Eva Vigran, founder of Core Connexion, offers classes, workshops and trainings in dance and expression as a healing art.

I am still here because I dance. I am deeply grateful for the opportunity that I had to experience the healing power of Dance, Art, and Nature, and I am grateful for the opportunity to become an active participant in the greater dance of life. In the dance I started to sense myself; in the dance I started to remember myself.

My Body, A Refrigerator: When I was 20 years old, the energy system in my body was so frozen that I could never sweat. I always had ice-cold hands and feet. My mind had gotten imprisoned by repeating beliefs about being worthless, guilty, and unimportant. My heart had closed and I had lost the key. I was cut off from all feelings and bodily sensations. I had no realistic self image as I could not retrieve a realistic sense of my body through my inner sensations anymore. My mind and my body were going in two totally different directions. I was frozen in a skinny body, but I still thought I was fat. (At age 20, I only fit into children clothes or XXS.) Frozen in self-limiting beliefs, I almost starved myself to death.

It was too scary in that body to feel anything. But in the presence of art (and nature is the purest art), I could feel something. In those moments something bigger took over my whole system. In these ecstatic moments I felt connected to everything. My boundaries dissolved and I was one with the universe. This could happen in a deep exploration of micro-movements in my hand or a big energetic swirling dance. It could happen in front of paintings by Mark Rothko, watching the sunset at the ocean or swimming. It could happen listening to a Beethoven symphony or digging a hole in my garden.

Ecstatic moments are moments of pure aliveness and clarity. They do not have to be loud and orgasmic; they can be small and gentle also. In those moments, all emotions, thoughts and sensations dissolve into nothingness, and there is no space for fear —only for love and expansion.

While I was frozen, these ecstatic experiences gave me a taste of the nectar of life. In these moments I could remember the joy, playfulness and absolute presence I had felt as a child while I was dancing, painting, or running around in nature. In these moments it became clear to me that my views of life and the world were very limited, and actually a much bigger force was holding me. These moments of ecstasy through art and nature were signposts leading me back into life.

Somehow I realized that I had to teach my system to trust again, to trust that there was pleasure in being alive, and that a larger force is holding all of us. After having studied with wonderful mentors in Europe, Africa, California and Canada, I developed a healing practice of dance and expressive arts, which I call Core Connexion. It is the alchemical essence of my own ongoing healing journey over the last 17 years.

Through becoming aware of my body moving in the present moment, I can connect with the aliveness that dances at the core of everything.

It is a practice of holding space for the dance to arise. I make myself available for the dance by cultivating the practice on an ongoing basis, recognizing that it is not a machine that works instantly when I press a button. Some days, I find myself totally absorbed and exhilarated by the dance— ecstatic moments of deep insight and connection arise, and everything seems easy. On other days, I feel odd, disconnected, disappointed, bored or even scared. That is when I can just rest in the practice. I practice staying with my movement, breath, the rhythm, and the acceptance of what is. That is when I hold space for the dance to move my body however it wants, for my emotions to arise — whether I like them or not. I experience myself unfolding, and everything happening in its own time. Dancing is dreaming with my body.

Magic can happen anytime; it is always available. The only prerequisite is that I am present. If I am present I am in the presence of the mystery. In that presence, I am still dancing....