Barry
12-07-2010, 04:48 PM
Here's a good introduction to Sweat Your Prayers from the Marin IJ. Wacco (the precursor to WaccoBB.net) is born from the community circle following the Sweat Your Prayers in Sebastopol.
There many other "official" Sweat Your Prayers dances in the North Bay, along with many other non-official but similar practices. See our Events and Classes category (https://www.waccobb.net/forums/forumdisplay.php?9-Events-amp-Classes) for current postings for these dances.
- Barry
Hot and steamy at Sweat Your Prayers workouts
Paul Liberatore
https://www.marinij.com/lifestyles/ci_10940011
Posted: 11/10/2008 12:13:38 AM PST
https://extras.mnginteractive.com/live/media/site234/2008/1109/20081109__10sweatPrayers2_Viewer.jpgEvery Sunday morning, 300 perspiring people attend a kind of aerobic church service in a Sausalito gymnasium, gyrating and spinning and twirling in a growing communal dance phenomenon called Sweat Your Prayers.
The popular weekly gatherings at Martin Luther King School - two back-to-back sessions of 150 dancers each - have been likened to "a mixture of a Sunday morning gospel service, a Friday night dance club and a Saturday morning aerobics class."
The concept behind these two-hour dance-a-thons, or, perhaps more accurately, "trance-a-thons," is a training called 5Rhythms, a meditation practice that combines music with mindful movement.
Some practitioners say it can lead to a feelings of ecstasy and spiritual enlightenment, but because some Sweat Your Prayers regulars treat it more casually, as an enjoyable musical workout, a way to meet people, it has a reputation as quite a happening scene.
"It really is a moving meditation practice, but at least half the people who go to Sweat Your Prayers don't even know that; They're just having fun," said Lori Saltzman, co-founder of the Moving Center School, the Mill Valley-based organization that started the Sweat Your Prayers trend.
"Some people say, 'Dancing, whoa, it's a party,'" she said. "But even though we don't teach at Sweat Your Prayers, we are always offering people a way to get off the social surface of themselves and to drop a little deeper inside."
For those more serious about spirituality through movement and meditation, the Moving Center School offers a series of workshops, classes, retreats and ongoing groups and events built around the teachings of Gabrielle Roth, an "urban shaman" who devised the 5Rhythms meditation practice in the 1960s. She now has branches in New York and Europe as well as Marin.
A musician, dancer, author and theater director, Roth is most widely known for Gabrielle Roth and the Mirrors, an ensemble that has recorded 15 albums in the world music and trance band genres and at one time included Marin's Jai Uttal and Lenny Kaye of the Patti Smith Band.
In 1987, Saltzman, 53, and Kathy Altman, 57, launched their school with a boombox and six students.
Now, 20 years later, as many as 600 students a week participate in Moving Center activities, making Marin one of the largest 5Rhythms communities, a fact that shouldn't be surprising given the county's history as a personal growth and New Age center.
"This particular practice is exploding all over the world, not just in Marin County, because it's addressing some basic human needs," Saltzman contended. "We live in a culture where we have stopped moving. Our bodies are made to move, but we sit and stare at computer screens, we sit in cars, and what happens is we get stiff and sedentary. We live from our neck up."
Catherine McConkie, a 52-year-old culinary instructor who lives in Greenbrae, started attending Moving Center classes 16 years ago and still goes to sessions twice a week.
"I wanted to dance, but traditional ballet and modern dance classes didn't feel right," she said. "5Rhythms felt right, plus I have a busy mind, and sitting meditation wasn't the right vehicle for me. But movement takes me to a place where my mind can step out of the way and let my spirit speak through my body."
She also used 5Rhythms as a rehabilitation therapy after a scuba-diving accident left her temporarily paralyzed. "I used the practice as a healing tool to not only recover physically, but also emotionally and spiritually," she said.
The idea behind 5Rhythms is to get people out of their heads, to remind them that they have bodies they may have lost touch with, not to mention hearts and souls.
"What starts to happen is you put the body in motion and the mind gets still, it gets quieter," Saltzman said. "And what starts to happen is the places in our hearts that have stopped moving go in motion again."
