Crowdsourcing My Self-Care

[lunabee34]

I need some calm and peace and comfort and strength and love and light in my life.

To that end, I would appreciate it if you would tell me about your religious, spiritual, mystical, and/or secular practices, rituals, or behaviors that give you the aforementioned.

Note: I would be delighted with lateral discussion; as a teacher, it is always my goal LOL. However, I will not tolerate any negative comments about peoples' beliefs and practices in this post (which I know is an unnecessary disclaimer as you all are the loveliest people who would never dream of being that kind of jackass).

Comments

[lyr]

Can you explain a little more about what meditating on the spiral dance and ecstatic dance meditation are?

Sure. There is some crossover there, too, since often the spiral dance is celebrated with a literal spiral dance, though usually that's done with a group of dancers and a drum circle. I've enjoyed that before, though I mostly do both of these solo nowadays.

Ecstatic dance meditation for me generally means instrumental music (words distract me from dropping down into a more trace-state), often of the belly-dancing variety. The lights are low, usually just candles. I often prefer to dance like this alone. I start dancing, and the keys are too keep going even if I need to slow the movement down when I'm tired and to pay absolutely zero attention to how the dancing would look to an audience. This is definitely a dance like no one's watching thing. My eyes are entirely or mostly closed so I can focus on how the music feels in my body and my breath. No outside distractions. My mind generally goes still and quiet pretty quickly, and I keep going until I am pleasantly worn out.

I prefer meditation of any kind alone and also in a dim-to-moderately lit room with no distractions. Some candles or water to stare into are nice focus points, but not strictly necessary. The spiral dance is a Wiccan metaphysical concept based on the precept 'as above, so below' - which is to say that metaphysical truths may be abstracted from the study of the natural world. The natural world flows in a multitude of steady cycles, so we can extend that to the spirit as well as support for reincarnation. But also, there's slow change in those cycles, as illustrated by evolution; these changes may simply be too vast and slow to see in a single human lifespan. So from this we posit that the spirit goes through cycles - birth, life, death, rebirth - but grows and changes with each revolution of that wheel. So there is always a road ahead and always growth to be done, and if it feels like the same old patterns repeating, that cannot be true forever. Embracing a longer perspective of change is comforting to me, as is the thought that nothing is lost forever. Every time my circle comes round again, I'll get a little closer to where I want to be. Hence the expression of the concept with image of an upward spiral rather than a simple circle. I find meditating on that to be calming and comforting, especially when I'm grieving.

[lunabee34]

Thank you so much for this detailed explanation. I've never thought of using movement in this way.

I love that idea of the spiral and of continued growth; that's a really powerful idea that resonates with me.

*hugs*