Gentleness is the antidote for cruelty” – Phaedrus
Do you agree that our world needs more gentleness?
But how gentle are you with yourself? Do we agree that healing begins at home?
What does the concept of ‘gentleness’ bring up for you? How does it feel in your body ? And how would you dance ‘gentleness”, if you were given the chance?
Our next SoulDancing session at Cedar Sanctuary is on Feb 20, 2020 and we will be dancing ‘Gentleness”.
It is a theme that has been coming up for me a lot these past weeks.
February is the month of LOVE.
Getting away from the Hallmark Valentine’s day thing, let’s turn our gaze towards ourselves and really see where can we be more gentle and loving towards ourselves.
As I hear Marriane Williamson speak, and other spiritual authors, I understand more and more how self love and deep self care are the antidote to our harsh cruel world that we are living in. When we are kinder, gentler and more loving towards our own bodies, minds, souls, we can then be so much kinder and loving towards others.
Gentleness is a power in itself. It is probably one of the most difficult traits to accept and cultivate in this dog-eat-dog world. Someone who is perceived as gentle can often be thought of as ‘weak’. When someone is gentle with you, when you are in a rage, can it pop you over the edge? And if you are someone who finds it easier to be gentle with others than yourself, what does that say about you? How cruel can you be to yourself? And how cruel do you allow others to be to you?
So I invite you to contemplate this – how would you feel if you gave yourself the utmost amount of gentleness in every moment of your day, in every thought you had, in every decision you made, in every activity you chose? What would that feel like?
Phaedrus (a 5th Century Roman poet) said “Gentleness is the antidote for cruelty”
Let’s make our SoulDancing session this month into a prayer for more gentleness for ourselves and the world. Let’s use our bodies to pray for love and gentleness to prevail.
In our session, we will dance with dualities to find a place of acceptance and non-duality. We will dance our wild nature, and come home to ourselves. Have you noticed how nature (and our emotions) can swing like a pendulum from one side to the other before finding a balance somewhere in the middle?
Often, when I make a strong decision to change something (for example, give up chocolate or bread for while), I will go and eat more chocolate and bread than usual, until I am overfed with it, and then swing back to eating none of it, and finally, come back to a centre stillpoint where balance is restored by eating a little of each, some of the time.
In our SoulDance session in February, we will find our gentle stillpoint by exploring contrasts. Gentleness contrasted with rage, softness contrasted with hardness, order contrasted with chaos. Through the experience of the contrasts, I hope that we can release some of the energy that keeps us being hard on ourselves, and restore a sense of gentleness into our beings.
And in this way, perhaps we can restore a bit more balance and gentleness to the world. For where two or more are gathered with a shared intention… therein lies the power to change the world, right?
In this month of LOVE, come and dance your way to gentleness, and teach your body and your cells what that feels like.
When we change the patterns in our bodies, we change the patterns in our minds.
Let’s cultivate more love and gentleness for ourselves and the world in the month of LOVE.
I look forward to dancing with you… your dance, your way.
Read more about the SoulDancing experience…
Bring your intention / prayer.
Space is limited. Please register with me via email: brenda@alohaflow.net
Come as you are. There’s no right way to do this.
7 for 730pm – 8.30pm at Cedar Sanctuary, 21407 NE 6th Pl, Sammamish, WA
$20 pp
If you have experienced SoulDancing, please share your experience in the comments below.