In a 5 Rhythms HeartBeat workshop I danced, we had a writing session, putting our emotions of fear into words, our words into a poem – turning our suffering into art:

Fear was born to live cold, alone, not knowing how to live

Fear enters a room cautiously, opening the door just a bit, peeking in whether it’s safe

Fear is afraid of taking risks, afraid of going out on adventures, of living

Fear never leaves home without having checked whether the door is closed, the gas is off and checking again

Fear has a ‘don’t forget’ list: take care of assurances, pay the taxes, make shopping lists, remember everybody’s birthdays

Fear likes to whisper; don’t do this, don’t go for life, keep still, hide, pipe down, don’t be so alive

Fear relaxes while looking a feel good movie, eating ice cream and chocolate

Fear was once in love with jealousy, red hot jealousy

Fear lingers in the dark notes of black, soul music

Fear is most afraid of living, on trusting life

And fear doesn’t stop showing me, that I am alive!

Fear warns me in time always, so I could go into action

Fear protects me

Fear kept me away from living

Fear keeps me alive

click here for more fear art and inspiration…

I’ve been dancing in patience, just looking forward to this yearly opportunity to post this video again… 🙂

Two sisters in a choir, both dressed as angels, the elder with a beautiful golden halo around her head, singing her song with full commitment like she has been taught; the younger with two far too big silver wings singing out her heart and soul…

There’s so much in this video, it’s such a bright metaphor for how most of us move through life and what also could be possible…

For Christmas and the New Year I wish you all, that you pick up some of the little girl’s energy; your own heart and soul energy;  may you find the courage and the guts to fully commit to your one and only you, may you go for who you really are, for what you sincerely want to do with your life, may you grap your chances when they’re there, may you live inspired, be authentic and fully dance your life!

May you open up, not hold back; may you stand up and stand out; may you not just pass on the light, but BE the light!

Click here and enjoy!

Rushing through old stuff, searching for some material to build a 5Rhythms art installation, I found bits and pieces of my graduate work from the Art Academy, from almost 20 years ago. This is long before I even heard of the 5 Rhythms.

As an artist I was  specialised in building environments, sceneries, filling spaces with objects, installations and video projections; turning them into spaces to experience, confronting our believes and deepening
our lives.

I was surprised to find my almost forgotten sketches and studies for “Collage des Bijoux”, the title of my graduate work, for which I found inspiration in
Leonardo da Vinci’s Vitruvian Man and Fibonacci’s Number Sequence and Spiral.

What struck me was that only now I realised the base for this art installation had been 5;
I built a pentagram space with 5 elements:
5 installations, each with a video projection, representing something about life and death; how dead life can be and how lively death…

Almost 20 years ago I made scripts, storyboards and models to be able to realise this project and now I was baffled to see that
I used the 5 Rhythms without even knowing them then.

I connected each of the five installations to a phase of life, an element, a sense, like the 5 Rhythms map does…

One installation was about the absolute beginning, a seed pulsing; the next about what we do in life with choices, boundaries, decisions, measurements; the third about control, control of life and control of death, not letting go of anything; the fourth about the lack of breath in our society, how difficult it is to fully live our life as a unique human being, the fifth about the end, the cycle of coming and going, the end as a promise for a new beginning…

And as a red thread through all 5 installations
I used elements of the ocean; its waves, its sound, its salt…

While going through this old material, it was like dancing through a Wave; I felt deeply connected with how much my life has changed over the last 20 years; I remember how I found the rhythms, how I embraced them as my home, and now through my art installations I discovered they have been in me much longer than I was aware of…

of course… the rhythms are my home… then and now and forever…

Roth’s 5Rhythms and Tolle’s Teachings

Last week the Arubian newspaper proclaimed:
Roth’s 5Rhythms and Tolle’s Teachings – Government sets hope on ambitious government program…

That would be something… imagine… if these two news items next to each other, would be one… how would that change our daily world?

We are on Aruba for two weekend workshops and in between we taste some of the Arubian culture… Aruba is called One Happy Island; I see some of it, the beautiful colours of the ocean, the humming bird coming every morning to greet us, flying just 2 feet away from us, really in front of our face, every day… Yes, that makes me feel HAPPY!

