"To sweat is to pray, to make an offering of your innermost self. Sweat is holy water, prayer beads, pearls of liquid that release your past. Sweat is an ancient and universal form of self healing, whether done in the gym, the sauna, or the sweat lodge. I do it on the dance floor. The more you dance, the more you sweat. The more you sweat, the more you pray. The more you pray, the closer you come to ecstasy."
I heard the music recently of Gabrielle Roth and The Mirrors, and it brought back how important she was to me when I was, perhaps, a more "embodied" person, when I was dancing more. I wanted to remember her here, the brilliant and soulful and tough artist and teacher and spiritual visionary that touched the lives of so many.
To Gabrielle, author of Sweat Your Prayers, physical movement was the key to unlocking the mysteries of the spirit and discovering an ecstatic path to self discovery. I'm always saddened when I see some of the great teachers of my time leave, and Gabrielle Roth was one of them, a teacher of dance as healing and joy, the creator of the 5Rhythms movement practice. She passed away on October 22, 2012.
To see a beautiful movie about Gabrielle Roth and her work:
http://www.cultureunplugged.com/play/8010/The-Wave--Ecstatic-Dance-with-Gabrielle-Roth
Here's a song I love that somehow fits this post:
"For A Dancer" by Jackson Browne:
http://youtu.be/IU1rZa8Ur_Q
