I pray to the Lyrical Rhythm to lift me up from the swamp of my personal chaos where I hold a VIP box, and in which I still get lost although I know it so well. It is as if I was born with it, as if I was born from it, as if I was born into it.

Lyrical lifts me up, it literally takes my hands, without fear of being dragged down with me. Lyrical fully knows its magic powers. Lyrical implicitly trusts its unique quality of lightness which comes after relief and release. At times it manages to lift me up even before my work has been done, and it often lifts me up while I am still entangled in the web of my own thoughts, in the limbo of my guilt and shame and accusation. For me Lyrical is like music. Music is in itself lyrical by nature. Created to inspire, guide and seduce us, to twist and turn us, to elate and enchant me, to open my eyes and ears. Music loves to introduce me to her friends, the other muses. I love it when they quarrel over me, who will welcome me in her lap first, when they are impatient, passionate each in her own right, each in her dress that sometimes completely falls off their bodies in the midst of their passion.

I love it when I see that I ended up in a different place without even noticing that I moved precisely because Lyrical works with such charm, such ease, so naturally, so subtly, so invisibly that I do not even get to resist it, argue, take out the list of all the reasons why I am no good and why it would do better to give up on me.

Lyrical is one of the reasons why I dance, why I live, why I am writing this. Lyrical teaches me how to share, regardless of whether my hands are full or empty, my heart open or closed, my mind calm or restless. In sharing I find gratitude not only in those with whom I share but within myself. It is a kind of lyrical sharing that transforms, that multiplies energy which moves and gets shared, the sharing that connects. I am more and more able to share with myself. When I go for a walk and see a lovely flower, I have learnt to share the experience with myself. It is the same with dancing. It is incredible how much pleasure I can find in my body’s movements, how much joy that does not depend on anyone outside of me or anything special, but simply buds and blossoms from my presence in my own and in the cosmic dance.

I hope we shall meet dancing this spring… Kisses, Silvija

“Being passionately at home in our bodies and honest in our emotions makes us desirable and intruiging. People with rich, rooted emotional lives are magnetic.” Gabrielle Roth

Tonight I want to write about fear. The fear that is right here, so much of the time. Maybe even all the time. I hope so actually, as in its essential power it is my best ally, that one friend that will keep my eyes open and remind me of my instinctual self. I was recently at a concert, and we were one of the first people who arrived. As others were joining in, I noticed how all of us found our place close to the walls, and left the whole open area in front of the stage empty. It was scary to go there, and the wall behind our backs gave us the support, something safe to hold on. Once the concert started the energy changed a little, it was as if because the musicians on the stage were brave enough to stand out there and share their gifts, we were invited to come closer. This is something I notice often on the dance floor. At the beginning of the class, fear holds us close to the walls, in the parts of the room close to the exit door where there is less light and for sure further away from the teacher’s table. And then just like magic, one by one we start with our flow, with finding our feet and we let our feet find our courage to go for empty space and slowly step by step, your step, my step, most of the room is moving and wherever we step in the room with our awake embodiment is our safe space.  We can find the roots of our freedom in our feet following each other.

Tonight I want to write about anger. I thought anger was this heartless unpredictable over the edge punishing lashing out energy. Oh yes there was also this constant complaining verbal putting down and bitching and holding back. And yes, I learned about it from the first row, when directed to me.

I learned it so well through imitation that I started to believe this is who I am. This is what anger is. So no wonder I feel guilty and ashamed of this truth warrior living in me, the lie and bullshit detector that never fails me, the protective mama cat ready to defend not only her kids but all the innocents. It is taking me a long time, many anger dances where I keep re-defining and re-aligning this anger energy, to find its pure wisdom of a heartfelt yes and no. The part of me that feels like I could go through the walls and move any mountain, the part of me that is a rebel with the cause, the part of me that feels the passion to be real and alive.