We meet loving people showing us parts of the island, telling us background stories, making things possible for us, like letting me participate in their 60+ Zumba class. The teacher is 78 and still got his samba moves… even the eldest participant… 97… is still a real pro in the way he does a walking meditation… hips, knees, feet … all Arubian style how we imagine Arubian style to be… Yes, that makes me feel HAPPY TOO!

On the other hand I see neglect, waste, slighting and power play… A four-lane highway has been constructed, totally out of proportion in relation to this island, expanded with an even more expensive useless bridge (built by a team of Dutch experts), while elderly care, schools and healthcare system are cut short … I notice that people paint their entire house in the colour of the political party ‘of their choice’ and hear that the paint is paid by these parties…

I can’t find any bio-shops or bio-food and when I ask, the answer is that would be too expensive. Fast food chains are built literally next to each other, all over the island … MacDonalds, Subway, Tacobell, KFC, Burgerking, you name it, they’re here …

At the Westcoast Aruba receives massive cruise ships, huge luxurious hotels are rapidly built to host crowds of rich tourists who come to buy duty free expensive brand clothing and precious jewelry, unpayable for residents.

Residents struggle for their money. It’s amazing how many incomplete families there are here, an absent father or mother … one parent coping with tough daily life; combining hard work with little money, fullfilling the needs of the children.

There’s a lot of people here on drugs, alcohol and medication like antidepressants; we meet people with sleeping problems and anxiety attacks really leading to agression and even murder … we met this all in the few days that we’re here; drowned refugees from Venezuela drifting ashore… people here are worried and compassionate, but can’t offer any help as Aruba is full …

Roth’s 5Rhythms and Tolle’s Teachings – Government sets hope on ambitious government program…

That would be really something…
Let’s keep on dancing and see how it ripples…

So great that there will be people from this happy island coming to the dance workshop this weekend!
That really makes me feel SOOOOO HAPPY!

Last month, before travelling to Westerbeke Ranch for the first module of the Heartbeat Training, my steps on this 5Rhythms teacher’s path brought me into the city of the Golden Gate. I had wonderful company to spend a day with, a young colleague from Spain. With emphasis on young…

She has the same age as my eldest daughter and we always make fun about this age difference… I call her my extra daughter and I am a kind of extra mother to her… we share a friendship that is dear to me…

So, we spent the hottest day ever in San Francisco, together, biking… biking hill up, hill down… mostly hill up… yes, I felt old… her energy, her power, her velocity… her hills were definitely not as steep as mine… but she was kind, waited for me every now and then and after a few hours the heat got grip on her as well…

After some strenuous hours we reached the Golden Gate Bridge, tired and sweating, me longing for a break and she making contact with another young one, offering her I-phone and asking this teenager if he could make a Boomerang of the two of us and the bridge…

A Boomerang? Yes. A Boomerang. Followed by a Time Lapse while I was biking on the Golden Gate Bridge, a Boomerang hoovering the floors of our appartment,  and an endless series of Duo-Selfies… The next day I found myself on her Facebook page, exposed in several funny pictures and video’s… I liked them 🙂

How I love these young ones and their crazy new creativity…!!!

Last weekend I sat next to my same-age-as-me husband in a sunlit flower garden with a fountain, in the midst of the busy centre of Amsterdam, saying: “If Irene would be here, she would make a video of me dancing in that fountain…”

“Well,” said the man I love “For now, I will be your Irene…”

music: Michael Stearns ~ Villages and Freeways

The last time I danced, I deeply enjoyed the music flowing through my body…

My body following… following the crazy jazzy, saxy, juicy sax… each note… each turn… each surprise just around the corner…  each second so differently… each moment was one of love…

The last time I danced I couldn’t think of anything else being more mighty delightful, than this crazy jazzy, saxy, juicy music leading and me, just letting my body follow… crazy jazzy, saxy, juicy body… crazy jazzy, saxy, juicy life…

Jazzy, saxy, juicy… jazzy, saxy, juicy… Surprise, marvel, wonder… How much I love my body… how much I love the way my body moves… follows… moves… breathes… just me and my body, what a bliss, what a celebration…

The last time I danced I was true to myself… in that dance I gave up my shadows and went for the light… I broke my heart open and sensed in every cell how much I love my feet… how powerful I am in following my feet… moving my head… going along with my shoulders moving through air…

Foreward, backwards… all around… all around my head… not holding back… just being… not caging myself, not fencing myself in, but jumping instead… over the treshold… into the light… this is me… this is for me and for me only and I celebrate fully enjoying myself…

My life is mine… my life is mine… my dance is mine… I own my body, my life, my dance, my power and my medicine… I can heal the world through dancing my dance… no other way to go than dancing my medicine!

