Are You Following the New Alay'nya Studio Blog? (Directions Here)

New Alay'nya Studio Blogsite Offers Tips, Techniques, and Resources for Oriental Dance (Belly Dance, Mid-Eastern Dance)

Darlings - We've moved!

 

Here's the new blog address: Alay'nya Studio.

 

Today's blogpost gives a link and overview of a super belly dance YouTube veil resource!

 

Belly Dance Veil Instructional YouTube Vid by Imei Hsu Shows Softness, Sensitivity, Technique

 

Too many of us in Oriental dance have performances that are heavy on the glitz and glamour - all brightly-colored, sequined and beaded costumes, big smiles - and not enough sensitivity and depth of emotional feeling.

 

One of the best ways to enrich our emotional repertoire is by dancing with a veil.

 

To read more: go to Veil Dancing: A Beautiful Instructional YouTube Clip.

 

And while you're there - if you haven't already - why not Opt-In using the form on the right-hand sidebar? That way, you'll get my weekly email letting you know that a new blog has been posted - you'll get the link and topic highlights, so it comes to you - and you don't have to remember to go searching!

 

much love, darling! - Alay'nya

 

New Blog Location: http://alaynyastudio.com

Dearest - Thank you for tracking the Alay'nya blog so faithfully over the last several years. We've just moved, visit our new blog location at the: alaynyastudio.com. See you there! love - Alay'nya

Using Belly Dance to Heal Deepest Emotional Wounds - Part 1

Using Belly Dance to Heal Our Deepest "Emotional Core" Wounds - Part 1

This post is not for everyone.

 

Really.

 

This is for "mature audiences only" - reader discretion advised.

 

(And let it be said, at the outset, that this by no means constitutes medical advice, that I am strictly sharing personal experience, and that if you are at all in doubt before you begin - should you choose to do something similar - consider asking for guidance from a licensed medical or therapeutic professional. And perhaps have a trained counselor with you as you do this particular form of "inner journey.")

 

What Is a "Core Wound"?

A core wound is the psychological impact from an experience (or set of experiences) that we have when we are young, or are otherwise exceptionally vulnerable. This (these) experience(s) occur when we are still shaping our basic worldview; our concept of whether or not the world is a "friendly place."

 

Core wounds most commonly come from experiences with our immediate family. In particular, they come about with those whom we identify as essential to our survival.

 

To the best of my knowledge, all of us carry with us some sorts of core wound. We often have them no matter how much we do psychotherapy, seek "spiritual enlightenment," or just plain "work on our stuff."

 

We can have breakthroughs, and often do. But still, these are the "core." They go right down to how we believe that the world works - in our favor, or not. Dangerous, or safe and friendly.

 

How Can We Determine What - In Ourselves - Is Our Own Core Wound?

Core wounds feel like psychological "hurt." In fact, they "hurt" a lot. So as a result, we try to bundle them up and isolate them away from our conscious awareness.

 

Core wounds never really go away on their own. They stay inside us, with tremendous power - mostly because we try to contain and control them.

 

Often, our core wound show up as "blurts." These can be phrases that we say to ourselves. Sometimes, they even slip into our conversations! Or, we show ourselves (and others around us) our core wound by voicing strong opinions about how a person (or certain group of persons) always does something that is "bad."

 

Core wounds feel intensely private. We rarely - if ever - discuss them with others. Often, if we do psychotherapy or have a life coach or a spiritual counselor, we may work for months before we tentatively allow our core wound area to be broached. This is because, of all the parts of our inner world, our core wound feels most sensitive, most vulnerable, most "ouchie"!

 

And yet, if we do allow a core wound area to "come into the open," we may be surprised to learn that our coach, counselor, or therapist really knew about it all along. (And so, for that matter, did our relationship partners, and possibly our boss, co-workers, family, and friends.) This is because our core wounds affect us so much that we "give them away" all the time!

 

Mother Henna writes about her experience of seeing her "pain body" as separate from her "light body."

To be continued (in next posting).

Who Else Talks About Core Wounds?

Eckhart Tolle writes about core wounds in The Power of Now. He calls them our pain-body.

 

Core wounds never really go away on their own. They stay inside us, with tremendous power - mostly because we try to contain and control them.

