This weeks Dance First Member Insight is from Banafsheh Sayyad, creator of Dance of Oneness.
Greetings dancers,
Empowerment comes from taking a courageous stance not just for ourselves but also on behalf of everything we love. The circle of the self is completed when we extend our embrace, our care, and our protection to nature, the environment, the world; to wherever there is a need. We feel embraced back when we extend compassion and care – and we become empowered because we live with purpose. “The most powerful starting point for any endeavor is not the question ‘What do I want?’, says Eckhart Tolle, but ‘What does Life want from me? How do I serve the whole?'” It is by serving the whole that we become whole.
What have we learned over the past year, with so much time for reflection about what Life wants from us? What has humanity learned? As restrictions thankfully begin to lift in many parts of the world, how do we want to live? Already we’ve been witnessing escalating violence and killing around the world, in the Middle East, in the US, and elsewhere. What did we learn? It feels like many of us were feeling a lot of fear, anxiety, and uncertainty during the lockdown, and now we are simply bringing all that fear out!
I live in the mountains of Topanga in Southern California. During the pandemic, it has been tranquil and peaceful. Just in these past two weeks, since we have been blessed to ease out of most of the restrictions, the noise and air pollution from cars, motorcycles, and airplanes have resurfaced rapidly. LA traffic has bounced back to pre-pandemic levels. I feel many of us are rushing to get back to the unsustainable pre-pandemic lifestyles that are more about ‘What do I want?’ instead of ‘What does Life want from me? How do I serve the whole?’
We are beckoned to be a part of nature again, to live in harmony with her and take action in amending the ways in which humanity has been incongruent. The present and future of our world depend on each and every one of us stepping up to take action to amend and change the conditions that break our hearts. For me, noise pollution is one of those conditions. We drive our loud motorcycles and cars, use leaf blowers, tractors and construction machinery, and so many other noisy gadgets and machinery without the slightest concern about the habitat we are bombarding with our personal noise. The sounds in nature harmonize to create the most sublime symphonic music. We, humans, rarely play in the symphony of nature, let alone the astounding symphony of the greater cosmos. It’s time to step out of being purely self-serving and dance with and in the greater ecosystem.
In the next Module of the online series I’ve been teaching, called Radiant Embodiment (which starts on July 6th), we will be focusing on opening our Throat Chakra. This Chakra has just as much to do with finding our voice and expressing our truth as it does with activating our listening and hearing abilities. Tuning into our inner guidance and intuition; truly listening and receiving another person; and listening to the sounds of nature that bring us into a peace and wholeness are some of the benefits of cultivating our sense of audition.
To learn more about this 4-week Module, visit: www.Banafsheh.org/courses/
