Belly dance – the art of living
The dance is a form of filling up for women. This is the art of living of the feminine principle, because the woman can only live in the actions that fill her up. The actions that don't fill up the woman, on the contrary, exhaust her both physically and spiritually.
Only after the woman has brought herself directly to the level and quality, where the filling up happens, she could carry the true qualities of a woman. The filling up is a concept given by the nature of quality life, determining the physiological and emotional needs of women.
The woman is endowed with the motherly principle by nature. And this is the process that allows her not only to live, but also to create. It is impossible to attain power without the filling up, and without power, it's impossible to support and believe in yourself. The dependence and need of pointless quests (devoid of any meaning, filling up external actions, which only help to forget yourself or get lost in a sea of different actions) is reduced at the presence of power inside yourself.
The filling up is the woman's breathing. It is a condition for a normal and qualitative stay, based on the processes of cultivation, pregnancy and maintenance, i.e. those functions, defining true beauty.
The filling up is the life blood, which feeds the flower, gives life and creates conditions for development. The woman, who is unable of filling up, is also unable of being in the process of development and the state of realization.
The filling up is a dance, nourishing and inspiring the nature of women. This is a dance, which is not determined by the physical and technical characteristics and by the rhythm, but a dance allowing women to acquire and develop internal foundations. The Earth is filled up by the action of the rhythm of Nature, performing its dance in the Universe. In the same way, the woman is capable of being in the phases of high and low tides, not only by the will of the Moon, but also by her own will, thus involving herself in the process of controlling her own filling up. The woman's body should constantly feed and bathe in all the essences of life: under the look of the men around, the singing of serenades, the sound of internal pulse, the feelings, the smells, etc.
All this creates a nature of unified sounding. By filling herself up, the woman, in the first place, is filling up her own heart. She attains an inner sounding, which makes her every gesture and every step look like a natural phenomenon. A phenomenon that she alone controls.
The woman – this is an element, soft and pliable, when she is in harmony, and raging and uncontrollable, when she is not in harmony. Being in a qualitative, filled up stay, the woman radiates a divine essence, which she sprinkles on everything that is around. Also, being in the unrestrained, uncontrolled process of her life, she becomes a destructive force, destroying the rhythm of her own personality and the rhythm of everything else.
Dance as food
Since ancient times, people worshiped the filling up as a form of divine manifestation. The woman is a receptacle, always containing life blood. People created the dance to maintain the quality and vitality of this receptacle. Or rather, they came to it naturally as to a process that enables the filling up and absorption of the energy, which is transformed in the process of dancing.
Being in the dance, the woman learns to correlate her needs with the quality of life. Actually, her needs begin to rely on her internal (spiritual) search, rather than the external, when she follows the rhythm and conditions, which are very often not consistent with her real needs and capabilities. The entire external activity of the woman is determined by her filling up. If this filling up is not present or not enough, the woman throws herself into a chaotic dance, turning her life into the pursuit of nothing!
Even, if the woman is in the center of events and actions, she doesn't know how to position herself right in accordance to them, which leads to a situation, where the events steal women's energy and time, instead of fill her up. In this case, the woman becomes part of the process, not the process part of her!
When filling up, the woman is capable of changing. The ability to change allows her to live her own life both quantitatively and qualitatively. As well as the Moon, passing through fifteen changes for a whole circle, the woman is able to get fifteen different sensual essences. The same as Moon, who has four types of living (seasonal), the woman has four distinctive forms of life in a single cycle.
It turns out that, during one year the woman lives through 60 forms of inner changing. However, the woman has to learn, first, how to fill up, in order to really feel these changes. Thus, the dance becomes a condition for the woman, supporting her life of a receptacle, or the dance is a condition for the acknowledgement of your own nature, its preservation and development.
Belly dance: an alchemical dance
All dances can be classified due to the set by them efforts. Such efforts cannot be more than fifteen, as it is the exact number of qualities inherent by nature. Although, it should be noted that each quality may have various forms of display, so they also may be represented as some big colorful bouquet. Every kind of dance is a pearl. However, among the variety of dances stands out an alchemical dance for women, which is the so-called “belly dance”. The basic meaning of this dance lies precisely in the understanding of the art of filling up and internal changing.
Belly dance is an art of reunion of women with their inner nature, or their uterus. The practice of belly dance has deep roots and knowledge, which is associated with the ability to be in the laws of naturalness, or those laws that allow you to reunite the nature of the physical and the spiritual.
Belly dance teaches the woman how to find and unite with herself. But, first of all, it is essential to look at yourself and your life from the outside, because only when you look at yourself from a distance, you can objectively evaluate yourself and your actions and beliefs.
