Bellydance a Courtesan Would Envy
Check out this Youtube clip on the gnostic teachings regarding sexual alchemy:
Gnostic Sexual Alchemy
I’ll fill in more about this soon.
In the meantime, a couple of good YouTube vids:
A woman who retired as full colonel in the U.S. Marine Corps recalled counseling a woman junior officer. The younger woman was presenting herself too timidly in the presence of her male peers.
The result of the young officer’s nice girl posture was that her ideas and work was not being taken as seriously.
My friend’s advice?
Take up more space.
She suggested that the young officer sprawl more when she sat in a chair – stretch out her arms and legs, rather than sitting in a tight, closed, demure little posture.
Can we just cut to the chase here?
There are wonderful imageries that help us create beautiful flowing technique and lines in our dance.
Chicken wings is not one of those images.
How do we get them?
More important – if we have them, how do we get over them?
Practice counts, surely.
But what if there was a way to make near-instantaneous change – in our dance and in our life.
Interested?
I recently observed a dance performance, and a highly respected dance teacher was sitting next to me.
The choreographies were good, and the dancers had their moves down right. But something was off.
Instead of having a long, beautiful line, various dancers were pulling in their arms.
The respected dance teacher summed it up in one pithy comment:
Chicken wings.
Chicken wings are not just a matter of poor posture, poor training, or inattention to detail.
What is really going on is that the dancer is constricted in her energy field. She’s afraid to open up and really claim her space.
But that’s not what we want, is it?
When we dance, we’re not just doing entertainment.
When we dance, we are a priestess, taking our people into a transcendent space.
We can’t do that if we’re fearful and constricted.
Sometimes, we express our tension differently – we get our shoulders up to our ears.
This isn’t pretty or graceful either. (Nor is it inspiring or transcendent.)
These are two sides of the same coin.
In both cases, it’s like having a kink in our energy hose. Our energy isn’t flowing freely, and so of course we don’t look as good as we might.
When we’re not afraid to extend our reach, we create transcendent moments – in dance, in life.
Recently, I talked with my dear friend Patty Haley – a beautiful dancer (and who has also served as an officer in the U.S.M.C.). Patty teaches women to take up more space when they dance. (See a great video clip of Patty explaining her Peaceful Warrior Girl approach.)
But sometimes, we need to make this change from the inside out.
Earlier this week, I asked my friend Julie Marie Rahm, the Resultant, to help me with a challenge.
I’ve done a lot of healing lately, and a lot of integration – but I still had some big areas of “stuckness.”
Recently, I’d felt very unsupported during a challenge that affected my entire Household. It’s not so important what the details were; it’s that I had some old tape playing in my mind.
Because the outer always reflects the inner, I created outcomes that had me feeling unsupported. These outcomes reflected a belief that I had – actually an energy pattern that I’d created.
This energy pattern impacted everything. Finances. Relationships. Stability of business ventures; whether on my own or with partners. Ability to get support and implementation of my creative areas.
More and more, I was seeing this as a pattern – not as a series of isolated events.
And more than anything, I wanted a deep pattern shift.
Julie worked with me for about 25 minutes, using YUEN Mastery, the New Science of Achieving Immediate Results. She did this at a distance; we were on the phone with each other, but once she knew what the problem was, she didn’t even need to have me on the line with her.
She advised me, when we were done, to take it easy for the rest of the day.
She was right – I felt just fine during the session itself, but later in the day, was a bit loopy and spacey – definitely not a day for operating power tools or making corporate budget decisions.
Felt fabulous the next day, and wrote my planned blogpost introducing Julie and the Yuen Method; see Has Your High Priestess Been Shortchanged This Year (How to Fix).
The day after that (yesterday), I really needed to take some time off for pure integration – lots of stuff going on both physically and emotionally.
Today is the fourth day since my Yuen session with Julie.
In next week’s blog, I’ll report how this method seems to be impacting my life overall.
I could feel the shift, as we worked. But it will take time for the real pattern-shifts to manifest on the physical plane.
One thing I can tell you, right now. Some of the blurts that I’d been wrestling with – for the past several years – have eased up substantially. (See Using Belly Dance to Heal Deepest Emotional Wounds, from February 2, 2013. And if you had joined me on the Twelve Lessons of Solstice (which will re-open again at Winter Solstice of this next year), you heard a lot about blurts, and how they reflect our core wounds and impact our lives.)
I’m looking for shifts in all areas of my life – personal, professional, and dance.
In dance, I’d like more strength, structure, firmness of expression. These are Emperor characteristics.
We may also want our Emperor to show up in our lives by having better boundaries in our relations with others (as well as keeping more of our vital energy for ourselves), having clearer communications with others (as well as greater internal connection), and increased financial well-being (along with personal energy).
Our Emperor achetype works to our advantage, both in creating a positive experience in the external world, and in shaping our internal energy selves. These really become the same.
Our Emperor is one of our core power archetypes. Our Emperor serves to define and protect our boundaries, increase communications and energy flow throughout our whole being, and bring in good energy and resources. In short, his job is to protect and provide.
Sometimes, we have some damage in our Emperor connection. Then, our Emperor has a hard time expressing in a useful and sustained way.
As I wrote recently in The Unveiling Journey (the blog series associated with Unveiling: The Inner Journey), our Emperor is on our side. Check out Healing Our Inner Emperor – What a Breakthrough Feels Like.
If you’ve experienced the Yuen Method, please share your experiences in the comments section.
If this is new to you, check back next week, when I report in. Also, look into Julie’s webpage, Problems-Resolved. Read some of her blogs to get a sense of how this method works in practice.
I’m working on healing (or as Julie would say, resolving) issues with my Emperor. You may want to focus on a different archetype or life-area. Either way, I’m interested in your results.
Please share. I’ll read and respond to your comments, and ask Julie to chime in also.
