Hiiiii friends!
This week, we'll continue our focus on Freeing Your Inner Dancer by exploring another sweet little technique to help us shed our inhibitions and allow our bodies to move freely and intuitively.
Technique 2: Listening deeply to the music.
Whereas last week was all about focusing on your body sensations, this week, we'll be really concentrating on listening to the beautiful music.
By really zooming in, and focusing our awareness on hearing and receiving the details of the music (the instruments, melodies, rhythms, voices, and lyrics, etc.), the magically rich layers of the songs become heightened and more available for our bodies to explore and connect with.
And connection is what Aya is all about.
For example, while dancing, we are always connecting with our bodies, minds, emotions, spirit, the music, the present moment, one another, the group as a whole, our humanity.....
This week, we'll be especially focusing on the bliss of connecting with the music.
How? We simply tune in.
Just like when we want to connect with another human, it all starts with focusing our attention intently on who or what we want to connect with.
This week, we'll focus our attention on the sounds of the music.
Listening to the music will become our meditation.
Aaaaaaand just like any meditation practice, if we find ourselves distracted, no problem. We simply come on back to the music and practice listening again and again. We can think of it as strengthening our listening muscles. And (like anything) the more we practice listening, the easier listening becomes.
Listening provides us soooooo much juicy goodness to play with!
For example, as we listen closely to the drums, our body will naturally want to connect with and align in some way with the beat. We'll start to step, pat, clap, nod, or wiggle. Then, as we listen deeply to the shakers, our body will naturally want to shimmy-shake about. As we listen to the swelling tones of the violin, our body will naturally want to sway with the dramatic ebb and flow. As we listen to the saxophone, our spine will start to curve and undulate as our tailbone and head both begin to move to the sounds. As we listen to the voices and lyrics, we naturally connect with the emotions of the story being told. As we listen, layers upon layers of the music become more evident, and give our bodies a feast of incredible sounds, textures, stories, and emotions to explore, experiment, play, and connect with.
That connection feels so good.
As we listen, our body will naturally want to connect with the sounds we hear. As we focus our mental energy on listening and receiving the sounds (and also sensing our bodies from the inside out, like last week), we simply won't have any bandwidth left for worries or inhibitions or holding back. By being in a receptive state of listening, our movements can simply unfold from within, naturally wanting to become congruent with the sounds we hear.
Alignment.
Harmony.
Unity. Resonance.
Oneness.
It's connection.
And it's beautiful.
Bonus: it's great for your body's physical fitness too!
Not only is listening closely to the music as we dance a really FUN way to meditate, it also feeds our bodies so much wonderful variety, which is sooooooo great for our physical health and fitness! Moving in a large variety of ways, to all kinds of instruments, with all kinds of musical genres, helps us to really reclaim, maintain, and improve our joint mobility, balance, agility, muscular strength, overall resilience and pliability, bone density, cardiovascular fitness, nervous system responsiveness, and more.
No thinking, planning, choreography, or judging part of the brain needed.
All it takes is listening.
Receiving.
Connecting.
Aligning.
Allowing.
Melting into oneness with the sounds you hear....
It's so delicious.
I cannot wait to explore it with you this week.
See you on the dance floor, beautiful souls!
💛 Dani
Want to dance some Aya with us this week? Wonderful! Please do!
Class Schedule
1st time? Welcome! Enjoy a FREE trial anytime. Code: FIRST
Commenti