The AfterMath of Belly Dance & Yoga

Well, I just finished a weekend workshop of Belly Dance and Chakra Yoga ( which is the part of the workshop I faciliatated) and I have to say I was totally inspired by this beautiful dance and quite intrigued by the similarity of the two. I learned that Belly Dance is a dance designed for women by women and it consist of movements that enable the women to let go of different physical and mental blocks. Like yoga it works with the subtle energies of the chakra system and through the dance, the women enables herself to balance the chakras by moving different physical areas of the body. A lot of women's second chakra is unbalanced. The pysical location of the Svadisthana chakra is the pelvic basin. The ASIS (hip bones ) are either tipped forward too much ( anterior tilt ) or too far back (posterior tilt ). When there is an inbalance pyhsically, the chakra becomes unbalanced. The most effective way to balance the chakras are to realign the body physically. In the example of the Svadisthana chakra we can do a posture such as Utkatasana (chair posture) to realign the pelvis. If you sit down like there is a chair behind you with your feet together and your hands on your hips, you can feel what happens to your pelvis as you bend into the knees. To really find opposite ends of the spectrum you can really reach you tail up to the ceiling and find anterior tilt in the pelvis and then really tuck your tail to the floor and find anterior tilt. Play with these two extremes a few time and then see if you can find a place of equilabrium. Eventually, the muscles used to support this posture become stronger and the pelvis becomes align with the feet, which eventually realigns the entire spine.....and then we are into an entire different groups of chakras. Lets stick with the second one ( Svadisthana ). Once we have found this alignment, we can use different mantras and yantras or belly dance to move and focus energy to this chakra. Svadisthana chakra is related to the elements of water and is concerned with creativity, sexuality, likes and dislikes. It is very much an energy center of feeling and signs that this chakra is out of balance are things like complulsive behaviour. fear of commitment, lack of desire and addiction. The chakra system is a very intresting tool that you can use to explore yourself in a very non-evasive way. You can use yoga to help you balance your chakras and really find the energy of the chakras in my new found love of the belly dance

Yoga & Belly Dance

Tuesday, April 14, 2009
Yoga & Belly Dance

I never thought that I would be using yoga techniques to improve the movement and exploration of belly dance, and then I met Tsaid Springfield, a professional belly dancer. After a few conversations about the dance and chakra techniques that I use in my yoga classes, we decided that two fused together could make a very interesting weekend workshop of moving energy, discovering location of physical and psychological blocks and how we can use dance and chakra exploration to bring awareness inwards well expressing energy outwards.

I am by no means a belly dancer, but I do know that we all have physical and physchological blocks that prevent us from exploring our inner self more in depth. For a lot of people there is fear to explore the unknown and what we may find out about ourselves. Using different Chakra meditations and specific postures, we can begin to balance the seven energy centres and in turn find more balance..so we started a workshop!

Sacred Chakra
BelyDance
Workshop
Saturday April 25, 1 – 5 pm
&
Sunday April 26, 12 - 5pm
Awaken the divine feminine within;
BellyDance is a language of sacred geomety, a
pure refecton of nature, and a gatway into
our deepest selves. Using tantic theory, chakra
visualizaton, Yoga, and Belly Dance, this
workshop is an invitaton to explore your body,
both physically and energetically, and bring
awareness to the way that you move in this
world. Join Jana Webb and Tsaida Springfeld
for this amazing weekend of looking inward, and
expressing outward. Specifically designed for the
complete beginner to the intermediate level
dancer, this is a truly unique opportunity to be
inspired by this dance in ways you never
dreamed possible.
Space is limitd so please register by caling Jana @ 403 269 YOGA
or email: jwebb@mypypeline.com
you can also email Tsaida: Bellyhellion@hotmail.com
Locatd @ Sanguine Yoga: www.sanguineyoga.com