Tonight I want to write about sadness. I see sometimes parts of us that are avoiding other’s people grief like it is contagious and in a way it is. It is like swimming in the same water, and we try so much to walk on water rather then surrender to it. Surrender to the waves of this cleansing releasing liberating energy. It feels sometimes like my sadness is a river that just wants to go back home to the ocean where it came from, where it belongs, and I need to stop holding onto it like it is only mine and like I would be lost without it. Sometimes I need to be a sadness whisperer, as my sadness is more solid then flowing, in some places of my heart and body it even feels it is calcified. So I whisper to it, and she says “but I don’t know why I feel this way, I don’t know what this is about, I don’t know why I am sad, I don’t know how deep this goes, I don’t know how long I will cry” and I keep whispering and giving space and rocking myself and allowing myself  to have strange sounds to leave my mouth, my heart, my soul. I allow myself to grieve about things I never even had at the first place, not just those that I lost.

Tonight I want to write about joy. There is this part of me that is going for happiness and it wants to be entertained, it wants to be invited to the school dance, it wants to be picked out from all the other flowers. And it waits and it gets lazy, and becomes really miserable about missing all the joy out of life. This part loves to think everybody else is happy but me, and if it is not their fault that I am not happy then it must be mine. Or it is the weather or the football or the government.  I realize more and more that this is one of the reasons why I love the dance so much, as it has always been such a simple accessible gateway into pure joy for me. The kind of joy that is hard to pin down and box, even name it. It is such a shape-shifter. It is always here somewhere. It doesn’t always have a smile on its face. It doesn’t always skip and jumps around. It is not always in bright colors. Sometimes it is actually like a striptease of all the things that I am, not to find the joy I came here to share with you.

Tonight I want to talk about compassion. The one that we are born with. The one that comes from simply seeing each other.  The one the bypasses thinking and goes straight into action and many times the action that is needed is to do nothing, just to let it be. To breathe. Compassion that comes from knowing our own heart so well and from living it over and over again. Compassion that happens when we all move and breathe like one, no matter what movement it is.  No matter who is this “we”.

With love, Silvija

“Unless we value our feet as much as our frontal lobes, we’ll end up disembodied talking heads with no rhythm, no root.” GABRIELLE ROTH

In Flowing I move with my feet following the empty space, following my own pace, following my own destiny on the journey to ecstasy.
In Flowing I rest my body on the ground, loving myself all around.
 
In Staccato I move with my hips connected with my heart and turn my suffering into art. I walk my talk and commit to the dance that takes me into trance. 
In Staccato I rest my heart in the beat, tired of being in the back seat.
 
In Chaos I move with my head and all it’s mess, surrendering to being work in progress. I release the stress of wanting to impress and I am on my knees praying for some ease.
In Chaos I rest my mind in the present moment and finally there is no comment.
 
In Lyrical I move with my hands and watch how my soul expands. The key is total fascination and disappearing in  life’s vibration.
In Lyrical I rest my soul in the spaces in between and in nature’s green.
 
In Stillness I move with my breath, as it is a matter of life and death. I am building the muscles of my awareness and devote my whole body to become spirit’s mistress. 
In Stillness I rest my spirit in the moonlight, remembering that dance is my birthright.
 
 With love, Silvija

I want to acknowledge this invisible force that brings us together on each class or workshop, the mysterious thread that connect us in the right place and in the right moment. How did I find you, how did you find me, how did we find the 5Rhythms, how did the 5Rhythms find us?!? I don’t really want to know the answers, I am learning here and now to trust this force of life and enjoy the surprises.  I feel somehow a part of my job as a teacher is to remove all the obstacles that stand in between us and the dance. The dance that is our birth right, the dance that is our soul mate, the dance that is our home. I feel so blessed to have the honour and privilege to hold space for us befriending our bodies, loving our emotions, opening our minds and rooting our souls. It is truly a gift to witness the very  humanity in its raw organic version that is so easy to fall in love with, and so much kindness that can happen on the dance floor tribes, towards ourselves and others. I am so aware that I can not to anything I do in this work alone. All of my work is possible thanks to steady support of my beloved family, my inspiring teachers and assistants, the 5Rhythms global teachers tribe that I can reach out to about anything and everything at any time,  my amazing organisers and crews and flyer designer, and to each of you and you and you and you and you and you…    I want to remind us all to include ourselves in this time of celebration and gifts, our happiness and wellbeing is the best gift to our family, friends and community. Maybe what you need is one of these workshops and maybe a winter’s pause and dream. 