The dance leads to the identification and alignment of the connections not only in yourself, but also the communications to the place and the society. By learning to pay attention to yourselves and your connections, and by learning to get satisfaction (filling up) of your own actions, you learn how to build up everything around you. In other words, you don't find some order, but the correct order in which each subject is in its place. Here, we already come to the concept of realization. The dance becomes the teacher, who not only fills us and gives us power, but also teaches us how to use it right.
If we don't reach an internal and external realization through the dance, it means that we have not yet started to dance. We bring into the dance our own understanding of it, which may be different from the true understanding of this action. As a result, we don't allow to be taught the dance and we begin to use it, like everything else around us. This already is a false Way.
Physiology of belly dance: uterus as a center of dance
Any dance must have a center, and such center in belly dance is the uterus. If you don't dance against your womb, then you have not yet come to the true concept of this dance, and you just make a group of exercises. In this case, the realization becomes either your definition or your previous experience, and the experience that moves many women, often is too far from the correct understanding of the dance.
In such circumstances, you don't really dance, you just dream or imagine that you dance. And, by the way, you can stay very long in the dreams about the dance or in some kind of a fantasy about it. But, the dance cannot be made up, it can either be expressed by understandable, or not understandable actions. However, in both cases are needed certain conditions as well.
Self-realization in dance
The concept of realization should be in charge of any action that a person does, and it should not move him initially. You cannot start from the very beginning to rely on the realization, because it will be an unfulfilled dream unless you achieve naturalness. The naturalness itself determines the degree of man's filling up and needs. And we need to remember that everyone has his own degree of naturalness. The self-sufficiency of a person comes from the filling up of his own actions and, further, already follows the truth or wisdom.
By reaching a realization in the dance, you turn the action into a truth. In other words, you are already above yourself, or higher than yourself. This is a significant factor that has an important and profound meaning. What does it mean to achieve wisdom? When you reach truth and acquire real knowledge of what you do, then you can already increase and refine the action, bringing it to the highest centers, implicit in the act of knowledge.
Actually, the person, in this phase, is a direct participant in the act of knowledge, when the action starts to bring him much closer to the truth and wisdom. The aspect of human existence, expressed by the dance, in fact, was initially focused on precisely this form of transformation.
Inspiration and development
Coming closer to the realization of this particular symbolic meaning of the dance, you confront with the next symbol of the dance, associated with inspiration. This is a very interesting aspect which is often defined as primary and is based on the existing qualities of the dancer. I want to focus a little on this one, because there is something that can center your attention. A great number of people explain the reason and quality of creation of their product of inspiration. In other words, their inspiration seems to be the primary truth and primary wisdom, which we discussed above. And, that is a mistake.
From the perspective of the real development, the inspiration without wisdom is at a lower level of creation (even, if the inspiration allows us to express our act as some kind of a super action or a super event) than, for example, a constant, but natural routine activity.
Let's analyze, for example, Van Gogh, Paganini and many other great people. We can indefinitely talk about their greatness of self-expression in art. Undoubtedly, it is so. But, we must understand that, within the bounds of the discussed from us concepts, it's not them, who show the results of the activity of certain creation, realized in one form or another, but the certain conditions that have allowed these people to replace all the previous symbols or stages of their work. And not to develop them, but precisely to replace them. By the power of the circumstances in the lives of these people, the form of their energy was so changed and so oriented on a certain state, that this allowed them to express the inspiration, which pushed them “to supercreate”.
In this aspect, the supercreation is not a result of the activity of these people. It should either be regarded as a consequence of the realization of conditions, in which they were born, or the following and dependence on some specific circumstances of life. There should be a discipline in the creation: it supports the naturalness. The naturalness, on its side, creates the wisdom, which is an element of the conscious act.
Relatively speaking, if we go to any mental institution, we'll find a lot of potential Van Goghs, who are short of certain external conditions needed for a full realization, so to speak, short of "an external dance" However, there may not be a total difference in the internal state between the relative Van Gogh or Paganini and the psychiatric patients. Or, these patients need to express some state, however, they cannot adequately bring that state into this world. If they are shown how to do it, we'll get new creators, no worse than the great classics and masters of the past.
However, it is extremely important not to forget that the act of creation is always a two sided process: in addition to the one who creates, there must be someone who is able to understand this creation. This forces you to appeal to certain features of the human mind. If the mind of the perceiver is linked to a concrete act of creation, it behaves one way, but if not, then another way. The understanding has its own movement, its own look, own ears, own time and place. For example, no one could understand that same Van Gogh for a very long time.