 

Often, our core wound show up as "blurts." These can be phrases that we say to ourselves. Sometimes, they even slip into our conversations! Or, we show ourselves (and others around us) our core wound by voicing strong opinions about how a person (or certain group of persons) always does something that is "bad."

 

To be continued (in next posting).

 

Curriculum Overview for the Coming Year

Curriculum Overview for the Alay'nya Studio - Studying by the Season (Part I)

Recently, I was counseling one of my young dancers. It was like talking to myself, when I was her age. Exactly the same issues.

 

Around the same time, I've been hearing from one of my other proteges, a brilliant young woman who is more than half-ways towards getting her doctorate in a particularly challenging field. Again, the same issues that I had when I was her age.

 

These two young woman - both intelligent, goal-oriented, and motivated - are struggling with a set of challenges that many of us face. Each of us may recognize ourselves in the feelings that they've shared. Many of us, all too often, feel fatigued and overwhelmed by our workloads.

 

What Do Women Need? And What Do Women Want?

We need more than a way to extricate ourselves from too many tasks and responsibilities.

 

What we really want is a way to release ourselves from our own expectations.

 

We often feel discouraged when we recognize that we've created our own "prison" of demands and expectations.

 

Alay'nya's Story

I certainly felt this way, almost three decades ago, when I first discovered Oriental dance.

 

Prior to that time, I'd been - as many of us are - largely male-identified. That means, I'd defined my self-worth in terms of my ability to succeed in exactly the same areas, and with exactly the same set of criteria and expectations, that men used to vie for their power-and-success games.

 

Side Note: Do you want my full story? It's in the Introduction to Unveiling: The Inner Journey, and you can read it using Amazon's "Look Inside" feature for Unveiling!

 

My Story Is Your Story Is the Story of All Women Today

In a sense, my dear sisters, we've set ourselves up for this.

 

This situation - one which confronts many women, worldwide - is a result of over two hundred years of work, by several generations of women, to gain "equal footing" with men.

 

We have, most fortunately, been successful.

 

This success, however, has come with a price.

 

Now that we can have equal opportunities with men - whether to get an education, hold jobs and advance in our careers, own property, run for office, or (most recently) fight along with men on the battlefield - we now expect that we should do this - and do this competitively with men, while at the same time maintaining all of our traditional "feminine" roles.

 

Exhaustion? Burnout? Fatigue? No wonder!

 

The challenge, dear sister, is not the opportunities or even the expectations.

 

The challenge lies within our dominant reference frame.

 

That means, the challenge is not so much with the work or the tasks themselves, but in how we evaluate ourselves, and how we create a mindset of what we should be doing, and how we should be focusing our minds, attention, and energy.

 

If we use a masculine-oriented reference frame, then we're setting ourselves up for a no-win situation, simply because we're not men. That means, no matter much we succeed at doing what men typically do, we're not acknowledging that what we really need - for our personal growth and satisfaction - is something a bit different.

 

So what do we need? And what do we want?

 

The Simple Answer

For many of us, the answer is: is a body/mind/psyche/energy integration pathway. In fact, we need an integration pathway specifically designed for women.

 

At this point you, my dear reader, might nod and say, "Sounds good. But what exactly is a body/mind/psyche/energy integration pathway?"

 

Good question. And a particularly appropriate one if you're seeking to reclaim what would once have been your heritage-by-rights.

 

In short, a body/mind/psyche/energy integration pathway is a lifeline. It's something that touches (and yes, integrates) all aspects of your life.

 

Lifeline image from Learning To Share

 

What Makes a Pathway Work for Us?

Whatever we select as a body/mind/psyche/energy integration pathway has to be something that - more than anything else - helps us connect. It has to help us connect our feelings (psyche) with our bodies. It has to help us connect our internal energy work (ch'i circulation) with our minds.

 

Waterfall stairs images by Aubrey Hord

 

Most of all, this integration pathway has to give us a powerful reference frame for understanding our lives, for making decisions, and for evaluating our priorities. (And we keep in mind that our "priorities" can range from large to small: Should we pursue and advanced degree or not? Should we go out and play with our girlfriends or stay home, organize paperwork, and pay bills?)

 

An integration pathway gives us a reference frame for understanding and consciously directing our lives.

 

This integration pathway has to be practical. It has to give us "stuff to do" - on a nearly everyday basis - or we'll forget and wander off. At the same time, it has to help us with the "big picture."

