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5Rhythms
Moving into You 5Rhythms Awareness Practice Offers Something Meditation Doesn’t—MOVEMENT! January 17, 2010
By Mona Frastaci
 Have you ever thought you could move yourself into stillness? That you could dance yourself into greater contact with yourself as well as those around you? With the dynamic practice of a body of work called the 5Rhythms, you can, and our community is fortunate to have the only certified 5Rhythms instructor in the Southwest right here in Taos, teaching every week.
The 5Rhythms is a movement meditation practice that was started by Gabrielle Roth in the early ’60s. Roth and The Movement Center School are based in New York City but the work happens wherever a 5Rhythms community exists, and the heart of ours lies with Visudha de los Santos, who brought the 5Rhythms to Taos when she moved here in January 2008.
Often referred to as “dance,” the 5Rhythms is actually an awareness practice. It is not a freeform dance, but it is not a rigidly guided or instructed movement practice either. “The 5Rhythms are states of being,” states the 5Rhythms Global website. “They are a map to everywhere we want to go on all planes of consciousness—inner and outer, forward and back, physical, emotional and intellectual. In dancing them you can track perceptions and memories; seek out gestures and shapes; tune into instincts and intuitions. They reveal ways to creatively express aggressiveness and vulnerability, emotions and anxieties, edges and ecstasies. They reconnect us to cycles of birth, death and renewal and hook us up to the spirit in all living things. They initiate us back into the wisdom of our bodies and unleash movement’s dynamic healing power.”
The Practice
While practicing the 5Rhythms can be as simple as showing up once a week and dancing what is called a “wave”—the sequential 5Rhythms of Flow, Staccato, Chaos, Lyrical and Stillness—the body of work is actually so extensive and rich with potential and meaning that it can easily fill a lifetime to delve into its many depths, continually exploring the various aspects of the work and one’s self. To become an instructor, extensive training that takes years of work and thousands of hours is required. Because people often enter the practice through a wave, they don’t realize how much is involved in learning and teaching the work, de los Santos explains. “The idea is to live the rhythms on and off the dance floor. We apply what we discover on the dance floor in our lives.”
The construct of the work is that by facilitating awareness through the vehicle of our body, we can more deeply know ourselves as well as the people around us, and we can transform the things that exist as barriers—within ourselves and with our relations. One dance at a time, we heal ourselves and our world. As we show up and move to the 5Rhythms, we connect to what is present for us on any level, be it emotional, physical, psychological or spiritual. “We transform whatever shows up and we turn it into art—the art of our lives,” de los Santos says.
A 5Rhythms session typically involves a variety of music orchestrated around each rhythm, some amount of instruction (more in deeper workshops) and an atmosphere in which there is no conversation. This does not mean you have to be silent, it just means the focus is on the dance—your body, your emotions, your breath, your mind (and what might be showing up that distracts you), your spirit and your heart. Dancers can make sounds and noises—part of expressing what shows up for them—but there is no talking or conversation between participants until they step off the dance floor.
The Body
The body is related to as an intimate, personal messenger, bringing us vital information about ourselves. We begin to see and notice what’s here for us—the same principle as meditation, but instead of sitting still and silent, you can move in any manner, shape or form that suits you—and the less that act of movement comes from the head, the better. A 5Rhythms environment is one where nobody is going to blink an eye whether you’re flapping around like a fish out of water, twirling like a top, childishly skipping, elegantly gliding, stomping around like you’re Godzilla, rolling on the floor, shaking your booty in ways you’ve never tried before, or any other of the myriad of potential movements a human being can come up with. It’s not a place of being “a good dancer,” because there is no “good” or standard in the realm of intimate contact one can make within themselves, or the manner that unfolds for moving whatever is discovered there. The movement is not mental, it is not plotted, it is not intended. It just is. Our bodies get to move however they want to, without a mental process acting as director.
“Dance—that word can be intimidating for people,” de los Santos explains. “They say ‘Oh gosh, I don’t want to dance,’ they get concerned about body image, if they can move well enough, that people will be watching them, or whatever, but the whole thing is that it’s not really the ‘dance,’ it’s not about coming to class and dancing in front of people—it’s dance as a metaphor for our life.” Because whatever shows up on the dance floor shows up in our lives. And the more we practice, the more the things that show up in our lives can be brought to the dance, to be transformed. We can bring our pain, frustrations, sadness, anger, sense of loss or being lost; joy or celebration—anything.
The work happens “by really taking the time to drop into a very tangible thing like our body,” de los Santos shares. “I’ve done a thousand spiritual practices—religious practices, meditation—I was a seeker all of my life until I found this. The thing was, it didn’t matter what I was doing, my mind was still busy.” Using the body is a very concrete, direct way to enter into stillness. “Moving in stillness and being still in motion transforms the accumulation of our life experiences into wisdom,” the website says. The invitation is to drop whatever is going on in your head and to move—and that if you still find yourself thinking, to move faster. You can’t think if you’re moving fast enough; your body takes over.
Awareness
You become aware, but not from a place of the mind. In fact, science has discovered that we have a second brain in our bodies, and it is in our belly—a part of our body much more central to movement than our head-brain. Dr. Michael Gershon, professor at Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons in New York City, has done extensive research demonstrating that the enteric nervous system that lines the digestive tract operates as an independent, second brain within the body.
