Participant's Sharings
How dance connects you in your life force?
There is the earth, the sky, my body and music. Music makes me that I want to move like an invitation for dancing. Out of this dance I allow myself to move. In this moment it happens that I get in contact with myself. I start to feel myself from head to feet, from my skin to the bones.
So it happens that something from the outside becomes something internal and
something from the inside becomes something external.
Now life force itself invites me to dance.
When I dance I get in contact with life force itself by allowing myself to move in what ever way I want to and It wants me to.
Mallika
What does the work with Navanita mean for you ?
Navanita creates a great space of trust and always follows the invitation of the moment, which supports me to find my own rhythmus. I`am always impressed how the existence is dance through her and how she accepts what the moment is offering. I`am also impressed by the awakeness she has and the nearness she allows. It`s special that she guide us and is part of the group as well. I have the feeling, she listens with her whole body and she helps me to discover things, which whisper inside me very silently. I feel her big love and care. Usually I`am used to give away responsibility; she supports in a playful kind, to realize it and so that I take the responsibility for me back. To practise this, I need the support of the tribe, which we create together. The tribe is an important source.
And so we are "the Bauls", who dance with the wind from one place to another and get deeper and deeper to the connection with ourselfes as we are ( "who I`am" ).
Irene, Elke, Andrea, Mallika
october 2004 in greece
How does your body respond ?
At the moment my body responds to me with pictures and colours. For example my pelvis. Usually I felt my to pelvis to be very cold, dark, tight and always a sort of "stressed" .
With breathing, movement, fun and support I just had a look what was there. For the first time I felt the shape of my hip bone which got a dark brown colour in this very moment. After being in silence with the image for a while I saw some green tendrils growing around the hip bones and I senses how much space there actually is.
I sense a growing feeling of nourishment and strength. Then I heard a tiny voice saying: ã Now all I need is warmth ã. Immediately a warm yellow colour floated into the image. Like a light, like a hug which gave me safeness, security, comfort and warms. I cried. Now it felt complete: there was space, warmth, light and ... calmness.
Does this image work like an anchor for you ?
Yes, sure. And if I can`t get directly into contact, I use some "tools" , for example I breath, or I hug myself, close my eyes and asked for the inner picture. Or I dance, or I use my body as a drum. It`s always different. So when I`m in contact with the picture again i feel an unbelievable acceptance, love, calmness and strength in my daily life.
This picture is still very new. I am sure it will become a very important anchor for feeling myself at home within myself.
september and october 2004: A experience in a space with Navanita; in events, in classes, in groups or just she is arround supports me and it can easer happen.
Thank you and all my love
from Mallika
Hallo NAVANITA,
I want you to send some words. I hope it is not to late and you can use it. Enjoy my weirdly English translation)
What chance after Greece? How I practice to be in my body and hear her voice?
I am more in my body. I feel my bones and joints and my muscles. I hear the signals of my body, I know when I am thirsty or tired. My pelves are round and big and often I walk and wiggle to be aware of. And I find that I am very aware of my pelves when I ride by bicycle without my hand. Than I must be in my middle to hold the balance, because when I ride with my head I will fall over.
Than I touch very often myself, more than after the weekend groups. I practice to massage my feeds in the evening and thank them and massage my hands and say that I have veneration for them. Than I begin to touch my belly and practice to see and feel the beauty of this part of my body.
Every evening I say good night and thank my body for her work. And in the Morning I say hello and hear music and sometimes I dance a little bit before I go to work. I have the idea that I dance into the day. It makes the day easier for me. In snatches I sing silently on my bicycle at the way to work.
Sometimes when I lock into a mirror I notice that my body is beautiful. I practice to find it.
I notice the wonder of my body again and again. Today I drive thru a dark park to work and I was so grateful that my eyes can see with only little bit of light. And often I love and my legs love to ride my bike. It is fun to feel the muscles and the bones.
Last weekend I gave my desk to my sister, now I have so much space to dance in my room. I love to hear music and often I dance. Sometimes when I feel alone and my mindfuck start I dance or I lay down on my wooden floor. Than I feel the connection and sometimes it comes water out my eyes and wash my heart. Than it opened. And I am very touched of me.
Some more to come back in here and now: Breathing. Short deep breathing in and longer breathing out.. I feel my chest and than I be back.
