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Dance: The Spirit & Soul of Dance
25 Plays30 days ago
In this episode of the show , Karen speaks with Sarah Bonnar who has danced and taught Tango both here in Australia as well as overseas. Sarah shares her thoughts on dance as a tool for freedom and greater connection to the inner spirit. To connect with Sarah direct, go to her website www.dancegrammar.com.au
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Transcript
Introduction to Episode 19
00:00:16
Karen Seinor
Hello everyone, thank you for joining me on the Soulful and Wild show. This is episode 19 and as you can see I have Sarah Bonner with me. Sarah is, well I'm going to say she's an international dancer because I know that she has danced overseas and is a mad dance lady. So Sarah, thank you very much for joining me. Thank you so much for having me.
Dance and Spirituality Discussion
00:00:43
Karen Seinor
know Where do we even begin talking about dance? Now, you know, the purpose of this um podcast is to tap into, you know, practical spirituality, things that we can do and use to enhance our spiritual path. I mean, dance is something that's so integral to spirit. Yeah, really.
00:01:05
Karen Seinor
Yeah. And i i thought you'd be the perfect person to speak to about that because I know your passion is profound. Thank you. I love to talk about dance and spiritual things.
00:01:16
Karen Seinor
yeah It's a perfect connection I think. Beautiful. careful Now um full confession, we did attempt to do this or we did actually do this interview a couple of weeks ago and we had so much of a challenge with the internet which is why we are in person with each other and this is the first time I've ever done it like this so it's a bit of a a trial.
00:01:38
Karen Seinor
and We'll see how goes. yeah see how so In terms of your journey with dance, and I know that you, I mean, it's it's really a spiritual thing for you, isn't it?
00:01:49
Karen Seinor
Yes. Yeah, it is. Where do we begin? Do we look at, you know, your start with dance, how that happened? Where do you want to begin?
Dance Across Cultures
00:02:00
Karen Seinor
I wonder if we could maybe talk about dance in general. Yeah. I think it's it's something that is integral.
00:02:12
Karen Seinor
to humanity. If we look into ancient cultures, if we look into modern indigenous cultures, dance is everywhere. Except possibly some industrialized or in here and displaced cultures like Australia.
00:02:33
Karen Seinor
And coming back to dance helps us to come back to our heart to achieve you know a higher coherence, which is just it' is a fancy way of saying being able to feel again.
00:02:48
Karen Seinor
Our modern Australian society is really about
00:02:57
Karen Seinor
conditioning us to be good little minions. Produced for the Empire. right yeah we We go to school, like we dance right children dance, naturally. You know put music on and you see the little babies bopping around in their high chairs. It's all everywhere.
00:03:14
Karen Seinor
We see it. But then we go to school and we're taught sit up straight, yep hands on heads, sit in your chairs, study, absorb intellectual knowledge, yeah intellectual ideas for six hours a day.
00:03:33
Karen Seinor
We break. We're allowed out for sports. Which is, you and I have had some discussions about sport. And it's good.
00:03:44
Karen Seinor
Moves the body. We like sport. We like sport. We don't need sport. But it moves the body in very particular ways, yeah which are about an external goal, achieving an external goal. So winning.
00:03:56
Karen Seinor
Yes.
Barriers in Dance Education
00:03:57
Karen Seinor
As opposed to dance. Being the best. Being the best. Yeah. Dance, which is about going inwards and feeling. Now, I've got to say, up front,
00:04:08
Karen Seinor
Two kinds of dance. Yep. And like hundreds and thousands of kinds dance. There is as many people as there are on the planet as kinds of dance that there are.
00:04:20
Karen Seinor
Largely. Two kinds of dance. We've got the kind of dance that everybody knows and is afraid of, which is designed as part of, it is taught empirically, right? Yeah. To learn how to improve and be the best and perform. yeah Perform.
00:04:44
Karen Seinor
Yeah. Which is, nothing wrong with it, right? It's fantastic thing to study, fantastic thing to do. It's dance. But it's also one of the things that stops people from thinking of themselves as dancers. Once it's been, you know, trained out of us, like primary school,
00:05:03
Karen Seinor
um so many people never come back to it because they look at, the dance that they can see yeah ah on stages or television or even TikTok, lots of that going around and it doesn't relate to them at all.
