DANCE / MOVEMENT

Related States & Conditions | Syntonic | Dystonic

Nothing rests; everything moves; everything vibrates.
Hermes Trimegistus
Khemetic Magus, Egyptian God Thoth, Greek God of Law & Letters
in The Kybalion: Hermetic Philosophy , 1912, 1940

There is no heart that does not move with the motion of rhythm.
Muhammad
c. 570-632, Arab Prophet, Founder of Islam

When you strive to gain quiescence by stopping motion,
The quiescence thus gained is ever in motion.
Jianzhi Sengcan
526-606, Chinese Chan Master, 3rd Zen Patriarch
"On Believing in Mind," 5, Daisetz Teitaro Suzuki, tr.

How long will you move backward?
Come forward; do not stray in unbelief;
come dancing to Divine Knowledge.
Rumi
1207-1273, Afghani-Turkish Sufi Mystic, Poet

Mad with joy, life and death dance to the rhythm of this music.
The hills and the sea and the earth dance.
The world of man dances in laughter and tears.
Kabir
1440-1518, Indian Sufi Master
One Hundred Poems of Kabir

Our natures lie in motion, without which we die.
Blaise Pascal
1623-1662, French Scientist, Mathematician, Philosopher

We should consider every day lost in which we have not danced at least once.
Nietzsche
1844-1900, German Philosopher, Critic, Poet

Dancing is the loftiest, the most moving, the most beautiful of the arts, because it is no mere translation or abstraction from life; it is life itself.
Havelock Ellis
1859-1939, English Physician, Sexologist, Essayist

Dancing may be said to be a graceful expression of thought and feeling without uttering a word. It may be used also to impress the soul by movement, by producing an ideal picture before it. When beauty of movement is taken as the presentment of the divine ideal, then the dance becomes sacred.
Hazrat Khan
1882-1927, Indian Sufi Master, Musician
The Mysticism of Sound and Music , 1991

Jungle jazzing. Orient wrigging, civilized stepping. Shake that thing. Sweet dancing thing of primitive joy, perverse pleasure, prostitute ways, many adored variations of the rhythm, savage, barbaric, refined – eternal rhythm of the mysterious magical, magnificent – the dance divine of life. Oh, shake that thing.
Claude McKay
1889-1948, Jamaican Poet, Writer
Banjo , 1929

The body says what words cannot.
Martha Graham
1894-1991, American Dancer, Teacher, Choreographer

Dance can play a special part in helping us achieve self-awareness and fulfill ourselves from our true nature – particularly when it comes to finding our very own personal rhythm … Everything that goes toward determining correct overall posture – the balance between heaven and earth, male and female, Yin and Yang, the world outside and the world within – is revealed in the way people walk, and even more so in the way they dance.
Karlfried Durckheim
1896-, German Psychologist, Philosopher
The Call for the Master , Vincent Nash, tr., 1989

We are the men of the dance, whose feet draw new strength pounding the hardened earth.
Leopold Senghor
1906-, Senegalese Poet, Essayist, President
"Prayer to Masks," Selected Poems , John Reed and Clive Wake, trs., 1964

The truest expression of a people is in its dances and its music. Bodies never lie.
Agnes de Mille
1908-1993, American Choreographer

There is a purifying process in dancing.
Katherine Dunham
1910-, African-American Choreographer, Anthropologist

Why aren't you dancing with joy at this very moment? is the only relevant spiritual question.
Vilayat Khan
1916-, Indian-British Sufi Master, Writer

The dance is strong magic. The dance is a spirit. It turns the body to liquid steel. It makes it vibrate like a guitar. The body can fly without wings. It can sing without voice. The dance is strong magic.
Pearl Primus
1919-1994, Trinidadian/American Dancer, Choreographer, Educator

Rhythm is the soul of life. Every cell in your body moves in a constant rhythm. When we get out of rhythm, that is when we get into trouble.
Babatunde Olatunji
1927-, Nigerian Musician, Writer
in Hartford Courant , 2001

Of what is the body made?
It is made of emptiness and rhythm.
At the ultimate heart of the body, at the heart of the world, there is no solidity … there is only the dance.
George Leonard
1931-, American Educator, Writer

We've all been dancing since the beginning of time. We're always in motion, even if we think we're not. If you feel static, then you've got a problem.
Judith Jamison
1943-, African-American Dancer, Choreographer
Dancing Spirit

Dance is vulnerability; it's about giving your love, light, generosity.
Jamison
in Essence , 1988 December

My job is to be resilient. That's why I call life a dance.
Bill T. Jones
1952-, African-American Dancer, Choreographer

Everything is animate. Everything moves. It's just that some things move slower than other things, like the mountains or the ground itself. But everything has its movement, has its life.
David Abram
American Philosopher, Ecologist, Magician
Radio interview, "Insight & Outlook," by Scott London, 1999

Dancing symbolizes the rhythmic, patterned movements of life itself. Music and dance amplify and make manifest to our senses the unheard tones and unseen waves that weave together the matter of existence. Even when we are sitting most still or resting in deepest sleep, the atoms, molecules, cells, tissues, organs, and systems of our bodies dance in astounding harmony and exchange the ambient energies from air, water, food, and invisible electromagnetic radiation.
Yaya Diallo
Mali Musician, Healer
in Yaya Diallo & Mitchell Hall, The Healing Drum: African Wisdom Teachings , 1989

Life is movement, movement is life.
To live is to move, to move is to be alive.
- Mirka Knaster

It's the heart afraid of breaking that never learns to dance.
- Amanda McBroom

When your body dances, your soul travels and remembers, free of the limits of this life, free of the limitations of time and space.
- Frank Natale

The language of movement is rhythm. Rhythm is our mother tongue, and everything is moving in a beat, in a pulse, in a pattern, in a cycle, in a wave. I began to notice that as people surrendered to their dance, their soul became more visible. And when that energy was visible, one could see the patterns of rhythm that were natural to the soul. These five rhythms are Flowing, Staccato, Chaos, Lyrical, and Stillness. And each one is like a state of being.
Gabrielle Roth
American Dance/Music Therapist

Sweat your prayers, dance your pain, and move on.
Roth

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Wisdom for The Soul: Five Millennia of Prescriptions for Spiritual Healing, © 2004