Here's What Living In Costa Rica Taught Me About Dance Churches:

1. Dance (and therefore Dance Churches) are the perfect medicine for anyone looking for a non-entheogenic, non-ordinary experience...or anyone who just feels the call to shake it on the dance floor. They have the power to bring us all together in joy and aliveness with a sprinkle of a collective intention for that joy and aliveness to spill out into the rest of the world. 

2. Dance Church can actually be pretty pretentious in its own right. The smudging, the opening of directions, the rules, the circle before and after, the snapping instead of clapping thing that the young people are doing these days. Lol. (And I, in certain ceremonies, totally get down with all of this...I just don't know that we need/want it here.) What do you think?

3. Most people seem to need a lot of structured rules, apparently, to let go without drugs/alcohol. That being said, the rules of the jungle include no phones, no substances, and no talking on the dance floor (unless it's to your kid who wants to ask if it's okay to go play somewhere else because they're tired of dancing...our kids most of the time.) I like the no phones/no substances rule for a lot of reasons personally, mainly, because it keeps us in our bodies.

4. They're a spectacular way to bring regular mindful movement into your weekly routine...to get you into your body, out of your mind, and make some space for allowing whatever energy that needs to move to do so. Yes, you could just dance and do somatic movement every day in your normal life (I highly recommend that,too !), and there's also something about dancing with people that's just freeing and sometimes a little awkward and sometimes a little wild and just an experience all of its own. It was one of our last days in Costa Rica, and I asked one of the locals I had befriended if they ever go to Dance Church, and he laughed. "No way would I do that. Ticos (slang for the locals) go to Pepperoni's on Tuesday nights to salsa....we don't need Dance Churches." He also shared about how much darn fun it is and that the music is pumping and people are dancing until 2am. On a Tuesday night!!! When did I stop dancing? Why–just because my night club days are over –that I only dance when I'm invited to a wedding, which lately seems like it happens every five years!

It all clicked for me then! We don't need to recreate dance into another indigenous-borrowed, sacred container. Dance is part of every culture and every tradition. We just need to dance to have fun, to be joyful, to move our bodies, to let our children see how much fun being a grown-up can be.

So, if you're down, and I mean really down to do this, let's do it! In the spirit of collaboration and synergy, Tony and I will be co-hosting this event with two of my favorite local women, Rachel Forman and Ann McHugh. They both bring their own beautiful gifts and heart wisdom to the mix. 

Contact me for details about our next dance

event!