 

That's why, in the Alay'nya Studio, we have a "course of study" that involves all aspects of who we are. We have the physical practice, and we connect that to emotional release work. We have energy cultivation and circulation exercises, and we connect that with releasing thoughts that our mind has used to keep us "stuck" in various ways.

 

In order to give ourselves some structure, we have a "course of study." Our program derives from the Kabbalah, or the Tree of Life - the oldest known guide for human spiritual growth and understanding.

 

What we do with our bodies connects with our emotions, our thoughts, and our energy patterns. And so on.

 

"See Spot Run" - A Simple Approach to Our Course of Study

When we were children and first learning how to read, we didn't start by picking up the Encyclopedia Britannica, or by embarking on Tolstoy's War and Peace.

 

Picture from an early Dick and Jane primer

 

Rather, our first books showed us a happy dog, with the phrase "See Spot run."

 

Using a "primer book" when we were children didn't mean that we were dummies. It just meant that we were learning something new, and we needed all the help that we could get. Pictures helped.

 

Right now, starting our body/mind/psyche/energy integration pathway, we're again going to use pictures. Our "picture book" comes from the Tarot. There are two portions of the Tarot; the Major Arcana (22 cards) and the Minor Arcana (40 numbered cards and 16 face cards). We're not concerning ourselves here with fortune-telling or divination. Rather, we're looking at the Major and Minor Arcana as a picture-guide for our study. For us, the cards function much like a Powerpoint (TM) deck.

 

We use the Minor Arcana as a picture-guide for our study; somewhat like a Powerpoint (TM) syllabus overview.

 

The Minor Arcana: Forty "Study Topics" During the Year

For our day-to-day (and weekly class) studies, we use the Minor Arcana. These cards give us a step-by-step approach to practical spiritual and psychological mastery. They also indicate energy practices, which we include in our dance training.

 

Side Note: The Major Arcana deal with our "big life issues." We study these also during the course of the year. In particular, we study the first six Major Arcana, which correspond to Psychological Types, as identified by Carl Jung. (There are two other Psychological Types not included in the Major Arcana, these are the "battery reserve" archetypes. For details, read Unveiling, Chapters 7 & 11, and consult ongoing topics in the Unveiling blog.)

 

We divide our study into "quarters," much like a college does that works on a "quarter system."

 

Tree in four seasons, from The Emmaus Road

 

We work with the esoteric traditional of assigning each quarter (Winter, Spring, etc.) to one of the "four elements."

 

Many of us know that the 22 Major Arcana cards relate not only to the letters of the Hebrew alphabet, but also to the 22 defined "pathways" in the Kabbalistic Tree of Life. The cards in the Minor Arcana also relate to the Tree of Life. There are ten Sephiroth (centers) in the Tree of Life, and there are four "worlds." The four suites in the Minor Arcana relate to the four "worlds" in the Kabbalah.

 

Each "element" has a set of qualities associated with it, and a particular focus of attention. Our curriculum will include intellectual study, spiritual disciplines, emotional release work, energy cultivation exercises, and (of course) dance movements and techniques and choreographies:

 

• Winter: Season of Earth (pentacles, the physical body, a "feminine" season),
• Spring:Season of Air (swords, the mind, a "masculine" season),
• Summer: Season of Fire (rods, the spirit, a "masculine" season), and
• Autumn: Season of Water (cups, the emotional realm, a "feminine" season).

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Most Luscious, Nurturing, Feel-Good Thing You Can Do

The Most Luscious, Nurturing, Feel-Good Thing You Can Do in Bed, On Your Own

And I'm not even talking sex. (Well maybe. Just a little bit. Later.)

 

What is the one thing that you can do on your own, in bed, that sends a totally relaxing and soothing feeling up your spine?

 

It's the same thing that I wrote about a few days ago, leaving you with a bit of a "cliff-hanger."

 

Because, as I asserted in my last post, many of you already know this!

 

The real surprise is, many of you already know this - and you might even be new to Oriental dance!

 

Believe me, I am more than surprised. I am amazed. I am totally blown away.

 

When I learned this "little secret" - many years ago, as I was writing Unveiling: The Inner Journey - it was news to me.

 

Infinity sign coded by Charles Petzold

 

The person who "clued me in" on this movement was Diane Richardson, whom I mentioned several times in Chapters 14 - 16.

