healing the binah

I have been on a journey within. The dance these past weeks has been an insatiable quest of knowing self. I am developing a series of essays to elaborate on all that this means, for me, for my dance work, for the OSA endeavor. I thank you for your enthusiasm, your prayers, your encouragement in this time of healing. It is my prayer that you honor yourself, and listen closely to what your body is telling you, always. In the meantime, I will post some pre-OSA Dance 600 stories while I craft the writings about this intense, transformational chapter in my evolution as a total being.

Let's rewind to February 2006, to India, to a little village in Karnataka called Hampi. I call this one, "The Priest at Sunset".


At sunset, I always pray. It has become more of a natural part of my day than a concerted effort since being here in India. Eleven days ago, the journey began in chaotic Bangalore—near-death misses with road rage and rikshas, hordes of bright-saried women grabbing my locs, incessant horns honking amidst five-way intersections, non-existent paths through the bush attempted by moonlight, impromptu dance explosions with Indian brothers on dirt parking lots all the while rousing dust into the mouths of onlookers—and it is time for a rest.

Now I am in Hampi, a quiet town of ancient ruins, holy temples, gypsy women, feisty monkeys, and of course, priests—the caretakers of tradition. It takes us an uncomfortable, overnight train ride from Bangalore to arrive at this oasis. I am eager to move after being crammed into the luggage rack for ten hours, with someone else’s legs and feet as my pillow. When we find a place to throw our bags, we set out to explore wherever we can get to on foot. Now that the sun is shifting out of reach, I begin to seek out a place to give thanks with a dance. A drum calls me into the temple.

The temple is massive from the inside. It is the tallest structure upon arriving to Hampi. Ornate carvings and smooth stone floors have witnessed many generations of humbled feet passing through to make offerings. There is a big elephant being guided on the path opposite us. We can see it through the pillars, illuminated by light seeping into the dark rooms of the temple. Even though we want to film this big giant, we don’t because cameras are not allowed in this temple.

While some Hampi residents use the temple as a shortcut from the main road to the back road, most people there are making offerings in the room where drumming and chanting are coming from. Migrating into the clearing at the entrance of the temple, I drop my camera and sandals and slip my feet into the warm, sacred space of the temple’s stone floor. I have found my offering place.

I begin prayer as I always do, by giving thanks. I reach up into the sky with both arms. It is a majestic flood of pinks, oranges, and light purples. The sun is painting us the last picture of the day. Soaking up the creator’s energy from above, I surrender to gravity and release my spine and knees low to the earth’s temple floor. I graze my hands over smooth stone and feel my ancestral awareness growing. I am grateful, I say to myself, for all who have sacrificed for me to be here. Pulling all this love into my center, I rise with my hands coming into my stomach and blast my self with all this positive, healing energy. I smile as I extend my arms back out into the world, giving thanks that I am here to bear witness to my own life.

I continue to move through cycles of the dance-prayer. Four times in each direction, north, south, east, and west. Each set of four is different as I experiment with new ways to reach up and spiral down. Sometimes I leap up and then dive into the earth with outstretched arms piercing through stagnant space. A few people slow down as they pass our moving bodies. Are they South Africans? Are they really dancing? Eyes of wonder bridge the language barrier never to be resolved. Yes, I smile back, we are really dancing in this holy space!

As the prayer evolves, I reach my limbs into unchartered movement. Spinning on one leg at a time, trusting the lean of the universe will catch me if I stumble—I never fall when I’m in the spirit. There is so much space around us. I close my eyes and follow the intuition telling me when and where to place each foot. I twist my torso and hips, honoring the sacred womb of all creation that rests within me. The drums are steady but if they stopped it wouldn’t matter; the dance has taken us over.

I sense a crowd is forming because of murmurs and the sixth sense you have when you are being watched. I open my eyes and sea of women, girls, and babies wrapped in saris is planted a few yards from our dancing feet as if we are the evening show. I smile at them all and move my hands from my heart to the ground at their feet to acknowledge them. They smile and nod back at me. They want us to keep dancing. They have never seen such a happening in their old temple.


Lost in the flow of joy, we do not see the angry man approaching us. Had I not been waving my limbs about the blessings of the universe and finding harmony in my pelvis with the pulse of drum, I might have known the violent gestures of the approaching man was not a dance, but a warning. I might have prepared a response to the attack that was imminent.

“Stop this! You must stop this at once!” he screams. He was dressed in slacks and a button-up shirt. I keep spinning, barely hearing him at first. I look at my partner who is ecstatic with praise; his eyes are still closed. In the absurdity of the man’s anger, there is something fleetingly comical. For a moment, I think I am about to laugh.

