WHAT: a community co-created safe space that will support you to explore the vastness and depth of your consciousness through body movement.

WHO CAN ATTEND: 18+ age

Open to everyone. You need no prior experience in dance or movement. You will be supported all the way. There will be ample instructions to support you enter into the movement space.

WHAT WILL WE DO?

Closer to the end of every month on Sunday evenings we will gather in community space to refresh ourselves for the next month.

We will engage in:

- 30 minutes: co-create safe space and warm-up

- 60 minutes: 5Rhythms Engagement

- 30 minutes: Group art & self-reflection

WHAT TO WEAR:

Dress comfortably. Wear loosely fitting clothes. Avoid jeans or anything thats too tight on you including “tights”. Wear fabric that lets the blood, muscles, bones in your body move and breathe.

WHAT'S THE INTENTION?

Movement and doing is the nature of the body, and Non-doing the nature of the mind. Yet, in our day to day lives we experience the reverse. Overcrowded minds and unmoving sitting restless bodies. We have become stiff in the body and in the mind. That is not our nature.

Somewhere trapped inside all that is our true playful nature that wants to explore, engage, express, embody life.

Think of the consciousness in a new born baby rediscovering its body for the first time everyday, and the blissful glee it exuberates.

Today play has got reduced to engagement in structured activities. Even modern day childhood is getting spent indoors instead of being out there in open free spaces - running, hopping, swaying, flowing, skipping - experiencing consciousness through the body.

What would it mean to just let the body play in open free space - uninhibited - let it move, flow, dance, and rediscover its own nature - within and without.

What would it mean to witness your movements through the sensations, feelings and happenings in the body as you let it play?

What would it mean to pause, reset and restart towards the end of every month?

If you are new to movement and playful exploration in the body, you are encouraged to come consecutively for the first three months to experience more continuity and relaxedness in your body.

ABOUT THE SPACE:

Organic Body Play will happen in the Big Studio at Shoonya that naturally welcomes and invites the body to engage, move and make conversations in its spacious body.

FACILITATOR - Rekha Kurup - Expressive Arts therapist and facilitator, Transpersonal Womens Spirituality Coach and Ritualist, Creative Artivist, Circle facilitator and Art of Living Breathing instructor for adults and children.

“Organic Body Play is an amalgamation of my own journey with movement through the last decade. As a child I was an overly enthusiastic girl - legs hopping, arms swaying -kind. The humble financial background of my growing up didn’t support me to engage in any dance lessons or classes in school. I wuld watch dance classes through windows and doorways and come home and train my sisters and then the two of us would be dancing away for guests who visited our homes.

However, as life happens - my journey into engineering and computers and marriage and all that somehow took away the dance out of me. My arms stuck close to my body. It was in 2001 at the Art of Living course that I rediscovered my free flowing arms, movement and the wild girl within. Then in 2004 I stepped into my first 5Rhythms studio in California and it was dance wonderland for me. That exploration continued. Then in 2007, I had the opportunity to participate in a 9-week doctoral dissertation research study of Dr Valerie Sher titled “Women's Embodiment of the Feminine through Movement” at the Institute of Transpersonal Psychology. It was an orgasmic experience meeting consciousness through my body - in every cell of my body. In 2010 I entered the Women's Spirituality masters program at the same school which further deepened Embodied Movement with phenomenal movement instructors.

Movement became a spiritual practice for me. Then in India I certified myself with a diploma in Expressive Art Therapy with movement therapy as one of the components.

My relationship with movement has deepened and grown in immensely powerful ways - from discovering past memories to releasing powerful knots and unrest in the body to rediscovering silence and stillness of consciousness within and without.

I feel movement is for everyone and when engaged as and in play - it presents a glimpse into our own vastness - for the entire universe is only energy and vibration in a constant dance. To even dip into that infinite ocean of consciousness- one feels awakened and released.

Movement is another form of mediation. It compliments life and living. Come and together lets explore and express.”