Collective Soul Level One and Teacher Training Level One grads!
What a journey this has been, the last few weeks in Australia. I have had the opportunity to meet and dance with some beautiful women, who have undertook intensive study with me. Congratulations to them for getting their certification, both in Collective Soul Level One and Teacher Training Level One. And not without a few giggles!
Collective Soul Level One grads...
Back row: Kelly, Colleen, myself, Shanne, Kate, Julie, and Dee
Front row: Margart, Heidi, and Becky
Heidi, Becky, and Dee did the course as a refresher, to get ready for the next intensive that immediatly followed, Collective Soul Level 2, testing today!
Lately I’ve been discussing how the dance is empowering to the women, on so many levels. Appropriately on Chris Guillebeau’s blog today, he writes:
Empowerment, as I think of it, is all about the beautiful principle of transferring knowledge and helping people consider possibilities that previously seemed out of reach.
This was a perfect read for today:
http://chrisguillebeau.com/3×5/the-small-man-builds-cages-for-everyone/
Fulfilling, rewarding, with sweat, tears, and joy… we reach for what we desire, experience our own journey along the way, and listen and share with the other’s we are joined with. Trust and community building: that is beautiful. I am constantly awed and rewarded by the women I dance with.
Thank you gals for giving me you trust, your time, and your dance! andhere is to the next step on your dance path.
Celebration!
Good work Teacher Trainees: Becky, Christine, and Sienna (photos to follow!)
February 18th, 2010 at 4:31 pm
In reading your comments about empowernment, the blog by Chris Guillebeau, beginning the process of reflecting on the most recent of my dance journey thus far and the stories other have shared with me, I felt compelled to response. Empowerment for me is certainly about the transfer of knowledge and the idea of possibilites. It is the stirring of awareness and in this, the ‘capacity’ for something. In this moment we experience hope and in that, create a space for the possibility that things could be different from what they are, what we think we ‘know’ or ‘believe’ them to be. Yes, in this, as Chris blogs, it is liken to putting a key on the ground in front of someone so they may pick it up and use it to open their cage… but the Grace, power and awesome beauty of empowerment I believe is not in the giving of keys from one person to another. It is more active and dynamic than that. While it is about collaboration, exchange and sharing… it is also about the journey, the seeking and creating of evironments where seeds of empowernment can be scattered. It is about the indiviudal and their own landscape as much as it can be about the ‘key dropper’ and the environment. We can endeavour and be open to the transfer of knowledge and place keys upon the ground.. but first we need to connect with each other, create the space and be motivated in some way to seek, to step onto the path and believe in the capacity for change or something different whether it leads to to understadning, ones own growth… whatever the ‘gem’ is that we are needing at that time is another story.
When we take this dance jounrey we do not always have the certainity knowing what it is we are seeking or the final destination, but in grace we have an awareness that it represents or holds the capacity for possiblilites. It is in this we are tilling the soil in which seeds can germinate and the possibility that we can HOPE, SEE, BELIEVE, UNDERSTAND and come to KNOW or FEEL that there are keys on the ground or within oursleves that can challenge our boundaries and open our cages. In coming together for our diverse needs we have the capacity to share and appreciate our commonalities with each other, we can be open to exploring our barriers and blocks. We create in ourselves and each other the capacity for validation of oursleves, our feelings, experiences, ideas and knowledge. We tap into our own resources and strengthens, some of which, we may not have been aware we held. We discover, build, share and transfer knowledge and skills between us as we journey if it be our choosing and the timing is right. Empowerment is about power; in self, each other, in communities… it is thousands of droplets of water on a pond, rippling out in a multitude of directions, transferring, shaping and creating. It is not until be become aware of this power, see it, exercised and come to understand how to tap into it that we consider the idea that it can not be simply picked up and possess because another who has it, has chosen to give it to someone else. Our keys are not necessarily the unique keys that unlock someone elses cage. Each of us is an active participant in our own lives, we are unique and although we may support someone to become aware of the idea of keys that tap into resources and unlock cages, that person has their own time and processes which will enable them to SEE and BELIEVE and access the knowledge and skills to be able to identify, choose and utilise the keys that need at any given time to journey unwards, fulfil needs, desires and dreams and continue to create. For those who have chosen or tapping into dance as part of their life and way of being, or whether it is forming part of a journey they are taking now that will lead them to other possibilities, its an awesome and humbling sight. Thousands of womens hands and hips spanning across the world, coming into view, perhaps for the first time, perhaps wise and well resourced in their respective journeys but, willing to create space for themselves and each other,to… hope, believe, dream and create. To bring forth the power within and open up to the world to create change and birthing of even more possibilities.