About 5Rhythms
5Rhythms is a movement school that teaches a consistent approach to body-focussed, free-form movement meditation in community. It's part of a big and growing constellation of related "embodiment" and "conscious dance" disciplines emerging in the late 20th and early 21st centuries in North America and western Europe.
Created by American artist, writer, and theatre director Gabrielle Roth (1942-2012), 5Rhythms is a system and practice of engaging the human body and awareness in improvised, expressive movement. It starts from the proposition that when you put the psyche in motion, it can heal itself. In the 5Rhythms world, movement is:
5Rhythms is a movement school that teaches a consistent approach to body-focussed, free-form movement meditation in community. It's part of a big and growing constellation of related "embodiment" and "conscious dance" disciplines emerging in the late 20th and early 21st centuries in North America and western Europe.
Created by American artist, writer, and theatre director Gabrielle Roth (1942-2012), 5Rhythms is a system and practice of engaging the human body and awareness in improvised, expressive movement. It starts from the proposition that when you put the psyche in motion, it can heal itself. In the 5Rhythms world, movement is:
- a meditation :: there is a practice of being with reality by intentionally occupying this flesh and this breath
- a method :: the proposed way forward is to keep feeling and moving the body, taking one breath and one step at a time
- a medicine :: there's an invitation to dive into our inner worlds and to connect with others and the group, and there is no stopping the healing this brings
- a metaphor :: impulses of movement and body shapes and positions are an infinitely rich language of expression, exploration, meaning, and imagination
- a message :: all people are lovingly invited to experiment with the discipline and the liberating tendencies of this dance, across languages, borders, skin colours, cultures, creeds, genders, sexualities, life stages, ages, sizes, abilities, and health status
The 5Rhythms process is called a Wave. It's a natural, familiar progression of energy and experience.
As earthlings, we're part of the natural order of things, and we each know this Wave from simply being alive. Whether we’ve thought about it or not, we are intimate with the way all things naturally arise, take form, grow strong and destabilize, come to a new resolution, and finally pass away.
The 5Rhythms re-create that basic wave, over and over, on a dance floor:
As earthlings, we're part of the natural order of things, and we each know this Wave from simply being alive. Whether we’ve thought about it or not, we are intimate with the way all things naturally arise, take form, grow strong and destabilize, come to a new resolution, and finally pass away.
The 5Rhythms re-create that basic wave, over and over, on a dance floor:
The 5Rhythms Wave
Flowing: come in
We practice a fluid continuum of movement that supports, nurtures, and circulates in us from deep in the ground, all the way up.
We can soften, sensitize, tune in, and begin to receive and allow whatever is authentic, however it arrives.
We can soften, sensitize, tune in, and begin to receive and allow whatever is authentic, however it arrives.
Staccato: come out
We practice articulating with our bodies, moving in conscious action.
We let our response to the beat ignite us, to claim and attend to our direction, boundaries, purpose, clarity, and heart.
A time for unhindered expression from our centres to the cosmos.
We let our response to the beat ignite us, to claim and attend to our direction, boundaries, purpose, clarity, and heart.
A time for unhindered expression from our centres to the cosmos.
Chaos: come down
We practice shaking, rocking, rumbling and rolling medicine. We give way to vibrational downloads of movement freedom.
We let the ground catch us as we fall into releasing, un-patterning, and surrendering to the intensity of the mysterious, creative unknown.
We let the ground catch us as we fall into releasing, un-patterning, and surrendering to the intensity of the mysterious, creative unknown.
Lyrical: come up
We practice offering ourselves to dissolving and resolving, re-patterning updrafts of movement. We lift right through the surface of things.
We can relax into more room, see farther horizons, and break into new, soulful fractals of freshness and effortlessness.
We can relax into more room, see farther horizons, and break into new, soulful fractals of freshness and effortlessness.
Stillness: come home
We practice following our own devotion in motion, guiding ourselves back to centre, where we can remember we're whole unto ourselves.
A gift of pure space to re-integrate, and align our awareness with the breathing, changing, sacred whole.
A gift of pure space to re-integrate, and align our awareness with the breathing, changing, sacred whole.
5Rhythms can be entered and used as a philosophy and a perspective - a way of looking at the world and its phenomena. It encompasses different “maps” of exploration, and many different teachers - with as many circles of community. This school of movement seeks to
empower people to transform suffering into art, art into awareness, and awareness into action.
My invitation as a student and teacher in this discipline is permanent: come dance your own waves.
empower people to transform suffering into art, art into awareness, and awareness into action.
My invitation as a student and teacher in this discipline is permanent: come dance your own waves.