“Maps to Ecstasy” book, By Gabrielle Roth.
The book talks about the powers necessary to survive: the power to be, the power to love, the power to know, the power to see and the power to heal.
The first stage consists of freeing the body to reach the being. Everything that happens to us is recorded in the body. It tells us that we live in the head: past/future and disconnected from our priorities. Ecstatic dance was what brought her back to life. Re-learning to move her inner self, dancing from the inside out and not from the outside in. The 5 rhythms are: fluidity, staccato, chaos, lyricism, stillness.
Flow: we give ourselves in the waves of movement with curves and circles, rooted to the earth. Flowing in all directions.
Staccato: we melt into the rhythms of the drums and our body becomes part of the percussion instruments that hit the floor and the space.
Chaos: the rhythm intensifies and we lose control. The head lets go, the spine moves undulating, caught in the rhythm, the feet dizzy and the hands fly.
Lyrical: we think we are bursting and we let ourselves fall, the breath descends and we expand. It is in the moment that we are reborn and we are rooted again.
Stillness: with undulating movements we begin to turn slowly, until we find stillness. But inside everything remains in movement. Meditation ceases to be movement and becomes this semi-stillness.
She compares the rhythms of giving birth to those of dancing 5 rhythms: labor begins with soft, undulating movements in the womb (like fluid), moves to strong, stabbing contractions (like staccato), grows indescribably painful (like chaos), pushes the baby to bursting (like lyrical) and sends a current of allergy embracing the baby (like stillness).
Over the years she has discovered that these rhythms: flow, staccato, chaos, lyrical and stillness constitute the DNA of our psychic life.
Practice:
She has recorded music to accompany this book with the intention that they can follow the practice at the same time as the reading is done. Gabrielle Roth comments that you can also choose the music yourself, with some music that moves you, as it is important to discover what moves you. She proposes to find the same time each day for 5 days a week to practice the rhythms, preferably in the morning. Beginning with movements with the feet, feeling them as they are rooted in the earth. Consciously moving up the legs, arms, circles with the hands and focusing on the belly, Gabrielle tells us that all movements begin and end there, in our center. She talks about how returning to the vital rhythms is essential to untie knots. She tells us that understanding rhythms opens us to new perceptions. For example, she talks about the staccato rhythm of New York and the lyrical rhythm of Jamaica. She proposes us to pick up the rhythms of people, places, seasons of the year, weeks, days and learn to dance to them.
Objective:
Its objective is to create awareness by healing with these 5 rhythms a practice of physical training and meditation through movement.
Content:
Gabrielle Roth proposes in this book questions that the reader can ask themself and write the answers with awareness. She also proposes a journey into the past through photographs to become aware of our evolution and goals achieved. Finally she proposes us to practice the rhythms with her playlist/record introducing us to the meditation with her music or using our own.
Structure:
Gabriella has dedicated her life to investigate the creative process of a moving meditation going through the 5 vital rhythms. She arranges them chronologically: birth, childhood, puberty, maturity and death. He also classifies them by 5 emotions. She makes the same association with places where we dwell.
Conclusion:
To assimilate this book with its five aspects of the psyche we must dance and move our bodies to understand the maps.