With love, Silvija

“We need to quiet our demons by dancing them until they are set to rest. Or meditate until the bastards jump ship. Really be still or really move.
Whichever way you do, do it mindfully.”  GABRIELLE ROTH

May we find any possible way to feel more at home in our bodies, any possible way to feel alive in our bodies. May we find ways to give our bodies fresh air, clear water, nourishing food, safe touch, healing sleep. Again and Again. Practice.
May we find the discipline to keep coming back to our center, no matter how many times we loose it. May we find honesty with ourselves in the times when we are lying to ourselves and others. Every time with more forgiveness and more responsability. Again and again. Practice.
May we find the strength in the moments when we are breaking down and in pain, when we feel we are the only ones feeling this way, to reach out for connection. Reach out to a friend, to a stranger, to a cat, to a tree, to a river… to ourself. Again and again, Practice.
May we find the way to be easy with ourselves when things are not going easy. May we find the comfort in the simple things that can be shared; like a smile, like a cup of tea, like a favorite song, like a story of our life, like a dream we just can’t forget about. Again and again. Practice.
May we find a way to rest, that guilt-free way of resting my mind on my breath for few minutes, that unapologetic way of resting my whole body down on the ground like a cat for few minutes, that carefree way of resting my heart on a sight of beautiful sunset for few minutes. Again and again. Practice.
With love,
Silvija

“Gratitude unlocks the fullness of life. It turns what we have into enough, and more. It turns denial into acceptance, chaos to order, confusion to clarity. It can turn a meal into a feast, a house into a home, a stranger into a friend.” Melody Beattie

I am grateful to my body for making me get up from my bed to go to toilet, when the quicksand of inertia wishes to suck me deeper into its jaws. The more I resist, the deeper I sink, the more I feel guilty the deeper I sink, the more I am ashamed the deeper I sink. The more I relax, the wisdom of the body gets me out. The more I surrender, gravity rolls me around the floor, floor recieves me with open arms and legs. Like when you think you are drowning and when you put your feet down you discover it’s shallow enough to stand up. Sometimes that simple act of standing on my own to feet, taking a step, even if it’s backwards, brings me back to life, to my flow. I am grateful that my body needs air, rest, to strech, to empty, to nourish, to move.

I am grateful to movement, for through it I can express absolutely everything I feel, even when I don’t know what I’m feeling, even when I don’t feel a thing or feel everything at the same time. Through movement I can say things I’m afraid to hear spoken out loud, through movement I can yell so loud without hurting anyone, through movement I can curse and swear without offending anyone. Through movement I can crush, destroy, break, tear apart, disembowl and keep my hands clean, without needing to wash anybody’s blood from the floor. I am grateful that through movement I can stir energy inside me that is pent up, pushed down, forbidden, the energy that corrodes and gnaws from inside.

I am grateful to intuition that expertly knows all I have experienced so far so it feels very well that which hasn’t happened yet. Intuition that shines as a firefly in the darkness of all I know, that shimmers as a lighthouse in a storm of all that I think. I think that I have to have an opinion on everything. I think about how much I think. I drive myself crazy with what-ifs. I ask questions that don’t have an answer, I answer when nobody asked me anything just to say something, just to think something. Intuition that is so much in the present moment that it’s always a step ahead of me. Intuition that is not afraid of the dark, that in the darkness hears better the beating of the heart, the call of destiny.

I am grateful for sensitivity that reminds me how everything is temporary, how everything changes. Sensitivity to pain (mine and others’), sensitivity to injustice (mine and others’). I love my sensitvity to light, colour, sound, smell, touch, temperature. I love how different rhyhtms move my hips, how different voices move my arms, how different words move my shoulders, how different vibrations move my knees. It’s fun how I change when I dance with different people. It’s interesting how right when I’m copletely embodied, present, conected with my breath, right then I can disappear and be a wind in a meadow, water in your hands, earth that holds the seed, spark that dances in fire.