 

The really important thing about what she shared?

 

It's that the insight didn't come from a member of the Oriental dance community. It came from someone who was skilled in the mind/body healing arts. (Diane now does something called HeartMath.) My students who already knew about this movement were practitioners of Reiki, yoga, deep tissue massage, and related areas.

 

So what is this one thing?

 

It's the movement that we dancers call the "Figure 8," done with our hips.

 

I've looked at a number of YouTube vids purporting to teach the (vertical) Figure 8, and have only found one so far that is trustworthy - click here to see a Figure 8 tutorial. Just watching this dancer, you'll see how the Figure 8 activates - actually massages - the sacral area. Beautiful!

 

(Be careful if you're looking at various online clips; some focus on a horizontal Figure 8; that's nice, but not what we're discussing here. Others show a Figure 8 that starts "top to bottom"; this is sometimes called a Maya. And surprisingly, just changing the direction of how the movement is initiated makes a huge difference. For best energetic benefits, do the "classic Figure 8" - start going down-and-out, then up. And no matter what anyone tells you, try to keep your feet on the floor!)

 

Enough of the technical hints. The real question is: Why is this movement so important? Why is it more than just one of the many basic "belly dance techniques"?

 

The answer - as I shared in Unveiling: The Inner Journey - is:

 

She [Diane] pointed out that Oriental dance is built on a natural undulating and flowing movement that connects our entire spine, from our cranial vertebrae down to our sacrum. In addition, she helped me to sense a very subtle and naturally-embedded "figure eight" motion at the base of my spine. ... All that we are doing, as we dance, is to tap into these innate, natural rhythms, and magnify them into a dance. (pp. 410-411)

 

So, the Figure 8 movement in Oriental dance:

• Taps into a subtle, naturally-occuring rhythm in our sacral area,
• Activates the physical and energetic components, and
• Induces a sort of "energy wave" that travels up our spines towards our heads; essentially initiating a form of cranio-sacral massage.

To the best of my knowledge, doing a physically-correct Figure 8 movement is entirely safe, given that a person has no physical or neurological conditions that would make this movement difficult. (If the reader has any doubt or questions, he or she is advised to consult a medical professional first.) Also, to the best of my knowledge, while well-done Figure 8's gently encourage both cranio-sacral release and (somehow) produce a "feel-good" effect, I don't believe that this movement alone will cause release of kundalini energy. As a reference, in yogic teachings, the kundalini energy is stored as a "coiled serpent" at the base of our spine. When we do the Figure 8, we are gently activating life-force energy, but I don't believe we'll have any danger of arousing kundalini.

 

The Figure 8 does, at least in my experience, seem to relate to an overall group of intrinsic motions from the cranium down to the sacral area. Healing professionals are learning to sense and work with these rhythms in a healing modality called cranio-sacral therapy. I have personally experienced cranio-sacral therapy treatments, and found them safe, gentle, peaceful, and healing.

 

I like to do Figure 8's in bed, because then gravity is not working on my sacral area. It is freer to move. And because this movement is gentle and relaxing, it will sometimes help me sleep easier and more restfully. And the relation to sex? Well, if we release our sacro-iliac area, and in fact mobilize our entire pelvic region (and Oriental dance movements help us with just that), then we are much more likely to have pleasure, right?

 

The Most Amazing Thing ...

The Most Amazing Thing Is That - You Already Know This!

It happened during the second-to-last class of autumn. I was giving a "preview of coming attractions" - going over the "hot topics" for the winter quarter to come.

 

I took a deep breath, and launched into what I thought would be the most oddball, obscure, and yet most fundamental part of our next studies. I felt pretty scared with this topic. It's one of those that makes "esoteric belly dance" - well - esoteric.

 

Mentally, I braced myself for resistance. You (that is, the new group of students - and also those of you reading this) have borne up cheerfully - and even enthusiastically - as I've introduced a range of topics that you (students and readers collectively) often refer to as the "woo-woo stuff."

 

That's right. Esoteric, by many other standards, means the "woo-woo stuff." And you've been cheerful and enthusiastic in not only trying this out, but in using that term.

 

This time, I thought, I'd lose you forever.

 

But as I launched into my description, my jaw dropped. I saw you nodding your heads in agreement. (This time, "you" being the students who were actually in the class that day - and perhaps even you as a reader.)

