Last night I went to a "Transformational Dance" meetup group in Manhattan. Transformational Dance is essentially a form of 'ecstatic' dance which I'll explain more about.
Considering the first train I was supposed to catch was cancelled due to track work, I had to take a later train a half an hour later, which meant I was going to be late for the event. I was already a bit nervous and unsure of what to expect from this event, yet excited. Therefore, I didn't want to come in late and potentially miss mingling with people and missing out on anything early on during the event.
I arrived about 15 minutes late. When I entered into the event room, everyone was doing a form of stretching/letting loose exercises and making very strange "release" sounds. Understand that I had no idea how to dress for this event. Therefore, I wore jeans stupidly, while everyone was dressed down, including some people wearing pajamas. Therefore, it made it a little difficult to do the stretching exercises with jeans on. Regardless, the exercises involved crawling on the ground, and making any kind of noises we felt like making including growling noises or animal like noises. I was kind of "thrown" into the fire immediately after arriving late, so I was bit uncomfortable crawling around the floor and making cat noises into people's faces at first, but with so much laughing going on with all of us, it made it so much more fun.
Then, we started dancing. This type of dancing does not involve any prior knowledge with choreography or even rhythm. It's a form of ecstatic dance, which means, freely expressing yourself around the dance floor while music is playing in the background. There is no thought involved. It's strictly movement by feeling. It was so incredible and empowering, to be able to move around with other people on the dance floor, each of us doing our own thing, going in crazy directions, with no judgment at all. Incredible does not even describe it. I felt strong emotions surfacing with the combination of expression and music playing in the background. Some other dance exercises involved dancing with partners. I even danced with another man! It was beautiful. A little strange, but such a warm feeling of love from each person to each other.
We then had to find a partner and ask the partner if they had any injuries. I found a female partner for this. Then, we proceeded to help 'loosen' each other physically by gently moving random parts of each other's bodies (completely non sexual). So, basically, arms, legs, neck and slowly glide the person on the back, along the floor. Very relaxing, if you don't think too much. I found this to be a bit awkward, when I was the one who was being 'loosened'. First of all, I have a hard time letting go in the first place, especially feeling pressured to let go with another person standing right next to me! I wasn't sure whether to make eye contact with her either. She was a nice woman and neither of us knew very well what we were 'supposed' to be doing to be honest. So, I found the eye contact part made me very tense as my muscles tightened up instead of loosening, and I kept looking away as dancing with a female partner completely platonically for some reason felt very weird for me to make strict eye contact for extended periods of time and I realize this is likely a result of my own conditioning and a belief that eye contact implies 'sexuality'. She had very powerful blue eyes as well. Something I took notice of with myself within my body, and will continue to be aware of in the future. I noticed that when I am sexually interested in a girl, I can make extended eye contact for long periods of time un-interrupted and I will often be the one to initiate it! However, when it's platonic, I at times, feel a little awkward making extended eye contact with people. There is a 'gazing' event through a similar meetup organization that I plan on taking part in, in mid October.
Anyway, the event was incredible. We did a number of other dance sessions which were a lot of fun and the night ended with us receiving and giving reiki to each other. I only received and did not give because I did not have a partner at that point and the organizer was the one who performed reiki on me, but it was very relaxing.
I made a couple of friendly connections. The re-lating aspect even with the few men that were there, was nothing I had ever experienced. It went from "tense" to "freeing" by the end of the night to be able to interact with other men in a loving connected platonic way.....without judgment most of all.
I definitely plan on going to another transformational dance event in the future. It's a wonderful stepping stone as part of a spiritual practice of truly feeling your self authentically and bringing that out to connect with other people.
Spirituality is all about authenticity. All of the other stuff is irrelevant. A true spiritual practice is one where we go within ourselves and allow who we truly are to Be. A good portion of my life was lived in ego, in manipulating others and in fear. Much of my interactions were based on the notion of 'hiding who I was' so that they wouldn't 'discover me'. I would always sit in the back of the classroom out of fear of being seen by others. I wanted so badly to fit in, that I put on an act for so long to hide who I truly was out of fear of rejection.
These types of events get you to most importantly FACE those fears inside of yourself and make them conscious so that you can love them and embrace them. Truly facing your fears means to LOVE every aspect of yourself and embrace those aspects non judgmentally.
I feel I have anxiety still in my life relating to certain issues largely with sleep, but I feel I'm finally on a true spiritual path as nothing else matters to me now other than Being who I truly AM authentically.