Nature of creativity in dance
The question here is not about the one who creates, but about what he creates. The package or the product? The dance or simply the movement? After all, the movement is not yet the dance, it's just a dance tool. Can a person understand the dance without being involved in it? And, can we talk about the aesthetics of perception, based solely on the information or the habit?
The dance, foremost, is an internal expression. A woman, dancing belly dance, relies on four manifested and four not manifested movements. For instance, the external movement stops, but the dance continues internally. The dancing woman stands for a minute, ten minutes, an hour! You get up and go, because you are no longer satisfied with the visible. But is it possible that you're not ready yet for it? Who and how can judge this? And, do we have the right to do this?
In order to give a definition to the dance, it is necessary to be able to participate, to empathize, to see without looking, and to feel without touching. The quality of the “Evian” water is not determined by the aesthetics, but the content! It's strange, perhaps, to talk about art, while not understanding yourself.
However, the purpose of this work is not the analysis of the modern attitude towards art and its criticizing. I'm talking primarily about the symbols of the dance. The dance is poetry and a certain volume. Belly dance teaches the woman how to dive and become partaker of this volume. We can talk about a certain sequence of actions, only after this connection happens. In other words, we have to learn how to relate each action to the volume. This correlation, actually, determines inspiration as a constant quality, but with varying degree of filling up. And then what? Then comes the Way!
Dance – the Way
Everything that we do, after finding inspiration, is called Way. This is the moment when the dance gets not only a heart (inspiration), but also a consciousness. In other words, there is a great distance between the dance at the beginning of its study and the dance, coming forward as the Way. In reality, you'll attain the happiness of stay, determined by your actions here and now, only when the dance truly becomes the Way for you.
That's how, any action that you do must, sooner or later, become the Way, in which each step will be an act, an incarnation or a realization. Oh, and most importantly, there will be no doubts whether you lose anything, because you'll only acquire and create, create and re-create.
Here I would like to point out another important aspect of the dance regarding women, which is associated with the purification. You see, it is thought that, coming into this world, we carry not only positive features, but also some negative by quality functions, from which we must free ourselves in the course of our lives. This is another reason why the dance should not be viewed as a group of movements, but on a larger scale – as the Way, even if we have a partial understanding or we are simply at the initial stage of comprehension of the process.
The dance is an art, knowledge and a philosophy. And like every action, it requires a specific effort, a certain act of forgiveness, an act of compassion, which purifies you and your action, or it purifies someone from the violation of laws, and, above all, from the violation of the principles of development of the spirit.
This symbol must be clearly understood and realized in every form of action of our work. This is especially true for the dance, because we refer, first of all, to ourselves in the dance, plunging into a deep, intimate communion with our own selves.
The dance requires that the dancer compulsory pass through an internal cleansing, otherwise the dance will never become the Way. The complexity here is that any act of virtue, compassion or forgiveness requires from us a certain right and confidence that we can do it. Any of us can give a designation to another person and his action and make some judgment. However, no one, in fact, has the real right to do that. Without applying a certain effort to ourselves, and without stepping on the Way of rationalization of our own nature, our value and quality, we are not in a position to assess and give objective definitions to someone.
We simply find ourselves unable to connect the energy of the objective judgment and analysis with the action that we're doing. And the one, who can really put the quality of his energy in the words, out of which he can also properly make ideas, is the only one who can formulate his opinion and be responsible for it. In any other case, we show ourselves as people who are not responsible for their words, and become hostages to irresponsible actions and decisions.
Thus, in the beginning of the study, the dance should become an instrument for consideration of your own nature. However, developing ourselves, we must realize that unless we reach some true understanding of what we are doing and why we are doing it, we cannot even express a semiprofessional opinion regarding the subject of the act. Any person is in a particular phase of imperfection, prompting him to do certain things. At the phase of knowledge, we need to stay away from judgments, discussions, and other aspects that might distract us from the act, and even destroy the already available.
Alchemy in dance
Finally, the last symbol that needs to be designated as directly associated with the dance, as well as with any action of man. This is an alchemical foundation of every act, i.e. the basis of the art of development. It could be defined as a new form of existence, birth and transformation. In other words, the dance should form a kind of a new beginning in the ability of the practicing woman to create energy, which, ultimately, will nourish her spirit. This is consistent with the form of rebirth, when you actually revive yourself.
Any action should revive you. The rebirth is the form, the quality of existence that frees us from the unnecessary and enables the acquisition of the necessary. The acquisition of a higher quality of spirit is the main task of every man who has come to Earth. Not the destruction of his spirit, but its acquisition or fortifying.
