Julie Forsey writes:
Free ~ Surrendered ~ Waterfall – River Rapids ~ Spontaneous ~ Intuitive ~ Release ~ Tornado ~ Stormy Seas ~ Rag Doll ~ Galloping Horse ~ Cairo ~ Driving in India ~ Boiling Water
Chaos is about movement and change. It is about release and surrender, surrendering to your own dance, emptying out anything that you don’t need. You can dance Chaos no matter what your level of energy or level of fitness is. Sometimes it feels to me like going down river-rapids, sometimes like being carried by a galloping horse.
Chaos is what happens when we mix together Flowing and Staccato, what happens when the masculine and feminine within us collide and we contain both, or transcend both.
Soften your body, allow it to dance like a rag-doll, allow the water that you are made of be free to move fluidly, releasing whatever it is that holds you back.
Chaos can be wild and expressive or it can be a physically less demanding dance, a more internal process with shaking, vibration and releasing. Either way, the mind empties out of the head and into the body, awakening our intuition.
If you find yourself busy with thoughts when dancing Chaos, one way to return to the rhythm is to bring your awareness back to your moving body and move faster – faster than you can think! Another way is to drop back into a Flowing dance for a few moments in the middle of chaos, bringing your attention to your feet and to acceptance of how you are in that moment, then add in Staccato and build chaos from there.
Effortless and Empty
Sometimes in Chaos you can find yourself in a dance that is effortless, where your breath is quiet and easy, the mind is empty and your body can dance without tiring. When you empty out whatever you are ready to let go of, you create space for energy to flow through your body, pure and unrestricted.
Sometimes in Chaos we may experience intense emotions, perhaps grief and sadness which comes with the loosening of our attachments. And with that letting-go, tears often come. A psychotherapist friend of mine describes tears as ‘melt-water’ that is released when a part of us has been frozen and thaws out. Sadness is what we feel when we let go of something, or someone in our lives. Dancing the 5Rhythms provides a structure to ride these waves of emotion as they arise in the dance, and follow the process through to wherever it takes us.
In our lives, chaos is what happens after we have taken action (Staccato) and when we let go of our expectations about the outcome. Rather than being a messy or disorganized state, trusting this process creates a possibility for something new to come into being. Many of us feel uncomfortable with change, and feel afraid of what might be coming next.
Letting Go
The practice of dancing Chaos helps us to let go of the illusion that we are in total control of our lives, and surrender ourselves to the possibility that sometimes things go better when we don’t try to control them.
Hidden in Chaos, whether in our lives or in our dance, is what Gabrielle describes as ‘the moving center’, your power center, deep in your belly.
It is here that all opposites converge, and yet is also a place of perfect equilibrium and harmony, a place where we can sit back and observe with fascination the Chaos of our inner and outer worlds. Like the eye of the hurricane, this is the place of peace and stillness which exists in the centre of Chaos.
Chaos has two common dictionary definitions: one refers to confusion or disorganization, and the other to the original Greek concept of what existed before the Universe came into being. When we resist our dance of Chaos, it can feel like confusion, and when we surrender to our dance as fully as we can, it takes us closer to the sense of Chaos as a space which is full of potential. The path that guides us through Chaos is our intention.
Gabrielle Roth on Chaos
Gabrielle says in her book ‘Connections’, “Chaos is the way to emptiness; the way to emptiness is to empty – to let go.”
And also from Gabrielle Roth’s “Connections”:
Dancing Chaos is an intense form of moving meditation. It’s a relentless rhythm that breaks down all barriers to our awareness. And in that divine opening into nothingness, the still-point at the center of our being, we find new eyes. Letting go of the known and receiving the unknown, we can sense new possibilities. When we expect change, life rarely disappoints us.