I am grateful that I have a possibility to chose gratitude even when things do not go according to my plan, even if in that moment I can see no goodness or lightness. I love when I can find gratitude at the end of my dance, especially when I feel that at the end of the dance the gratitude has found me. I am grateful that over and over again I keep finding myself in the dance and that I have the opportunity to meet all of you, through dance or through these words. Thank you.

Love, Silvija

“Letting go of the known and receiving the unknown, we can sense new possibilities. When we expect change, life rarely disappoints us. In the dance we can get to know ourselves well enough to be aware of the judgments, expectations, and attachments that inevitably get in our way.” GABRIELLE ROTH

After a lovely and intense passage from the Old Year into the New, at our Tribal Dance workshop, I dove deep into my winter sleep. After many working winters, getting stuck in snow with the car on my way to lead workshops in other cities, halls without heating, cancellations at the last minute due to illness or snow, I realized that, like a squirrel, I had been working hard gathering food during autumn and was now able to allow myself to spend a part of winter in my tree hole, chewing on hazelnuts, watching good TV series. This year I also gave myself a present of going into the unknown. I have not done something this exciting and stirring for quite a long time. I travelled to a place I had never been before and did not know anything about where I was going or who and what awaited me there. There I was met by wonderful people who manage a little retreat (I was the only one of three possible guests) with a lush garden overflowing with flowers, fruit, and vegetables that they had created on volcanic soil up on a hill overlooking the ocean. During the day the ocean merged with the sky and every day the sunset told me when it was time to stop eating on this detox retreat of mine, as I enjoyed the most amazing star-studded night sky that I had ever seen. The taxi driver by the name of Angel, who saved me several times during my “hiking” adventures, told me everything about his life in Spanish, which I barely understand and speak even less. Every day I went through a letting go of the old shit, quite literally thanks to the hydrocolon therapy, which by itself did not make me very happy, but the lightness that I felt afterwards was certainly worth it. I was surprised to see that in this silence I was embraced by so much peace and quiet. It is as if I was not really aware that I had it within me through life, that I had this ability to settle down, just be, observe the clouds, and now I was mature enough to be able to enjoy it, too. One of the great driving forces in my life, as well as a source of much anxiety and neurosis, is my need to be useful. This time I was useful to myself – everything was there for me, my health, my balance, my cleansing, my rest. I knew I had deserved it. I knew that I had gone through a very difficult, demanding and tough period of my life at full speed recently and that this was prevention instead of me waiting to break down completely. And actually, when I look back over the years, it seems that I have a period like this every year. Like every wave has its turning point, the moments of the darkest night, the point where we get lost in order to find ourselves, the life test or life alarm clock that asks us to be fully ready for whatever is going on. The moments when we know what it is that we should keep holding on to and what it is that we need to let go. When we need to keep both our feet on the ground, with flexible knees so that we can change direction when the undercurrent that is guiding us changes, with our minds focused on our breath, and our bellies relaxed so that we can hear the inner voice which bypasses all the crazy voices in our head, with our heart as a compass in our chest that stands tall and is open even when it is breaking under a palm of a hand that instinctively found its way there to give it support. With our eyes that can see the smallest details and our consciousness that can see the bigger picture and encompasses both where we came from and where we are going.   

Coming home was like a plane landing on rough ground. The period right after my return was like equalising the air pressure after being submerged deep in the water or coming back from Outer Space or coming down from some hallucinogenic trip. I am observing how quickly old habits return and how they come into conflict with the newly formed ones.

I am still grateful that I went, grateful for new dances that are waiting for me around the corner, for new and old friends in the dance.

