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Pheeew...what an intense 2020!
I don´t know about you, but I do need to look at it once again and dance it out to cleanse and create clear and loving space for what 2021 may bring.
That´s why I offer this 8th Edition of "Transitions". A Waves + Heartbeat workshop. A ritual shared in community, to move, shake and meditate in body and heart. In the intimacy of our homes and in connection with the dancing tribe, this time also online, through zoom. 9-10 January 2021 (5-8pm Madrid time // 11am-2pm New York time)
Here I share with you a piece of my own story. And a wish: "May we become more conscious about our journeys, embodying and honouring them through the wave, again and again. And may some patterns that have been repeated long enough, can be expressed and dissolve, letting the lyrical rhythm visit us, opening new doors and windows, new paths."
In the last few years I was in a very intense wave of classes, workshops, trips and 2 years in advanced scheduled programme. On the one hand loving my work, passionate and dedicated. On the other, hiding in it, and exhausted, empty, stressed out. Filling the space so as not to feel the pain. Looking for worth outside, in how others looked at me and admired me. Putting my love in their eyes, in continuous search for approval. This and a few losses and big changes. A good mix. That I had no choice but to look in the lock down (2 months stuck in hour homes in Spain). Or better, I wanted and dared to feel and look !! It took me to the hole, to that pain that was waiting to be felt. It broke me in two. It took me to the bottom. I rolled in the mud, I felt terror, despair, exhaustion, anger, so much anger. I looked for help. I danced and danced and danced. And at some point, I gave up. I let myself float, I stopped fighting. I allowed sadness to fill me up and overflow, I let go and let go, I stopped. And it was enough. I was enough.
At some point, the hole became a nutritional lagoon and a place of refuge and impulse. And I started to feel my worth from within. Although sometimes they are only small drops of self love. Even though I keep catching myself looking outside. Something in me has changed. It was not something sudden. It is a little by little, step by step. A reminder that the place of my compass is inside. In my center. The learning of letting myself be cared for and supported. See where there is support and company. Take it. Stop looking where there is not. And love me. In the end everything is summed up in that practice that is said easy but becomes difficult: SELF LOVE. Even in "worm" moments. Even in the falls, the mistakes, the patterns that I see and do not like. LOVE ME.
My new practice: "Enjoy the small, take in what there it is, feel my worth, pause, and let it be enough."
Thanks 2020, for so much learning. Thank you 5Rhythms practice and community for such a healing map and deep reminders. Thank you guardian angels. Thank you family and friends. Thank you dancers, students, teachers, colleagues, dancing family .. and thanks to me !!! To my strength and courage. To my tenacity and my commitment. To my vulnerability.
Big love, and nurturing transition to 2021 to you all!
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Emma Leech
United Kingdom
Teaching since 2001
Dancing since 1991
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In the 30 years I have been dancing 5Rhythms and bringing my life’s stories to the practice, to transform, heal and navigate through it all, hard to believe some of the adventure’s I have had over the years, straight out of a Shakespeare play, or even a Mike Lee movie. The 5Rhythms has been my life line to keeping me turned on to life, and able to appreciate and love my life despite the many difficult challenges, The dance has lifted me beyond, through and out the other side shifting perspective and opening me to the wisdom and artistry of the soul. I began in my early 20’s and now in my early 50’s not a week has gone by when I haven’t danced, That is a lot of sweat!
The many path’s on my teaching journey (20 years), walk ways, hills, rocky mountain metaphors that have lead me to ROME and NAPLES……for the past 6 years where my now dancing family spin me into spaghetti twirls of delight and my producer and friend Massimo Passante, DJ legend and collaborator, magician, together we are creating and innovating 5Rhythms Movement labs.
And so now 2020 the year of the Pandemic, to move my body through all the fear, frustration, confusion, shifting and learning to dance with the chaos, on a global scale, plugged in to humanity with a collective sharing of vulnerability. I feel that Gabrielle Roth knew that her life’s work would be needed for something like this……perfect to help keep us all mentally, emotionally and physically able to cope. It has opened me up to connect to the ‘bigger’ picture of what it is to “be a human being” when death is an invisible killer that can strike us down at any breathing moment. Unreal, like a horror sci fi movie, except it is REAL.
Transforming into Artistic language from the soul of the body, listening with a deeper acknowledgment and respect to nature, paying attention to the small things that hold magic.
And so the challenge of being more a lone with myself, in 'Lock Down' for the first time in my life, intimate, deep, like an initiation to discover my inner strength. Living by myself, transforming my home into a dance sanctuary and overcoming the cyber techno world of zoom to dance with others and teach classes. (I Love the fact that Peter Fodera can join me in Rome from USA and I can drop in to classes anywhere on the planet.)
I have been developing the ‘Silent Wave’ of moving with just my body, silence, inner music, poetic improvisation emerging from the dance, metaphors leaping to catch my breath from the unlit corners of my being. This new world of silence has inspired me to work with the dance in a more visual, spacious, expansive context. To slow down enough to feel and see with that part of me that is Love, I am at the beginning of a teaching that is beautiful, strong, and present.
I believe that the 5Rhythms is a practice that ultimately is teaching us HOW To LOVE a dancing journey to compassion, to be real. Explore the energy and movement patterns of our own shadow and emotions, before we can be fully present with another person with compassion or empathy. If I don’t know the dance of my own fear, how can I be there to support yours ?
The ‘Be Still’ movement lab is an online event: We will move to discover the essence, spirit, poetic, expansive, dark night of the soul. To learn how to be patient, how to develop new ways of being with the Empty space in our lives, when the ‘to do lists’ can’t do? All our usual distractions and habits are disrupted. Slowing down, reflect, meditate, be still, stop. Endings, beginnings take on a different meaning. Dance to heal, to become a moving prayer for Love for ourselves and for humanity.
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