Mission Statement
Belly dance can heal, transform, and empower women and our well being. This dance is deeply rooted in ancient beliefs. By honoring The divine feminine in us all we can create dances which enact myths, tell stories, and celebrate women. Belly dance has its origins as the birth dance and restores its rightful place in this sacred process.
BELLY DANCING AS THERAPY
Belly dancing affects the mental and the emotional attitudes of those who practice it in several ways.
Mental and emotional problems are responsible for the overwhelming majority of unhappy lives. If, when difficult situations arise, people magnify those difficulties, and at the same time doubt their abilities to cope with them, they inevitably find themselves depressed and blue. The world seems bleak and unprofitable. On the other hand, they refuse to face the difficulty and fortify themselves with a false sense of competence, they soon find themselves on the road to disaster.
Belly dancing forces such people to see themselves and their problems as they are. Even when learning a simple dance step, they will have the opportunity of seeing themselves at work on intellectual and physical tasks that are actually smaller counterparts of some of the greater problems of life. Belly dancing can give such people a realistic appraisal of themselves.
When people have problems they should not run away from them; but instead, should face them. Aspiring belly dancers must also learn to face problems. Learning new dance routines gives them challenges to meet and overcome. Such accomplishments carry over into their lives outside the studio.
It gives them the confidence necessary to face all sorts of difficult problems. Any kind of dancing can help such confidence, but belly dancing is especially helpful in doing so as it takes more concentration than other forms. Children as well as adults can learn to express their inner selves with movement. Music and body must become one, must blend together the imagination and skill of the dancer. Tension and anxiety flow from the body and the dancers feel spiritually restored.
Belly dancing is also thus a catharsis. Being free expression of self, it can ease the pressures (for even children) of the everyday world. When dance pupils let their instructor know they are depressed or discouraged, the instructor will usually tell them to put on their dancing togs and zills, and to dance until they feel better.
Belly dancing relieves the tension in children every bit as much as it does in adults. Children respond quickly and deeply to music, and being less inhibited, their dancing is most often more free and spontaneous. Their losing themselves in the dance helps relieve the many pressures they experience from their parents at home and their peers at school.
Belly dancing is for everyone to enjoy big or small shake your body one and all.