And oh yes. Let me know if strengthening your inner Emperor – or any other resolving done with the Yuen method – helps you claim more space. Personally, professionally, or in dance. Or in all areas at once.
Very best wishes as you use Oriental dance (belly dance) for personal growth and healing!
Yours in dance –
Alay’nya
Author of Unveiling: The Inner Journey
You are the Jewel in the Heart of the Lotus. Become the Jewel!
Founder and Artistic Director, The Alay’nya Studio
Bellydance a courtesan would envy!
Check out Alay’nya’s YouTube Channel
Connect with Alay’nya on Facebook
Follow Unveiling: The Inner Journey on Facebook
What does Oriental dancer Ronnette Ramirez have to say about Unveiling: The Inner Journey?
This is a must read for all women. Most of what is written, relates to oriental dance and the lives of dancers, instructors, and those who dream of becoming a dancer. A woman’s journey is of importance and Unveiling: The Inner Journey, is a terrific guide.
Alay’nya has a HERstory that is familiar to us. However, what she created is a wonderful text of rich knowledge and research for women to use in their pathway. In Unveiling, Alay’nya takes you on a journey to discover what is a woman’s pathway.
… On a personal note, there is a section in the book called “Receiving”. This is my challenge, for I do feel less in control if I receive from others. I will go back to that section and work this issue. Alay’nya’s words hit close to home.
Read Ronnette’s whole review here at Ronnette Ramirez on Unveiling in the Belly Dance Editorial at BellaOnline.
BellaOnline is a website for women, covering many areas of women’s lives.
BellaOnline includes a Bellydancing Site, edited by dancer Ronnette Ramirez.
Recent posts by Ronnette include:
And just as a side note – Ronnette is fascinated by the character Scheherezade (such drama! such psychological richness! such courage!), and has several posts on her – interesting coincidence that I write about Scheherezade also in Unveiling‘s Chapter 8: The Essence of Stillness.
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Part 1, Chapter One: Woundology and the Healing Fire
Section on “Your ‘Cellular Bank Account’,” which continues from the previous post:
After Basic Emotional Healing: What Next?
“Each of us has hundreds of circuits of energy connecting to us, energy that different cultures have named in different ways as the Divine breath of life that animates each of us. What the Indians call prana and the Chinese call ch’i, Christians refer to as grace or the Holy S;pirit, and secularists might call vitality or simply life-force. ” (p. 16)
“Althought the life-force is equally available to all of us and flows into us whether or not we are aware of it … it’s possible to maximize our intake and use of it. In fact, consciousness means awareness of the flow of life-force inot us and the ability to direct it into certain areas of the body, without unknowingly releasing it from other areas of the body.”
“Imagine this flow of energy as a financial allowance … positive investments will earn you positive returns… Negative investments, on the other hand, will create debt.” (p. 16)
“The other source of additional energetic cash is the energetic resources held in your own cell tissue. … Keeping your physical body energized consequently feeds your creativity, your relationships, and your vital need for optimism. But when too much energetic cash is drawn out of your cell bank account, you become debt-ridden. The greater the debt becomes, the weaker your cell tissue grows. If you do not reverse this pattern by paying off our debt with your daily allowance, then you will become vulnerable to the development of disease.” (p. 17, earlier)
“Holding on to the negative events of our histories is expensive – prohibitively so. It is like trying to keep the dead alive, and it takes an enormous amount of energy. When we experience a trauma, Nature supplies us with extra financing, so to speak, to protect us during the draining period of crisis, but that loan’ has a time limit on it. … the signal that thet loan is coming due is that we begin to sense that time has come to a standstill and our lives are not moving forward.” (p. 17)
“The only way to release the pattern into which we have locked ourselves is to release the weight of the past – to get out of the enegy debt we can no longer afford to carry. Forgiveness is one sure way out of deb. Forgiving does not mean saying that what happened to you doesn’t matter, or that it is all right for someone to have violated you. It simply means releasing the negative feeligns you have about that event and the person or persons involved.” (p. 18)
“The process of retrieving this energy from the past begins by making a shift in awareness and vocabulary; simply put, you have to outrun your past. Learn to become conscious, as often as possible, of what you are thinking about and where your energy is.” (p. 26)
“Refusing to let go of past event, whether postibe or negative, means throwing away some part of your daily energy budget. If you start losing energy and don’t do anything aout it, you will invetiably develop a weakness in your physical body. … If you continue to lose energy without taking action, those minor upsets can develop into major illnesses. … An ‘accident-prone’ person is actually energetically in debt.” (p. 19)
Audio Collection:
http://alaynyastudio.com/2010/06/18/its-about-healing/
Very best wishes as you use Oriental dance (belly dance) to bring youthful vitality, movement, and expressiveness into your life!
Yours in dance –
Alay’nya
Author of Unveiling: The Inner Journey
You are the Jewel in the Heart of the Lotus. Become the Jewel!
Founder and Artistic Director, The Alay’nya Studio
Bellydance a courtesan would envy!
Check out Alay’nya’s YouTube Channel
Connect with Alay’nya on Facebook
Follow Unveiling: The Inner Journey on Facebook
P.S. Learning the sexiest walk in the world involves lengthening our lower back, strengthening and using our abdominal core, and generating your movement from within.
As a side benefit from doing this, you will automatically begin to strengthen your pelvic floor.
There are additional health benefits from doing this. Dr. Christiane Northrup, New York Times best-selling author of Women’s Bodies, Women’s Wisdom and The Wisdom of Menopause, tells us that developing a strong pelvic floor is necessary for our overall health – including mitigating urinary incontinence.
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What Does Dr. Christiane Northrup, New York Times best-selling author of Women’s Bodies, Women’s Wisdom and The Wisdom of Menopause, have to say about Unveiling: The Inner Journey?