00:05:23
Karen Seinor
And if we look at the dance that's taught in schools, it's kind of about puberty and kind bring dream very uncomfortable boys and girls together to do very uncomfortable things at a very uncomfortable time in their life. Like touching.
00:05:41
Karen Seinor
Like touching. Like doing the heel and toe polka. Things that don't, um I mean, I don't know if we do heel and toe polka anymore. i don't know.
00:05:52
Karen Seinor
But we did. Yes, we did. And it's enough to put people off, and especially boys. It's enough to put people off dancing because it's everything about it is uncomfortable.
00:06:03
Karen Seinor
Whereas, you know, you've learned how to play sport and the rules are obvious and it's it's straightforward.
00:06:12
Karen Seinor
It's such a lost life.
Dance as Emotional Release
00:06:14
Karen Seinor
Yeah. Because if we dance, we can feel ourselves. If we dance freely, we can also feel others in a comfortable, safe Oh yes, and learn to respond to the nuances of their movement and read how they feel and things like that.
00:06:36
Karen Seinor
Absolutely. and So i my training, I've trained in the first way and now I'm unpacking all of that training to find myself using dance as a spiritual tool, as you say, to come back to my centre to
00:07:01
Karen Seinor
feel my feelings, to feel subtleties in in like energy, not just people, but I use it a lot for that.
00:07:13
Karen Seinor
But feel subtle energies
00:07:18
Karen Seinor
wherever I am, I suppose.
00:07:24
Karen Seinor
And it can be a real release, can't I mean, i know just speaking really, really but basic and practically, you know, during that COVID period, I was working from home actually in this space and I was doing counselling online with people and it was a difficult time.
00:07:46
Karen Seinor
And i was isolated and and normally working as a professional counsellor, if you work for, say, like a community service organisation, there's going to be somebody to debrief with if it's required. So I was really not out on my own.
00:08:00
Karen Seinor
And one of the things that I did do was I would play a track between clients. Or if I had a really tricky, heavy-duty one, out would put this track on and I'd turn it up really loud and I'd dance around my lounge room and then go write my notes and be ready for the next client.
00:08:24
Karen Seinor
And it was a very powerful tool for me to be okay because I was alone yeah during that time.
Dance and Stored Emotions
00:08:30
Karen Seinor
Yeah. you know totally isolated actually. That sounds like it was challenging but that you found dance as a tool to help you through that. It was fantastic. yeah So yeah that's the reason why i say I imagine it would be a release in some ways.
00:08:49
Karen Seinor
Is that how you see that when you talk about and feeling your feelings? Very much so. and So many things So many experiences that we have, we collect.
00:09:05
Karen Seinor
by you know We move through childhood, adulthood, all of the yeah experiences we have. If we can't intellectualize them and most things, we can't store them.
00:09:18
Karen Seinor
right The body keeps the score. It's a fantastic book. Vessel van der Kolk. But we the the energy of our experiences, our emotions that we are discouraged generally from feeling, let alone expressing, are trapped in our bodies, trapped in the tissues of our bodies.
00:09:39
Karen Seinor
And it's sometimes really, really hard to access what they are, to release them, to understand them. But dance can help us do that. So we might just feel something in the body.
00:09:50
Karen Seinor
And if we can move focused on that feeling, it can go. We don't even have to think about it. We don't have to name it. We just... can move the energy and help that shift.
00:10:02
Karen Seinor
Yeah. Yeah.
00:10:05
Karen Seinor
You can get as deep as you like. Yeah. Or just, you know, dance is also fantastic for celebration, right? So not just the, you know, cleansing between clients or, you know, moving the difficult emotions, but to be together you know ah group and dance together. Mm-hmm.
Historical Connections Through Dance
00:10:28
Karen Seinor
They call it entrainment. It's about moving together as ah as a group, and it we've used it from the beginning of time to cohere society's communities. yeah have to The communities that dance together come together, maybe.