The alchemical processes have their own principles. We must learn to contemplate each action that we perform. The right action - this is a certain pattern, mandala, labyrinth, containing a variety of interesting and diverse forms of knowledge. And before we can really come to it and start dealing with it, we need, first, to learn how to contemplate, or to remain in the course of action. In other words, the contemplation is one of the forms of the development of concentration.
If we do not contemplate the process and we are not in it, we cannot be focused on that process. And, if we do not concentrate, we don't come closer to the clue of the process. This is very important because it should lead us to the understanding of the following aspect: a possibility for transformation must be present in every act. As a result, we come to the next formula: the opportunity to be in what you do is an opportunity of self-transformation, which is implicit in the alchemical transformation of the act, based on laws and knowledge.
In other words, we learn how to know. First, we learn how to act while contemplating, then we learn to be aware of what we do. Thus, we develop knowledge. And it is very important always to avoid saying: yes, I know this, I understand this, etc. You can, of course, justify such statements when you want, for example, to reduce the process of participation in a certain conversation, or some other activity. But it must be clearly understood: there isn't and cannot be a limit to knowledge.
Next, if you have studied some movement, it does not mean that you know it. Even if you have spent ten years on doing it, you should avoid phrases like: yes, I know it, I can do it. It is extremely important to learn how to find new moments in any movement. Knowledge is differed not by some external sequence, but by the depth it reveals. One and the same action has several levels of depth that need to be investigated. Therefore, there aren't simple or complex actions, there are just actions.
If you repeat one and the same “simple” action, but you are not in it and it does not give you the real filling up, then you do not have this action, because you do not realize yourself in it. And if, defending your position, you say: I do not need it, or this action is bad, then it is wrong.
Every action, whether you make one move or do a whole bunch of moves, has the same foundation (feet or knees, for example), the same concentration, the same effort, the same energy. And, let it have different expressions, because this is, really, what leads to the understanding that there are no simple acts. The most difficult actions are, in fact, the most simple actions.
One of the most difficult actions is to sit and be! To stand and be, to lie down and be, to walk and be, is a process, and not like when you make some difficult technical actions, because this already is a result. Do not block your act of knowing with what you think that you know something. Thus, you violate the principles of knowledge, which, in reality, is unlimited.
Knowledge is an act of circulation, an act of movement, and it relies on the circulation of the energy, which you create through actions. The problem here is that, by violating the circulation of energy, the rhythm is disturbed and the quality of living changes. The quantity begins to substitute the quality. The dance also teaches you to be in harmony with your own rhythm.
However, man cannot attain compliance with his own rhythm until his circulation of energy is violated. The circulation does not depend on the complexity or simplicity of the movement, only its speed can change. Many complex and fast movements rather destroy the circulation than develop it, as there are much stronger requirements to the concentration and the ability of the body to maintain control over the internal and external communications.
Dance: a language of communication with body
The dance teaches us to communicate with our body. We get a language of communication with the body or a language of communication through the body, i.e. either in relation to yourself, by learning to communicate with your body through the actions, or in relation to the external spectator, by learning to demonstrate, speak or show. Naturally, by receiving and developing knowledge through the body, we open a variety of possibilities for its nourishment and filling up with senses.
The senses do not appear out of nowhere. They are part of the energy that our body produces. And if our body is blocked and clogged, then this energy cannot fill our inner volume and cannot be conserved, and it is simply thrown out of the body. Again, we have the same problem that was mentioned above. Man loses energy, instead of getting and storing it. He does not absorb it, acquiring by that certain functions, but he throws it out, without the chance to experience it and fill himself up. And all this is due to the impossibility of his body and consciousness to fulfill it.
In captivity of audience's sympathy
There is another important aspect related to the dance, which cannot fail to mention. Let's simply call it a certain element of consumption. This concept is associated with two forms of the human existence, based on different attitudes to the process and the work results.
The quality and properties of the practices, appearing in man and connected with the circulation of energy, can either be directed to make you happy and harmonious, or to evoke reactions from the outside. The second point is the fact that if you do not know how to fill up and consume yourself through your own actions, then your body requires from you to look for and get reactions from the outside.
Many women, who have the need for filling up, but are unable to fill up independently and self-sufficiently, express themselves and try to get realization in a way that causes a reaction from the outside, thereby initiating the process of external filling up. Of course, in this case, they realize the universal role of women as a container, which still has to be filled with something or it has to generate and recreate another thing.
Unfortunately, at the moment, all dances – the ones, having a deep culture, and also the modern, are focused almost entirely on the external reaction of the audience. Here, I draw our attention to the fact that, by not being able to properly fill up, we sometimes find ourselves in a serious dependence on such external influence.