When I massage someone my fingers are very curious I can feel the bones and muscles and it is joy to me. When I touch somebody I can imagine that my body is also a wonder. Than I care that I also become a massage. I practice to ask for being touched.
The wonder is when I be grateful, things happened and I be more grateful. Lots of little things, for example I go with a friend to the cinema and I not know the film and suddenly it is the film you speak about. (rhythm is it) Or my mother invited my to go to a concert from an African women (Angelique Kidjo) I never hear from. And the concert was so nourishing. She say a lot of things I hear from you. Life is for live and not for hanging in the shit, dance the life and celebrate it.
Very nourishing to hear and see things I learn again and again to remember.. always
I am very grateful to learn from you. To be in your nearless and see what you live.
Thanks for all and see you in december....
In lot of love SARAH
(my heart is at least so big as I)
....
When I dance, I feel different parts of my body. This connects me more with my body, because I see and sense these parts. And I feel then more at home in my body. This "feeling the body" brings me out of my head and I feel even more. It is a state of being at home and not being in the mind. When I feel my feet, I feel grounded and supported. I am not alone. This gives me a strength and I can relax and go more inside and watch.
What I learnt in your groups is: to stay relaxed and watch what is happening. To be present in the body - not going into mindtrips, what to da, how to react and so on. And also to play with this: it has not to be a perfect Presence. I can forget this and it is also o.K.. This is a even bigger relaxation. Playing with this is a very important thing that I learnt, because with seriousness there is also tension, with playing there is relaxation and fun. It is also accepting myself as I am. And: Allowing my body to move how it wants.
Love Utsav.
....
And here the last message for today - the poem I wrote for you:
Beloved essence
Sweet time, enjoyed with you;
innocent, full of trust and truth.
Recognizing your simple love
in my own heart.
Wild time, danced with you;
joyful, playful
mirroring my own strength and aliveness.
Nourishing time, listening to your Being,
understanding the helplessness of each of us
reflecting the deep longing to be at home.
Feeding the source
while receiving you
and being received by you.
Naveen
Beloved Navanita,
You are asking for my experiences with „Love is the Dance of Life“ and I can tell you only good things about it. For me the weekends with you always were a very special and touching group-experience, on my way searching for sense and truth in my life.
The beautiful and rythm-strong music and your intuitive, sensitive guidance create a joyful, playful and powerful atmosphere after a short time in your groups. This atmosphere, during all the weekends I participated, made it possible to let my body dance out of my very soul and to give myself totally to here and now as the only important event. In movement and in silence, in dance and in meditation, in touching and in being touched, I always found possibilities to let go and to trust, that what is, and what is happening in the moment, belongs to my existence and to the existence of the people, who are dancing with me. This wants to be lived and it`s allowed to be lived.
In the dance of my ecstatic body, but also in the silence of ist grounded movementlessness, I found the eccess to an energy inside of me, that let me feel strong, connected, and makes my life always again a happening of joy and dance.
By touching and being touched during a partnergame it could also happen- what is hardly not explainable- but people can feel together, when letting-go, trust and respect for each other is there: the „dance of life“ than became a dance of love! In these moments for me a wide inner space is opening and I get a feeling of borderlessness.
In experiencing how time and space are disappearing, I feel the truth of the eternal being and the deeper sense of my life very near. A nice feeling of love, peace and joy then stays back. But, and this also belongs to my experiences,some sadness always was there, when it was to say good-bye to people, whose love for moments really had touched me deep during the weekend.
„Love is the Dance of Life“ as a personal and a group-experience, stays as a special diamond in the treasury of my experiences of life and being.
It helped me to become strong connected with my body, with more power,
with wholeness and with love.
For this I thank you from my whole heart.
Love
(from a beautiful and loving doctor. A seeker for Healing – Mind, Body
and Soul)
....
A dance group with you is all in one for me: Bodywork, playing, moving, connecting, feeling, and experimenting.
In the beginning of your group, I am curious but also a bit shy because of all the unknown people. Usually I come directly of my daily life, where it mostly goes about having aims and functioning rationally.
And then it starts, this magical group. In such a short time, I come in contact with my being, my depth and space inside, my playfulness and wildness. And I get in contact with the others. It goes so smoothly, easily, as if it had been so for ever and it feels totally natural. The others are suddenly no strangers anymore but close and I feel connected.