Dr. Northrup notes:
“Alay’nya brings divine sensuality to women in the ancient forum of dance. This book is delightful.” Read this and more reviews of Unveiling: The Inner Journey.
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Two days ago, a dear, wise, and trusted counselor told me that I needed to clear out my attachment to needing my father’s approval. As a gifted intuitive, she could see the “energy cord” linking me to – not so much him, per se (he died Thanksgiving weekend of last year) – but to my still-ongoing desire for his approval. For his affection. For his attention.
Yup, I thought to myself. She’s right.
Moreover, she was telling me that once I did this – cleared out this energy-attachment once and for all – I’d be free to experience the abundance and prosperity that I desired.
What more of a motivation does a girl want?
This sure triggered an avalanche of response in me.
I spent all day yesterday burning off physical energy by cleaning the front porch and bringing in the big potted plants, so they could winter over safely. I found all sorts of ways to discharge physical energy while I opened up my mind to clearing out the attachment energy.
Forgiveness, as we all know, is the only way to do this.
I’ve been working on this for a year now. In fact, spiritual housecleaning has been the one thing that pulled me through grief after Daddy died last year. But having dealt with the most immediate shock, and nearly having completed a year of mourning (surprise, it really has taken a year), it’s time to work at a deeper level.
So, I’ve started a new practice.
I resumed meditation practice, on the advice of both this counselor and another one, about a month ago.
Now, I’m tacking on one more thing.
After basic meditation, I bring to mind three things where I still feel some pain (loss, heartbreak, sorry, and even just plain pissed-off-ness) about my father. Do the forgiveness schtick. As best I can (and sometimes it’s a bit ungainly).
I try keeping the list to just three items per pass; no use dredging things up much more – I know this will take some time.
Then, I bring to mind as many things as I can for which I’m thankful, appreciative, have good memories. (Thankfully, there really are a lot of those!). About six to ten does the trick.
Sometimes (a whole lot more often than not), I have to do a similar process with yet another man who’s played a role in my life. (While there have been some absolutely lovely men; men whose valour, nobility, and kindness I’ve absolutely loved, there have also been – shall I say this kindly? And with no disrespect for the bird that will grace many of our tables in just a few weeks? – some real turkeys.)
Forgiveness is the foundation. It’s the one single spiritual practice where – if we make even a half-a**ed attempt (and I mean a diligent half-a**ed attempt; not a fluffy one) – when we complete this lifetime, we get a passing grade. Everything else is bonus points.
There really are four disciplines, and we factor them into our practice throughout the year:
My personal experience – and that of my teachers (those who do energy work) – is that these are essential to releasing our personal baggage; the stuff that holds us back.
We have to do our spiritual homework. That’s obvious. If we fail to do this work, our lives (not to mention health, abundance, relationships, and everything else) will get stuck.
We also need correct basic physical practices – everything from good diet to stretching, taking walks, checking in our posture for good alignment, and all these related things.
In addition – and something which is an essential component of our school – we also do energy practices. Yogis practice these as part of their more advanced work. Internal martial artists use energy as part of their art. We also include energy practices; we make them part of our etudes (study pieces), our choreographies, and even our improvisations.
I’m re-igniting my own study of energy work, using books and sources that I’ve collected for nearly forty years. As I factor these materials into curriculum, I’ll post reference pages. (These will become new Resources pages. Will announce in this blog when they’re up.)
There is a specific method – I’ll call it “energy washing” – that we can use to bring greater life-force energy into our etheric bodies, or personal energy fields. The methods for this are very similar to those of Chi Kung. I’ll be teaching these in class over the next several sessions.
I’m re-engaging these energy practices and putting them into dance form. Not much to say in words yet; will show you specific examples if you’re going to be in class with me.
Physical things – just as with people and experiences – come into and out of our lives as needed.
Odd things are happening – will share more in class on Sunday.
Until then, I’m heading down to the Diva Den for morning practice.
See you soon!
yours in dance – Alay’nya
In last week’s post, I asked you (my readers) the question: Are you autistic?
I’d assumed (erroneously) that most of you would say something like: Me? Of course not!
I was wrong.
I got an email back from one of my readers, Yes, I am autistic, and dance helps my symptoms.
I know the woman who wrote back to me; she’s actually very well integrated – she has a strong role in society, is a valuable member of several groups, and is overall an absolute dear and delight.
I was surprised that she labeled herself autistic, although that I knew she used belly dance strongly as a healing modality.
I also knew, though, that she attended strongly to the beat of a “different drum” – she listened more to her inner self than to the external world.
Belly dance has been important for her as a means of tapping into her body’s secret storehouse of knowledge. For her, as for many of us, belly dance (Oriental dance), truly is an integration pathway.
As I reflected on what she wrote, I thought: I’ve used belly dance for healing myself, just as she has. And many, many of my students have said the same.
In fact, probably most of the women who come to me (and yes, like attracts like), have come less because they want to put on the glitzy costume and perform on stage. They come because they want to tap into who they are in a deeper way.
That, and do some serious healing and integration.
And for some of us, of course, performances and other stage opportunities do ensue. (This in fact may be part of the healing process.)
In that sense, maybe we’re all dealing – to at least some extent – with the challenge of having various aspects of who-we-are fractured, and our conscious awareness sometimes not fully tied into either our surroundings or our bodies.
A couple of months ago, I wrote about How Belly Dance Healed My Life.
From the stories that I hear; I suspect that I’m just one among many.
We may not all use the term autistic to describe ourselves, but many of us – due to a range of factors – may feel that it is difficult to be present in this world. Co-opting the title of one of Robert Heinlein’s most famous science fiction novels, many of us feel that we are a Stranger in a Strange Land.
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One of the things that I love most about Oriental dance is that it allows us to both access and express the full range of who we are.