It is important to understand that the woman cannot escape from the filling up, because it can either be internal, or external. And, the less the woman is in the phase of her own internal construction, the more she is oriented on the external reaction, ultimately, becoming directly dependent on it.
This is a real danger in the woman's existence, because if not being able to properly develop and conserve herself, she may force herself to react to everything and everyone, using for that the most unreasonable, in the common sense, actions she could produce.
Also, another problem for the woman is the environment she lives in. The loss of rhythm is also a men's problem, because they involve the woman in an abnormal rhythm of existence, which pushes her to an external dependency. This implies a lot of negative effects, leading to the destruction of the feminine principle. One of the most important is that this particular behavior of the woman, the external dependency, is defined as a natural or proper state for her.
Thus, the nature of women is leveled and new rules are being written, which are beyond the understanding of the source of the social rhythm, or breathing.
Physiological and energetical basis of belly dance movements
In any case, the woman gets to a point where she needs to develop her own energy, and she is constrained to take conscious actions for her development, or unconscious, in the form of reactions.
And the first movement is the union of the body with the vibration. Many Belly dance movements are connected with the vibration. These movements are based, first of all, on the generation and the subsequent refinement of the energy in the body and the given container. In particular, there are many vibrational movements, associated with the hips.
This is partly determined by the fact that the uterus redistributes the energy, especially, in the hips. So, it's needed a lot of vibrational movements in the hips and, in fact, the whole body, in order to absorb and transform this particular energy. In general, this specific movement is connected with the energy transformation.
The next typical belly dance technical action is the different forms of rotation. There are eight forms of rotation in this form of dance related to the filling up or the eight phases of the Moon. Each form of rotation has its own density, i.e. it is not just a rotation, it is a movement forming either a circulation density or an internal effort, set during this rotation.
The next move is sinuous. It is associated with the absorption, because the generated energy must be transferred and absorbed. The movement should not be just plastic, it should fill up, and that's two different things. We should learn how to internally fill it with energy, and this should not be just an element of techniques. What is the plastic movement? It is one of the energy types.
Also, the wavy head movement resembles a serpentine movement. Dance should always be transformed through the head, or pass through an understanding. The use of the head is the use and understanding of the movement at the head's level, the level of knowledge.
And of course, the main movement is the belly movement. Each assimilation of the energy, naturally, goes through the abdomen. This is the place where the whole energy of the body is gathered.
The connection between the abdomen and the uterus implies a transition to the next basis of techniques or practices related to the dance: the generation of a uterine breathing, linked to the rhythm that will capture the movements during the dance. The movement in the belly dance initially comes from the uterus. In general, all movements are based on the woman's uterus. Belly dance, in reality, teaches this foundation.
It is totally natural that belly dance is really a unique dance for women. It was primarily created for the reunification and transformation of energy in the body. Belly dance, as a temple dance, is related to the kind of energy that is accumulated in the temple. As the temple has always been considered a kind of a container, so the woman has been looked upon as a receptacle, or the same container. The woman, who danced in the temple, transformed and connected the corresponding energy with the others. And this lied in the heart of this ritual. The most important thing, in this case, was the transformation.
Foundation in dance
During the dance, it is important to build up the circulation of energy in the womb and let it be absorbed normally by this organ. Then the woman gets the chance to go into a different quality of sensations and feelings. Precisely these aspects are fundamental for the understanding of the dance culture. It should be clearly understood that, the technique as a basis of knowledge can become a foundation only if we learn how to do it right.
The foundation for the women in the dance is really their uterus. It is natural that the abdomen also opens, as it is an energetically stronger receptacle than the uterus. It is important to ensure a presence of a real connection between the abdomen and the uterus, in order to take place a transformation. The belly dance technique is a journey through several stages: the stage of purification, the stage of adjustment, the stage of creation of efforts and the stage of naturalness and transformation.
Dealing with the dance, the woman, first of all, should seek to study her inner self. Everything external in the dance is already a consequence. What precedes this? An adjustment, a going out, a gathering, and after that it can be enriched by patterns. What is the movement? This is a pattern, a method of entwining energy, a method of producing energy in the form of transformation. We can get energy by moving our hand, by throwing, by gathering or some more complex movements. However, it should be realized that these are patterns, which have a certain energy foundation.
It is also important to keep the whole process in time, where the woman receives an essence – a particular seed that should be grown up. Many dances are related to the fertility cult, or the origination. The woman breeds and conceives something, as well as the Earth. So, if you're willing to do that, then do it.
23 april 2012
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