 

Over half of you were saying, essentially, "Oh yes, we know this already."

 

What?

 

One of the weirdest, most unusual, most "woo-woo" parts of the curriculum, and it's already common knowledge?

 

I just couldn't believe.

 

But it made sense.

 

In the class, we had a massage therapist whose interests and background included energy work. We had a Reiki practitioner. We had a few whose interests in yoga, meditation, and related areas were almost life-long. In short, at least half of you had more than a passing acquaintance with one of the most powerful principles for pathworking, or for bringing your energy work into your physical practice.

 

Jedi for Women

 

Over the years, as our curriculum shifted from classical, mainstream Oriental dance to ... well, Oriental dance plus something ... I've tried to express who and what we were in different ways. One that made the most sense was, simply, Jedi for women.

 

Imagine that you are Obi-Wan Kenobi, but a young Obi-wan. You're not yet the Jedi Master. In fact, you're not yet even a Jedi knight. You're a young man who hopes to one day become a Jedi knight.

 

Or imagine that you're Hermione, and more than anything, you want to go off to a school that teaches you to use the powers that you know that you have - but simply haven't ever been able to bring together.

 

Or that you're an young woman in pre-Arthurien times, stepping into the boat that will take you through the mists to Avalon, where you hope to learn the fabled priestess arts.

 

You've Already Been There, and You Already Know This

 

Now, let's take this one step deeper.

 

Imagine that not only you are some fictional character, setting out to learn and master some arcane arts that will require years of complete devotion and dedication - but that at one point, in one of your many lifetimes, you were such a person.

 

Imagine that at one time, you not only knew these things, but had mastered them.

 

You were, at one point, a Jedi Master. You were a grown-up, fully powerful Hermione. You were a Priestess of Avalon.

 

And now, in this lifetime, you're simply trying to bring it all together.

 

And thus, you gravitate towards energy practices, such as yoga. Or perhaps you've already studied energetic healing arts, such as Reiki. Or you've followed a tradition of ritual, and opened up your sensitivities in that area.

 

Somehow or other, in your various wanderings, you've already picked up enough so that when the new information is presented to you, it's not new anymore.

 

It's already part of your known and familiar.

 

Make sense?

 

Of course. And for a very good reason.

 

An "Integration Lifetime" - Or Why It Seems So Tough and Complicated

 

Many of us are experiencing an integration lifetime. We're pulling together all that we've learned before, and we're making the breakthroughs that we were reaching towards earlier, but possibly didn't make in our previous lives.

 

That's why this lifetime, for so many of us, is so complex, demanding, and challenging. We're "wrapping up" a lot of things all at once, while reviewing all that we've learned before, and making major breakthroughs that we almost - but didn't quite - complete in our earlier lives.

 

Sound exhausting?

 

It's kind of like taking organic chemistry during the summer. (Difficult under the best of circumstances.) And then, while doing that, taking a "survey course" covering a few thousand years of humanities. And then doing an extra-credit project under the direction of a Nobel Laureate researcher.

 

Which would explain why our lives are so full, so complex, and so challenging.

 

We're not just making headway in one area, we're doing a lot of things, all at once.

 

And the Answer Is ...

 

But what is this one thing - one of the three "cornerstones" of esoteric dance - that many of you know already?

 

Read the details in the next blog. (Yes, I promise to be forthcoming. And I'll put the link here as soon as I publish the next blog.)

 

Or, if you simply can't wait, pick up your copy of Unveiling: The Inner Journey, and read the paragraph at the bottom of page 410. (Yes, this is smack in the middle of Chapter 29, "Pragmatic Esoterics," or - as we now call it, the "woo-woo stuff.")

 

 

	Paper		Kindle

 

Here's to your health and well-being - and to your overflowing personal energy and abundance in 2013 and beyond!

 

Much love - Alay'nya

 

P.S. Do you have a desire to be a "Jedi Master" in your own life? Do you desire bringing all of who you are - energetically as well as physically, and emotionally as well as intellectually - into one art? Do you desire your own pathworking?

 

Join me. Click here, scroll to the lower left on the page, and join the Unveiling community for quarterly (and sometimes more frequent) communications. This is reserved for people like you - people who want to infuse their practice with the energetic aspects, and use their dance art as a pathway for healing, wholeness, integration, and mastery.