This is important, because most of us – in our day-to-day lives – find that we access only a limited part of our emotional range.
Through movement, we express ourselves through a much more complex emotional vocabulary.
In that sense, the phrase coined by autism researcher Dr. Geoffrey Waldon, Meaning [comes] from movement, is useful for all of us.
Our emotional healing progresses throughout our entire lives. Most of us – unless we are a very advanced soul – will not finish in this lifetime.
However, we do move on to progressively deeper – and more refined – aspects of inner healing.
Specifically, we start to work more with our full energetic being.
Carolyn Myss, in her book Why People Don’t Heal and How They Can, writes (in Section One on “Your ‘Cellular Bank Account'”):
Each of us has hundreds of circuits of energy connecting to us, energy that different cultures have named in different ways as the Divine breath of life that animates each of us. What the Indians call prana and the Chinese call ch’i, Christians refer to as grace or the Holy Spirit, and secularists might call vitality or simply life-force. [p. 16]
Although the life-force is equally available to all of us and flows into us whether or not we are aware of it … it’s possible to maximize our intake and use of it. In fact, consciousness means awareness of the flow of life-force into us and the ability to direct it into certain areas of the body, without unknowingly releasing it from other areas of the body.
Imagine this flow of energy as a financial allowance … positive investments will earn you positive returns… Negative investments, on the other hand, will create debt. [p. 16]
The only way to release the pattern into which we have locked ourselves is to release the weight of the past – to get out of the energy debt we can no longer afford to carry. Forgiveness is one sure way out of debt. Forgiving does not mean saying that what happened to you doesn’t matter, or that it is all right for someone to have violated you. It simply means releasing the negative feelings you have about that event and the person or persons involved.[p. 18]
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What Caroline Myss teaches gives us an important and valuable connection:
To use belly dance as a sacred pathway for body/mind/psyche/energy healing and integration, we also have to do some spiritual work. Most especially, we have to learn forgiveness.
First, we start forgiving ourselves. Then, we also forgive others.
The Course in Miracles also teaches forgiveness as a basic principle.
We’re going to be working with this – and with other spiritual principles (gratitude, giving love, and taking responsibility for our thoughts) over the next months.
For today, it may be sufficient to simply start being gentle with yourself.
First step: Ease up on the judging.
We are much harsher with ourselves than we are with anyone else.
Cultivate – to the best extent that you can, just for today – the art of gentleness. (You do this, and I’ll try to do this also.)
Belly dance gives us the means to be with our bodies, and our feelings. It helps us access our inner feminine core, and express the feminine aspects of ourselves.
There is one more step that we can take, though.
If you’ve been following me on the Unveiling blog, you’ll know that we’ve been working towards the goal of core archetype integration. This is often typified by the seventh card in the Tarot’s Major Arcana; the Chariot. (For those of you familiar with the Tarot, this sounds like a masculine archetype, right? Read Unveiling’s Chapter 7: “A Real Woman’s Path (Really Does Exist!),” to learn the original meaning for this card. It started off as a feminine archetype: the Winged Goddess.)
Beyond the Chariot or Winged Goddess stage, where we literally force our archetypal polar opposites to work together, we open up a brand new stage of learning.
We introduce this with the notion of Strength, Major Arcana Card VIII.
Have a look at the figure to the left.
It shows us the Tarot card Strength (Major Arcana Card VIII). This is the first card in the second series of major life journeys.
Notice how the woman is easing her “inner beast” to the ground; she’s subduing it not with force, but with gentleness.
In most of my Unveiling blog, and in my book, Unveiling: The Inner Journey, I focus on the first major life journey: getting to access, understand, and integrate our eight core power archetypes.
I briefly mention the second and third journeys adult life journeys. The second journey deals with accessing our inner Fountain of Youth – our intrinsic personal energy.
Martial arts masters – especially of the internal martial arts (T’ai Ch’i Chuan being a premier example) use their internal energy, or ch’i, as part of their practice.
In our second adult life journey, we learn to do the same. (Read Unveiling’s Chapter 29, Pragmatic Esoterics, for a start on this.)
For a practical start, as you do your belly dance exercises this week, focus on softening your body. Use the force of gravity to help you align, not muscular tension. See how much you can release tension throughout your body.
We’re beginning to learn effectiveness while staying soft, relaxed, and gentle.
As Saint Frances de Sales is credited with saying:
Nothing is so strong as gentleness, nothing so gentle as real strength.
Let’s try putting this into action together, shall we?
And we’ll check in with each other next week.
Very best wishes as you use Oriental dance (belly dance) for personal growth and healing!
Yours in dance –
Alay’nya
Author of Unveiling: The Inner Journey
You are the Jewel in the Heart of the Lotus. Become the Jewel!
Founder and Artistic Director, The Alay’nya Studio
Bellydance a courtesan would envy!
Check out Alay’nya’s YouTube Channel
Connect with Alay’nya on Facebook
Follow Unveiling: The Inner Journey on Facebook
What does Oriental dancer Nimeera have to say about Unveiling: The Inner Journey?
This is a wonderful book! Unlike so much of the fluff out there, this one is by no means an “casual read” to read in the little stolen moments of the day. Rather, it is something with many layers of depth to be explored in meditation and contemplation, with a cup of tea, away from the demands of children and husbands. And then not to read all at once, but section by section with time for reflection between readings… It has resonated with me and given me validation for the things I feel and do that don’t always fit with society’s expectations for me, and given me ideas for how to further mold my life path to my greatest satisfaction.
Nimeera Nazmine performs in North Virginia (Fairfax and Woodbridge), as well as in Washington D.C. She also teaches classes in both belly dance and Bollywood-style Indian dance.
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First question: What is “ascension”?
