Gabrielle Roth
References regarding Gabrielle Roth
Noted artist, philosopher and healer, has devoted her life to exploring and communicating the language of primal movement and experimental theatre. Over the past 35 years, Gabrielle has taken thousands of people on a journey from physical and emotional inertia to the freedom of ecstasy, from the tyranny of the chattering ego-mind to the blessed emptiness of stillness. Her labs and retreats have an electric intensity that mates contemporary currents of rock music, modern theatre and poetry to the ancient pulse of shamanism.
In shamanic societies, there has always been the dance. Dance was a sacred act, the sine qua non of most rituals. Tribal people would dance for hours, churning themselves into ecstasy in order to free their souls and communicate with their gods. Unlike our ancestors, our spiritual worship in the West has to a great extent become a sedentary activity, with meditation and prayer most often done in complete stillness. Rarely does the body get in on the act, and few spiritual teachers ever demand of us that we do any differently.
And then there is Gabrielle Roth. For the past thirty-five years, Roth has taken thousands of people on a shamans journey through the rhythms of their bodies and into the rhythms of their souls. Her books, workshops, and music recordings provide a context in which the spirit and flesh come together as one and dance like lovers upon a stage. Through the 5Rhythms™, her self-styled form of ecstatic trance dance, Roth uses movement to reignite shamanic ecstasy in a culture and people that have become trapped in a kind of physical and emotional inertia. Roth guides her students on an adventure into the often unexplored, sometimes daunting, region of their own psyches, and brings them back into alignment with the rhythm of their own souls.
Several years ago, I attended one of Roth´s workshops. Over the course of the weekend, the boundaries between our bodies, our egos, and our souls became more and more diffuse. I watched myself and my fellow students move from self-consciousness to selflessness; from the agony of excruciatingly uncomfortable movement patterns that we had never cultivated within ourselves-or worse, had been taught to repress-to the ecstasy of rhythmic liberation
"Put your psyche in motion", Roth says, "and it will heal itself."
Gabrielle Roth is the author of Maps to Ecstasy, Sweat Your Prayers, and her latest book, Connections. She is the artistic director of her dance/theatre/music company, The Mirrors; and through her recording company Raven Recording (cofounded with her husband, Robert Ansell) has produced more than twenty music compilations, considered to be on the cutting edge of shamanic trance dance music.
Hillary Webb, author of Travelling Between Two Worlds
Video with Gabrielle Roth:
about the breath and Gabrielle´s dancing Journey
about embodiment
Interesting video. The Prisons Video Trust produced the film about Emma Leech's use of Five Rhythms in the UK. You can hear G. Roth speaking about each Rhythm.
Part 1 of 2
Part 2 of 2.
PVT is a charity that has worked in the criminal justice sector in the UK for the last 20 years.
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