What is ‘Embodiment’?

Ultimately this is a free movement practice. You are invited to explore and follow your own unique dance. There are three key ingredients of this practice:

Movement, Breathing, Awareness

This practice is about embodying what is. Allowing what you feel, think, experience to be invited into movement through the body. It is simply meditation in movement.

What do I do?

Here are a few suggestions:

1. Stretch and warm up your body.
2. Pace Yourself

Respect your body’s needs and limitations. Be responsible for your own body. There is no need to push.

3. Move how you feel and stay open to changing
4. Stretch yourself and experiment with different ways of moving and connecting.
5. This meditation is an invitation to drop the words and speak with your body
6. Practice Presence

Just notice when you get distracted and gently bring your attention back to your feet, the beat, the breath, your dance.

7. It’s not just about the Music.

The music is a platform for practice. You don’t have to love it – just respond

8. Have fun!

What do I bring?

1. Bring some water to drink.
2. Wear comfortable clothes to move in, layers are best.
3. Dance barefoot or in comfortable footwear

Do I need to have dance experience?

No, This practice is open to all who have a desire to move. It is a place to come and move as you wish to move, dance how you feel to dance. If you have never danced before or have spent most of you life dancing you are most welcome.

Can I come for one session to try it out?

Yes, you are very welcome to come to the drop in evening on Wednesdays (see ‘weekly classes’). If you do find you are interested in the practice after the session you can come as often or as seldom as you wish. This is a meditation practice and as such offers more benefits with regular practice.

For the weekly classes, must I come every week?

This is a meditation practice and as such offers the possibilities for deeper learnings the more consistently you engage with the practice. 
Some people come every week over a long period of time, others come regularly for a time, stop for a while, then come back. Others come every now and then. Its up to you how often you come and there is always a space for you in the class. 

Is it therapy work?

This practice is not therapy though it is therapeutic. In any spiritual practice, there are times of change and emotional turbulence. 

Stepping onto it the dancer may well come face-to-face with psychological patterns, obstacles and challenges which are familiar from day-to-day life, (both on the personal and the collective levels). This might include: (for example) resistance, judgement, habitual ways of relating, recurrent emotions, incessant thinking, spiritual disconnection – or many other things. 

Two main approaches are used when working in this way. One is to dance in search of cathartic release: dancing deeply with and through the pattern or wound, until it is somehow released or alchemised by the transformative intensity of the dance. The other is to use the dance to observe what is going on psychologically, to embody and name this, thus activating a possibility of choice, and then to formulate and practice alternative ways of being. These approaches are both valid, and are probably most effective when used in tandem.

Ecstatic dance can be profoundly catalytic, throwing up personal challenges and breakthroughs along the road of healing and transformation. A personal therapy space of some kind can help to hold, process and deepen the journeys of the dancefloor through direct one-to-one support.

What is Movement Medicine?

Movement medicine is a movement meditation and ecstatic dance practice developed by Ya’Acov and Susannah Darling Khan. It is an embodied practice grounded in ecstatic dance, which integrates therapeutic, shamanic and devotional study and practice.

A strong foundation of Movement Medicine is the journey into accepting and being as you are in this moment, in this body and cultivating intentions to become all that you can become and give all you can give in this lifetime.
It offers body-based ways of knowing who and what we are. Its purpose is to facilitate healing, growth and connection to the sacred.

The Movement Medicine maps are structured around the mandala and their essential vessel is the Dance. The core movement practices are the Tree of Life meditation, dancing the Elements and the M.E.S.A. work. Everything is underlaid by an awareness of the ultimate Oneness of all things and the sacred polarities of Yin & Yang. For more information see www.schoolofmovementmedicine.com