the first time, or return to it if it is something you have done before. Remember, in ecstatic dance are just dancing with a little more intention, space, and connection. 😊
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