Did you know that dance can transport us beyond the realm of the every day? To the land between time. To dream time. To future. To past. We can travel with our souls. Dance can transport us.
On this morning, January 1st 2014 I travelled with a small band of warriors. Brave men and women seeking more clearly, fully, strongly how to walk with Light.
We danced a dance that took us from the past, connecting to our ancestors; to this moment balanced between past and future; and finally to the future – where the souls that are not yet born are watching us, seeing what we choose to manifest, and which dreams we choose to spin into the world.
Some of the magic that danced with our circle of women in Zimbabwe during the recent Women are Medicine retreat, danced with us here. In Northern Ireland.
A vision entered me in this dance. A vision danced with me.
The beginning of the dance was filled with light. With joy. So immense, so light, so bright. I felt like an angel flying high. High.
As we moved into the dance of the future, I met the Lions. The lions of Mana Pools in Zimbabwe. Perhaps they were the lions of everywhere. I saw how they are watching us and waiting. What will we choose?
And I cry. I am wrecked with grief, as I watch how as a collective we are choosing to destroy them. From this place of light and freedom I connect with the deep grief that is also true. Wondering how I can feel these two so close together, and wondering if I will ever escape the feeling of immense grief. A sea of grief. A vast vast ocean.
I experience how grief sinks deep roots into the earth.
Joy lifts me up – high. Grief brings me down into the centre of the earth. Both are needed. How can I dance between them?
In the moment where I experience each one, it feels like the only reality. In this moment I am wondering whether the grief will ever end. Ever?
I dance and dance and dance and then it moves through me. And I realise that I can dance with the lions. I can play with them. And we play. We romp, we run. The grief has lifted. I feel the women of my ancestral line behind me, strong beautiful women giving me strength. I am not alone.
I am in the future dancing with the lions.
And then grief returns, fills me once more. Back and forth. Joy and grief. Entwined.
I have a sense that there is something I am missing. Something I am not seeing. This dance continues because I am not yet seeing something.
And then I get it. Lion is asking me not to wallow in this grief. Not to remain here. Not to simply mourn him, but to use the grief to help me access his medicine. To fuel the courage, power and grace of Lion in Me. He is asking me to embody him. In crying I have created space for light and joy and Lion (!) to enter.
‘Let the light in’, Lion says, and ‘Run with me. Run with me. We have work to do.’
He looks back once, and then runs.
I run with him.
The courage of lion enters my body through the crack of grief that has broken me open.
Open heart, open soul, running with lions.
As we closed the dance – in that moment – rain fell from the heavens.
Bringing blessings.
Manna from heaven.
Soft Irish rain.
I am left knowing that I am not alone.
Lion runs beside me.
Ever-growing circles of dancers, dancing light into this world, dance with me.
May we all run with the lions, fly with eagles, go gently with deer.
We have work to do.
We have lights to shine.
And they have medicine to offer.
Dancing Universe 
So appreciate your words, Marianne, in this post and the previous few.
I ended the year and began anew with Dance. I went to Halifax in late September for a glorious week of dance in a lovely studio on St. Margaret’s Bay. With my Haligonian sister, we shared magic, healing, and beauty. Mother Nature graced and celebrated us – a wee tribe of women from across Canada – with sunshine and exceptional warmth, cavorting whales and soaring eagles, and full autumn colour. After months of struggle in my head, recuperating from a viral infection and all that cracked open, I found my joy, laughter, and the commitment to step back into the dance at home. And then a lapse.
I’ve been reading your posts throughout. I’ve observed my hesitancy, not only to reply to you, but also to step back into the Dance, despite knowing all it gives. I know, too, the grief and fear it summons, held in ancestral, cellular DNA, past and perhaps, future, though released when my body moves without thought, guided by sensation and sound and as you offer, a bigger medicine.
Yes, I join you in the Dance. I know we have work to do.
Blessings and a warm embrace from my home in the winter snow and cold of Canada.
Dear Katherine,
I am so grateful to read your words. I have a deep sense of the power of the dance. I must admit that there is a part of me that wishes for everyone to dance – and of course I know that we each have our own gateways. I am amazed at how much my story has offered to so many who like me are finding the gifts of this simple and deeply profound practice. I want to dance more, write more, dive deep more.
It is the first time I have found a practice that I know is the work, and deepens my capacity to do the work that is mine to do, and at the same time feels so much like play, play, play, play.
I wondered recently where my grief had gone. So much joy was showing up in my dance, and then suddenly the grief returned, but this time much more balanced – grief… joy… joy… grief. Dancing, flowing together. The dance offering me a vehicle to let them both move through me, creating space, space, space. And where there is space, there is creativity, capacity, response-ability.
:)> I am so happy you are joining me.
You can also join us in souldancing, a facebook group where a small group of us connect and share stories and images and impulses from the dance.
with love,
M