Kundalini Dance - A Self Healing Journey Through the Chakras
05/05/2004 - By Leyolah Antara Dekanic
Leyolah ecstatic
Kundalini Dance is a unique form of ecstatic dance developed and taught by dance therapist/healer, Leyolah Antara, world wide for over a decade. Here Leyolah explains how this unique form of movement maintains health and vitality.
Kundalini Dance
A self- healing journey through the chakras
- by Leyolah Antara Dekanic
Kundalini Dance is a unique form of ecstatic dance developed and taught by dance therapist/healer, Leyolah Antara, world wide for over a decade. Here Leyolah explains how this unique form of movement maintains health and vitality.
The roots of Kundalini Dance can be found in the ancient tantric yogic traditions and dance movement therapy. People who participate in my Kundalini Dance classes describe the practice as deeply transformational and totally ecstatic. Regular practice can clear stagnant emotional energy out of the body and mind, release stress, still the mind, brings insight and clarity, open the heart and support the awakening of higher consciousness.
Kundalini is an ancient Sanskrit word used to describe an innate energy found in every human being. It is located in the sacrum, at the base of the spine and unless cultivated, it remains dormant. Kundalini is also known as ‘prana’, which means a highly potent form of “life force”. The ancient Indian yogic mystics referred to Kundalini as Shakti, the divine feminine energy within us, which when cultivated was the key to self-realisation, health and longevity.
Kundalini Dance is essentially an ecstatic dance journey through the chakras. It combines dance movement with rhythmic pranic breathing techniques to express and purify the energy of each chakra. Rhythmic pranic breath quiets the thinking mind, synchronises brain waves and induces light states of trance conducive to healing and transformation.
When the breath is incorporated with free movement it is known to shift stagnant and repressed energy and thought forms that have been held in the mind-body system. When you open the body, surrender and let go of emotional stress and tension and give it up in the dance, it creates an opening, a sense of expansion and inner peace This encourages energy flow to the organs and body parts that each chakras governs, promoting wellbeing and feelings of ecstatic union with source.
Ecstasy is a timeless, ego-less state of no-mind where our inherent sense of separation dissolves and we feel at one with the whole universe. When we are ecstatic we are whole in body, mind and soul.
Emotional Integration
One of the underlying principles of Kundalini Dance is that the mind, body and spirit are interconnected. Thought patterns and emotions are initiated and stored not only in our brains, but also within the cells of our bodies, our organs and our (chakra) energy system.
Within our cells we hold the imprints of all that we have ever experienced in this life. Unexpressed or un-integrated experiences carry strong mental and emotional energy that can become locked in the body as tension, resistance and body armoring.
Emotions are like water they need to flow. When they flow through the pathways of our energy system, they automatically bring balance and harmony. An emotion that is blocked or denied stagnates the life force and blocks our energy system, impeding the flow of life force into the various body systems and organs causing gradual deterioration and eventually disease. This is why our emotions are so connected to our health. The more you clear your mind-body system of dense, emotional energies, the more universal energy can flow in. On a physical level, that means more life force energy can flow into the organs to create health and vitality. On a spiritual and emotional level, this means freeing yourself of the past and feeling lighter and becoming more present.
Emotional clearing and Integration can take place by allowing feelings to arise with acceptance and observation – without identifying or intellectualising them. We spend our lives resisting and judging what is, thinking we will be happy when it all looks like an idea of perfection that we have in our mind. Through our resistance to what is, we create our own suffering. Unconditional acceptance of what is, is transformative, spontaneously and instantly. When we unconditionally accept what arises we can directly experience the transformative energy of love because acceptance and love are one. Any time that we judge our feelings, we contract, literally, in body, mind and heart. Every time we contract there is an opportunity for expansion. Acceptance is the path of expansion as it cultivates our capacity to except all experiences, even the painful ones, and when acceptance is the path love and happiness are the inevitable destination.
Direct experience
Practice the art of feeling your emotions as they arise. Become aware of where the feeling sits in your body and then breath into that area and become totally present with it. Allow your body to move and feel spontaneously, in ways that feel effortless and natural, without analyzing trying to change it.
