Healing through Dance

Found in Tomb of Nebamun - Thebes

Belly dance, in its oldest and purest form, brings women together in shared community to exchange knowledge about birthing, self love, self adornment and sisterhood. The dance's deepest intention is to liberate the pelvis, free the belly and open the heart. - www.visionarydance.com/HealingDance

'Through the sacred power of the belly dance, the dance of Mother Earth, we re-awaken our inner selves and regain the spiritual energies of the body, mind and soul. Belly dancing enables women to re-establish the lost link to their creativity, from which many have been disconnected for centuries.' Tina Hobin, Belly Dance, the dance of mother earth

From Library Journal
After recounting her own childhood and coming of age in the Arab world, Al-Rawi reviews the history of women's dancing and reflects on the individual movements used in this ancient art form. In a section titled "Variations and Rituals," she describes nine different dances (e.g., the Wedding Dance, the Birth Dance) and sets them in context. Photographs evoke the mood of each dance, suggesting a general impression rather than step-by-step instruction. The narrative, however, supplies enough detail that the interested reader may wish to try a dance. Throughout, Al-Rawi relates movement to ideas and art to philosophy so that, in her words, "belly dancing becomes a source of inspiration, a means of collecting and strengthening oneself, and a clear and dynamic way of discovering...and understanding oneself." An interesting glimpse into a culture, an art form, and a means for women's healing and self-expression; suitable for most circulating collections, especially those whose readers are interested in Arab culture, dance, and women's studies.ACarolyn M. Mulac, Chicago P.L.
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.--This text refers to the Hardcover edition. Grandmother's Secrets: The Ancient Rituals and Healing Power of Belly Dancing
by Rosina-Fawzia B. Al-Rawi

The moves and postures of bellydancing suggest it was danced as a sacred feminine artform for thousands of years. The fertility principle and ritual stylisation of this dance for celebration and worship became synonymous with the ancient temples of Artemis, Aphrodisias, Aphrodite, Ishtar, Isis and even Hindu Temples. The art of bellydancing allows emotional expression, physically activates core energetic meridiens and re-balances the body. It improves confidence it takes the focus off the busy outer world and into the inner workings of the self. When the dance is experienced and deeply felt - in terms of rhythm, melody and emotion - it opens the senses to the powerful connection between art and the universial creative principle - http://www.ketisharif.com

The round belly of a woman is the most obvious sign of fertility and pregnancy, and belly dancing celebrates that belly, and that fertility. The dance is done with bare feet, to connect the woman to the earth and all of life. The movements are sensuous and elegant, reminding the viewer that the woman is beautiful, no matter what her exact shape and size. It is her ability to bring life into the world that is the celebrated glory. - http://www.lisashea.com/lisabase/conception/art11713.html

The Spirit of the Dance
by Tamsin Murray

The writer T. S. Eliot used a technique called the objective correlative to intensify and create an emotional reaction in the reader. He would put, side by side, two seemingly disconnected images. As disconcerting as it was, he created a means to harness those impressions and feelings that were so difficult to communicate in this language and he did it extremely well.

In the same way, as much as dance and spiritual work are seemingly unrelated in the western culture, the work of bringing them together is a continual acknowledgement and acceptance of the interplay between the senses and the spirit.

Allowing the essence to lead rather than the form is quite foreign in classical western dance forms. Here, the highest form of dance requires an intense training that over time deforms the body and renders the most accomplished to imitate and re- enact classical stories. In the world of the Sufi, this is not at all the case.

Within the work of Adnan Sarhan, Sufi Master and Drummer, the dance acts as a vehicle for the union of concentration and individual expression to engage the senses in a positive and creative way. It brings dance to the level of healing through joy, ecstasy and learning to allow the music and the moment to lead us into our bodies. Not just the muscular body of our flesh but the house of our emotions, psyche, heart, instincts - making dance an exploration of how to utilize our senses to awaken the spirit, our connection to existence.

The transfiguration of the being is total. Adnan often says that peace is the highest and most powerful vibration. To vibrate peacefully, to allow the healing process to exist seems to make sense though I wouldn't really have understood had I not seen how it affected me.

Before I began the to work with Adnan Sarhan I danced in nightclubs to de-stress and because I loved to dance. I had wanted to dance as a career but had grown up with the idea that if you didn't start at age 4 it was too late. Dancing to choreography of any sort was a nightmare for me and learning to dance seemed very distant from wanting to dance. My femininity was locked away for fear it would attract the wrong kind of attention. As such, to be soft and sensual and strong at the same time was alien.

I had read about Sufi since being a teenager and had some sense that it was connected to a dance that would bring about higher consciousness but at that time the only vision I had seen of that was Peter Brook's film about Gurdjieff that featured highly choreographed movements. When I walked into Adnan's workshop I had a completely different experience. I saw very soft feminine women and gentle men. When we danced, many of them closed their eyes and moved freely around each other. The music was beautiful, so full of feeling and sensitivity and it just kept on going in very long songs.

I bounced around still extremely self conscious and felt very angular, but when I went home after the last day of the weekend workshop, the radio had similar music playing. With the lights turned off I began to dance and move with a femininity I had never expressed in my life for fear of ridicule. I had never moved my hips so gently and never allowed myself to close my eyes and feel what was happening inside me. That in of itself was a shift in consciousness.

In the years I have studied with Adnan and through the profound changes that have occurred in my life, my dance has mirrored the transformation of a creature mired in arrogance and volatile egotism to someone who is learning to let go of the artifice of control. I was very frightened to feel anything when I began his work let alone express it through dance in a public place where my mistakes and frailties could be seen. Through his work I began to see what is a habit of fear, what is an expression of love and how dancing from the heart without any embellishments, fear or disguise was a powerful event in the soul as well as in public.

Dancing is akin to life. Finding a teacher who offers dance as a companion to spiritual work and who guides sensuality towards expressing the yearning for the divine is perhaps the most amazing expression of love I have known. When I am able to see how love is expressed without condition, when I am able to hear the voices of Om Kalthum or Banan or to see dancers who create a spiritual ecstasy in the atmosphere, or when I dance and sing at the same time with the feeling of them coming from deep in my heart I feel gratitude for everything. I feel love for life.

When this feeling comes it harkens the expansion of the life force that I hear and see in all those people whose hearts are so big, that from them usher the inspiration for others to connect with the beauty and the majesty in existence.

Dance and music with spirit can heal the most injured, produce the most beautiful moments and turn the most hardened into a believer in love. When my soul yearns for freedom it is able to be free through dance. Beauty, perfection, depth, joy, companionship, effort, concentration, honesty, compassion, art and science all coexist within the work that Adnan Sarhan does, allowing the dance to grow endlessly beyond the song. - http://www.discoverbellydance.com/Vol_22_No_1.htm