Dance healing is available to everyone! Without even stepping into a dance class, you have access to one of the most powerful healing modalities and can benefit from the profound joy, strength, grace, and love that dance offers you! We all have a skeleton in our closet, something that we have done or that has happened to us that has made our lives difficult, has caused us pain, and has left physical, mental, and emotional scars. Imagine the possibilities when you learn to dance with your skeletons and ultimately heal them in such a way that you will never put them back in the closet again! Dancing with Your Skeletons is a three-part book offering you three separate ways to experience dance healing. The book as a whole can also be an amazing tool to gently and easily facilitate dance healing in your own life. Every dance begins with one step. Reading this book is your first step in a new, beautiful, and exciting dance.

A step-by-step guide to working with the spirits of ancient northern Europe • Explains how to build relationships with Earth, Sun, Moon, Plants, Animals, Water, Fire, Craft, Air, and the Ancestors through 83 practical exercises • Explores the role of altered states in spirit work • Outlines the ancient cultural rules and taboos to avoid spiritual debt or offense We are all surrounded by spirits. Many people feel called to work with them, but few know where to begin. Enjoined by the gods and spirits to fulfill this need, Raven Kaldera and Galina Krasskova have reconstructed the indigenous spiritual traditions of northern Europe and Scandinavia extinguished more than one thousand years ago by the spread of Christianity. Arising from basic survival needs, these practical traditions are fundamentally tied to the elements found in the harsh world of the ancient North. Beginning with the skills tied to the Earth element, necessary for grounding prior to the more demanding aspects of the practice--working with Sun, Moon, Plants, Animals, Water, Fire, Craft, and Air--the authors explain, step by step, how to build relationships with each elemental spirit and the Ancestors. Offering 83 practical exercises, from cleansing with the Moon or borrowing the legs of Reindeer to making sacred space with Mugwort or creating an ancestor altar, they also explore building spirit relationships through altered states. Emphasizing the proper management of your spirit relationships to avoid spiritual debt or offense, the authors outline the ancient cultural rules and taboos that circumscribe these practices, essential knowledge for successful and fruitful spirit alliances. Detailing the beginning set of skills needed to work with the spirits of this ancient world, this comprehensive workbook offers a unique ancestral spiritual outlet for those of northern European descent as well as an accessible guide for anyone trying to fulfill their shamanic callings.

A spectacular and timely contribution to dance history, recasting canonical dance since the early nineteenth century in terms of a feminist perspective.

Marshall leads the reader through the intricacies, ambiguities, and silences of !Kung beliefs. Based on fieldwork among the Bushmen of the Kalahari in the early 1950s, she presents the culture, beliefs, and spirituality of one of the last true hunting-and-gathering peoples by focusing on members of different bands as they reveal their own views.

Still naïve in many ways from her sheltered upbringing, Sarah wants to shed her goodie-two-shoes image. She wants to live life, not let it pass her by. That’s why she enjoys the company of her cousin Skye so much. Skye lives life to the absolute fullest and Sarah wants to be more like her. Even the fact that Skye is gay is fascinating, albeit frightening as well. Sarah has never found any man attractive. But she’s pretty sure that’s because her family is constantly attempting to fix her up with every eligible single man in the church in the hopes of making an honest woman of her. The family pressure is building and at the age of twenty-eight, it’s getting harder and harder to reject each new suitor. But what is she to do? There doesn’t seem to be anyone who can even remotely light a spark in her heart. That is until she meets Jewel Black, a fire dancer who goes by the stage name Enigma…

This new collection of essays surveys the history of dance in an innovative and wide-ranging fashion. Editors Dils and Albright address the current dearth of comprehensive teaching material in the dance history field through the creation of a multifaceted, non-linear, yet well-structured and comprehensive survey of select moments in the development of both American and World dance. This book is illustrated with over 50 photographs, and would make an ideal text for undergraduate classes in dance ethnography, criticism or appreciation, as well as dance history—particularly those with a cross-cultural, contemporary, or an American focus. The reader is organized into four thematic sections which allow for varied and individualized course use: Thinking about Dance History: Theories and Practices, World Dance Traditions, America Dancing, and Contemporary Dance: Global Contexts. The editors have structured the readings with the understanding that contemporary theory has thoroughly questioned the discursive construction of history and the resultant canonization of certain dances, texts and points of view. The historical readings are presented in a way that encourages thoughtful analysis and allows the opportunity for critical engagement with the text. Ebook Edition Note: Ebook edition note: Five essays have been redacted, including “The Belly Dance: Ancient Ritual to Cabaret Performance,” by Shawna Helland; “Epitome of Korean Folk Dance”, by Lee Kyong-Hee; “Juba and American Minstrelsy,” by Marian Hannah Winter; “The Natural Body,” by Ann Daly; and “Butoh: ‘Twenty Years Ago We Were Crazy, Dirty, and Mad’,”by Bonnie Sue Stein. Eleven of the 41 illustrations in the book have also been redacted.

How to get sparks back in your life and keep them burning. The blaze of a log fire on a cold night speaks to the heart in a way no other flame can. It has character and ever-changing form; it has vibrant colour and a balletic movement. Indeed, it was the flame that transformed the way life was lived on earth, but now that primary driver of evolution finds itself being extinguished in a modern world of microwaves, induction hobs and central heating. Gradually the flames are going out, as houses are now built without fireplaces, bonfires are banned, and schoolchildren are forbidden to use the Bunsen burner. But the sight of a flame remains as evocative as ever. Playing with Fire wants to inspire, and teach, looking at the history of fire and showing the wonders that the burning flame can conjure.