Light, light, light… turning, curving, curling… up and down… back and forward… round and round… inner and outer… I move through air… dancing my medine…

(photo by Bob Willoughby; Concert of Big Jay McNeely at Olympic Auditorium, Los Angeles, 1953)

This morning waking up, I had a thought of asking Jonathan Horan, Gabrielle’s son and my most important 5Rhythms teacher, if he could tell me something more about my home rhythm as I am still not sure about my home rhythm myself. Always this question … how do I know?

Then, while showering (the shower is my place to have brainwaves, insights, revelations) I had a deep deep experience of coming home. During our Teacher Refreshworkshop in Zagreb this month, we were asked in groups to come to the middle of the dance floor and dance our home rhythm, later the same for the shadow of our home rhythm…

I am so used to my decision that this is staccato, while I also hear people find me flowing… I have never been sure about my home rhythm… anyway I danced staccato as my home rhythm. To my surprise I saw a colleague dancing flow as her home rhythm, while I expected staccato because of her always being so clear. This observation shook me already up a bit: a rhythm one uses as an instrument in life is different from a home rhythm…

This morning, under the shower there started a movie playing in me, showing all pictures of me during my life, all in one rhythm… in one or two seconds hundreds of pictures in this one rhythm… a deep experience … in the rhythm of lyrical …

Tears came up, in me a deep sensation of landing, of coming home… release, relief, seeing…

Lyrical, the rhythm of which I thought would be the last option to be my home rhythm. Now this sounds already silly to me, but two hours ago this was still the case…

In the picture I saw myself growing up with a flowing mum and an shadowy staccato dad, no space, no other possibiliy than holding my breath and taking all possible shapes to fit in on one hand and staying true to  myself on the other… I was (am) creative, I create since I was born, but could never find it in one discipline, I shifted, shifted, shifted… classical ballet, beat ballet, jazz ballet, making cheese, candles, clothes, drawings, paintings, food (cooking, baking); finding my way with paper cuttings, knitting, frivolité, macrame, pitrites, papier-maché, clay modelling, etc. …

I had five professions, followed countless courses, studies, well… I could write a book about it, but I think you got it by now… shapeshifting is so close to me that I never recognised it… I do it all the time, in how I do my day, meet others, do my planning, built my life … though I actually never got it what was exactly meant with a shapeshifter…

I always thought I was good at moving with, adapting, flowing. I am able to, but what I am really good at is taking another shape… I have a shape to survive when I am with my family, I take a shape when I am in big groups, I take a shape when I am in uncomfortable situations … and when I do this too long I get ill, because I loose my true self in this… I don’t want a steady form, I don’t want to conform… My tendency to ‘behave’ is looking for the ‘right’ form to stay out of trouble … one of my shadows …

I totally dislike the shadow of lyrical, more than any other shadow. I thought because there’s so much going on in the world these days with all marketed ‘spiritual’ developments, guru’s, fake ecstatic, addictions … as if this were not the case with shadows of other rhythms…

Until now lyrical has been the most difficult rhythm for me to understand … too light (strict religious education)… this rhythm simply was not in my scope…I do embody flow, I do embody staccato… my home rhythm is lyrical… I can’t tell you what a deep shift this is in me…. finally seeing myself…it moves me to tears… coming home… this is a soul experience, a break through… I see myself from another perspective now.