00:10:48
Karen Seinor
Yeah, maybe that's where that's coming from. But, I mean, there's archaeological evidence that people... danced, they found trodden down land at the same places they found bone flutes from prehistory. So we've been doing this for a long time. It's just that we're kind of in this weird place. And you know we met, Karen and I met at a weekend with David Holmgren from... He's from Rob Fenton.
00:11:26
Karen Seinor
From Permaculture. What David said, which was just like clicked a bunch of things into place for me, was that we came over from England, we, you know, white Australia, the beginnings of white Australia, came over from city where we were in prison for trying to feed ourselves essentially. Stay warm so we can start.
00:11:52
Karen Seinor
Stealing. And put into this place where we, Not only didn't know how to farm this land, we didn't know how farm it, right? I think it's the same with dance in Australia.
00:12:05
Karen Seinor
We moved from our small communities on the land where we probably danced into big cities, the dark satanic mills, as they say, yeah and lost that connection to each other.
00:12:21
Karen Seinor
And to the earth. And to the earth. Very much so. And then we were brought over here went, yeah, have a build a society. yeah So we're learning more, right? As, you know, people have been coming from places like where they still dance and also now starting to
00:12:43
Karen Seinor
really value Indigenous wisdom. I went to a workshop a couple of years ago where I think it was... Wiradjuri Mok did some dances and shared them with us.
00:12:57
Karen Seinor
And it was so wonderful to see this little tiny kid, like two, just dancing with his people, you know, not getting it right, which at the time, you know, oh my God, because I studied ballet, right?
00:13:16
Karen Seinor
Ballet is about doing it right, doing it better, doing it harder. And kind of, I went, this kid doesn't know what he's doing.
00:13:27
Karen Seinor
And that's the point. He's doing it with his people. And it's not performance. It's a being. Yeah.
The Transformative Power of Dance
00:13:38
Karen Seinor
Yeah. I went, I need to learn this stuff. Yeah. Yeah.
00:13:45
Karen Seinor
Yeah, it's very special. I've seen, but i lived on the Timi Islands for a while, on the territory, and so I've being blessed also to see dance happen in that way.
00:13:59
Karen Seinor
And what do I saw there, to add in to what you said, is they have a particular animal, really, like so crocodile or, know, whatever, and they dance that and the movements are of that animal, which connects them profoundly with that that creature and that place that they are on.
00:14:28
Karen Seinor
Because they're country with everything for them. So I ah hear what you're saying and it it does deepen the connection. It gives place. It gives you a sense of belonging and makes sense of things. yeah it's It's powerful. I can see why I mean, Sarah and I have talked it you know privately before about the dance, and I keep looking at you and then forgetting about you being there.
00:15:00
Karen Seinor
So excuse me for that, because I'm sort of hit with her, and I'm talking to her. At the same time, I'm aware that we're being watched, but perhaps only listened to. Yeah,
00:15:14
Karen Seinor
I remember going to Mullumbimby and Miten and Dhirukamal, but doing this weekend
00:15:26
Karen Seinor
chant yoga slash music thing and I loved it so much I went a couple of years in a row but the singing and the harmonizing and the men singing and the women singing and just using those sacred sounds it dropped some in incredible shit. I could feel it like bits of armour falling off me over those days and interspersed with this the chanting what was dancing yeah and it was dances of universal peace I believe.
00:16:08
Karen Seinor
i've I want to find that. and then i It was fascinating because over that period of time um you know, you you start to relax, you start to get, come home to yourself, like you're talking about the movement and the dance.
00:16:30
Karen Seinor
And when we were doing those dances, part of it was we had to look into each other's eyes and acknowledge partners, like what was two circles moving. and that was so profound for me. i' found that deeply transformative.
00:16:50
Karen Seinor
and to actually be seen in a sacred space. It was a very safe space. And i I wonder with your um extensive experience with dance, and in particular with tango, which I know was a passion for you for a long time, and how that being seen, what is the impact for you when you dance that kind of dance how does that affect your your spirit or your yeah could you speak to that do you think yeah thank you um i want to acknowledge what you said about dropping your arm first of all because that is the that's the magic lone dance that's the medicine yeah of dance that's medicine isn't it like this and this this is a
00:17:47
Karen Seinor
What we strive for with healing is dismantling this armor so that we can flow with the energy of the universe so we can feel
Tango's Unique Connection
00:17:59
Karen Seinor
what's going on.