In brief, it is expanding ourselves vibrationally. It is a culmination of spiritual growth. For a reference, please check out Wanda Lasseter-Lundy’s blog. You can also read some useful material in The Soul and the Ascension by John Van Horne. You can also take a look at A Complete Ascension Manual: How to Achieve Ascension in This Lifetime (Easy-To-Read Encyclopedia of the Spiritual Path) by Joshua David Stone. For each of the books, use Amazon’s “Look Inside” feature; it will give you enough to get started.
Some of this is pretty strange; pretty weird. But definitely points the way to a form of spiritual growth.
Even the most cursory read will probably have you saying, “Really great; really cool – but so far beyond me!”
That’s ok. It’s far beyond me also.
But let’s not over-task ourselves with the whole “ascension” thing just yet. Let’s do baby steps.
In a recent blog, Static on the Brain, I pointed to – essentially – “corrosion of our spiritual/energetic selves” as causing us to function poorly; in dance and in life. I promised some resources.
Here they are. These are the ones that I’ve used to “pull myself together” after my Daddy died late this last autumn. I realized that I needed to do some pretty deep spiritual healing work. These “baby steps” worked for me (and they’re still working, and I’m still working them). They might work for you as well.
Here’s the four-point overview, freely adapted from Joshua David Stone’s book (pages 2-4).
Alice (“Alicja”) Jones, in her forthcoming book, Own Your Power, similarly identifies these points. In her Jan. 12th section on “Forgiving All,” she writes:
Forgiveness is one of the three major reasons for incarnating on this planet. The other two are learning unconditional love, and learning to be of service to others.
In her January 14th section, she devotes attention to the “Law of Attraction” – which really becomes a lesson in responsibility.
So let’s do a wrap-up. And let’s keep in mind that, for each of us, the more important the lesson, the simpler we need to make the content. Let’s treat ourselves as Winnie-the-Pooh did, when he said of himself, “I am a Bear of a Very Little Brain, and long words bother me.”
Thus, here are our lessons. They are a combination of Joshua Stone’s and Alice Jones’ writings, and will undoubtedly resonate with works of every spiritual teacher/path on this planet:
There are a set of books that are useful for this. Those will be the subject of a near-term posting.
Very best wishes as you use Oriental dance (belly dance) as part of your own personal evolution!
Yours in dance –
Alay’nya
Author of Unveiling: The Inner Journey
You are the Jewel in the Heart of the Lotus. Become the Jewel!
Founder and Artistic Director, The Alay’nya Studio
Bellydance a courtesan would envy!
Check out Alay’nya’s YouTube Channel
Connect with Alay’nya on Facebook
Follow Unveiling: The Inner Journey on Facebook
This post is not for everyone.
Really.
This is for “mature audiences only” – reader discretion advised.
(The following post shares personal experiences, and is not medical advice. If you are at all in doubt before you begin – should you choose to do something similar to what I’ve done – consider asking for guidance from a licensed medical or therapeutic professional. And perhaps have a trained counselor with you as you do this particular form of “inner journey.”)
A core wound is the psychological impact from an experience (or set of experiences) that we have when we are young, or are otherwise exceptionally vulnerable. This (these) experience(s) occur when we are still shaping our basic worldview; our concept of whether or not the world is a “friendly place.”
Core wounds most commonly come from experiences with our immediate family. In particular, they come about with those whom we identify as essential to our survival.
To the best of my knowledge, all of us carry with us some sorts of core wound. We often have them no matter how much we do psychotherapy, seek “spiritual enlightenment,” or just plain “work on our stuff.”
Core wounds feel like psychological “hurt.” In fact, they “hurt” a lot. So as a result, we try to bundle them up and isolate them away from our conscious awareness.
Core wounds never really go away on their own. They stay inside us, with tremendous power – mostly because we try to contain and control them.
Often, our core wound show up as “blurts.” These can be phrases that we say to ourselves. Sometimes, they even slip into our conversations! Or, we show ourselves (and others around us) a core wound by voicing strong opinions about how a person (or certain group of persons) always does something that is “bad.”
Core wounds feel intensely private. We rarely – if ever – discuss them with others. Often, if we do psychotherapy or have a life coach or a spiritual counselor, we may work for months before we tentatively allow our core wound area to be broached. This is because, of all the parts of our inner world, our core wound feels most sensitive, most vulnerable, most “ouchie”!
And yet, if we do allow a core wound area to “come into the open,” we may be surprised to learn that our coach, counselor, or therapist really knew about it all along. (And so, for that matter, did our relationship partners, and possibly our boss, co-workers, family, and friends.) This is because our core wounds affect us so much that we “give them away” all the time!
Eckhart Tolle writes about core wounds in The Power of Now. He calls them our pain-body.
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Core wounds never really go away on their own. They stay inside us, with tremendous power – mostly because we try to contain and control them.
Often, our core wound show up as “blurts.” These can be phrases that we say to ourselves. Sometimes, they even slip into our conversations! Or, we show ourselves (and others around us) our core wound by voicing strong opinions about how a person (or certain group of persons) always does something that is “bad.”
We can have breakthroughs, and often do. But still, these are the “core.” They go right down to how we believe that the world works – in our favor, or not. Dangerous, or safe and friendly.
When we dance, we sidestep the cognitive side of who we are. When we let our bodies simply move, and express how we feel, we can access – and begin to heal – our core wounds.
I’m not talking here about technique practice, or learning a tight little choreography. There is nothing wrong with either technique or choreography. But at some point, we need to go beyond – to what dance really is, and what it can do for us – if we start releasing ourselves to the flow of energy and feeling that we can experience as we dance.
Z Helene Christopher – in her excellent paper on Middle Eastern Dance: The Emergence of the New Sacred Temple Priestess – provides four key points that will help all of us (including myself) use Oriental dance (belly dance) to heal our core wounds. According to Z Helene:
There are four main points in which we, as new temple priestesses, reclaim and reconnect with the ancient Goddess.
