There are some magical moments that are imprinted in the soul and follow us perhaps forever.
The stage is dark, only a light that crosses it from the back right corner to the front left and then the dancer. Black glossy hair tied in a bun, black eyes with sharp contours, a black spot between the two eyebrows, pink saree, adorned hands who were the first to move and start talking to the audience. Then the body, the soles, the face spoke, telling us a story that didn't matter who it was.
The stage is dark, a light in the center as if coming directly from a star in the sky and in the light the dancer. Disobedient blonde hair, colorless face, underwear on the body that just started to move turned into light that endlessly drew curves and circles until it met infinity.
The stage is dark, three beams of light and the dancers in them. A slow Oooooooom and 108 Salutations to the Sun, Surya Namaskar, that although it was night we all felt deep inside the power of the existence of the Sun at the center of our solar system, the power of the Life-Giving Sun.
That was the magic moment! Sens dance festival in the 90s in France. Three completely different images that locked inside me together and became one! Dance and yoga. Expression, freedom and alignment. Stylize, solve and repeat. All as complementary as they are different. All to be inspired by the eternal question of the Essence of Existence.
If yoga is the realization of the Self, the higher essence that resides in existence, if yoga is the effort to free oneself from the successive cycles of life and death, if yoga is the respect for the "carrier" of the soul, then dance is the expression of the Self, it is the simulation of liberation from samsara, it is the glorification of the "carrier" of the soul, the body.
With these thoughts of hers accompanying me and having come a long way in modern dance, I began to explore the endless, vast world of yoga. And as I got lost and found myself among new data and information the only thing that remained real was that magical moment. There I leaned in order to distinguish a clear path. Walking it gave rise to Yoga Dance, Free Flow and finally their connection with Primitive Dance and the rhythms of the African continent.
All three together one unit: Free Flow and Release. You can do yoga, breathe deeply, hold your alignments, flow through the asanas, and then let the alignment "melt away," disappear. You can give your movement the shape of your emotions. Move to the rhythm of your heart. You can do Pranayama by singing or simply making a sound in your exhalation. You hear the vibrations of the earth under your feet, beyond the ground or the floors of the building where you may be. You feel the soil on your "feet". You can move endlessly in the same pattern and in this way enter the deepest meditation. You can open the "gates of your unconscious" and see the picture without the blinders of fixed beliefs. Thinking outside the box! In Free Flow and Release practices you discover your true Self.
By Katerina Spyropoulou Yoga House Studio
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