Listening to a discussion of Shamanism on the radio, I hear dancing as an aspect of shamanism referred to as pejoratively. Indigenous people do, “dance around, wear headdresses and blow smoke at you “…
In my life, I have spent many years participating in indigenous ceremonies.
The dances expressing the essence have been the most profound, exquisite, healing, bonding and creative song to multiplicity of our worlds.
One of the reasons I feel such confusion about contemporary western psychological shamanism is that there is no dancing, that the community aspect of shamanism is missing.
I first heard buffalo songs in womb if indeed they were not what called me into this life.
An intact ceremonial dance is created from a community, from its deep history thousands of years of dancing, looking at buffalo dancers thousands of years of buffalo dancers present past and future dance there, the multiverse opens to hold us in its sweet compassionate embrace.
Songs are created from heart, history and knowing, singing of gratitude for all that we receive, life breaths wisdom, light night, plant life, animal life, rock life, mountain and river life, sunlight, stars, wind, song, dance, creativity. A specific group in a specific place in a specific time dons the dance. In the fullness of ceremony a community is called together, preparations are made, logs are gathered, food is prepared, songs are prepared, dances are prepared, hearts are prepared, souls are prepared, our sweet frail humanness is prepared. There is fasting, fasting from meat, from salt, from anger list hatred, revenge, fear, shame, pride. Each cleanses the earth, the heart, the village, the body, the soul, the song, the community, the dance. Step by note the community reweaves life consciously, with beauty and love, with receptivity and release.
In dance the community honors and shines its wholeness, it is not individuals, it is a living organism expanded through the multiverse beyond space and time. We each with great reverence and joy take up our note, our step, our thread in weaving of reality. With the song and dances our hearts beat as one, we move into deep reality the rich compassionate multiplicity of being.
“We dance to create the world.”