After spending many years in dance, trying to find a way to teach mindful movements/authentic movements/movement meditation, I realised I had to put it aside, as most people who are looking to learn dance isn't looking for those things, but would rather prefer more lively, more technical, more showy styles of dance. In other words, it was learning dance for the external form - hardly anyone was looking to learn dance to go inwards.
So many years on, I stepped into yoga. And though - hey, now here's a bunch who is already learning to go inwards. They are learning yoga afterall - a spiritual practice, a mindful exercise.
So I thought, maybe I could bridge the gap a bring dance to the yoga audience instead.
It wasn't hard. I just needed to choreograph some nice flowing poses, throw in a little dancey pose here and there, and move to some nice flowing music.
Many enjoyed it, thought it was a good way to gear up their yoga practice, learn some new moves/poses, and sweat.
However, I started noticing a few things...
Firstly, like Vinyasa, because of the speed of moving from one pose to another, bad habits started forming - hunched shoulders, limbs are not fully extended, body not fully aligned. For advanced yoga practitioners, this issue may be minimal, but most are not, and I really do not want to reinforce these bad habits, if not eliminate them. But really knowing how correct alignments and extend limbs require more detailed work, with many pauses and paying close attention to little details. And then remembering to implement them during the flow.
Failing which, I risk injuring the students more. And injuries are hardly worth the risk of practicing any form of yoga.
That aside, I found that I wasn't exactly teaching mindfulness, much less mindful movements - which require some practice in meditation and slow, meditative movements.
I haven't found a solution to that. So I stopped teaching...
But soon, many more yoga dance classes started around my city. I don't know what happened there but I haven't heard much of it in recent years. Perhaps they too, bumped into the same dilemmas I did.
However, with the recent Embodiment movement, given a kick at last year's gigantic Embodiment Conference which brought together a multitude of expertise from dance, movement, therapy, medicine, psychology, from east, west and around the world, witnessing more diversions and bridgeing of yoga and mindful movement practices, I'm now confident that perhaps what I was envisioning was not totally off track, but rather needing some fine-tuning, development and learning from more experienced teachers and form those who did researches in various fields of expertise.
I'm also more inclined now to reach to an audience who are seeking for more - something beyond the commercial, the appearances - who want something deeper, a spiritual, insightful and healing experience towards dance/yoga.
And with that, I will continue my work, my search, to find that balance, between art, health, performance, fitness and healing.
Yet, keep walking, keep searching, because...
~All roads lead to Rome...~
