5Rhythms with Jonathan Horan | Europe this Fall

September 8, 2016

“Emptiness which is conceptually liable to be mistaken for sheer nothingness is in fact the reservoir of infinite possibilities.” — D.T. Suzuki

Dear Dancing Maniacs,

I’ve spent the last days of summer in Big Sur, California visiting my father and my homeland while the area has been all-consumed with wildfires.

Dad continues to remind us that it is the natural fate of the forest to eventually burn down time and time again. That it needs this cyclical destruction in order to regenerate and resource and renew. That regardless of what started it and how scary and painful it feels, it is a healing for the earth to release into this ritual.

After my mother’s death nearly 4 years ago, I was (as it felt) thrust into a roaring fire that was being stoked in all directions with both the fury and beauty of creation and destruction all at once. As I stepped into the hot seat of this eclectic and misft tribe, I began to take on the responsibilities bestowed upon me and it has surely not been the easy path.

As I reflect into these forest fires I see a mirror of my process and the dance:

the discipline and freedom to self-destruct, self-heal & self-generate — every body has the ability to manifest our own personal warrior path of transformation and rebirth

the opportunity to shed skins so we can shed stories — honoring the past, while not relying on it to define the future

that the wave of life will eventually drop us into stillness, compassion, and acceptance if we simply allow the creative mystery to move us towards our own destinies

and that we can always begin again, with every end being a chance at a new beginning.

In my reflection, I would not change the messy parts. the suffering, the pain, the letting go. It is within these wounds that our greatest teachers live.

Above all, I’m grateful for this 5Rhythms practice deep within my bones that I am able to fall back on as it holds me up & heals me up — it is the mirror, the muse, the mandala of life.

From burnt ashes we can all rise.

Pili kau, pili ho’oilo

(Together in the dry season, together in the wet season)

See you on the dance floor,
Jonathan