Sounds good huh?
Don’t we just long to be ourselves, to be free and uninhibited from the judgement of others? Isn’t it a basic human need to be seen and known for who we feel we really are rather than an adaptive, watered down version?
This is partly what is behind the Inner Dance at Flomotion where we dance like nobody’s watching with our eyes shut. It adds variety to the dance session and has other benefits as well. Interested? Read on…
‘If You Can Walk You Can Dance’
(Zimbabwean Proverb)
Aside from the very human needs above, there’s also the business of dancing. All too often people say ‘I can’t dance, I’m no good at dancing’ and so on. It’s a shame. Dance in many forms has been part of human evolution from our very beginnings and has been crucial to group bonding and our success as a species.
The modern Western world has reshaped dance into something with rules and standards that need to be met rather than something fun, accessible to all and part of our birthright. Conscious dance practices like Flomotion, Ecstatic Dance and others are turning this around and moving us in a different direction.
Ecstatic Awakening Dance (EAD)
I trained to teach Ecstatic Awakening Dance some years ago. The method invites all participants to have their eyes shut for the entire class so that they can dance like nobody’s watching, because they aren’t. This overrides the self-consciousness that inhibits people to dance freely. It can feel liberating and profound.
The Relational Channel
Much as I enjoyed the 100% internal experience of Ecstatic Awakening Dance, I began to miss dancing with other people. Conscious dance practices such as 5Rhythms dance and Open Floor movement practice encourage deliberate connection with others on the dance floor and actively discourage dancing with eyes shut.
Dancing with others allows us to explore our need for connection and belonging, and the group ambience is heightened by the contact we have with others on the dancefloor.
Inner Dance
Flomotion takes a hybrid approach to the matter. There is some active group dancing, some dancing eyes open on your own, and in the middle of the session everyone shuts their eyes and we have several tracks for the Inner Dance. The music slows down and the invitation is to go inside and move with what you find in your internal world.
The Inner Dance comes after the Relaxation part of the session in which people are generally sitting or lying down. Often people are carrying a lot of tiredness, and it can feel hard to get going again once they have fully relaxed.
The Inner Dance is a great way to gently transition back to movement. I invite people to follow their energy levels: they can stay on the floor for the whole Inner Dance, move between upright dance, and being nearer/on the floor. The only requirement is to shut your eyes or lower your gaze if you are bringing in more active movement.
Relaxing and Deep
After a Flomotion session, if people want to tell me what they enjoyed, it’s often the Inner Dance that they highlight. They value being encouraged to slow down, to take time, to engage with feelings through their moving body. People have reported profound insights and vision during this part of the dance session.
Even Slower
The pace of the Inner Dance has got slower over the years. It’s a juxtaposition to the fast-paced and complicated world in which we live. Inner Dance offers time to catch up with yourself, taking time to listen in and sense what might be below the surface and to notice how your body wants to move. It’s a time to let your nervous system relax, again much needed in our over-stimulated modern world.
Top Down/Body Up
We are rarely encouraged to listen deeply with and into our bodies and to follow ourselves. From a young age we receive instructions and are told what to do by parents, teachers, and subsequently bosses and other authority figures. This is of course necessary and useful. It can also lead to never listening within, following our gut, trusting ourselves.
We tend to operate in a ‘top down’ fashion: where mental activity is favoured over sensory and motor experiences in our understanding of ourselves and the world.
The Inner Dance is a ‘body up’ experience: we start with our physical, embodied experience, the music pulls our physical, emotional and mental bodies in different directions and we follow that.
Being In the Present
Spiritual, religious and many other practices advocate the value and importance of living in the present moment. Not an easy task as our attention is constantly pulled in different directions through modern technology and 21st Century living.
Inner Dance is an antidote to this. It invites us back into the here and now: breath, body, movement.
Come and taste the Inner Dance experience at Flomotion … you’ll get the outer dance experience too!
I can bear witness that the Inner Dance is quite a unique and wonderful part of the Flomotion experience.