MOC : [[DANSE]] - [[MOUVEMENT]] - [[MÉDITATION]] Source : [Introduction to Dance Awake – AHB ACADEMY COURSES](https://awakehumanbeing.org/lessons/introduction/) Projets : [[Atomic Flow]] Date : 2022-12-13 *** **Conscious Dance’ = Embodied movement occurring in a space of alert and awake presence.** ## Protocole pour faire de la conscious dance n'importe où **First….** ### **Make contact with the environment** This is a good practice for when you arrive at a dance or into any new space. Even if it’s just moving from your kitchen into your living room. Especially if you want to feel like you are a part of the space and welcome there. When entering a new space, look around and consciously connect to the environment. Take it all in. Everything.  Through your 5 senses (see, touch, smell, listen, taste) and also feel into the space with your sixth sense (intuition, feelings, impressions). Become receptive and open. If there are people around try make eye contact or at least notice everyone and everything in the space. This helps us to feel comfortable with the space. It is good to try notice people arriving and connect with them, even if there are no words spoken. Take a good minute or two of doing this practice. **then…** ### **Warm Up** Besides physically warming up your body and preparing it for some great exercise, the warmup is really about becoming present. It is a time when we start to practice the guidelines. A time where we consciously make effort to arrive into the present moment and begin to move with what is moving in this moment. Spend some time feeling into our bodies. Noticing how we are feeling physically – our bones, muscles, joint. Different body parts. Also notice how you are doing mentally and emotionally – what thoughts are swimming around in your head, how are you actually feeling right now. You don’t need to name them, just experience.  Become aware of what is alive inside in this moment. And then with this attention we begin to put ourselves into movement. Stretching and moving our bodies in ways that help to deepen our attention. Spend some time on areas of the body that are in pain, or stiff, or tight, or areas we cannot feel yet fully with our awareness. Explore movement in your feet and move slowly up the body until you have connected in movement with each part.  Connect to your breath and notice it moving in the body. Feel the heart beating and pulsing in the body. Use the warm up to begin to experience yourself more tactilely. More physically. It is a somatic practice. ### **The Guidelines for Conscious Dance practice are as follows:** 1. **Awake and Aware – Stay Present** 2. **Keep Moving** 3. **Non-verbal** 4. **Respect Others** 5. **Eyes closed or Open.**  Start applying them when you arrive in a class, doing a practice at home, dancing in a space or even a night club, party or outdoor festival etc. ### **1. Awake and Aware – Stay Present** The practice of staying present is simple. It requires no effort. You focus on the sensations of the body as they are occurring. The breath that you are breathing. Bring your attention back to the body and the breath, whenever it wonders into the past, future, or fantasy.  Sometimes you will need to come back a lot, other times you will be pretty focused. Allow thoughts, feelings, sensations, sounds, smells to come and go like clouds in the sky. ==Being present is to be identified with the sky, not the clouds. The sky is not bothered if the sun, the moon, or a thunderstorm is moving through it. It is not wishing for night when it is day. It simply is. Everything else is a dance.== **Some Clues for staying present:** - Whenever your mind is distracted, come back to the body and breath. - Observe the movement of the breath. - Feel your heart beating. - Be aware of the sounds around you. - Notice the feeling of contact of your feet on the floor. - Feel the sensations of your body in movement. - Notice what moods, feelings and emotions are moving inside you. - Witness the mental state and thinking going on. - Notice your energy level. - Are there any parts of your body that are stiff or in pain? - What are you moving with right now? - What is alive inside your being right now? ### **2. Keep Moving** No matter what is moving inside you or around you, keep moving! Allow your body to always be in some form of movement. Allow every experience, thought, emotion or feeling to have a dance, a movement, an expression or a gesture. There is nothing that can’t move. Even feeling self conscious has a dance. So even if it’s the tiniest wiggle of your baby finger, stay in movement. _Movement is the practice!_ You might find yourself repeating the same movements over and over, until something changes. Or you could find yourself flowing one movement into the next into the next. Sometimes you move fast  and sometimes slow. In time with the music, or moving to your own pulse and rhythm. You are free to move however you feel to move. It doesn’t need to look like a dance.  **Some ways of staying in movement:** - Let your hands lead you in a dance. - Explore your hips in movement. - Focus on your spine and allow it to move freely as you explore what it can do. - Stretch, open, shake. - Reach up, get down. - Express yourself and how you feeling in movement. - Let your body lead you into a dance. - It can be fast or slow, small or big. - Weave around the space. - Explore your body making shapes. - Explore repetition of movement. ### **3. Non-verbal Space** Although we do not speak to others using words, we allow our bodies to express in movement what we need to be saying. Besides being distracting, words keep us from discovering a new and clearer way to communicate with our bodies. **Ideas for conversing in movement:** - Allow yourself to express how you feel in movement. - When dancing with someone else, have a conversation in movement. - Explore how to say ‘yes’ and ‘no’ clearly in movement. - Start to speak through movements - Listen to the conversation your body is having through movement. What is it saying? - If you have something to say, say it in your movement. - If you have a thought stuck in your head, let it drop into the body and be made visible in a dance. ### **4. Respect others** This guideline is very important when you are dancing with others.  It’s very simple. Allow others to be. Be aware of you own dance and the impact it may be having in terms of others. Serve each other. Allow yourself to be. Connections will happen spontaneously. When they do they are welcome. When someone feels to leave a partner dance or a group, let them go.  