5 rhythms peer group disbanding

I feel sad about this. We've been dancing together on Sunday mornings for 7 years. I love this group--its familiarity and intimacy. Some people have come and gone, but a core has remained. Gary, Lisa, Elizabeth, Steve, Scott, Cherrie, Karin, Lakshmi, and others more recent or sporadic.

It's been just wonderful to enter the studio (we've danced at 3--at Zein's Arabic Bazaar, Quicksilver, and now Khabele) on Sunday morning and know I was entering a sacred space, nonverbal, to move to programs we put together ourselves. It's been like entering into silence, only the silence has music, movement, and companionship.

No one is needy or intrusive or very sociable--or unfriendly. We all know there's time to interact in a "regular" manner later--this is our sacred time to move, together in a space but separately. I love that. It's been a gift that has allowed me to focus deeply on my body, my habits and patterns, and become more authentic in my dance, and more graceful, more centered, more grounded, more aware, more whole, more healed.

Lisa has been training to become a 5 rhythms teacher. She wants to teach and can't do both. (She and Gary have been the mainstays of the peer group, doing the music most of the time, renting the space, buying the equipment.) Plus, Gabrielle Roth doesn't like peer groups.

I'm glad Lisa is pursuing her goal and actualizing her life. I wish her the best teaching the 5 rhythms, and I will go to some of her classes. I hope I never get to a place where I think I know enough, that no one can teach me anything. Beginner's mind no matter how much experience you have is a reverent approach to learning. Because you never know it all. There's always more to explore, and my years--13 or so--with the 5 rhythms have deepened my exploration and appreciation of the wonder and complexity of life.

But I still feel like I will want to rent a studio sometimes and go into it with some peers and just move to music with reverence.

I'm doing the program this Sunday, and I loaded it with favorites over the time I've been dancing the rhythms: Peter Gabriel, Rusted Root, Geoffrey Oreyema, Toni Childs, Rachid Taha, Gotan Project, Suru, Leftfield, Ashkara, Doug Sahm, Lyle Lovett, k.d. lang, Thomas Barque, Rachel Bagby.

I'll miss the following Sunday, and our final dance together will be April 20. That date is a turning point for me. I don't know what my map will be after that, but I know I will follow my heart, and that it will be a moving experience.