In the dance, we become aware through our bodies, and through this act of awareness, we are more able to let go of our attachments. “Through the act of releasing attachments, we’re transforming whatever is showing up for us, whether it’s within ourselves or in relationship with our partners, or in our smaller communities or the greater communities,” de los Santos explains. “We’re building connection. We start by building the connection within ourselves, breaking down those walls of separation within: the good/the bad, the approval/not approval, the dichotomies and dualities within ourselves which can then extend beyond into our relationships with our partners, our families, our work groups and our other community groups. We’re seeking the unified field within ourselves so we don’t experience pain and separation.”
Bound by the Beat
The aspect of community is a fundamental part of the 5Rhythms work. “The 5Rhythms community is a 21st century tribe unbound by history, culture, race, religion, gender or politics. We are bound by the beat, following our feet on a dancing path to freedom,” states the 5Rhythms website.
“The community piece is very important to me,” expresses de los Santos. “We can not truly make a difference, we can’t make peace within and in our communities if we don’t know and express authentically who we are, our essential selves.” She has spent 20 years involved with community development and education, and values the contribution further made to our community when people from other parts of the country come to Taos to attend her workshops.
The deeper background of this work also lies in community, with Sufi and shamanic traditions that involved communities dancing together regularly, during which healing was happening. “The medicine man was there and they did it as a community, they didn’t do it alone. These tribes’ connections to heaven and earth deepened the connection to the universal web,” de los Santos shares, expressing that through this work there can maybe be a hope of changing the world around us, shifting whatever is happening with the earth mother.
“It’s the only true peace work I know,” she says. “True peace can’t begin if we don’t know peace within—if we’re always in conflict within ourselves, feeling conflict and confusion, wondering if we’re doing things right or if we’re being our true selves or if we’re being judgmental, critical. If we learn to be more accepting of ourselves, this creates some peace.”
“As we learn to be more accepting of ourselves, which is definitely something that ripens with practice, trust in ourselves deepens. The whole body of work is around listening to our own internal source—you the student learning about your own awareness—to understand and honor the source within, to follow and act upon our own inner authority because we don’t need anything else, just to be with the source that we already have. We learn to follow our own rhythm with harmony and grace.
“Movement gives us much more space when we allow ourselves to go to these places; our creative potential expands because we’ve just given ourselves another way. These rhythms really do hold the key to our soul’s journey.”
Resistance
Resistance is commonplace in this work. “Human beings love resistance!” de los Santos asserts. “We more easily go into the energy of No, rather than the energy of Yes. No keeps us safe in what we know, what is comfortable, whereas Yes takes us to territory we don’t know, to the great unknown which can be deeply uncomfortable.” Resistance can show up in our minds, hearts and bodies—in our decision to show up at the dance or not, even when it is something a person knows they want to do. And the resistance is welcome at the 5Rhythms too. “It’s your collective energy body saying, ‘No, I don’t want to go, I don’t want to move,’ while your soul is saying, ‘Yes, I want to live life, I want to be bigger than this.’ It’s resistance in motion.” In her classes, de los Santos often tells participants to give 100 percent, to go all in, that in this work, that is what is asked of them. So if resistance is what’s there, a person should to give it 100 percent too, letting the body express that in whatever way the person is feeling it, and seeing what happens next. Resistance can in fact be one of the greatest things to transform, time and again.
ROOTS = FREEDOM
“ROOTS, go deep, grow strong” is the slogan for the workshop that de los Santos will be teaching for three consecutive Sundays starting January 17. “We’ll really look at the roots of our lives—what sustains us, what supports us—while delving into the 5Rhythms.” For de los Santos and this body of work she has created, ROOTS = FREEDOM, and the components of Roots are breath, music, movement and awareness. “By really using these four things, we can get to freedom,” she explains. “By accessing the source within, we gain freedom, we become our own inner authority. We’re really trying to go a little deeper with the material of our lives.”
Studying with Roth since 1999 and having taught the 5Rhythms work since 2004, de los Santos says, “The rhythms are my life—they are the filter in which I explore my life.” She structures everything in her life around the 5Rhythms class that she offers weekly in Taos, and she teaches all over the country among roughly 40 other certified 5Rhythms teachers in the United States, and many others around the world. Her background includes a variety of other body-based modalities like massage, yoga and reiki, and she holds a degree in expressive arts.
Jonathan Horan, Gabrielle Roth’s son and biggest collaborator, has been involved with the 5Rhythms since his early childhood and teaches the work around the globe. He is hopefully going to be coming to Taos in November of this year. “He’s a great big, giant dancing bear, a wonderful man with a huge, open heart who has really stepped into his wisdom,” de los Santos says. “It is such an honor to be in his presence.” Later this year, many of us will have the opportunity to feel that—with an entire year before us now to literally move ourselves into a community to welcome him.
Visudha’s 5Rhythms class, Sunday Waves, is every Sunday, 10:30-noon at Taos Academy of Dance Arts. No experience required. $12. Contact Visudha at 575-737-0408 or info@moveandbemoved.net.
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