00:17:59
Karen Seinor
yeah So there's a couple. i pick up on a couple of different ways of being seen. the first way is the way I was trained, which is to be seen by an audience, which is armor.
00:18:14
Karen Seinor
We pack it on, pack it on. want make sure it looks perfect.
00:18:21
Karen Seinor
And that has really yeah really shaped my self-perception. I saw myself from outside myself for a really long time, rather than from behind my eyes.
00:18:36
Karen Seinor
Coming back to dance in my really, really is bringing me back to learning to be seen as myself, not as the performer, not as the entertainer.
00:18:56
Karen Seinor
yeah Coming back to
00:19:01
Karen Seinor
trusting that I'm enough yeah by de-armouring. Because in inside that armour, that's all that, you know, the...
00:19:13
Karen Seinor
I'm not good enough. so you know this I am imperfect. And that's actually fine. Who here is perfect? a
00:19:28
Karen Seinor
So tango um has the ability to do that. to but when I say seen like through eyes, but to be seen through your soul.
00:19:40
Karen Seinor
yeah With tango, It's a dance where two people move as one and it's improvised. There are no set steps. There's no choreography.
00:19:52
Karen Seinor
You can dance tango in that first way as a performer. You can improve and, you know, be be that person. But the tango I love is social tango. it's We get together as community and we dance together in part and part, we dance together with strangers. Yeah.
00:20:13
Karen Seinor
Moving together as one. yeah Improvising. Wow. So that takes, you know, you can do it with training, with your armour on. You can absolutely do it that way.
00:20:26
Karen Seinor
But the best answers for me have been when let it all go and I trust it. Yes. the t would Big T word. T word. Yeah.
00:20:36
Karen Seinor
Because it it's it's absolutely, you require the trust. Yeah. The leader, the divine masculine, is the person responsible for the dance, for keeping the partners safe, both partners, themselves and their followers safe, and all the other dancers on the dance floor, not bashing into anything.
00:21:03
Karen Seinor
Yeah. For suggesting the direction, suggesting the rhythm, the timing, the musicality. Yeah. The follower, the divine feminine is the receptive person.
00:21:19
Karen Seinor
the The person who says, yeah, I accept that. Or, you know, also I don't accept that. You can also know have your boundaries and go, that's not, that doesn't feel comfortable for me.
00:21:34
Karen Seinor
But to have the dance, you have to agree. I'm going to lead. I'm going to follow. in sense, in censured that space centred within yourself, each of those roles is very distinct and they come together with a synergy so that it's beyond beyond just the music and the partnership. it's there' like There's
00:22:05
Karen Seinor
The most incredible experiences I've had have been with like huge group people an amazing leader, an orchestra, a live orchestra. So in well Argentine tango, you dance a lot to old recordings of tango music from the golden age of tango.
00:22:25
Karen Seinor
But sometimes you have live orchestras that play arrangements of familiar songs in different ways. So rhythms like i mean not the the beat's not exactly where you expect it to be.
00:22:42
Karen Seinor
But because my partner and I were so connected, and it has been a stranger in many cases, because we're so connected, when the music is different to where I expect it to be, we're still on it.
00:22:59
Karen Seinor
We're still with it. Because, I don't know, we tap into something. yeah We tap into this universal consciousness or whatever. So we have this peak flow experience with ourselves, with each other,
00:23:12
Karen Seinor
with the dance on the floor, with the musicians, with the music, with all of it at once. And it's just amazing. Like a heart-opening experience.
00:23:25
Karen Seinor
Yeah. It's fantastic when you describe it like that because, and I mean, you mentioned that permaculture thing earlier. i remember when I was doing that course, that permaculture course with Rob, and he had all these golden bits, yellow wool basically, and he had all these animals and all these trees and all these different things, pictures of it on the table, and we had to place these threads between these different elements, this animal, that one, that one, to and what we ended up with was this incredible web, like a golden web.
