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Summer 2007
--->Quote of the Season
--->Summer Movement Monastery Insight
--->Summer Practice: by Dunya Dianne McPherson
--->Summer/Fall Events Calendar
--->Good Books
--->Testimonial of the Season
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Quote of the Season
Dance Space
A dancer is someone who has come to recognize that verbal is not the only means of communication. For those of us who have found this Reality, reading, writing and talking do not suffice; dance people need to be dancing and moving in a space together, witnessing one another and being witnessed. It cannot be done through technology as yet; the technology is not advanced enough to carry the nuances of expression that make this dance communication essential. It must in person, in the same room at the same time. Centuries of life on Earth have not altered that.
--Dunya
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Summer Movement Monastery Insight (excerpt)
by Anita Teresa
During the retreat, I found it unsatisfying to read or write, while normally I consume whole books in a day. Instead, sitting on the porch and looking out over the marvelous display of greenery became my mental food for the week. I realized somewhere along the way that I needed a lot of sleep, and a lot of space to just be. Having this space allowed the turbine of my thought life to turn itself over and over, churn through its many ideas and musings, and process a multitude of things for itself.
One memory is of an intense experience following the first time we whirled, and then lay down to rest. When the music started again after our rest, I recognized something about it as though this music was calling through layers and layers and layers...I knew something terribly beautiful was about to happen. When you asked Nisaa, Kate and myself to dance with the veils, I felt something very powerful inhabit my senses. Something about loosening into the veil as though it was spirit, letting its nature consume me as I moved, was so extraordinary...that a sheer fabric made by human hands could take on the essence of life and become a catalyst in this way... I hadn’t thought that a veil could become an incarnation of spirit, like dancing with your own life force, mirroring oneself, communing with oneself.
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Hidden World
by Dunya Dianne McPherson
Anita wrote a number of beautiful things but I chose this because of its seed about the hidden world. Sufism often refers to the removing of veils as a metaphor for seeing what isn’t always apparent. What I received in Anita’s piece was her eyes becoming unveiled to experience, a metaphor to express a perceptual condition catalyzed by the actual object. Opening perceptual doors is a mystery. Even the desire to open them is a mystery. Some of us want to experience the beyond, not merely the sheer fabric of thinking about or toward the beyond, but moving in a beyond-ness.
In a more mundane frame, I walked to a park in Secaucus, NJ where I often walk, passing through a neighborhood. The road to the park curves by a sweet little house edged with a crop of cedar trees just head height. In the past, as I’ve rounded the bend blinded by the cedars, cars, going too fast and cutting the curve, have swerved, narrowly missing me. A few days ago, after my return from the Summer Movement Monastery, the sun was hot. As I approached that curve, I crossed the street to get into shade, and there I saw a litter of mulberries. I never knew the mulberry tree was there. I love mulberries. Every day since, I’ve crossed the street to reward myself at the end of my walk. Though I didn’t even think of it at first, being so pleased to eat mulberries, this also neatly takes me out of careening cars’ reach. Such serendipity has made me consider the perfection of solutions. It is, sometimes, how things work; you follow what you love and are saved from what could destroy you. But this episode’s value is its mystery – I did not imagine or reason this into being. The sun, the tree, the day…these drew me to the solution.
This brings me to our practice. I call it the Hidden World. I like to imagine that working on this practice during the Monastery activated this aspect of my daily life…
Summer Practice: Hidden World – Activating the Dorsal Plane
The back of the body is called the dorsal plane (like a shark’s fin); the dorsal plane connects to what we can’t see, the Hidden, the Mystery. The front is the ventral plane. It is common to associate ventral with the future and dorsal with the past, but these are metaphors more than actuality. In actuality we are present and the dorsal and ventral planes are spatial concepts. They locate is in relation to space.
At one point in quadripedal mammalian history, a history still lingering in our cellular memory, our ventral plane safely faced the ground. It was protected, while the dorsal faced the sky, the world. We had hackles that reared with danger. We sensed our world – the sun, moisture, weather – through the dorsal. Now, as bipeds privileging the ventral, waking the dorsal plane places us in center. It’s as if we open two eyes, rather than see everything through a cycloptic one. Here is a sequence to awaken that Mystery…
Practice: Dorsal Plane
1. Settle yourself in a room where you won’t be disrupted for 30 minutes. The room should be a comfortable temperature and have a clean, well-cushioned mat for sitting and reclining motion. If you like music, choose something smooth, with a medium rhythm and no lyrics (or lyrics in a language you don’t understand – we don’t want to be caught up with ideas or emotions from a song.) Also, set a timer for 30 minutes and forget about the time once you start.