- We must understand our dance as embodying nature, especially its fertility aspects… Our dance exudes fertility. We move our pelvises and roll our bellies, honoring the sexual act and the resulting procreation…
- We reclaim and reconnect with the ancients by understanding our dance as manifesting ecstasy… Our movement invokes the ecstatic kundalini…
- We reclaim and reconnect with the ancients by understanding our dance as an experience of Divine Union…
- We reclaim and reconnect with the Goddess by understanding ourselves as dispensers of karuna; early motherly love … transformed … to embrace all forms of love: touching, tenderness, compassion, mercy, sensual enjoyment and eroticism.
Very best wishes as you tap into who you really are using dance!
Yours in dance –
Alay’nya
Author of Unveiling: The Inner Journey
You are the Jewel in the Heart of the Lotus. Become the Jewel!
Founder and Artistic Director, The Alay’nya Studio
Bellydance a courtesan would envy!
Check out Alay’nya’s YouTube Channel
Connect with Alay’nya on Facebook
Follow Unveiling: The Inner Journey on Facebook
From Z Helene’s Amazon review of “Unveiling: The Inner Journey”: “Unveiling is about becoming more intimate with ourselves. It is about peeling away the outer layers that keep us from knowing, naming, and attaining our deep wants and desires. By embarking upon a transforming inner spiritual journey, we are encouraged to get connected to ourselves in a way that allows us to genuinely feel our bodies and emotions– all of them, even the undesirable ones. By integrating and loving our “shadow” sides, and by doing daily practices such as stillness, softening, releasing, shifting state, and breathing, we increase our vital energy (prana, ch’i) which makes us more attractive and, yes, more erotic as well. For true attractiveness, according to Alay’nya, is the ability of women to lessen their adopted masculine roles of control and being in charge (Amazon archetype), and instead to surrender to pure energy, motion, and love. This is what makes us beautiful!”
P.S. – Have you read Z Helene’s article on Middle Eastern Dance: The Emergence of the New Sacred Temple Priestess? I recommend it to all my dancers!
Z Helene also has a 4-volume basic Middle Eastern dance (belly dance) instructional DVD set, and another DVD on zills, available through her website. Check them out!
Copyright (c) 2013, Alay’nya. All rights reserved.
And I’m not even talking sex. (Well maybe. Just a little bit. Later.)
What is the one thing that you can do on your own, in bed, that sends a totally relaxing and soothing feeling up your spine?
It’s the same thing that I wrote about a few days ago, leaving you with a bit of a “cliff-hanger.”
Because, as I asserted in my last post, many of you already know this!
The real surprise is, many of you already know this – and you might even be new to Oriental dance!
Believe me, I am more than surprised. I am amazed. I am totally blown away.
When I learned this “little secret” – many years ago, as I was writing Unveiling: The Inner Journey – it was news to me.
The really important thing about what she shared?
It’s that the insight didn’t come from a member of the Oriental dance community. It came from someone who was skilled in the mind/body healing arts. (Diane now does something called HeartMath.) My students who already knew about this movement were practitioners of Reiki, yoga, deep tissue massage, and related areas.
So what is this one thing?
It’s the movement that we dancers call the “Figure 8,” done with our hips.
Our “Figure 8” (“Figure Eight”) movement in Oriental dance (belly dance) mirrors the infinity sign, and also traces a subtle internal movement at the base of our spine. The person who “clued me in” on this movement was Diane Richardson, whom I mentioned several times in Chapters 14 – 16.
I’ve looked at a number of YouTube vids purporting to teach the (vertical) Figure 8, and have only found one so far that is trustworthy – click here to see a Figure 8 tutorial. Just watching this dancer, you’ll see how the Figure 8 activates – actually massages – the sacral area. Beautiful!
(Be careful if you’re looking at various online clips; some focus on a horizontal Figure 8; that’s nice, but not what we’re discussing here. Others show a Figure 8 that starts “top to bottom”; this is sometimes called a Maya. And surprisingly, just changing the direction of how the movement is initiated makes a huge difference. For best energetic benefits, do the “classic Figure 8” – start going down-and-out, then up. And no matter what anyone tells you, try to keep your feet on the floor!)
Enough of the technical hints. The real question is: Why is this movement so important? Why is it more than just one of the many basic “belly dance techniques”?
The answer – as I shared in Unveiling: The Inner Journey – is:
She [Diane] pointed out that Oriental dance is built on a natural undulating and flowing movement that connects our entire spine, from our cranial vertebrae down to our sacrum. In addition, she helped me to sense a very subtle and naturally-embedded “figure eight” motion at the base of my spine. … All that we are doing, as we dance, is to tap into these innate, natural rhythms, and magnify them into a dance. (pp. 410-411)
So, the Figure 8 movement in Oriental dance:
To the best of my knowledge, doing a physically-correct Figure 8 movement is entirely safe, given that a person has no physical or neurological conditions that would make this movement difficult. (If the reader has any doubt or questions, he or she is advised to consult a medical professional first.) Also, to the best of my knowledge, while well-done Figure 8’s gently encourage both cranio-sacral release and (somehow) produce a “feel-good” effect, I don’t believe that this movement alone will cause release of kundalini energy. As a reference, in yogic teachings, the kundalini energy is stored as a “coiled serpent” at the base of our spine. When we do the Figure 8, we are gently activating life-force energy, but I don’t believe we’ll have any danger of arousing kundalini.
The Figure 8 does, at least in my experience, seem to relate to an overall group of intrinsic motions from the cranium down to the sacral area. Healing professionals are learning to sense and work with these rhythms in a healing modality called cranio-sacral therapy. I have personally experienced cranio-sacral therapy treatments, and found them safe, gentle, peaceful, and healing.
