Feeling Good

The Choral Dance represents the organized excitement reflex of a community. The oldest form of the Choral Dance is the circle. Even the chimpanzees dance in a circle and people of every continent still do it.  –Curt Sachs, World History of the Dance

In the continuing story of the Core Shamanism class that I took, the next item on the agenda was an animal dance.

The idea here was to allow the spirit of an animal to express itself through our bodies via a circular “dance”.  We were encouraged to follow the desires of the animal.  Dance if they wanted to dance, fly if they wanted to fly.  With our eyes open only enough so as not to bump into a wall or one another, we proceeded to walk a circular path around our instructor who was providing the every steady beat of the drum.

With a clear and open mind, I walked. 

Before too long, I couldn’t help but notice a rather strange sensation in my arms.  They literally felt as though they were getting longer!  I didn’t know what to make of this at first so I just kept walking.  Very soon I noticed that I was no longer walking completely upright and that my gait was much less deliberate – more like a shuffle.  I was beginning to think that I was perhaps being visited by the spirit of a primate when my thoughts were confirmed by a growing preoccupation with my nose!

All doubts were removed when a strong sense of playfulness came over me in a flash.  My chimp wanted nothing more than to play and have loads of fun doing it!  As we continued the circle, he couldn’t resist, on a couple of occasions, the desire to walk in the opposite direction of the others just to be playful.  He darted about savoring every moment!

As the dance was nearing its end, I could feel that my chimp was getting a bit tired and may need to find a place to lounge for a bit but he made to the end of the dance with me.  After we took a moment to make some notes we reflected on and shared our experiences.  I told the group of my long arms, sideways walk, and itchy nose.  And it was at this point our instructor asked me a very pointed question.

“What can you take from this experience to apply to your life?”

For me the answer was quite obvious.  The chimp’s playfulness was outside of my often overly serious nature.  I could take this chimp’s example and get over my serious self! 

I could, and will, lighten up and have some fun!  I could, and will, enjoy life and everything it has to offer!