“Stop this. You cannot do this here!” he insists. We still are dancing and praying. I never can comprehend being told to stop dancing. Would the Earth any sooner tell the ocean to stop making waves? Would not the whole planet die if the ocean did in fact obey and stop breathing? So too is the delicate relationship of our dance to our beating hearts.

Who is this man who challenges my right to live through the dance? This fiery opponent to our movement appears to be one of the leaders of the temple, likely a priest himself. Perhaps he has already made his offerings and that is why he now has time to harass us. His aggression brings me into the moment with him; he is not playing, he really wants us to stop.

Not that I am going to stop dancing, but I am taking in the whole scene now. The women at our feet are yelling at the priest. More people have surrounded to watch this exchange. The priest is reaching out to us with more than words now, but with his hands.

“Please,” he pleads, “this is a holy place. You cannot dance here!” With that he thrusts himself further into the circle of dance we’ve created around ourselves. He attempts to physically halt my partner’s movement and grabs his arm. We both dodge his desperate grasp. Wow, this man’s crazy, I think. He really thinks he can stop our movement with his hands!

“This is Shiva’s temple!” my partner bellows, pivoting on one leg and hopping out of the priest’s reach again. He never misses the drum’s beat through the holy man’s assault. “Shiva is a dancer,” my partner continues, laughter swelling into his tone. “How can we not dance?” We laugh at the blatant hypocrisy of the priest’s demands. Here we are embracing the pure essence of Shiva, and his servant, his keeper of the faith, his custodian of the sacred—the priest—does not recognize our dance as holy.

I wonder how many others have had the misfortune of being silenced in their spiritual exuberance because one of the Lord’s servants does not feel the spirit. When did our spirit, our inclination to dance in celebration, to praise, to sing, to run in harmony with the raging winds of our hearts, become the judgment of a (so-called) chosen holy man (authority figure)? Really, my global family, do we have time for such backwards behavior? In this urgent time when our spiritual freedom is increasingly essential for any “Movement” we purport to participate in, do we have the luxury of dimming our light for the sake of preserving the comfort zones of the less courageous? Is it in our best interests as a human family to allow our leaders to suppress the very thing that gave us all life in the first place? These questions and more zoom through my consciousness during this sunset prayer. In between flailing arms and asymmetrical legs, bent backs and rotating hips, I see that there is still so much that the movement has for us to explore as a world village; there are so many reasons why we must keep dancing, despite the protesters.


Even still, the priest is not the first misguided authority figure that I have out-danced, out-loved with a shimmy. In the middle of our dance-in, our movement gives way for an even bigger miracle of humanity to emerge.

The community has become our petitioners. In a language not our own, they tell the priest to leave us alone, we are praying, we are holy people. He barks back at the women, but he is clearly outnumbered, out-spirited really. The movement emerging in love never ceases; the holy dance won’t be sacrificed for the ignorant.

The priest’s frustration hardens his face and stiffens his body. He has lost and we have won. We are all relieved that he goes about his grumpy way. The women smile at us, nodding once more that we should continue dancing. I begin the eternal spin of joy’s rapture. Losing myself in what would be dizziness if it weren’t for my awareness, I am overwhelmed with gratitude that these people defended us, strangers on the outside, but kindred folk on the inside. We are laughing now; it is all so humorous they ways in which God plays with us.

My dance-prayer is beginning to settle. The sun is no longer in sight, but its warmth moves through my body. I slowly return to the original movement prayer of give thanks. Reaching up delicately into the bottom of the heavens, curving my body down into the earth to gather the strength of the ancestors, and then pulling it all into me so that I may give more back out to the world. I repeat this gentle motion to all four directions. As I open my eyes, I honor our defenders who are still at our feet, touching my hand from my heart to the stone gathering around their soles.


As we put our sandals on, the people rise and move with us outside of the temple. We do not say so much in words because our tongues are different, but we speak volumes in gesture, in nudges, in smiles. Several women clasp their palms into prayer hands and bow slightly towards us. I am so happy; they recognize that we too are a branch of the cosmic priesthood. Our energy resonated with them, burst through superficial barriers of language, race, gender, class, faith—and they protected us from the wrath of man-made authority. Their love of the spirit honored our pure intentions of celebrating in movement. The people, after all, are the caretakers of the spirit.

(This essay is an excerpt from my auto-choreo-biography about my early artistic awakenings that took place from February 2003 to February 2006. My journeys through India in 2006 opened me to my dynamic, artistic, spiritual beaming-light self in a way that hadn't been done before. The pictures in this posting are from various places in India. A more in-depth exploration of my India experiences is coming.)

On with the healing...