Dance and Universal Energy
00:24:08
Karen Seinor
And when I think about, the tara when you read the tarot or when you're doing healing work with someone or even, you know, if you're good sex, for example, you know, you're tapping into this universal web and that's really what you're describing, I think, is, you know, we are all within this incredible energetic field and everything's in it.
00:24:39
Karen Seinor
Yeah. And when we are fully present with it, that's when everything looks. That's what you're describing. Absolutely. Absolutely.
00:24:50
Karen Seinor
I love this. It's exactly you exactly what you're saying. the Quantum physics is coming up with this. They're calling it the quantum field. I mean, yeah yes, sure. People call it God. like There's all kinds of names for it. But it's...
00:25:06
Karen Seinor
It's a thing that exists that we have experienced. It's not just... But can't experience it intellectually. That's right. It's a feeling that we have to get past the armor. We have to use whatever tools we've got to get past the armor so we can you know have conversations like this that may like give you goosebumps.
00:25:30
Karen Seinor
It's such pleasure. Yeah. It's... um It is amazing. It is amazing. like And you're right, it's it's definitely about dropping that armour because when we open up and we're talking about dance through movement, we get lost in that, we become free, special connections with individuals, whether it's on the dance floor in other ways, safe spaces.
00:26:00
Karen Seinor
And we do. And I feel like our it's almost like our Is it our atoms begin to, there's space between them and suddenly, almost unexpectedly, you're in it.
00:26:16
Karen Seinor
And that's where the magic is. yeah
00:26:22
Karen Seinor
So, yeah. So, we know what it is now. So, thinking about that,
00:26:34
Karen Seinor
I know that you've got some different things that you've got but you're cooking up at the moment. And one of the things I'm really interested in is um
00:26:51
Karen Seinor
pausing, thinking, hang on a moment. I know that we've we've we've sat together by your fire and chatted and spoken about the dance with no name, right?
00:27:02
Karen Seinor
and one When we had that conversation, I felt really inspired about the possibilities for that dance because my my sense about it was that you are working, and correct me if I've got this wrong, but my sense was that you are working a ah pathway for people to actually move so that they can almost tap into
00:27:35
Karen Seinor
that themselves in a kind of like a supported group like a workshop-y sort of thing. sure is am i read Did I read that right?
00:27:49
Karen Seinor
Yes, yeah that's exactly what I'm attempting to do um it's It's based on tango. Tango has a long history codes and code yeah and
00:28:08
Karen Seinor
impressions that people have of it which many people are attracted to many people are drawn to it attracts a lot of men relative to other dance forms and that before we like men we like men dancing we think men should dance more because it helps with empathy because it helps with this dearmoring we think dance is good for all people especially men.
00:28:40
Karen Seinor
It is maybe not so attractive to some people for whom that is not their primary culture, it's from Argentina and it's not necessarily what some people are attracted to. And end also, I'm an Australian person.
00:29:00
Karen Seinor
I have ah grown up here and other places but I always felt a little bit weird saying I'm an Argentine tango dancer. So, the dance with no name.
00:29:20
Karen Seinor
It takes that dance and uses the parts of it that help connection
00:29:31
Karen Seinor
and focuses on the connection. Yeah. and also the you know the the lead and follow can be swapped. i mean you know The lead is always going to be divine masculine.
00:29:45
Karen Seinor
The follow is always going to be divine feminine. But as a woman, I can dance as a leader. I can embody that divine masculine and vice versa. So it's not it's on gender-based yeah in a way that Argentine tango often is. I went to a level of milongo one night in Buenos Aires,
00:30:03
Karen Seinor
And I had a couple of American friends who danced swinging. yeah Oh, lovely. Yeah, fantastic dancers, bloats. And in between sets of tango, Milong is a social dance, in between sets of tango, sometimes they'd have like a bit of music that wasn't tango.
00:30:23
Karen Seinor
And this night there was a swing set. And so my two mates got up and had a dance together. They looked incredible. They were having fun.
00:30:34
Karen Seinor
And they sat down and one of the old milongueros, one of the old dancers came up and said, don't ever do that again in public. Men can't dance together, that's disgusting.
