Dance Mama HealHer Reborn

Wow, a new year has dawned and many people have asked me where has OSA been since October? Where have I danced? What have I been doing? The dance has definitely been here, with me! In the fall, I decided to shift the structure of OSA Dance 600 (which was 600 consecutive days of OSA dance) to better nurture my whole self. Learning to balance health, nutrition, rest, prayer, cleansing, and writing with the dance allowed me to reflect on sharing OSA with the world in a more effective way. With the arrival of spring, I have come out of hibernation and OSA is reborn ANEW!

Welcome to the journey of movement as life itself. Ask yourself when was the last time you danced? If you don't remember start dancing NOW! Shake a leg, a booty, a wrist--do something to send a signal into the universe that you are ALIVE and participating in this cosmic dance of breath and body. OSA reminds us that the dance belongs to all us, and depends on all of us to actually do it. No one else can do your dance, and no one else can teach you how to do your dance but YOU! You are the magic equation for the miracle that is your life. Wake up with me and dance!

I recently started dancing with women who are incarcerated and recovering from drug abuse. This has been an amazingly synchronistic development in my journey as a movement healer. The experience of surrendering my freedom to enter a prison only to go and facilitate dance that acknowledges the innate freedom within has illuminated the ambiguity of liberty. What is freedom? Is it a place or a consciousness of being? Is it something you are given, or something that is yours to take?

I dance with these women. I listen to their poetry and I wonder, "why are you here, in lock-up?" And there are many reasons, many stories, many traumas, many people with blood on their hands, and yet, none of it matters when we stand in the circle to breathe our way into dancing. Lifting our arms, stretching our backs, smiling with whatever teeth are left, this dance is the product of all the known and unknown circumstances. In one moment I am wishing that they weren't in jail and then again I know we wouldn't be dancing these sacred healing rituals if they were out on the street escaping life with drugs. I am thankful and I am prayerful that each one of these women experience dance as an opportunity to love the self. And it wasn't until working with them, that I really began to honor the same prayer for myself.

I love moving with the whole world. This dance is so much bigger than my moving body, this dance is the whole earth body and all that dwells therein. All of us are dancing and the OSA Dance project is a reflection of that movement. I dance out the joy, the pain, the ugly, the gorgeous, the sexy, the lame, the scary, the traumatic, the spiritual, the confusing, the anger, the humor, the mystery, the monotonous, the NOW, and whatever else I find out there in our world. Are you in the dance? Are you in the game?