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Moving Presence workshop with Nirtana Jane Elin and Muiz Brinkerhoff

Moving Presence
A Creative Collaboration of Movement and Awareness
with Nirtana Jane Elin & Muiz Brinkerhoff

Saturday 24 March 2012
9.30 am – 12.30 pm
Sebastopol Center for the Arts 6780 Depot Street Sebastopol, California
$ 45
$10 Early Registration Discount, before 19 March.
Some low income concessions available, apply early.

Registration and Questions
[email protected]

Could your dance experience be more potent and present?
No matter how you approach dance and movement: as group spiritual practice, formalized ceremony, or free-form ecstatic expression, there is always more to be experienced, subtler levels of inner awareness and outer expression, which can lead to deepening your internal dance experience and a broadening of your movement vocabulary.

Join Nirtana and Muiz as they offer a variety of ways to enhance your movement experience, working towards fully inhabiting your bodies in an integrated and authentic manner, so that movement comes from the core of your being, as you open to the universal container of expressive possibilities – the Space from which all powerful and transforming Dance emerges.

We’ll make use of a few Dances of Universal Peace* (aka Sufi Dancing), Breath Practice, and a selection of dance-movement motif explorations stemming from Laban’s dance analytics in order to:
! Bring breath, awareness, intention to movements
! Expand consciousness while staying present
! Experiment with conscious, embodied movement
! Broaden Dance / Movement Vocabulary
! Deepen embodiment of movement elements
! Develop creativity in dance motifs
! Open to using Dance as a Spiritual Practice, and a vehicle for transformation and healing

Nirtana Jane Elin
A dance artist and educator with over 30 years experience, and Sufi practioner, Nirtana is a seasoned professional in ballet, classical modern, Bharata Natyam, Rudolph Laban’s analytics and Choreological Studies, disability dance, and embodied somatic movement. She has a BA in Dance, a Masters degree in Education, and is a published author of the college textbook, Re-envisioning Dance.

Muiz Brinkerhoff
For the past 32 years, within his own Sufi spiritual practice, Muiz has mentored Dancers and Dance leaders, and worked with his own Sufi students in the US, and in the UK. His focus is a unique combination of embodied spiritual practice, cultivating a healthy sense of humor, and not taking self too seriously, in order to fully incarnate, inhabit one’s body, and realize that body actually is the temple, and heart is the altar, of God/Goddess/Source.

Dance is the way of Life. Dance is the sway of Life. What Life gives may be expressed with body, heart and soul to the glory of the One and the elevation of humanity, leading to ecstasy and self-realization. This is truly Sacred Dance.
- Paraphrased from Spiritual Dancing by Samuel L. Lewis, American Sufi Master and zen Roshi

The watcher is the prayerful devotee, but the dancer becomes divine.
- Samuel Lewis, mystical poem 'Siva Siva'

*The Dances of Universal Peace are a form of heart-centered meditation in motion, integrating spirit, mind and body, through awareness of breath, sound, movement, and silence. Combining simple circle dance forms, with singing or chanting the Divine Names and sacred phrases from the major World Religions, the Dances offer easy access to expanded states of consciousness, and to an experience of Unity — without allegiance to particular dogmas, or theological belief systems.

03-24-2012

Moving Presence workshop with Nirtana Jane Elin and Muiz Brinkerhoff

Paul R. Fleishman, MD, on Vipassana Meditation and the Scientific World View