2. Lie on your back. Place a small towel rolled under the neck. This is for contact and tactile feedback rather than support. Close your eyes and draw your knees to your chest; using tiny movements, feel where the back touches the ground.
3. Now lengthen your legs beneath you on the floor and let your arms lie beside you, the inner side facing the ceiling. You may want to fold a blanket in half and place it at the base of your spine beneath your torso to gently support your lumbar curve. With closed eyes, do small, squirming motions, feeling the floor with as much of your dorsal plane as possible.
4. When you are ready, come to standing. Move freely, keeping the eyes closed, focusing your attention on the backside of the body: foot soles, back of calves, back of knees and thighs, buttocks, back of waist, back of ribs, should blades, back of upper arms, lower arms, hands and fingers, back of neck and back of skull…Accept the totality of your motion as you move. The back is awake, or more awake. If it is pleasure, wonderful. If not, if waking brings pain, sadness, difference, or discomfort, accept these. They are part of the weather of self. It is not necessary to fix these, simply to wake up to them. How is this different for you?
5. Finish by sitting with easy, erect posture. Let the spine reach up and periphery drift down. Be aware of your wonderful dorsal plane. How is this different for you?
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Summer/Fall Events Calendar
Seminar - Sensual Alchemy: Spiritual Bellydance at Kripalu
August 29 * 866 200 5203
Sensual Alchemy
Seminar - Documentary Weekend
The Mill, Philmont NY
September TBA * 212 226 2114
We’ll charge a nominal fee (to cover expenses) to participate in an instructional weekend. This retreat is for those who are interested in being part of a documentary process.
Course – Spiritual Bellydance
Moving Body Resources, 112 W. 27th St. #402 NYC
October 1 – November 5 * 6:30-8:30pm * 212 226 2114
Spiritual Bellydance
Seminar - Dervish Dancemeditation: NYC Fall Intensive
Moving Body Resources, 112 W. 27th St. #402 NYC
November 8-12 * 12:30-6:30pm * 212 226 2114
NYC Fall Intensive
Seminar - Clear Delirium: Dervish Dancemeditation
Boston, MA
December 1 * Info: 781 662 6027
Clear Delirium
Retreat - Winter Movement Monastery
Margaret Austin Center, Chappell Hill, TX
December 29 – January 4 * 212 226 2114
Winter Movement Monastery
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Good Books
Bond, Mary. The New Rules of Posture: How to Sit, Stand, and Move in the Modern World. Rochester, VT: Inner Traditions, 2007.
I’m gong to do what I haven’t done before - recommend a book two times running. We resourced The New Rules of Posture for the Summer Movement Monastery with such great success that Id’ like to spread the word again about its clarity, warmth and supportiveness.
McPherson, Dunya, and Rudloe, Stephanie. Simple Sufi Cooking. New York, NY: Dervish Society of America Press. 2006
As co-author, I know I’m blowing my own horn here, but Simple Sufi Cooking truly deserves a plug. It is a succinct little volume about preparing and eating food simply from the Sufi tradition. Researched and written to support cleansing retreats, it reminds us that food needn’t be fussy to be delicious, and that often our physical comfort comes from eating fresh simple natural food rather overworked appetite inducers. You’ll definitely learn how to steam kale perfectly. This is a healing book!
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Testimonial
from Sensual Alchemy at Kripalu, April 2007
Gayla’s Story
I am a disabled retired veteran from the Gulf War era. I deal with post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) on a daily basis. I was first introduced to Spiritual Dancemeditation/ belly dancing movement school of thought several years ago. I find the flowing release of movement with dance has assisted me with dealing in my stressful world. This practice helps me release the stress that is locked deep in many portions of my body. As time passes, and I discover how freeing dance movement is, I enter the inner core of my soul, where the sense of shame disappears and is replaced with only a peace that words cannot describe. The pure innocence of moving the body and connecting with a musical note is a sensual experience I love.
-- Gayla M.D. Reilly, Retired Naval Officer, Fairhaven, MA
And that is the end of our newsletter. Thank you very much!
©2007 Dervish Society of America
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