"If you put the psyche in motion, it will heal itself." Gabrielle Roth

Heartbeat

The Heartbeat map, taught by a few teachers from Belgium and many more from abroad, explores and works primarily with our emotions and feelings, with their energy and power and how each one can serve us in their essential form. We look at how they express themselves in us, as part of our being human. We really listen to these emotions, to where they manifest in our bodies and how they move there, experiencing letting them come and go in their own innate way, neither hanging onto them nor pushing them away. Experience with the waves map helps us to fall back on our fundamental movement practice, when emotions shake us up a bit, because they too follow the rhythm of the wave.

FEAR, ANGER, SADNESS, JOY, COMPASSION

I (Edo) have befriended my emotions through hundreds of hours of heartbeat work and I have learned to name them more accurately and sharpened my awareness of them. This has enriched my life, and given me much more information about what goes on inside of me. Through this, the frozen parts of my sensibility became more and more thawed and it now telIs me more than ever before about what is happening in me. Thus, it has become a rich resource in me, giving me messages that I can use to discern and more sensitively understand my reactions and through that choose my actions more wisely.

My (Nancy) 5R HeartBeat dance is a practice in the same way as with the waves map. This time, there is a specific focus and attention on how emotions and feelings move in me in my dance and how they serve me. The perspective is on seeing each essential emotion as having gifts to offer me in order for me to take the next steps in the journey of my life and unfoldment. Having done some exploration in the HeartBeat realm, I always go back to my Waves practice, in order to integrate and embody more the teachings which I’ve gleaned from the HeartBeat piece.

Briefly, some of the things I’ve learned from dancing each of my essential/ core emotions:- my essential Fear helps me to be awake and really present in myself in each situation so that I can take action that is needed; also, moving consciously with my instinctive fear helps some numbness inside me to come alive and stream through. My Essential Anger gives me the experience of trusting myself to be able to stand up for myself and appropriately set my boundaries - not too much and not too little. My essential Sadness helps me to be with that tender part of myself and washes through me, sometimes like soft spring rain, sometimes like the torrent of a waterfall, to loosen the heavy clogged parts and soften knotted, matted bits. Essential Joy comes when it’s ready and cannot be pushed for; it reminds me that I can stay deliciously and softly grounded in my whole body whilst reconnoitring the feelings of celebration and felicity which there is absolutely no doubt that I deserve. Essential compassion allows it all and is underneath and contains, includes, all the other emotions. It is hard to put into words - something like a sense of golden, dripping “rightness”, all pervading and all encompassing.