Interview for 5Rhythms Global Teacher Spotlight, January 2014:
My home rhythm is Staccato in a serious flirtation with Chaos, that finds its roots in Flowing. You can see, it is not a pure Staccato. I love going into a messy pile of papers on my office table and sorting them out, by alphabet, by date, by theme. I love making different kind of lists, and I love ticking the things off of those lists. For me work is fun. Money is energy. Communication is the key. I love breaking things down to be able to pass them on. I am a “beat slut”, loving the way the beat holds me steady. I love to make things happen and bring people together, doing my “match making”. I follow my passions in my life, to hell and to heaven. I am comforted with the simplicity of Staccato. I love the dynamic of question and response. I love bringing together two sides to meet, roots and wings, movement and rest, feminine and masculine, light and shadow.
The first time I heard about 5Rhythms and Gabrielle Roth was from her “Maps to Ecstasy” book that became my sacred book. Reading it was like finally finding a friend who understood me and spoke my language. One year later, working on the Anti-War Campaign Croatia I was blessed to meet the peace activist Sophie Reynolds, who one day said “oh I feel like dancing today” and took out of her bag one of Gabrielle’s tapes. She brought me in touch with my first 5R teacher, Dilys Morgan Scott, for whom I organized my first 5R workshop in Zagreb. Since then, the doors kept opening and I was ready for the journey, supported by many. Thanks to amazing 5Rhythms teachers along my way, I became a 5R teacher as well. It was destiny, and the rest is history.
As soon as we become aware of and in touch with our bodies, we are making contact with ourselves. For me movement in this way is like a “thermometer” for my state of being. For me, 5Rhythms practice shows me a way to really meet myself, in both a safe and challenging way. There was that feeling where I was longing for contact and I was dreading it. I was meeting myself this way, over and over again on the dance floor, I started building this steady, long-lasting, never-ending relationship to myself in the midst of all the changes of life. I got a lot of energy back into myself, that I had been spending on running away from myself and bumping into other people. Dancing for me was always a way to avoid contact with other people, I could just disappear into my own dance and feel whole there. But actually through 5Rhythms practice and its approach to partnering, I started enjoying meeting others in the dance. I loved that non-verbal communication, where things were clear and in the beat, came first. And later, through Mirrors workshops, I started learning the verbal part of communication as well, dipping into my intuition and awakening my senses.