Healing Power of Dance

Last year when I was in Santa Fe, a sharman told me that people feel healed when they watch me dance. That I am a healer who has the capacity to heal and uplift people through beautiful movements. I was skeptical. I know much has been written about arts therapy. But for some reason it always appeared to me to be poor artists trying to find a lucrative way to make money by repacking their art into art therapy. I was not entirely convinced of the healing power of dance. I did believe that music affects brain chemistry and has a healing dimension. Dance - I was not so sure. And this is coming from a dancer - someone who had trained rigorously and performed extensively and taught passionately for over 30 years. And yet I was not convinced of the healing power of dance. But a few things happened lately that made me change my mind. As I evolve spiritually and mature emotionally I realize that I am better able to integrate the spiritual and the vibrational power of a place into my movement. Dance is now evolving beyond its physical beauty and complex choreography. Dance is now evolving beyond experimental multidisciplinary work. Dance is now evolving beyond education and entertainment. Dance is now becoming more and more a source of divine energy and way to tap into a higher consciousness. For a long time I understood this intuitively but I did not feel it emotionally. Transcendence via movement still eluded me until recently. It was my dad's 70th birthday a few days ago. Unlike the previous birthdays which were often focussed around food and fellowship, this time my family decided to play a bongo and sing old and new songs. My dad who has severe late stage Parkinson's hardly ever opens his eyes nowadays. He hardly interacts with the world. But as we sang and played the bongo I could see him awaken, alert and energized. He was tapping into a deeper place within that only music and dance could reach into. He gave a beautiful speech on Tamil language and the need to stay united as minorities. Although not entirely coherent I could see what an amazing and positive effect that dance and music has on suffering and pain. I had a similar experience in Los Angeles when I performed at a yoga studio last year. A small crowd has come to watch me dance after a long day at work and battling LA traffic. But at the end of the one hour of performance everyone went home with a shining face. And I loved it. To be able to bring so much joy and energy into people's heart and tap directly into a higher space within is truly an honor. Maybe the sharman was right after all.