00:30:48
Karen Seinor
Right. So that was all the time. This has gone back a few years and I'm sure it's changed a lot. but To not have to conform to those codes, I think can help open it up for a lot of people.
00:31:09
Karen Seinor
Also, not having to fit the mold of... How
00:31:22
Karen Seinor
are you going to say that? <unk> Not having to wear stiletto heels. Yep. let me put it that way. I don't need to say any more than that.
00:31:34
Karen Seinor
We don't have to. We can dance where we are. Not having to dance to tango music. you know yeah Not everybody is attracted to the music of the 1940s.
00:31:48
Karen Seinor
So, the dance with no name.
00:31:51
Karen Seinor
You know this is getting steep, don't you? The dance with no name. I think... It's the newest social dance in the world because it's the one that you're doing right now.
Introducing Dance with No Name
00:32:03
Karen Seinor
Yeah. Yeah. Tango is a ah walking dance, right? It's based on walking.
00:32:12
Karen Seinor
And it makes it very accessible for people. Yeah.
00:32:19
Karen Seinor
So um I'm working on developing ways of sharing the movement vocabulary. Yeah. in in a way that can be adopted for anybody's culture at any time. ah know I know that you're not fussed.
00:32:37
Karen Seinor
um
00:32:40
Karen Seinor
You're not fussed. Like you've got that course online dance grammar and I know that there's no videos around that and that is very, very foreign. I know when I looked at the website, I was like, where's the pictures? Like where's the videos on how to do it?
00:32:58
Karen Seinor
And it's only as I sort of looked into it more with you that I kind of like that. It's very out there, this idea that there's not going to be videos to show people what it's supposed to look like. It's challenging.
00:33:16
Karen Seinor
It's challenging to you because you can look at a video and understand what your body is supposed to do yeah as a dancer. Yeah.
00:33:30
Karen Seinor
However, there are a lot of people, a lot of men, who have never learned to copy somebody's body movements.
00:33:43
Karen Seinor
they They work with words. you know we ah and we've we're We've spoken about the intellect, right? yeah um And so one of the things I learned very early on as a tango teacher was how to use my words.
00:34:03
Karen Seinor
get right Because I had a fantastic friend who was really generous with me and spent days, months, years saying, okay, when you take that step, you look different.
00:34:17
Karen Seinor
Why? And forcing me to really understand what about my boy biomechanics was different to his biomechanics. And instead of just going, yeah, you do it like this, one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, actually having to go
00:34:36
Karen Seinor
bend your knee very slightly. Yes. And use the straightening of your knee in a horizontal direction to push you to move forward. Oh, my god I know this one so well. I know this so well. Yeah. that yeah When um you learn, when you study yoga to teach, yes,
00:34:55
Karen Seinor
a big part of it is actually learning to language the movements and you're facing, like you are when you're teaching tango, because I've seen um you you're facing your students and in a perfect world, your you're the opposite.
00:35:15
Karen Seinor
So what they see is what they're doing. I could never ever do that, but learning to actually verbally paint a picture is a big part of you know your efficiency. so And that is it definitely a learned skill.
00:35:30
Karen Seinor
I have to say it took a very long time to learn because when I learned dancing, when I learned tango, I learned it the first few teachers I had did exactly that, copy me.
00:35:43
Karen Seinor
And I could do it because I live in studied ballet for 13 years. And it was about do it like this and with a demonstration. And I went into this first class I was teaching with that.
00:35:59
Karen Seinor
And my friend had a bit of a breakdown because he could not copy. He did not have the connection between eyes and dance, right?
00:36:12
Karen Seinor
I you know feel for the guy, but I'm also really grateful that that it happened because it's helped me to learn to express yeah how death how to dance.
00:36:27
Karen Seinor
So this is this is where the concept of dance grammar comes from. This is the language that we use. So to try to reach out to more men. to try There's so many ways, like so many videos in the world about dancing.
00:36:45
Karen Seinor
and know need drew I don't need to the TikTok. I don't need to produce another video of dancing, right? yeah that That's not it. There's nothing wrong with it. A lot of people a lot of people are learning a lot to dance with it. It's fantastic. yeah But my special skill set is in using language. yeah So that's what I've created. I'm not happy exactly where with where the website is, with where the course danced together, which is the dance with no name.
