A temple is a structure reserved for spiritual activities; such as prayer and the worship of a divinity. Often seen as the dwelling place of the Divine, a temple provides sacred containment for reverence, devotion, and connecting one’s soul to Spirit.
The body is often referred to as a holy vessel or a temple. Understanding and aligning with Spirit within your body temple can provide you with a clear and direct inner path to the Divine. Hidden among the layers of skin, muscle, blood, and bone resides the creational glue of the universe.
Comprised of the fundamental forces— Earth, Water, Air, Fire, and Spirit—your body provides you with a portal to the core essence of creation. The rich matter that make up your cells flow in harmony with the universe when you honor the forces of the Divine within and dance in time to the rhythmic pulse of cosmos. As an outer world temple becomes enlivened by the prayers of the people within its walls, so too the Divine within responds to your devotion, reverence, and activation. By dancing your body as you pray to the sacred musical pulse found in the rhythm of the sun, moon, and stars, as well as, your beating heart; you enliven the forces of creation that live inside your body temple.
With rhythmic movement you activate your: 1) Physical container. 2) Watery emotional energy. 3) Mental air realm. 4) Fiery life force. 5) Spiritual soul essence expression. When these elements in your body move to the tempo of music, you literally dance your prayers into being.
Without movement and the fiery energy it creates, the physical body temple becomes stagnant and lacks life force. Dance provides an exceptional tool for igniting life force, generating energy and activating your prayers.
In some cultures, the regulation of dance has been used as a means to control. When people’s movement is very limited, their ways of thinking, their life force, power, and ability to connect to the Divine directly becomes restricted.
If you want to free your thinking, increase your creativity, free a block in your life, or fully enliven your prayers, you literally need to move in new ways.
Finding new movements shifts your energy. For this reason, dance has been used to free overly tight constraints around the physical body, or the way people perceive the world, and bring in new levels of perception.
Dancing your body temple gives you a powerful tool for moving deep issues and energies. Dancing to strongly percussive music with few or no words serves this purpose very effectively. Shamans use the ancient tools of ritual drumming and dance for connecting to the Divine, transforming energy, spiritual journeying, and achieving trance states.
Riding the rhythmic musical wave while dancing moves you into a trance state allowing access to inner realms and awareness not found in your ordinary reality.
Dance can be used for increasing personal expression, opening to creative insight, connecting to the Divine within, and accessing deep levels of soul transformation.
From the beating of your own heart drum to the rising and setting of the sun, nature’s elemental forces of creation provide the rhythmic pulse for your sacred dance of life. Dancing your prayers into being and enlivening your life force as you honor the Divine within, forms an entry point for the forces of creation to assist you in bringing grace into every area of your life.
Lisa Michaels, author, dancer, facilitator, and founder of the Natural Rhythms Institute, assists others in accessing their ability to learn from nature and to discover more about their essence expression. For the past twenty years she has shared her expertise through her products, workshops, and facilitator trainings. Lisa’s current products include her new book Natural Rhythms, the Priestess Within, The Elemental Forces of Creation Oracle and Audio Book. Her work has helped thousands of people find the key to moving their lives forward, thus enlivening their ability to co-create and unlock their natural growth potential. Lisa will be presenting a workshop at our Simply Soaring Festival.
Lisa Michaels • Founding Director Natural Rhythms Institute • 770.823.8718 Email: lisamichaels@naturalrhythms.org
Photos by Sara Guevara.
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