DEORA DÉ The 5 Rhythms Dance Practice of Gabrielle Roth

Movement is life and life is movement. This can be movement of your physical bodies, feet, hips, heads, hands; it can be thoughts moving across your minds or it can be the movement of feelings in and out of your hearts. For many of you this movement is mindless, a type of rote or sameness to your everyday life. The 5 Rhythms® Movement Meditation Practice (MMP) offers you the opportunity to make all this movement mindful, to bring it into your awareness where you can learn to appreciate the uniqueness of your movement whether it is physical, emotional or mental.

 

 

 

The 5 Rhythms® MMP is a physical way for us to ground ourselves in Flowing, centre ourselves in Staccato, release stresses and tensions from our bodies in Chaos, experience lightness of spirit and creative possibilities in Lyrical and to find the stillness we require to be quiet and free in Stillness. They teach us how to move through our insecurity, self-consciousness, and fear into fascinating, unpredictable, spontaneous, authentic beings. They demand that we be original. So get down and find out what your hands, your shoulders, your elbows, knees and, most importantly, your hips and feet have to say about it. There is a dance only you can do, that exists only in you, here and now, always changing, always true. Are you willing to listen with fascination? If you are, it will deliver you unto the self you have always dreamed you could be.

The benefits of the 5 rhythms can be found here. Personal stories can be found here. A short DVD can be found here. Weekly classes and Workshops ranging from a single day to week long retreats are available, during which each of the five rhythms is explored more deeply and purposefully, allowing the dancer to identify how they relate to their individual body, mind, heart and spirit.

 

I have always loved dancing but had begun to box dancing into a corner of my life that came out at discos, weddings and céilithe. In 1992 I was introduced to the 5 Rhythms®. It was my first experience of dance as a way to meditate i. e. to come into the present moment.It was also the beginning of me seeing dance as a physical language which I had lost a lot of my fluency.

Over the next 5 years I studied the 5 Rhythms® with the following teachers Gabrielle Roth, Andrea Juhan, Lori Saltzman and Kathy Altman, Susannah and Yacov Darling Khan.

 

I began to find freedom in physical movement. As I participated in workshops and practiced I discovered that my body was carrying all the experiences of my life in the muscles, bones and movements. Thus I embarked on a journey to heal past hurts, to let go of situations and habits that where keeping me from living a wholehearted and creative life.

 

In 1997 I studied with Gabrielle and became the first accredited 5 Rhythms® teacher in Ireland. In 2007 I participated in Advanced training in the emotional work of Gabrielle called Heartbeat.

 

My style of teaching is practical, down to earth and injected with plenty of humour.I love my work and feel very privileged to be able to teach such a profoundly healing and transforming body of work. I have had the opportunities to travel almost this entire island teaching groups of people involved in all areas of life in Ireland, north and south. I could almost become a one woman tourist agency!

 

Many people have made the 5 Rhythms® their spiritual practice as it brings them more deeply into the present and allows them to live their lives in a more wholehearted way.

I thank Gabrielle Roth for putting such a body of work together and sharing it with many of us throughout the world. Over the past 12 years I have made many deep and longstanding friendships through this practice for which I am very grateful. I hope I will have the chance to make many more as I continue to teach the 5 Rhythms®.