For a number of weeks I have been reading about prayer, wholeness that comes with complete connections between the body and mind, and about dancing. I have watched several movies that focus on dance and the consequential release of the heart, thereby allowing it to become fully and passionately alive. If the disconnect between heart and mind is removed, the body begins to work and move in harmony. I have also been considering the question of speaking without words – how is that possible. Often there isn’t the opportunity or space for words and communication must be created through different means. How can the whole body speak a language that can be heard?
Those of you who have stopped by here before will know I have spoken of the divided heart. My own divided heart is being embroidered together again in the desert of detachment: a Divine destination for reattachment of the whole body – mind, soul and spirit. My hunger for inner connection is also a request to the Desert Lover of my soul to be invited to dance. In the place of dancing can I allow my breathing to become a continual prayer to Yeshua, a continual conversation that does not need to be words? I long to be totally and completely connected within to Yahweh. Where the dark places are held open to the Light, a wide-open heart leans into the dance, hope-FULL, and abandoned into that Love.
Celeste Snowber a dancer, educator and writer at Simon Fraser University, has written a book Embodied Prayer. Anj referred to it in her blog today. She speaks of embodiment as how we are connected to and communicating with God. Honoring our bodies is the foundation of embodied prayer. If we live in deep gratitude with our bodies, we can see that simple acts of physically engaging in the world can be a way to honoring the holy in our bodies. Our lives then become a constant prayer listening, speaking and honoring God by being fully connected and alive. Celeste is co-leading a workshop, The Dance, in June and I plan to attend.
If this is so, in order to dance I must posture myself in prayer and allow the Spirit to become the music that will lift my limbs, my eyes, become my voice and allow connection, deep intense connection to living that is filled by the Almighty. I have become aware of how often I fold my arms tightly across my chest. An unconscious act of protecting my heart and keeping it closed up. Posturing the body to open the heart I take a deep breath, drop my shoulders, let my rib cage expand, my arms hang relax at my sides, hands are relaxed and ready to receive and I whisper “Abba, I open my heart yet a little more.” Dancing freely (moving ones limbs however you are lead to) in the early morning becomes a posturing, motioning of prayer that opens the heart to hear God speak.
Catherine de Hueck Doherty says:
Prayer is that hunger for union, which never lets go of us. It beats into our blood with the very beat of our hearts. It is a thirst that can be quenched by nothing except God. It’s as if one’s whole body is poised on tiptoe, our hands stretching upward as if to touch the cosmos. The act of prayer, like the act of love, involves movement and effort. You don’t pray like a robot anymore than you make love like one? Prayer is movement, stretching, seeking, holding, finding…
Our bodies are a holy gift that the Spirit of God breathes into. Moses was told, be careful not to treat the holy gifts of the people of Israel as though they were common. The Apostle Paul writes God has made our bodies with many parts, and he has put each part just where he wants it …If one part suffers, all the parts suffer with it, and if one part is honored, all the parts are glad. Hence if pain or suffering has caused us to close off parts of our heart, the whole body reacts to that silencing. The body clearly speaks to us when it is tired, fragile, broken or hungry. What does that speaking sound/feel like? When the mind, body and soul are connected we will hear not only this voice, but also the voice of the Spirit that lives within us. We will be unafraid to dance with the heart and mind fully participating.
Snowber writes, Part of recovering our bodies is accepting our in-between states, our imperfections, and acknowledging that we are clay. Many of us have become estranged from our bodies; it is time to make them friends. They are part of us, and we must invite them back. If we don’t, we will become increasingly alienated from ourselves. For me, it has been my heart that has become estranged from my body. This intensely personal desert of detachment is where Yeshua is reuniting the body, mind and soul. The exploration of prayer and breathing also comes with His invitation to dance.
Yeshua make me a prayer
Invite me to dance
My answer is YES.
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