Drop-in sessions at locations like the Tam Valley Community Center, the Pickleweed Community Center in San Rafael and the MLK Gym in Sausalito are called "Endless Waves" because, as Cathy Altman puts it, "everything in the universe moves in waves, patterns and rhythms."
With that in mind, the school doesn't teach dance steps or choreography per se, but a practice called "the Wave," a 5Rhythms sequence of patterns described as: flowing, staccato, chaos, lyrical and stillness.
"What we do in class is encourage people, through music, which has different rhythms, to move through these states and eventually have them take them to a place where all effort disappears," Saltzman explains. "You're now being dancing, as opposed to just dancing."
Saltzman and Altman noticed that 5Rhythms really started to take off a decade ago when there was a strong urge to belong to a community of like-minded people.
"People are dying for a sense of themselves in a group situation," Saltzman said. "With this practice, you're actually moving in a group, so you're building a sense of community. When you move together it builds a deep sense of camaraderie. And when you meet with music in a form of meditation that's fun, it takes the worry out of being close."
Last month, Saltzman and Altman participated in training 80 new 5Rhythms teachers from all over the world. They see their work as going beyond personal growth and moving into the health-care system, into schools, senior centers and community service programs.
"We almost can't keep up with the demand," Saltzman said. "This is really moving back into its original root, which is to serve everybody and not just people who want to come in and dance."
IF YOU SWEAT
What: Sweat Your Prayers
When: 9:30 to 11:30 a.m. Saturdays at Pickleweed Community Center, 50 Canal St., San Rafael; 8:30 to 10:30 a.m. or 11 a.m. to 1 p.m. at Martin Luther King Gym, 100 Coloma St., Sausalito
Cost: $15
What: Endless Waves
When: 6:30 to 8:30 Tuesdays at Tam Valley Community Center, 203 Marin Ave., Mill Valley; 7 to 9 p.m. Wednesdays at MLK Gym
Cost: $18
Information: 388-0431 or go to www.movingcenterschool.com (https://www.movingcenterschool.com)
Paul Liberatore can be reached at [email protected].
There many other "official" Sweat Your Prayers dances in the North Bay, along with many other non-official but similar practices. See our Events and Classes category (https://www.waccobb.net/forums/forumdisplay.php?9-Events-amp-Classes) for current postings for these dances.
- Barry
Hot and steamy at Sweat Your Prayers workouts
Paul Liberatore
https://www.marinij.com/lifestyles/ci_10940011
Posted: 11/10/2008 12:13:38 AM PST
https://extras.mnginteractive.com/live/media/site234/2008/1109/20081109__10sweatPrayers2_Viewer.jpgEvery Sunday morning, 300 perspiring people attend a kind of aerobic church service in a Sausalito gymnasium, gyrating and spinning and twirling in a growing communal dance phenomenon called Sweat Your Prayers.
The popular weekly gatherings at Martin Luther King School - two back-to-back sessions of 150 dancers each - have been likened to "a mixture of a Sunday morning gospel service, a Friday night dance club and a Saturday morning aerobics class."
The concept behind these two-hour dance-a-thons, or, perhaps more accurately, "trance-a-thons," is a training called 5Rhythms, a meditation practice that combines music with mindful movement.
Some practitioners say it can lead to a feelings of ecstasy and spiritual enlightenment, but because some Sweat Your Prayers regulars treat it more casually, as an enjoyable musical workout, a way to meet people, it has a reputation as quite a happening scene.
"It really is a moving meditation practice, but at least half the people who go to Sweat Your Prayers don't even know that; They're just having fun," said Lori Saltzman, co-founder of the Moving Center School, the Mill Valley-based organization that started the Sweat Your Prayers trend.
"Some people say, 'Dancing, whoa, it's a party,'" she said. "But even though we don't teach at Sweat Your Prayers, we are always offering people a way to get off the social surface of themselves and to drop a little deeper inside."
