Eva Vigran, founder of Core Connexion offers transformative dance.

Dance for me is meditation, transformation, healing and fun. Dance reminds me of me. It reminds me of my innate aliveness. It is a process of recovering and reinhabiting my body. Dance brings be home into the now, where a step is a step, where earth is support and breath is life energy. It reminds me of my place in the community of beings.

Part of the aliveness in a human body always seems to get lost in life. It just happens, as life does not always turn out as we want it to be and sometimes treats us harder as we expect. We then start to defend ourselves against those hard or threatening experiences, and aliveness gets lost. Sometimes certain expressions of aliveness may not be welcome depending on our families or culture. They may get stifled and be cut off from our experience. They slip into our shadow, still there, but forgotten.

When I dance, letting my body lead the way, I have the opportunity to get in touch, feel and express all parts of myself through movement, whether they were OK in my family or culture, or not. Movement is the recovery tool and the means of expression at the same time. Dance frees me to go beyond my defended conscious mind, tapping into deeper sources of wisdom like intuition, instinct and inspiration.

Dance reminds me of the play and aliveness that I had as a kid, being in wonder about the simple things, being excited when I found myself upside down or rolling down a little slope in the garden, or simply being excited about being alive.

When I dance alone, I touch the earth, I connect to my center of gravity and balance, my breath, and the movement that flows through me and moves my body, without my planning. This is my dance meditation. Then I express my feelings, move them, using their energy for expression and creativity. I also allow myself to discover new moves, my body leads me to do, which I could not discover while sitting at my desk or driving a car and which can become resources for my everyday life.

When I dance with partners - other human bodies - I get reminded of all my relationships and all the dances of attraction, repulsion, support and abandonment that we dance every day.

I found that a partnership is more than 1+1=2. In a partner dance, a 3rd body of energy automatically develops, which has its own life, rhythm and movement that informs our dance. This relational body can do other things than one of us could do alone.

Dance in groups reminds me that our humanity comes in all forms, shapes, ages and sizes. As soon as people take off their street clothes and shoes and put on their dance pants and shirts, they are all simply human, moving on the same earth together, sharing the same air for breathing, being animated by the same source, all wanting to be happy, healthy and at peace. In our Core Connexion community people are accepted for who they are - bodies, hearts and souls - and not for what they do, how they look or how "cool" they can move.

Here we can meet each other beyond our everyday roles and social contacts, where the truth and honesty of the body and soul can have their beautiful expression, where we come together in meditation and prayer through movement.

Dance becomes practice when there is an opportunity for participants to feel exactly who they are right now, without having to be different. It is an opening to be honest, vulnerable and present with what is. Some people dance wildly, swirl, roll around on the floor, some make sounds or hit the air, some are more quiet and on the outskirts. Gene, our 90 year old participant, sometimes sits on a chair and sometimes moves around in the center of the dance floor. Participants move according to their own capability, always honoring their bodies, their part in the community and the sacred space we are dancing in together. Through acceptance of our humanity and who we are in the present moment, we can all connect in our innermost aliveness that flows at the core of everyone. Dance in community becomes a powerful ritual of healing, aliveness and connection, as at the core of every Body is the dance.