I can enjoy it like a child, without intentions and full of life and trust, in the here and now. And the medium is the dancing, the playing with the movements of my body and with other Buddha-bodies. Without words. It brings me also in contact with my pain but on such a loving way, that I can take and accept it. Because there is love and the support of you and the others.
For me the most beautiful is that I come right into my heart. Into that space,
where everything is so easy and o.k. And to have the feeling, that there is
space for everything or everything is possible and that nothing has to happen.
This feeling becomes stronger each time and comes along with me into my daily
life.
I love the great “work” you do and I thank you from the bottom of
my heart!
Chunauti
www.chunauti.ch
EARTH SKY CONNECTION
I have always looked UP in my search for somethingmore than me, to feel connected to the often written and talked about ONENESS.
Contrary to the hope, most meditations involving watching and
stillness have left me feeling more isolated and more alone. I now come to think of this experience of aloneness as there being 'no-one home' to connect to anything, but I am getting ahead
of myself, as that too is a discovery I made in Navanita's teachings.
When I did the workshop with Navanita in Waiheke I had the wonderful experience of at last being connected with something more vast and also an ongoing practice for no longer feel alone.
The starting point was not sky-bound but one thatbegan with the earthliness of movement and feeling the body. Through dance /movement and at times experiencing /sensing the breath in motion as it travelled through the body, I had the experience of 'some-one is home' and from this earthed place, the vastness of 'inner sky' became available. Its something to do with the contrast of watching (who is watching and no-one is at home, with being IN thesensation of the body through movement that the EARTH-SKY connectionis created.
Now I use dance and movement as my vehicle of meditation. I still practice sitting mediations too, but not to watch...but to feel the movement of the breath, to find some-one home, to connect outward
and UP.
Leela
From Steffi
During the last month, I started getting more aware
of the dance that happens inside of me, The dance
happens through movements inside and outside, in the
way that the outside movements are visible and the
inside movements are visible or felt (only) by the
dancer. Of course both are one and belong together.
I only "seperated" them, because by feeling the
inside movements more and more clear, the "visible"
movements become more pleasureful, more spontaneous
and creative and the connection between both is
growing like a small path which is becoming more and
more wide, till it´s a real street one day.
What happened to me in the last month is, that the
inside movements became more clear, more real. The
movements became more concious in the way that the
body itself became more concious of its own
movements.
The main support for this was dancing and playing
with the movements which brought us back to
embryonic growth. I think bringing these movements
of embryonic development into the dance, creates the
posibility to experience the strength and the
resources and the natural or "animal qualities" that
we have from the beginning. By experiencing our
authentic movements the word reclaiming became more
than a word to me. It´s posible to get a taste of
what feeling right, feeling at home, being strong
and vulnerable at the same time (like an embryo is)
means. And the longing for following this or
experiencing it again is very strong.
It started with the uprightness from the frontside.
By the picture of the spine with no head and
especially by doing the expansion and contraction
from the front side, it was the first time that I
didn´t feel uprightness as an effort, but as
something natural that creates space.
It was also very helpful for me, to experience and
allow resistance as something that we need and we
grow through. It´s incredibly relaxing and joyful
and a big help to get a taste of what letting go
means. It becomes more clear that playing with
resistance is part of dancing.
It creates the
posibility to use not only the ground but also the
air as resistance, as something to lean on or to
bounce against.
Another big key for me was the word completing.
Again through the playing with authentic movements,
I felt the longing to find the right point for
bringing movement into stillness and I got the clear
feeling that a movement that is cut leaves pain and
frustration and makes ourselves feel uncomplete.
Sometimes I got the feeling that these authentic
movements which end up in completing are like a hug
or like a touch or like loving words which caress
our wounds and fears. It´s healing then, of course.
So experiencing what completing means through dance,
through movemens gives again the taste of what
feeling complete might mean. That was very powerful
to me, and the power and the desire for completing
is in the body.
I hope it´s posible for you to understand some of my sentences. It´s quite difficult to express what I mean, somehow it´s imposible to put it in words. But it was also interesting for me to see what comes out. I hope I can help you a little bit, much love, a gig hug, THANK YOU again, Steffi