Julia Wolfermann
Switzerland
5Rhythms Teacher since 2010
Tribe Member since 1979
I tapped into the 5Rhythms when my dear friend Dagmar, who is at this point of time dancing with Gabrielle in the more subtle realms, visited me in Hamburg and seduced me into an “open evening” with Jonathan Horan. Dagmar couldn’t stop telling me about this practice (and had been persisting to talk about it for quite some time). I was pretty comfortable in my state of inertia back then, having lost my mother only a few years before, having stopped to dance and having stopped to have fun in general. I was convinced that the joy chapter in my life was simply over. However, my tough friend insisted that I should give it a shot and join the dance; so I dragged myself along...
This is where I met Hanna again (whom I had already seen before, at the spiritual bookstore which had been one of my comfort havens during dark times). And Jonathan.
I entered the dance space…oh God…what’s going on…everyone was dancing so uninhibitedly in front of everyone else! This is what I was doing since birth...and, out of shame and fear of perhaps bothering anyone who likes to be depressed...behind my closed teenage room door...all alone. In my “Sturm & Drang” years, I attempted to break through the societal stress walls under the influence of alcohol and cigarettes in claustrophobic clubs, nicely numbed and desperately screaming for cathartic experience as well as truthful, intimate, respectful connections.
How open and daring, right here and now, to share this liberating experience, simply with the support of water and juicy beats….!!! No one seems to judge the other…I have to try…………………and fell in love. My vehicle of existence started moving again.
A few months before this event, I got accepted at a theatre school in New York City. The only thing I knew was the address of the school. The only person I knew there was one of the staff and stage members.
Suddenly Hanna tells me that she is going to move to New York for some months to work with Jonathan’s mother, Gabrielle Roth. If I knew her, she asked me. “Never heard her name.”, I responded. Well, maybe I hadn’t listened all that well to Dagmar. I’m sorry.
So she introduced me to this magical being called Gabrielle Roth and I became part of the “crew” of both Gabrielle and Jonathan’s classes at Alex Grey’s new age temple space in Chelsea, under the crew leadership of Amber. Yes, it was exciting, transformational and mind-blowing. No, it was not always easy. Yes, it was all absolutely worth everything. For about 7 years, we’ve been sweeping the floors, preparing the room with sage, decorating, running out for last-minute errands, particularly that bottle of Fuji water for Gabrielle. A tribe I like to compare with the tribe in “Avatar” formed itself. Our core connection were the rhythms, breathe and a curious heart. Sometimes I wouldn’t even know the name of a person, often far longer after I had met her or him on a much deeper visceral, nonverbal level.
After a certain amount of years, I decided it might be time to teach the 5Rhythms if I preferred to prevent complacency from luring itself in. The longing to grow was again bigger than inertia and since 2011, I’ve been teaching in many different places on planet earth.
This month I’ll be inviting you to have the courage to express yourself in Switzerland. Through your own expression of dance, facilitated by me, who knows only too well that it takes a whole lot of guts to be(come) your true, free self in a world of opinions, addictions and frictions, projections, protections, dissatisfactions and anxious actions. By learning to “see” through movement and dance, we receive the liberty to return to the bright side of life on a true and grounded level.
Will you join in?
Response-Ability
with Julia Wolfermann
12 September 2020 - 13 September 2020
Espace Yelema, Vevey
REGISTER HERE!
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Natalie Poole
Australia
5Rhythms Teacher since 2014
Tribe Member since 1972
I had a miscarriage after my first ever 5Rhythms class. I was only in the very early stages of pregnancy, but we had been trying for our second baby for nearly a year. I was studying Dance-Movement Therapy at the time, and had been hearing about this big exciting 5Rhythms dance class in Melbourne for a while. I’d finally plucked up the courage to go along with friends. The installation artist invited us to take some red earth she had collected from central Australia, and to paint it onto our ourselves. I marked my belly with a big circle as I sensed I was finally pregnant, and then added some war paint, in streaks, to my face. I welcomed the ancient ritual. And I loved the dance but I remember I was elbowed in the face by a guy who never apologised, someone stomped on my foot, and then I ended up in a partnership with a guy who kept coming closer, no matter how much I backed away from him. Apart from those incidents, I enjoyed the class. But a few hours later when I began to bleed, I reflected on the meaning and the timing of it all. I didn't go back.
However, several years later when I had had my children, and I felt they were old enough to leave for a few hours - and I was craving time and space to myself - I returned to that big class. It no longer felt untamed and clumsy - or perhaps I was just more aligned and open, or had clearer boundaries, or was more desperate for a dance. From that time on, I rarely missed a class.
I trained with Jonathan in the first year of his new wave of teachers. For me, for us, it was a chaotic journey, firstly with Gabrielle passing, then the realigning of the teachers association, and the restructuring of the teacher training. The safe container I thought I was stepping into was shifting and recalibrating. And it just happened that we were digging up and rebuilding the foundations of our family home - the symbolism was not lost on me. I felt like I was digging up my past, my relationships, questioning my alignment and life direction, and developing and adopting new resources for my own inner support structures.
And we’ll be exploring this theme of restructuring and realigning in our five-day workshop ‘Archaeology’ at the end of January in Melbourne. We’ll be ‘digging up our bones,’ embodying our own anatomy, and going journey of inquiry into our skeleton. We’ll be unearthing and rebuilding our foundations for movement and alignment. We’ll be diving beyond simple moving body parts, and going into the deep architectural engineering of our body. We’ll be mapping our bones, our boundaries, and our connections. We’ll be working with the container of our body - discovering the strength, and structure, in order to support and protect our softer, more fragile body parts. We’ll be inviting the clarity of our bones to dance us through the 5Rhythms wave - and inviting each of the rhythms to dance into our bones - revealing new depths and re-discovering our ancient body wisdom.
Working with the bones brings clearness, articulation, strength, and re-alignment. This is your time to dig deeper into your dance, to make meaning with your bones. What clarity, inner support and restructuring would you like to welcome into your new year, your new decade? This workshop will recalibrate your mind, body, and heart.
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Archeology - 5 Day Summer Workshop
with Natalie Poole
23 January 2020 - 27 January 2020
The Masonic Lodge, Melbourne
REGISTER HERE!
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