Welcome to the week of the art and healing course about dance. Dance is about embodiment. We have these bodies. It's a little strange, but we have them. They're us and they're not us. We have this spirit, that consciousness, the universe, and our bodies. And when our bodies move, knowledge comes in the cells of memories that we don't usually access. The first time I learned this, I was working with the grandmother of healing dance, Anna Halprin, who has now just had a huge healing dance party for her 90th birthday. And I asked her what she did with her cancer patients with healing dance. I said, the first thing I ever do is dance as an animal. I said, why is that? And she said, because when they move as a turtle, the ancient cells, we all carry 99% of the DNA of a lot of the animals. We don't lose things. We gain things in the world. So we're bear, we're owl. We're amoeba, we're bacteria. We're all these things. But when your muscles move turtle, you get turtle consciousness. So turtle is protective. Turtle is protection. Turtle moves slowly. Turtle is unbelievably ancient. So Anna says, when a cancer patient moves turtle, they're embodying protection in a way that a guided imagery or another art can't do. So I watched her working with very sick, almost end of life people with her. And they would receive a spirit animal, and then they would dance it. So I was working with bear. So I said, hm, this sounds like an interesting idea. So I had workshops with the bear skins that I had with women with breast cancer. And first I would dance the bear myself with them, not knowing much about what was going on, following my ancient memories. And then one day, I put the bear skin on a woman. And she went like this [SOUND]. And I got to the end of the dance, and I said, what happened? And she said, there was no room for the bear and the woman who was afraid of breast cancer inside, only one. And I said, hm, now, this is interesting because maybe the oldest documented art in healing is dance. Cats who did the boiling energy study at Harvard on Kalahari bushmen, who had a hunter gatherer lifestyle that was very ancient, although of course, it's changed with time. The only healing, there was no doctor, there was no artist, the healing was a once a week dance where the whole tribe, there was no specialist, there was no shaman, priestess. They just danced, and what they did was they released what you call the boiling energy. And the boiling energy balanced their chakras, freed them. And some of them would be in a trance. Some of them would fall down. Some of them would go into tongues, and that was the healing of the tribe. So we have within us this technology to heal ourselves with dance. Okay, so now I have a bear skin. And now I'm putting it on cancer patients, and now the people I'm working with who have cancer, arthritis, are now working with the bear skin. So a physician on morning rounds at UCLA sees me. First though they did a series on Good Morning America on four alternative healer, and I was one of them. And they filmed me working in a bear skin on top of Mount Timpanagos at sunset with a very old woman. And I'm standing over her, and she's covered with rose petals [LAUGH] in a crater of the Earth, crying, and it was a beautiful video. So it was on Good Morning America, and the doctor saw it. And he tracked me down through my publisher. And he had been going to the Chumash Indian bear dance. The American Indians in California, the five tribes Pomuch, Chumash, have the Bear Society, and they bear dance to heal. And he asked one of the chiefs if this crazy doctor that he saw on Good Morning America could come, and they invited me. I brought my skin, and the chief says, did you bring your medicine brother? And I said, I don't know what you're talking about. He says, your skin. And I said, yeah, and he walks away. And he comes back and he says, Creator told me you're supposed to dance with us. And I said, what does this mean? And he says, just follow the bear in front of you. So it's midnight now, and where it's 28 degrees, and they say, take off all your clothes to your shorts, and we'll paint your face. So they did that. So we go in a little circle of stones, and he says now we bring in the sick people. And up to then I was just saying what is this? And had to bring in people with cancer, and people with, and he says, now the bears will heal him. So you put your skin on, and the bears do the healing. This one I knew well, because I had been working at University of Florida Arts and Healing with bears, with artists on the river. And suddenly my bear comes out. I leave, and this ancient bear, which is the healer for almost all Native American tribes does its healing. And I come out, and I said, this is who I am. I don't why, I don't understand this. And now I've been dancing with the Chumash dance group in southern California for 16 years, three times a year. And it's extremely beautiful, extremely powerful, and it's my teaching. Because dance takes you into animal transformation, which is the basis of all shamanism. You turn into the spirit of the animal. The spirit of the bear is an ancient healer beyond our comprehension. And when you dance that bear, when you dance that turtle, you release cellular discharges of memories that go everywhere in the universe.