For those more serious about spirituality through movement and meditation, the Moving Center School offers a series of workshops, classes, retreats and ongoing groups and events built around the teachings of Gabrielle Roth, an "urban shaman" who devised the 5Rhythms meditation practice in the 1960s. She now has branches in New York and Europe as well as Marin.
A musician, dancer, author and theater director, Roth is most widely known for Gabrielle Roth and the Mirrors, an ensemble that has recorded 15 albums in the world music and trance band genres and at one time included Marin's Jai Uttal and Lenny Kaye of the Patti Smith Band.
In 1987, Saltzman, 53, and Kathy Altman, 57, launched their school with a boombox and six students.
Now, 20 years later, as many as 600 students a week participate in Moving Center activities, making Marin one of the largest 5Rhythms communities, a fact that shouldn't be surprising given the county's history as a personal growth and New Age center.
"This particular practice is exploding all over the world, not just in Marin County, because it's addressing some basic human needs," Saltzman contended. "We live in a culture where we have stopped moving. Our bodies are made to move, but we sit and stare at computer screens, we sit in cars, and what happens is we get stiff and sedentary. We live from our neck up."
Catherine McConkie, a 52-year-old culinary instructor who lives in Greenbrae, started attending Moving Center classes 16 years ago and still goes to sessions twice a week.
"I wanted to dance, but traditional ballet and modern dance classes didn't feel right," she said. "5Rhythms felt right, plus I have a busy mind, and sitting meditation wasn't the right vehicle for me. But movement takes me to a place where my mind can step out of the way and let my spirit speak through my body."
She also used 5Rhythms as a rehabilitation therapy after a scuba-diving accident left her temporarily paralyzed. "I used the practice as a healing tool to not only recover physically, but also emotionally and spiritually," she said.
The idea behind 5Rhythms is to get people out of their heads, to remind them that they have bodies they may have lost touch with, not to mention hearts and souls.
"What starts to happen is you put the body in motion and the mind gets still, it gets quieter," Saltzman said. "And what starts to happen is the places in our hearts that have stopped moving go in motion again."
Drop-in sessions at locations like the Tam Valley Community Center, the Pickleweed Community Center in San Rafael and the MLK Gym in Sausalito are called "Endless Waves" because, as Cathy Altman puts it, "everything in the universe moves in waves, patterns and rhythms."
With that in mind, the school doesn't teach dance steps or choreography per se, but a practice called "the Wave," a 5Rhythms sequence of patterns described as: flowing, staccato, chaos, lyrical and stillness.
"What we do in class is encourage people, through music, which has different rhythms, to move through these states and eventually have them take them to a place where all effort disappears," Saltzman explains. "You're now being dancing, as opposed to just dancing."
Saltzman and Altman noticed that 5Rhythms really started to take off a decade ago when there was a strong urge to belong to a community of like-minded people.
"People are dying for a sense of themselves in a group situation," Saltzman said. "With this practice, you're actually moving in a group, so you're building a sense of community. When you move together it builds a deep sense of camaraderie. And when you meet with music in a form of meditation that's fun, it takes the worry out of being close."
Last month, Saltzman and Altman participated in training 80 new 5Rhythms teachers from all over the world. They see their work as going beyond personal growth and moving into the health-care system, into schools, senior centers and community service programs.
"We almost can't keep up with the demand," Saltzman said. "This is really moving back into its original root, which is to serve everybody and not just people who want to come in and dance."
IF YOU SWEAT
What: Sweat Your Prayers
When: 9:30 to 11:30 a.m. Saturdays at Pickleweed Community Center, 50 Canal St., San Rafael; 8:30 to 10:30 a.m. or 11 a.m. to 1 p.m. at Martin Luther King Gym, 100 Coloma St., Sausalito
Cost: $15
What: Endless Waves
When: 6:30 to 8:30 Tuesdays at Tam Valley Community Center, 203 Marin Ave., Mill Valley; 7 to 9 p.m. Wednesdays at MLK Gym
Cost: $18
Information: 388-0431 or go to www.movingcenterschool.com (https://www.movingcenterschool.com)
Paul Liberatore can be reached at [email protected].