00:37:17
Karen Seinor
It's an ongoing development. But
00:37:22
Karen Seinor
and What I'm excited about for Dance Grammar, though, is that it is a platform for other dancers to come and share their work in language. Yeah, right. And I can help them.
00:37:37
Karen Seinor
um good If there are dancers in a particular style want to come and you know understand how to language what they're doing, if that's not their skill, up please. If anybody is very good with language and dance, come.
00:37:53
Karen Seinor
You know, we've got a platform. Yeah, great. But um I'm excited for that. Yeah. Opportunity for growth. Yeah. So we've talked about, um just aware of the time. We've been chatting for about 38 minutes, which is pretty good.
00:38:09
Karen Seinor
That's pretty good. We can easily talk about this forever. Yeah, sure. But there is a cake out there. So. And another cup of tea. Yeah. So we've talked about input, like dance for your soul, really.
00:38:28
Karen Seinor
We've talked about tapping into the web. We've touched a little bit on your background in Argentina and ballet history and
00:38:42
Karen Seinor
and dance grammar. What would you... So I'm just thinking, what have we not talked about that we need to... And I'm just wondering if somebody wanted to tap in to their essence, to create a space for themselves, what would your recommendation be for them just to get started with themselves?
00:39:09
Karen Seinor
Put on some music. that and i My understanding for a very long time about dance is movement to music. And then I started working for a contemporary dance company.
00:39:21
Karen Seinor
and
00:39:24
Karen Seinor
But it still dances. But I mean, we could start with music. Put on some music you love. And you know, just unlock your knees, right? Because if we've got, our knees are locked straight, we can't use our legs.
00:39:40
Karen Seinor
Like we can only use our feet to move us around. But if we unlock our knees, then all of a sudden we've got a lot more movement available in the legs. And do it. Nobody's watching. Do it in a way that nobody's watching.
00:39:51
Karen Seinor
And then you can just let go. And be free with it. I use dance for all kinds of things, right? Moving the energy. I was telling you in our first interview about we had a mini cyclone come through where we live.
00:40:09
Karen Seinor
And I live in a shed and I'm surrounded by gum trees and i was terrified. It felt like gum. The house was about to lift off like in the beginning of the Wizard of Oz. And I was terrified. was frozen.
00:40:22
Karen Seinor
Yeah. Thinking that a tree was going to come down on on my little house. And I realized this as I couldn't move.
00:40:33
Karen Seinor
And then I remembered, I'm a dancer. I can fix this. And just unlocked my knees. Just started moving. Yeah. And but by the time, you know, the wind had passed and the sun had come out again, i was fine. Yeah.
00:40:51
Karen Seinor
I had no trauma embedded in my tissues from that fear, from that experience. Now, you know, also within our little yard, there were no trees there.
00:41:07
Karen Seinor
So maybe tapping into some of that universal consciousness, yeah bringing that dance in. Maybe that kept us a little bit safer. There were trees down all over the rest of the property. Yeah, right.
00:41:18
Karen Seinor
Wow. But our little yacht, nothing.
Dance in Communal Settings
00:41:21
Karen Seinor
Safe. that was pretty cool.
00:41:27
Karen Seinor
We had a party, thank you, our Seltzest Gathering. It was fantastic fun. And... you know, later in the night, put on some music and got up and just boogied together.
00:41:40
Karen Seinor
And it just brings smiles. You know, nobody's judging. and Nobody's judging there. Just seeing each other. As you said, looking into each other's eyes as we move.
00:41:55
Karen Seinor
Maybe not as together as one, as though we were all doing. Are we still there together? As ah having a group energy. Yeah. That's right.
00:42:05
Karen Seinor
Even when you do ritual work, so women's groups and things like that, that whole thing about moving as a group and you're building energy yeah when you sing, when you move in, you know, that holding hands and dancing around the circle.
00:42:25
Karen Seinor
Or I've been in spaces where all the women stand in a circle they clap and they sing and then one woman will go into the centre and she'll dance around and she'll say something. to All the other women acknowledge that.