I like to do Figure 8’s in bed, because then gravity is not working on my sacral area. It is freer to move. And because this movement is gentle and relaxing, it will sometimes help me sleep easier and more restfully. And the relation to sex? Well, if we release our sacro-iliac area, and in fact mobilize our entire pelvic region (and Oriental dance movements help us with just that), then we are much more likely to have pleasure, right?
It happened during the second-to-last class of autumn. I was giving a “preview of coming attractions” – going over the “hot topics” for the winter quarter to come.
I took a deep breath, and launched into what I thought would be the most oddball, obscure, and yet most fundamental part of our next studies.
I felt pretty scared with this topic.
It’s one of those that makes “esoteric belly dance” – well – esoteric.
Mentally, I braced myself for resistance.
You (that is, the new group of students – and also those of you reading this) have borne up cheerfully – and even enthusiastically – as I’ve introduced a range of topics that you (students and readers collectively) often refer to as the “woo-woo stuff.”
That’s right. By many other standards, esoteric means the “woo-woo stuff.” And you’ve been cheerful and enthusiastic in not only trying this out, but in using that term.
This time, I thought, I’d lose you forever.
But as I launched into my description, my jaw dropped. I saw you nodding your heads in agreement. (This time, “you” being the students who were actually in the class that day – and perhaps even you as a reader.)
Over half of you were saying, essentially, “Oh yes, we know this already.”
What?
One of the weirdest, most unusual, most “woo-woo” parts of the curriculum, and it’s already common knowledge?
I just couldn’t believe.
But it made sense.
In the class, we had a massage therapist whose interests and background included energy work. We had a Reiki practitioner. We had a few whose interests in yoga, meditation, and related areas were almost life-long.
Most of you already understood one of the most powerful principles for pathworking, or for bringing your energy work into your physical practice.
Over the years, as our curriculum shifted from classical, mainstream Oriental dance to … well, Oriental dance plus something … I’ve tried to express who and what we were in different ways. One that made the most sense was, simply, Jedi for women.
Imagine that you are Obi-Wan Kenobi, but a young Obi-wan. You’re not yet the Jedi Master. In fact, you’re not yet even a Jedi knight. You’re a young man who hopes to one day become a Jedi knight.
Or imagine that you’re Hermione, and more than anything, you want to go off to a school that teaches you to use the powers that you know that you have – but simply haven’t ever been able to bring together.
Or that you’re an young woman in pre-Arthurian times, stepping into the boat that will take you through the mists to Avalon, where you hope to learn the fabled priestess arts.
Now, let’s take this one step deeper.
Imagine that not only you are some fictional character, setting out to learn and master some arcane arts that will require years of complete devotion and dedication – but that at one point, in one of your many lifetimes, you were such a person.
Imagine that at one time, you not only knew these things, but had mastered them.
You were, at one point, a Jedi Master. You were a grown-up, fully powerful Hermione. You were a Priestess of Avalon.
And now, in this lifetime, you’re simply trying to bring it all together.
And thus, you gravitate towards energy practices, such as yoga. Or perhaps you’ve already studied energetic healing arts, such as Reiki. Or you’ve followed a tradition of ritual, and opened up your sensitivities in that area.
Somehow or other, in your various wanderings, you’ve already picked up enough so that when the new information is presented to you, it’s not new anymore.
It’s already part of your known and familiar.
Make sense?
Of course. And for a very good reason.
Many of us are experiencing an integration lifetime. We’re pulling together all that we’ve learned before, and we’re making the breakthroughs that we were reaching towards earlier, but possibly didn’t make in our previous lives.
That’s why this lifetime, for so many of us, is so complex, demanding, and challenging. We’re “wrapping up” a lot of things all at once, while reviewing all that we’ve learned before, and making major breakthroughs that we almost – but didn’t quite – complete in our earlier lives.
Sound exhausting?
It’s kind of like taking organic chemistry during the summer. (Difficult under the best of circumstances.) And then, while doing that, taking a “survey course” covering a few thousand years of humanities. And then doing an extra-credit project under the direction of a Nobel Laureate researcher.
Which would explain why our lives are so full, so complex, and so challenging.
We’re not just making headway in one area, we’re doing a lot of things, all at once.
But what is this one thing – one of the three “cornerstones” of esoteric dance – that many of you know already?
Read the details in the next blog. (Yes, I promise to be forthcoming. And I’ll put the link here as soon as I publish the next blog.)
Or, if you simply can’t wait, pick up your copy of Unveiling: The Inner Journey, and read the paragraph at the bottom of page 410. (Yes, this is smack in the middle of Chapter 29, “Pragmatic Esoterics,” or – as we now call it, the “woo-woo stuff.”)
Here’s to your health and well-being – and to your overflowing personal energy and abundance in 2013 and beyond!
Much love – Alay’nya
P.S. Do you have a desire to be a “Jedi Master” in your own life? Do you desire bringing all of who you are – energetically as well as physically, and emotionally as well as intellectually – into one art? Do you desire your own pathworking?
Join me. Click here, scroll to the lower left on the page, and join the Unveiling community for quarterly (and sometimes more frequent) communications. This is reserved for people like you – people who want to infuse their practice with the energetic aspects, and use their dance art as a pathway for healing, wholeness, integration, and mastery.
Very best wishes to you make your dances more fluid and expressive as you add “water play” to your practice!
Yours in dance –
Alay’nya
Author of Unveiling: The Inner Journey
You are the Jewel in the Heart of the Lotus. Become the Jewel!
From Dr. Nicole Cutts’ Amazon review of “Unveiling: The Inner Journey”: “I love, love, love this book! It is like the g*ddess mother, mentor I never had and always needed. Finally a book that just tells it like it is for women. It is well written, intelligent and enlightening. For any woman who wants to live a life of adventure,joy and love. It is rich with so much wisdom and grounded in thorough research, which I love! I can’t say enough about it. All I can say is read it if you are looking for something new to take you to the next level of womanhood.”
