FREE DANCE IN HONOR OF SANTA CRUZ DANCE WEEK AND NATIONAL DANCE WEEK
4/26 ~RECESS TIME
Pacific Cultural Center, 1307 Seabright Ave, Santa Cruz
6:30 – 7:30 Welcome & Orientation (1x Requirement)
7:30-9pm Dance
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I was 6 months fresh out of a constraining religious background when I found ecstatic dance. I was down in SLO (San Luis Obispo, CA) visiting a friend who invited me to attend the Sunday morning dance. Without hesitation, I said yes!
Once there, after we helped set up (how awesome to get to help!), the facilitator made this amazing gentle offer:
Imagine the bell has just rung, recess has begun and the playground is now open.
These souls standing around you are your playmates.
Go, have fun meeting new playmates. See what they are doing. Copy what they are doing or make up a new game. Be curious, experiment and see where the spirit of play takes you!
And with that, the music started. We were off to our recess time!
I don’t remember much of the specifics from then on.
I just remember dancing and dancing and dancing. Feeling so free, unbound.
I remember feeling welcomed by this group and that group. I had so many new playmates! I remember the amazing feeling of being unrestrained in my worship. Unlike in my past Sunday experiences, here I was allowed to dance my worship. My praise. My awe and wonder. 
I felt completely at home. I felt so much freedom, joy, pleasure and openeness in a way that I had never felt before.
Woah!!!!
By the end, I felt so much aliveness and pleasure being in this body, this life, this practice that I shared a small kiss with someone – with my eyes closed! It wasn’t a sexual kiss. It was a kindred, this is lovely, we-are-love-and-sharing-that-love-type-of-kiss. It was so natural, so pure, so innocent – and soooo out of the box from whom I had been just 6 months prior.
I thought I knew who it was until I opened my eyes….
It was NOT who I thought it was!
It was a woman, an older woman. OMG…a brief moment of embarrassment flew over me as the tapes started to go off. She without hesitation spent a moment caressing me like a mother or sister. All the tapes and embarrassment went immediately away. Nothing was going to rain on this parade.
I had never felt so safe. So loved. So complete. So uninhibited. Until now.
That was the power of this Medicine the first time I fully danced.
This is why I am so passionate about this Movement Medicine.
Because I continue to have life shifting, belief altering experiences.
I am offering you this invitation this week:
Take in the sense of wonder, curiosity and joy of being out on the playground at recess…
See who you find – whether the “who” is inside or outside of your physical body.
See what draws you, what repels you and explore every ounce OF IT ALL.
See what you find in this lab of people and souls and music.
Let’s Moove It, Moove It!
