When: Monday 13 July 2015
Where: St Peter’s Anglican Church, 8 Walton Avenue, Auckland Park
Time: 6.30pm to 8pm
Investment: R100 per class for dancers with a solid income / R70 for those whose incomes are irregular / R50 for students
Bring drinking water and wear comfortable clothes that you can freely move in. There is secure off-street parking with a car guard, so please come join us.
anita van der merwe
anitavdm29@gmail.com

Being quite an emotionally intense person, I was recently reminded of Rumi’s poem, The Guest House, in which he encourages us to view ourselves as a guest house through which emotions and thoughts can pass unjudged, each accepted as ‘a guide from beyond’. What a relief not to identify with these ‘guests’, not to take any of them personally!

This is also one of the gifts of the dance for me: it creates a sense of inner spaciousness through which thoughts and emotions can float, without having to cling to any of it. As we keep our bodies in movement and breathe on purpose, we open the channels, or the ‘rooms in the guest house’ to air them out and maybe even gently encourage the ‘visitors’ who have been hiding in the attic or basement to move along…

So please join us tonight for a dance meditation to create inner spaciousness and to reconnect with our peaceful nature using our breath and our bodies’ natural movement.

THE GUEST HOUSE
“This being human is a guest house.
Every morning a new arrival.

A joy, a depression, a meanness,
some momentary awareness comes
As an unexpected visitor.

Welcome and entertain them all!
Even if they’re a crowd of sorrows,
who violently sweep your house
empty of its furniture,
still treat each guest honorably.
He may be clearing you out
for some new delight.

The dark thought, the shame, the malice,
meet them at the door laughing,
and invite them in.

Be grateful for whoever comes,
because each has been sent
as a guide from beyond.”