Fear-based emotions, like sadness, grief, anger, jealousy or depression, are experienced in the body as contraction. Love, on the other hand, is experienced as expansion. Allow your inhalation to fill the space where you feel the contraction, letting go on the exhalation. Watching, accepting, yet not identifying with the ever-changing emotional wave, with the story, with the constant chatter of our mind looping in the past and the future. Observing ourselves we remember that we are the watcher not what we are watching. If you are not what you are watching, who are you?
I find using my breath is a powerful tool to bring me back into this present moment; it is when I rest in the now that I find the inner peace to accept all my experiences regardless of appearances. The breath will help me shift my negative emotions and ground my attention back into the truth of love. Giving me the clarity to see my own limitations, look at what I am creating and change my perceptions in accordance to truth.
The Power of Breath
The breath has the power to affect us deeply, and is a powerful tool for physical rejuvenation, healing and transformation. Breath carries what has been known in Eastern philosophies as prana or chi: vital universal life force. The science of harnessing prana is central to the Kundalini Dance work, which once mastered, is the key to physical, mental, emotional and spiritual wellbeing.
The key to receiving and maximising pranic energy is how we intend to focus our breath because we all know that energy flows where attention goes. Pranic Breathing directs both earth energy and universal energy up and down the central energy channel, and we direct it out through the specific chakra we are activating or purifying. Kundalini – shakti is synonymous with earth energy and can be accessed through raising this up through the central energy channel.
Breath is like the wind: it clears away the debris, it uncovers layers of resistance until old wounds are revealed for healing. Emotions are simple energy in motion — the breath is an incredible purifier as it frees up stagnant emotional energy and moves it through the body to be released. It is through the breath that we can let go of stress, anger, grief, fear and negativity. Breath is the essence of life; conscious breathing opens the body and awakens the mind. Every inhalation is an inspiration of spirit and when we are inspired with spirit we are passionate, vibrant, creative, healthy and ecstatically connected to all of life.
I find breathing into my heart one of the most direct ways to make contact with my true essence. When I breathe into my heart I become fully present to love and directly experience my true nature as love. I feel whole and happy when I breathe into my heart, I can accept all as well and be at peace. I am in love with myself and know that I need nothing outside myself to be whole and happy. When I am feeling emotionally turbulent or stuck in a negative emotional or mental loop, I find breathing into my heart will always bring me back home to truth.
The practice of breathing into my heart chakra, coupled by my intention to embody love, has become my main daily spiritual practice. I have shared this tool with groups of people, regularly for the past decade and it never ceases to amaze me at its instant effectiveness, in creating happy smiling faces and beaming hearts. As a practical tool it is very simple.
Direct Experience – The Love Breath
Place your attention in your heart chakra, which is in the centre of your chest, and make an intention to experience your true nature. Softly and effortlessly sip your breath in through pursed lips, breathing rhythmically and evenly, for about two seconds in and two seconds out. Feel your breath filling up your lungs, expanding your chest as you as you raise energy up through your central energy channel and out through your heart chakra. On every exhalation release a soft ‘aah’ sound, to clear any stagnant emotional energy that might be trapped in your heart area. The more you clear the more space you create for the love within to expand. We do not try and fix or change what arises but simply recognise and accept all our experiences, beliefs and emotions. In this act of breathing into your heart, you are tapping into the source of love. Let this love that you are embrace all expressions of your consciousness and breathe out love…aah.
Dancing Through the Chakras
Kundalini Dance work is based around the universal map of the seven chakras, the main centres of energy and consciousness in the body. The chakras touch deeply into the core of whom we are, how we perceive and express ourselves in the world. Issues relating to survival, relationship, sexuality, personal power, career, life-purpose, creativity, communication and spiritual dimensions are all expressed through the chakras. The chakras are a universal map that when explored can lead to us to greater personal awareness, healing and empowerment.
The chakras are located vertically and sequentially along our spine. Ancient wisdom traditions teach that the chakras are centres of energetic and spiritual information, triggering specific emotions, mental or behavioral states, as well as channeling life force into the vital organs and body system that each chakra governs.
