I felt to write this after being given more information via circledancingfriends about the Elm Tree Dance to the song: Kā man klājas
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s0Lv9CqaJy4
and also dance steps at:
http://www.joannamacy.net/theelmdance.html
and http://www.gaia.iinet.net.au/ElmDance.htm
My quintessential Elm Tree dance experience was when teaching a 'spontaneous' session outside in the sunset and rising stars at the first Passages Camp. (In England in the early 90s).
It was a spontaneous session in that I wasn't officially there as a teacher or in the program, but that I felt pregnant with the energies and qualities of the process of the camp and called out by the beauty of the feeling of the sunset. It felt that the heart of the camp had opened. Dancing out in such a glorious setting and in an already relaxed trust served as an expression of what was current - of feeling life as an intimacy that arose through our camping and being together, and which carried within it a sense of innocence or simple delight in the moment.

We finished with the Elm - in a hug and then instead of breaking off, we found ourselves forming a spiral hug that wound around one end and held all in embrace. The silence and connectedness was tangible - and then there were sobs from someone in the middle, so I said something (from the outer arc of the spiral) like - "are you ok - can you breathe in there?" and the one whose heart was in release replied, "Breathe? - I feel like I am breathing for the first time in my life!".
The blessing was felt and shared without adding word or ritual.


As it transpired - even though I held back the dance until after the programmed event started, and did so without any pre advertisement or notice, it still happened that a large number didn't go to the programmed event but did join in the dance.
As a result, there was deep disappointment and consequent blame directed at me for sabotaging the program, from the camp organiser whose heart was in running a camp where his passion could find expression in its own right - (instead of being a peripheral event at the big Dance Camp where Circle dance was the main focus). But he didn't communicate any of this to anyone until after it didn't go as he envisioned, and somehow managed to manifest his fears rather than his joy. I was asked not to return to those camps and was branded a separatist - which was not a term of endearment but of exclusion.

That was all very long ago - and yet the trust and willingness, to honour the movement of life in me, and finding it serves at a deep level, and yet also activates a script in the world of exclusion is a familiar one. I embrace the experiences of exclusion in my life as opportunities to uncover otherwise hidden judgement and release it from my mind- but that doesn't mean I do not feel pain. It means I choose not to make stories of grievance and suffer Self-exclusion as a result of self indulgence.

These days I sing the Elm Tree song for my dancers.  And the quality of opening through a cut heart into a deeper inclusion is in the song - yet held so gently.
There is an accidental 'meaning' in the song  just before the pause and the high notes where its sounds like 'oh feel this now'.
It is one that I accept as a gift of my Spirit regardless of that that is not what is really being sung. For the denial and fear of feeling is the exclusion of our own capacity for joy in life now - and to feel and flow and be released of exclusion and fear and conflict, is to breathe anew.

(Managing the denial of the heart or feeling being is a heavy burden of misplaced responsibility)

The true Heart has its own language - secret to the mind of command and control - which is blind by design. The sharing and moving through dance is a vehicle for such communication and communion of Life.  Breathing together.

(Elm dance note: Our groups often come into a hug as part of the dance and not just at the end).

There are all sorts of aspects to the nuances of the form of a dance - but there is also the issue of whether the form is mere surface, or whether it serves and is embraced as a vehicle. I feel the latter is often easily lost in the world - in any inspired cultural expression.

Shaking hands, hugging, dancing - even making love! - all can become an empty ritual of meaningless facade onto which any meanings may be applied or agreed BUT without sharing the Meaning of love.

It is our innate and inescapable responsibility - or nature - to be the love that we are. This isn't a burden of yet another impossible task for management-mind to get a handle on. It is simply staying present in our inalienable capacity to receive, to feel and to express.  And seems to be a matter of acceptance and peace amidst whatever moment of life we find we are in - that we feel as we feel - and - be gentle with ourselves and each other in the way of our expression.

"Music soothes the savage breast".  (this also often slips into using the term beast).

I feel music offers an alchemical process of uncovering the yearning beneath the hurt, beneath the anger, beneath the triggering thoughts and perceptions.  When as Rumi says, BE the yearning, we will find and be found in an Inclusion before 'the world as we make it' clicks into gear.  And NOW we have a perspective from which to choose anew. Without such a willingness of awakening beyond a personal protectiveness of misidentified thoughts, there can be no true restoration and no renewal, but only an endlessly rebranded repetition of the old rituals that sacrifice or deny our feeling being - our joy in life.

I feel to write openly of what is usually held secret because our human world is becoming very fearful and unstable in the directions and focus of its intent, its media and its thought. I do not feel to be defined by fear for it is the condition in which we are most easily deceived - but I do feel to be alarmed into waking up. Not to reaction - but to uncover and align in the perspective of my heart's truth. That on which a true foundation can be lived out from - whatever the world seems to become.

Seeing the related Elm Dance web pages linked above relating to other cultures joining in a deeper solidarity of heart despite suffering the oppressions of callous, careless and divisive intent, I feel, (as I long have) - that the dance that is seeded in my life is not a hobby or an activity in search of members, and still less a business - but is a path of transformation and renewal - available to be discovered by any who are willing to step out from their closet into a deeper trust.

Presence and passion communicate directly and energetically. And a lack of presence and passion communicates itself no less. The 'what' of what we do is either something consciously real to us - to which we bring our heart's committment - or is something we do in attempt to make ourselves real to ourselves and others. But we never did or could or can make, determine or define the reality of our awareness. We accept and be aligned with it as it Is, or, we imagine it as it isn't and experience our own definitions as real - even though reality remains - as it Is.

Such is the habit of living imaginatively in thought, that it has virtually (sic) replaced our real life.  But in all sorts of little ways, Awareness rises to life, and can lead out from confusion. Joining in a circle of dance offers a very simple way to be touched by an experience of unified being, in the company of others also touched. But if it is reduced to achieving conformity of form as a privately defined sense of belonging, held within a tacit agreement not to join, nor become present in our joy - then it has become like the seeds, that were sown on the path, but there was no soil so that the birds came and ate them - and there was no crop.

In Peace

Brian

"God picks up the reed-flute world and blows.  Each note is a need coming
through one of us, a passion, a longing-pain. Remember the lips where
the wind-breath originated, and let your note be clear. Don't try to end it.
BE YOUR NOTE."   

-Rumi