I hope that our feet shall meet in some of these sacred dance spaces! Kisses, Silvija

“The rhythms take us back to that primordial soup, so that we can begin again, fresh and fertile, high on our own existence.” GABRIELLE ROTH

I find myself lately saying when I am teaching « this is why this is a practice… ».
And sometimes I would even hear myself saying it so it got me interested to dig a bit deeper into it.
What are we practicing when moving with these 5 Rhythms, when dancing body parts, when doing walking meditation, when dancing with a partner or when dancing unity circle?
For me the most general answer is that I am practicing being present.
Dancing Flowing I am practicing finding my ground which can be really helpful when I feel I don’t know who I am and where I am going. I practice following my feet into the empty space and being open for the doors that open for me and I find that very useful when I stop moving and get stuck hitting into the closed doors.
Dancing Staccato I am practicing the clarity that only my heart can offer and this is a good medicine when I get so separate from my emotions that the only thing I can feel is my tension. I practice moving from my center and that brings me back to the best place from which to make connection with people and world outside of me.
Dancing Chaos I am practicing dancing so wild, so free that I can break through the deadly safe habitual way of thinking, feeling, moving.  I practice letting go of my head to my dancing feet so that my preoccupied mind can be released of its confusion.
Dancing Lyrical I am practicing being so deep in the effortless movement of my body so that I can wake up from this autopilot running my life. I practice lightening up from the hands to my feet to create a welcome for my soul into my dance that was waiting for somebody to finally come home.
Dancing Stillness I am practicing uniting my movement with my breath as so many times I am frozen and witnessing my life passing by and feeling dead inside.  I practice putting all I have into the emptiness of this dance, letting the breath move me and finding hope again.
What do you need to practice?
With love
Silvija

“Unacknowledged fear is, in fact, at the root of many of our lives. I discovered the pervasiveness of fear early on in teaching movement and massage, since fear inhibits movement and keep us literally uptight. We live in fear of our emotions and develop all kinds of strategies and coping mechanisms to avoid experiencing them.” GABRIELLE ROTH

I was thinking one day about what could I do to face my fears: jump with a parachute, go in a deep dark cave, dive into icy water and then I realised that I have so many fears that look so “ ordinary”, so everyday, so normal that I can just pass by them and not really notice them. And still, they really freak me out, they shake my legs, they shut my mouth and eyes, they sweat the palms of my hands, they clench my belly, they make me smaller, they sunk my chest. They feel like real thing. 

I am scared of how I can move in circles and can’t see the way out. I am scared of losing ground under my feet. I am scared of being dependent, of my constant needs and of how much my body needs me. I am scared of being paralysed by my fears and to live comfortably numb.

I am scared of saying how I feel before somebody asks me how I feel. I am scared of waiting to be asked how I feel by somebody and forgetting to ask myself how I feel. I am scared of the numbness and indifference that my heart can feel. I am scared of how rough and hard and critical I can be to myself and how it spills out to my loved ones. I am scared how successful I can be in my defensiveness at the times when I actually need intimacy and contact.

I am scared of my wholeness, of how the things that I find wrong with me are in tension with the things in me that I find acceptable. I am scared to end before it is finished. I am scared to pass on the pain. I am scared to abandon myself alone in my suffering. 

I am scared to show my loneliness as it is an old and heavy burden. I am scared to loose my hope in my sadness. I am scared there will never be enough. I am scared to be a lost case and to loose the plot. I am scared of how much I believe that I am unloveable. I am scared that I missed the beauty of life, the sweetness of love, the play of light, the grace of nature, the simple goodness. I am scared that all of this was for nothing. I am scared that it is too late.

All these fears are showing me where to bring attention instead of shame, where I am still learning instead of being arrogant, where to ask for help instead of isolating, where to just sit and breathe with instead of fix it or change it, where I need to dance and then dance some more instead of think again about it, where to hold your hand, where to show up instead , where to stay instead of run away, where to love instead of judge.

When we meet our fear we uncover what we are really protecting and we start to feel our aliveness; when we express our anger we show what we are defending and we meet our boundaries around our softest part; how when we release through our sadness we get closer to what we really care about and how deeply we love; how when we share our joy we lift the veil from our own light – and all that is so vulnerable and so powerful.

It takes courage to welcome fear. It is at the edge of anger where can find forgiveness. It is so liberating to surrender through sadness. It is about sharing when joy shares its dances with us. It takes (comm)unity to feel like we belong.  

With love
Silvija

“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. This is a promise.” GABRIELLE ROTH