This practice really is simple: just let the music move you and witness your movements and thoughts as they unfold in the current moment. When you find yourself thinking about the past or future, come back to the dance. When you find yourself thinking about how to move, just gently acknowledge and release those thoughts as well! Concentrate on the music, with the different sub-rhythms, instruments and so on. Repeating the same step or move is great, until the body responds with some different muscles to alter it somewhat, or the music suddenly throws you into an entirely different energy and movement!
Allow, abandon, surrender!
At first you may only witness a few aspects of your movement as being spontaneous and (virtually) devoid of thought. “It’s all good” is the mantra, as you simply enjoy the process of celebrating the movement, the music and the community of dancers that have joined with you in the practice. Just allow whatever happens, as you abandon ego to free your spirit.
The practice of surrendering the thinking mind to the music is more important than how you move. In this practice, we will never use verbal instructions to label the different rhythms or recommend which parts of the body to move in the context of conceptual understandings. The thoughts we are practicing to release, which are often heard in the inner mind as words and phrases, would only be reinforced by these verbal communications. In each moment we just witness the movements as they emerge from the collective consciousness of the people in the room.
Loving Community
The community is just as important as the powerful discharge each seeker experiences through their dance. Making connections to one or more other people on the dance floor is encouraged. Celebrating our relationships by watching and feeling each others movements helps to surrender the illusion of separateness. The intention is to witness how the movements of one are inspired by the other dancers on the floor, and vise versa.
In some sessions, your facilitator may provide simple devices to help communicate whether or not you wish to partner with others during the session. There may be times you need to withdraw from making conscious connections with others and simply witness yourself join with the music alone. Eye contact and other body language is good and sometimes sufficient, but a simple device such as a bracelet, possibly of different colors, or worn on ankle vs wrist to signify your preferences may also feel worthwhile. In a space where dancing together is encouraged, a device may help people who want to dance alone to feel safer and more easily honored. The specifics of the device(s) and their meanings will depend on the particular session, so please make a mental note of these as they are introduced during the opening circle, or if you are late, through any signage that is posted at the door.
Structure That Supports and Nurtures Community
After a few minutes to stretch and warm up, each Witness Your Dance session starts with a short opening circle, where each person gives their name, a short check-in and/or any intention brought to the dance that day. This would also be the time the facilitator will introduce any (solo/partnered) preference communication devices being used (as described above).
During the dance, talking on the dance floor is discouraged. If your need to communicate verbally is too urgent to wait, please wave the party involved off of the dance floor, until you are both out of visual and audio range of the other dancers before you speak. While spoken language is out, humming, whooping, clapping, singing along, and making other noises are all encouraged! Just think of the vocal chords as another muscle group that may also respond spontaneously to the music.
At the end of the dance session your facilitator will guide you through some final practices to help integrate the energetic benefits of the dance before it is brought to a formal close with another short sharing circle. This may include a short “toning” session, where everyone is encouraged to make some noises together!
Witness More of Your Life
This practice of witnessing your body / mind can be done off the dance floor too. It is similar to what some call mindfulness (meditation) practice, which can most easily be done during simple repetitive tasks. The subtle difference is that of “moving” the awareness out of the body just far enough to “witness it” rather than “be it.” From my experience the benefits of the practice are even sweeter than simply mindfully “staying in the moment.”
How I Started This Practice and Why
In 2015 I started to study and follow the teachings of Sri Nisargardata Maharaj in 2015. The quote which inspired me to look for more of his teachings, which I saw in the movie “With One Voice” was “Wisdom is knowing I am nothing, Love is knowing I am everything, and between the two my life moves.” The main recommendation for practice that he often repeated to seekers who came to him for his advice and insights, was to simply stay with the sense, “I am.” Not what I am, not who I am, just the undeniable sense of existence itself. This practice, which he learned from his guru, was what he used to awaken to his true Self in just three years. One of the secondary recommendations he often cited was to simply “be the witness” of your human self as it moved about it’s daily routines.
By the time I started practicing spiritual dancing in January of 2017, I was doing as many things as I could with this “witnessing” intention. The activities included doing the dishes, chopping wood, cooking, eating, driving my car, riding my motorcycle, and more. So it didn’t bother me that the dance sessions I went to most Sunday evenings didn’t have any instruction, because within the first couple of sessions I found myself taking this practice in the witnessing mode as well.
Nisargardatta admonished almost everyone that came to him that they are not human beings, that they were never born nor would they ever die! If a visitor to the shrine room in his humble home in India was not ready to hear and at least entertain his radical teachings, he would simply show them the door. Nisargardatta’s teachings were the bare bones of simplicity and elegance and his recommendations for practice were likewise easy to step into, yet challenging to stay with at the level of devotion he recommended, which was every moment of your day! When a seeker balked because of worldly responsibilities, he said something to the effect of, “practice all of your free time then, it will be enough!”
The “Witness your dance” practice described above is inspired by both Nisargdatta’s teachings and my own experience in spiritual dance sessions over the last two years or so. During my first few sessions, I witnessed my mind planing moves, noticing how others were dancing and using their example to morph what I was doing. I seemed to be thinking my way through the process. But at some point I realized I didn’t need to think much at all about how to move. New variations of steps and body movements seemed to be the muscles direct responses to feeling the music. Eventually I realized long periods of time where I had not been consciously aware of any thoughts of how to move! If the thinking mind was involved, it was more often simply noticing how each different step or move was being repeated in the subsequent measures of music. After a couple of months of weekly practice, I came to appreciate dance as the most fruitful opportunity to practice witnessing that I had found. It seems that the synergy between my body, the energy of the music and the other dancers provides a wonderfully dynamic, joyful, immersive experience to witness.
I hope you enjoy the practice and reap many fruits of happiness and bliss through the process!