As a child I had bronchitis, always, could not breathe, no air… air, space, endless space has always been a theme in my life. The best place in the world is that endless beach on Terschelling, that’s where I feel fully at home… what I do with my paintings is creating as much space as possible in 2D. My installation work in Zagreb… 5 papercuts as the basic and then I start shape shifting… I don’t think about it, it just happens… I can go on forever giving examples… also from what people gave me as feedback over the years… I just wasn’t able to listen, to let it in …

From this place I understand so much more from the workshop we did in Zagreb…which feels great, beyond my skin and fingers… feel a bit ashamed at the same time… how could I have been so blind? … the familiar voices in my head… I let them go for now…

Now the penny has dropped… not only the penny… I got the whole jackpot … I have to laugh at myself. That I didn’t see … now I do… it’s a huge permission, a liberation, a celebration …

Seeing, meeting myself from the perspective of lyrical is such a shift… and such a gift… so true… from pop into butterfly…
So here I am, in my true colors, with a lot of dots in my writing…

Soul Rebel 🙂

Yesterday I had the honour of teaching a 5Rhythms workshop in Aachen, Germany:

‘My body, my dance, my life’.

In the morning we took time to land in our breath and in our body;  we explored our flow-energy, searched and discovered this in our body, experienced how this energy moves fluidly, bringing us into a dance from earth to rooted feet and up, teaching us about daily life. From flowing into the empty space to moving fluidly with obstacles; small ones, big ones; seemingly impossible to pass…

From here we found our focus in our heart and hips, the drive to express our heart, opening up to dance our own truth, moving lines and edges, setting our goals, defining our yesses, no’s and boundaries – clear boundaries, no limits-, letting out a loving, powerful staccato dance, teaching us about how to express ourselves one to another.
What a beautiful morning! And more to come in the afternoon…

After lunch break there was a heavyweight, clear collective ‘NO’ tangible, ‘NO’ to get moving again… sleepy heaviness, bodies weightful on the floor, wrapped up in blankets… moving?
No way!

I let go of plans and made space to let dancers fully experience this dance of not willing to move again, softly playing earthy flowing music, not going anywhere, just being with what is…

After a while this low key, soft earthy music evolved into an invitation to feel the ground, to stay on the ground, like staying on the ground forever; a huge permission to let go of routine and expectations…

This subtle dosed music turned into medicine… earthy flowing music, over time adding a small tinkle; breathful pauses and a soft flute, calling as a tickling invitation bringing us into the next song, soft and patiently knocking on heaven’s door, then slow oriental music with a sultry voice seducing, rippling into a sip of rhythm…

irresistible…

no other way to go than to stay true to the body, following the body… following the body into its breathing… into movement… into rhythm… into getting on our feet again…

Such a privilege to witness this out of time transformation from immovable wrapped up cocoons on the floor into these unfolded brightly coloured bodies, spreading their wings, putting their feet back into the beat, sucking in the rhythms of life…

What an amazingly powerful home base for releasing, sharing and celebrating who we really are, embodying our deepest essence, aware that we are all one…

I feel deeply grateful to have been part of this touching, powerful experience of healing…

Every Tuesday I travel some hours to teach 5Rhythms in the South of the Netherlands. Two weeks ago when I arrived at the venue the concierge was not there, another man sat in for him; an attentive, helpful man and yet … something was different.

Last week when I arrived, the concierge was back again and when I received his smile I immediately felt what I had been missing the week before… his smile … something so trivial … something so simple … His smile always says: nice to see you, make yourself at home…

Just a kind smile, that’s all what it takes to make one feel at home and welcome, one simple act that makes one realise that life is worthwhile. Isn’t it funny that giving or receiving a smile just takes one moment, while the memory of it lingers much longer…?

A smile is totally inexpensive, costs nothing, is always for free, for everyone… if you can’t find a smile in yourself today, it’s likely that there’s someone in the neighbourhood who will give you one…

And then you might meet someone who is really too tired to give you a smile and you can simply give him yours; you know by now that no one needs a smile so much as he who has no one to give anymore.

How beautiful this works, the miracle of a smile; a smile is not a disease, it’s infectious. Most smiles are started by another smile; often you wear a smile somebody else gave you.

If you didn’t start the day with a smile, it’s never too late to start practicing for tomorrow. Smile with your lips, smile with your eyes, smile with your heart and your soul and your life.

Every time you smile at someone, it is a gift to that person, a beautiful thing, an act of love…
Here’s a video for you to practice and enjoy your smile!