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P.S. – Are you seeking to revamp and rev up your life? Do you have goals, desires, dreams that seem almost within your reach?
Nicole Cutts, Ph.D., Success Coach and Founder of Vision Quest Retreats, can help you map the strategic plan to achieve your dreams.
Copyright (c) 2013, Alay’nya. All rights reserved.
The primary focus of this ten-week series (from the Ace through the Ten of Cups) is on cultivating our internal energy and bringing it up our spines. The final stage of this series is actually the Ace of Cups, when we (supposedly) learn to “fountain” our energy around ourselves.
This is an important goal, both because being able to “fountain” our energy (actually, to do anything at all with our internal energy) is good, but also because this ability is a crucial predecessor to the really important energy exercises:
We will be doing the first two of these practices (Micro-Cosmic Orbit and Middle Pillar) over the winter, and the final one (Circulating the Body of Light) in the summer.
What we are doing now, though, is a structured energy practice that will lead us steadily to some of these more advanced exercises.
In the previous three weeks, we introduced the Season of Cups and basic exercises for this autumn quarter:
In this Autumn Week 4, we encounter emotional blocks that keep us from fully doing our energy work.
Learn more about the Tarot’s Minor Arcana Four of Cups.
The Four of Cups is a moment of stasis; we are so locked up in our present thoughts and conditions that we can’t open up to new “good energy” that is being offered to us.
When we studied the Two of Cups, we realized that we were being directed to examine the Ida/Pingala energy streams at the root of our spine. At the Three of Cups, we included the Sushumna primary energy column in our attention, and did the first “interweaving” or “crossing over” of the Ida/Pingala streams. We did this at an energy nexus point on our spines that connects directly to the second chakra in front.
(Recall our energy anatomy: there are six “nexus points” on the spine, each of which connects via nerve bundles to one of each of six nerve ganglia on our fronts. Each of these physical nerve ganglia bundles corresponds to a chakra area.)
Now, at the Four of Cups, we’re at the second crossing of the Ida/Pingala streams, which corresponds to the third nerve bundle on the spine and the third nerve ganglia grouping and chakra center on our fronts.
This third chakra occurs at our solar plexus. This is right where our upper diaphragm (the one separating our heart and our lungs from our abdominal organs) occurs.
When we are energetically and emotionally blocked or “stuck,” then our diaphragm is tight, and we have a rigid hold on the muscles in our upper abdominal area as well as our sternums. The result is that we have a tight and rigid dance.
In Unveiling: The Inner Journey, I describe how one of my master teachers, Anahid Sofian, corrected me and another leading dancer on precisely this matter.
Across the crowded floor, a series of young women swayed like seaweed in the ocean. Their eyes on the diminutive teacher, they followed Anahid Sofian in her graceful yet precise movements…
“Leah,” she called out to a dancer, “you need to release – right here.” She gestured to her own sternum. We were practicing upper body undulations, one of the most beautiful and sensual moves in Oriental dance. “And Alay’nya,” she turned, scrutinizing me, “you need to do the same.”
Both Leah and I were well beyond the beginner’s level. … Here we were, getting the same correction on one of the most basic moves. “What,” I wondered, “is going on with us?”
Suddenly it hit me; one of those “Aha!” moments. Leah and I both epitomized the “young-woman-on-her-own-in-the-world.” Having to make it on our own in essentially a man’s world, we had taken on the masculine attributes of body armor by using our muscles and ligaments! By stiffening our muscles, and holding them tightly, we created an impenetrable shield; we were “armored” against the world. What we were doing in our bodies reflected more the influence of Athena, Goddess of Intellect (as well as war; she is the ultimate Amazon), than Aphrodite, the Goddess of Love. We were fully in our Amazon mode!
Releasing the muscles in our sternum took conscious attention from each of us. It did then, and it still does. The old tension patterns die hard. [from Unveiling: The Inner Journey, Chapter 14, “Locking Our Minds Out of Our Bodies,” pp. 189-190]
For many of us, as we go into the autumnal Season of Cups, our attention is not just on practicing technique. Rather, it becomes a quest to release those tensions and blockage patterns that keep the movement from flowing freely.
Here’s to your own “inner un-blocking”!
Very best wishes as you use Oriental dance (belly dance) for personal growth and healing!
Yours in dance –
Alay’nya
Author of Unveiling: The Inner Journey
You are the Jewel in the Heart of the Lotus. Become the Jewel!
Founder and Artistic Director, The Alay’nya Studio
Bellydance a courtesan would envy!
Check out Alay’nya’s YouTube Channel
Connect with Alay’nya on Facebook
Follow Unveiling: The Inner Journey on Facebook
Do you want to continue reading Chapter 14, from which the beginning was excerpted above? You can have your print copy of Unveiling overnight from Amazon, or a Kindle version within minutes.
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A very important related section is in Chapter 9, “The Essence of Stillness.” I have a nice long extract posted on the Unveiling website. Go to the Resources page, and look for the extract about Esther. Also, you’ll have a chance to sign up for the Unveiling e-newsletter, and be given early information on:
Very best wishes to you make your dances more fluid and expressive as you add “water play” to your practice!
Yours in dance –
Alay’nya
Author of Unveiling: The Inner Journey
You are the Jewel in the Heart of the Lotus. Become the Jewel!
From Dr. Nicole Cutts’ Amazon review of “Unveiling: The Inner Journey”: “I love, love, love this book! It is like the g*ddess mother, mentor I never had and always needed. Finally a book that just tells it like it is for women. It is well written, intelligent and enlightening. For any woman who wants to live a life of adventure,joy and love. It is rich with so much wisdom and grounded in thorough research, which I love! I can’t say enough about it. All I can say is read it if you are looking for something new to take you to the next level of womanhood.”