00:42:38
Karen Seinor
they They all take a turn. So i I hear what you're saying about that whole thing about in that group. That's beautiful. and it's a wonder It's so good. like Going back to the beginning of time when we did it because our survival depended on it.
00:42:57
Karen Seinor
Now we can do it because it synergy again too. like There's some of the parts is or the whole is greater than the sum of the parts. So like dancing by it myself, one thing, fantastic. Dancing in a group of people, we then sharing energy, building energy.
00:43:15
Karen Seinor
know
00:43:18
Karen Seinor
And we can create shift. I actually genuinely feel that, I mean places hold energy, we know that.
00:43:30
Karen Seinor
and that when you bring a group of people together and there is something like dance and song and and joyful celebration, the place benefits from that being there.
00:43:46
Karen Seinor
It doesn't disappear. that yeah Absolutely. This is something that we've been working on at home. I live on a my mother-in-law's cattle property and we live in a big shed which have been storing things for a really long time.
00:44:05
Karen Seinor
And we've got big plans for this place. We would love to host host people to come and give healing workshops there. But in order for that to happen, we have had to move energy. yeah So we have had a series of gatherings where we have sung together, danced together,
00:44:27
Karen Seinor
made offerings by the fire to move this energy and now you saw on the solstice we've got two new rooms in the shed, we and yeah we've got a new lounge room. I mean, if they don't have walls or anything, but you know the energy is there, it's clean, it's got space to dance, it's space to move.
00:44:50
Karen Seinor
So it's a it's a exciting when you bring people together, you raise the energy, and the energy knows. It comes and it inhabits.
00:45:04
Karen Seinor
I also think that
00:45:08
Karen Seinor
by tapping into the land there, I've been able to understand what it is that it wants. Now that's a big call, right? Because that land's been there for a really long time.
00:45:22
Karen Seinor
But through de-armoring, through you know, kind of getting back into my body, getting that healing happening.
00:45:34
Karen Seinor
I'm able to connect with the land. I was never raised on the land. i I was a city girl. We moved countries every few years.
00:45:46
Karen Seinor
I lived in ballet studios. So me and nature, you know, I jump at, you know, and piece of grass hitting my leg.
00:46:01
Karen Seinor
But through the dearmory, I can come back to it. I can be in it. I can now sit and have lizards come and crawl over me and I can have bugs land on me and I'm not afraid of them.
00:46:21
Karen Seinor
So I can feel things so much better. I can feel the land so much better and I can... breathe because that armor stops you from breathing doesn't it it does it does yeah and i definitely agree with you i think it's totally normal for us to actually feel the land and to have that a two-way communication yeah with that that place yeah where we are i mean we we started
00:46:55
Karen Seinor
We did speak about, I think we spoke about this earlier. We've definitely had a few chats. I think this morning we have also talked about dance with the Wurrachuk people.
00:47:08
Karen Seinor
Maybe we spoke about it. i think we did. yeah and And I mean, that's an integral part of of the First Nations people's connection with dance and the land and Yeah, all the things. I'm getting little fluffy off now a little got a little puppy joining the situation.
00:47:33
Karen Seinor
So, we could
Episode Recap and Offer
00:47:36
Karen Seinor
go on for hours. I wonder whether we should wrap this. I mean, it's the, well, it's not first main conversation. Yeah, but you know, there's plenty.
00:47:47
Karen Seinor
Yeah. All right. Well, look, we might wrap it there. So we've, We've talked about quite a few things, dance-related, using the importance of using dance with a body to release tension, trauma, yeah move storms, all sorts of things.
00:48:07
Karen Seinor
And I'll actually put a link in the blurb about your website so people can go and check that out. I'd also love to offer your listeners, viewers, a half-price...
00:48:21
Karen Seinor
access to the current course which is called Dance Together but I think if they use the code soulfulandwild that should be half price for you know all the courses when they are there.
00:48:36
Karen Seinor
There you go. So soulful and the word and wild. Yes soulful and wild in those spaces. Use that in the chat now. Alright thank you very much for joining us and have a beautiful rest of your day.
00:48:49
Karen Seinor
Thank