Physiologically each chakra is also connected to an endocrine gland, a physical organ and a bodily function. The location of each chakra corresponds to the location of a neuronal plexus, a network of cells dense with neuropeptide transmitters and electrical and chemical activity that receive, process, and distribute specific information from and to the rest of the body mind. For example, the peptides most active at the solar plexus regulate digestion.
Working with the chakras through rhythmic breath and dance movement expression helps to balance the chakra system as a whole. Each chakra inspires a totally different style of movement, and focuses on opening different body parts. For example, dancing the sex chakra inspires a fluid dance; it is like water, sensual and flowing, and focuses on opening the hips and pelvis, circling and spiraling, creating an energetic lubricant that opens up the whole body.
Each chakra carries the blue print of all our life experiences; they carry the programs at the core of our sub-conscious. Bringing the feeling content of their energies through dance helps bring awareness and insight into those deep impulses and patterns that run our lives.
Each chakra has its own rhythmic breath sequence that when incorporated with movement will activate and potentialise the specific aspects of consciousness relating to that chakra. Pranic breathing into the heart chakra fills you with feelings of unconditional love and joy, connecting you deeply into your essence. Similarly pranic breathing into the solar plexus chakra creates an expanded sense of personal power, vitality and confidence.
As the chakras hold both the positive and negative experiences of our lives, pranic chakra breathing also supports the spontaneous clearing and purification of old stagnant emotional energies out of the chakras and their associated organs. On a physical level this allows more life force to flow into the different body systems, balancing the energy flow and revitalising and rejuvenating the associated physical organs, creating more health and vitality. For example, contacting and releasing grief and sadness out of the heart and lungs and the musculature around the upper chest and back, will eventually strengthen the respiratory system and the physical heart. Healing disease takes ongoing self-maintenance and discipline yet it possible if you are willing to get to the core issues around the dis-ease.
One example of this concerns a middle aged woman who attended one of my weekend workshops, essentially motivated by her history of digestive problems and upper abdominal pain. Whilst working on her solar plexus, the woman accessed a deep sense of repressed anger she felt toward her ex-husband. She experiened immediate relief from chronic pain after the session and eight weeks later reported her digestive problems were gone. This is a direct example of how our emotions are connected to our health.
Participants of Kundalini Dance workshops and events report improvements in their physical vitality, health and energy levels; others claim heightened creativity and improved libido. Dancing through the chakras is the exploration of your core energetic patterning, inspiring a dance of release, a dance of elemental balance and beauty, a dance of insight, a dance of self-healing and transformation, a dance of ecstatic celebration.
The Alchemy of Ecstasy
All the mystics and spiritual teachers and spiritual traditions and practices inspire us to “know thy self” as the ultimate goal to achieve sustaining happiness. They all have the same central theme that in order to experience the true self we need to silence the constant chatter of the mind that keeps us held in the past and in the future.
Ecstatic dance, like meditation is a vehicle to move you into a state of no mind - a very deep inner stillness. We call it being in the zone: that place of inner silence where we commune with the source. In the zone we remember that consciousness is all there is. We become intimate with our true nature.
To dance ecstatically requires you to let go of form and linear mental control and surrender to a sense of direction that comes deep from within. To be consumed by a longing to shed the layers that keep you separate, release the past and dive deeply into the sea of love within. There we receive the gift the gift of knowing the true self, where we are already perfect, whole in this moment, now.
Kundalini Dance is a contemporary personal cultivation practice, drawing on ancient ways and wisdom, designed for the accelerated times we live in. Once you remember how to plug in, activate and clear your own body mind system, it is something that comes very naturally, we all have an energy body and it is our birthright to remember how to work with it, and empower ourselves to take our physical, mental, spiritual and emotional health into our own hands.
Any body can do this practice; every body was born to dance. This is an invitation for you to come and Kundalini Dance, and experience the ecstasy, pure joy and radiant health that come with a clear energy channel.
“There is a way of breathing that is a shame and an intoxication there is another way of expiring a love breath that lets you open infinitely.” – Rumi
For more information - www.kundalini-dance.com