Everyone is free to dance with you or without you. We are able to dance a ‘no thanks’, and know that others will respect that. We listen to each other and give each other space. Space to move freely, sometimes together or with others and also alone. If someone is dancing with their eyes closed, do not touch them. If someone is crying on the floor, do not rescue them. Give people space. Also treat others, how you would honestly want to be treated. For example, would you mind being hit on all the time when you just want to be left in your dance? Let this guideline help you cultivate awareness for others and either be in service to their needs if you are able to know what they are, or leave them alone, especially if you notice you are moving with your own agenda at the fore. ==Begin to develop trust that in conscious dance, your needs are always met. But not always your wants.== This guideline can be an incredible journey in itself. It will teach us how to establish boundaries with others. How to connect and move authentically and honestly with others. To get clearer on what we are needing and what we are wanting from connecting with others. If you are prepared to look it will help you to become more free in interacting with others and more empowered in your interactions. This also spills over into the dance of relationship, conversation and even negotiating a business deal. ### **5. Eyes Closed or Open** Closing the eyes will allow energy that is usually lost through the visual sense to become available for a more somatic and inner sense. It will eliminate distracting visuals and allow you to really tune into your own being, or sense the space around you through your other senses.  You can close your eyes at any time for any length of time. Open eyes also has value. If you are finding that you are too introvert, open the eyes and look around. Your awareness will become more extroverted and inner experience can be grounded into the physical.  **Ways of playing with this guideline:** - Open your eyes and look around as you move. Notice everything coming in through your sense of sight. - Close your eyes and allow your attention to move inside your being. Observe the inner landscape. - Close your eyes and feel the  air moving through the hairs on your skin. ## Les tips principaux pour la conscious dance ### 1) **ALWAYS  Start where you are…..and not where you are not!** This is the cornerstone of real spiritual practice. You are not supposed to be happy, wear beautiful dance clothes, have a gorgeous body, smile, be peaceful and shine the light from your aura for all to see. You are not supposed to be god’s gift to conscious dance. You do not need to pretend to be anything other than as you are right now. Be honest with where you are. If you feel jealousy, hate, anger, greed, pain, depression, want to lash out, or you are narcissistic or lustful, then that is where you start your dance. Do not think you can use this practice to bypass or escape from all your “Dark stuff”, challenges, and “negativity”. Be honest. Be courageous.  Use this practice as a way of looking deeply into yourself and the good, bad and ugly. ### **2) Do not Judge, compare or suppress experience** **i.e.  practice equanimity.**  When experience arises do not judge the experience positive or negative. Experience it. As it is. Sometimes we get very high and elated, other times we feel awful and exhausted. Practicing equanimity means that no matter what is arising, we stay present, curious about the experience we are actually having.  Stay moving. No experience is better than another. ### **3) No preference for music** If we were to judge the music playing, we would quickly develop preference for specific music.  It’s fine to have taste in music. But that should not stop you being open and present to whatever music is being played. If you do you soon we will only be able to move to certain music. This limits our experience and keeps us from finding ways of moving with things that are not to our taste. If we rather open to the question: “How does this music make me move?” Or “How do I find a way to move with even this song?”  We open up to the ability to adapt to all music. We open also to  moving new ways, and expressing different things with our bodies. Things that would not necessarily arise if we always danced to the same tunes. This skill quickly translates into the ability  to move with the many situations that our life present us with. The stuff we cannot skip in favour of the next track. ### **4) You are Unique**  It is also important if you find yourself comparing yourself to another. As we do. “That person looks amazing”, “I wish I could dance like her”, “I’m a much better dancer than him.” Remember now we are not present we are lost again in comparison.  Your dance is completely unique. **There is no body in this world that is able to dance your dance and experience life in the way that you do. Get curious about your own movement and how you experience it! Remember your movements don’t even have to look like a dance.** ### **5) Beware of ‘Should’ or ‘Shouldn’t upon yourself** There is also nothing we should be or should not be experiencing. If we arrive thinking we **should** be enjoying when we are not, or feel we shouldn’t be feeling this tired yet we are, we are not being present to what is! Do not have expectations of the experience. Some days you just drop right into the magic other days you don’t. If you start wishing you were having last weeks dance experience again, instead of being with the dance now, it will lead to problems and may even stop you coming to the dance. Rather allow things to be as they are and move with them. ###  6) **Zen mind Beginners Mind** We are all beginners. It is good to cultivate an atmosphere of newness each time you dance. No matter how long you have danced. Each moment is new.  It is not the same as it was last week. It helps to consciously invite **curiosity** and **playfulness**. ![[Pasted image 20221213102609.png]] ![[Pasted image 20221213102617.png]] • Respect de soi et des autres (bienveillance, confidentialité) • Attitude de non jugement (pas de jugement, de comparaison, d’interprétation vis-à-vis des autres mais aussi vis-à-vis de soi) • Intimité (chacun dispose de son propre espace personnel de créativité dans lequel personne ne peut entrer sans y être autorisé – en claire, personne ne « zieute » ce que l’autre fait) • Liberté (de partager ou pas ses pages ou/et ses impressions, de faire les exercices proposés ou pas) • Silence (pratiquer en silence permet de mieux entrer dans sa bulle et de faire taire le mental) ==Every thought has a dance. Each feeling has a movement. Emotion and every state of mind can lead a dance.  If we could allow these thoughts to drop into the body and be felt where they land.  We could let our bodies move with them.  We are back online.==