|
Ravendance
Wizzerd


Registered: 05/23/14
Posts: 238
Loc: Earth
Last seen: 5 years, 3 months
|
Ecstatic "art forms"
#21170885 - 01/24/15 12:18 PM (9 years, 3 months ago) |
|
|
Anybody here into ecstatic dance, ecstatic drumming or anything similar? I drum a lot (depending on what circles I'm in or whether I'm by myself, either a djembe, talking drum, or frame drum) and even while sober, if you put your soul into it, it can be an incredibly powerful tool for transcendence and community (and when you add psychedelics to the mix is incredible).
Lately I've been getting into "ecstatic dance", my friend brought me to a potluck and said "We will be doing ecstatic dance!". So I made some guacamole and thought cool, there will be lot's of kids rolling their ass off and listening to EDM or something.
When I got there I was thinking "ok, this probably isn't going to be my scene but I'll see what happens". But when I got there, it was way more magical than I could've expected. They had a bonfire out back, everyone was drumming, and there were people flailing around or just doing yoga type stuff who looked like they were tripping REALLY hard. I looked and my friend and she looked at me almost like "yeah, I told you this was cool". So I drummed for a minute, smoked a bit, and asked her who I'd talk to to get some of whatever these people were taking.
She said they weren't taking anything, that it's about ECSTATIC movement, and to just let the drums into your heart. Next thing you know, my ego was far above me in the sky and I was doing my soul's dance, having a genuinely psychedelic, VERY spiritual experience. With nothing but a few hits on a blunt, and very very mystical atmosphere! It was incredible. this was a while ago on the winter solstice, but I feel like I should post about it and see if other people are into this kind of thing.
|
saenchai
Stranger
Registered: 10/05/14
Posts: 238
Last seen: 7 years, 4 months
|
Re: Ecstatic "art forms" [Re: Ravendance]
#21171379 - 01/24/15 02:28 PM (9 years, 3 months ago) |
|
|
Yeah, dance is great. It is pretty blissful to lose your mind like that and let your body express itself with no inhibitions. In a community setting, im sure that creates all kinds of interesting effects. Courtship and sex are ecstatic artforms too I think. They are very energetically pleasing and when you do it with a partner who is equally drawn to you as you are to them, the energetic back and forth becomes a kind of intoxicating play that mirrors the dance between form and consciousness.
I'm pretty sure the Hindus developed complete yogas and practices for using sex, dance, and ecstatic artforms as a means of experiencing mystic union. They had the right idea on that, not so sure about the sacred cow stuff lol. Youre right, these sorts of activities would probably be very enhanced by entheogens even though the sober experience has a lot to offer in itself. This sort of thing is definitely worth exploring
|
Halayudha
Empath



Registered: 01/02/15
Posts: 242
Loc: fresh air, nature, warm-i...
Last seen: 6 years, 8 months
|
Re: Ecstatic "art forms" [Re: saenchai]
#21174148 - 01/25/15 10:00 AM (9 years, 3 months ago) |
|
|
I have, a couple times, though the ones I participated in are more mellow I think, than what you're describing. There's one called "Dances of Universal Peace," it's rooted in Sufism, but more universalist because they have Hindu and Buddhist and other songs as well, maybe Pagan? I'm not a great source on it, but I went a few times to the one in Kansas City - a very small group there. It was very beautiful, very lovely, very worth checking out at least a couple times. I would go again if I lived anywhere near any of those groups - I live way out in the country right now.
Also Kirtans are very ecstatic usually. Native American pow wows - I would love to get to one of those again. I went to a few when I was a kid, but I haven't been since then.
I would enjoy probably very much the fellowship at a gathering the kind you mention, but probably wouldn't join in the dance. Sacred herb and other things like that are more of a quiet, reflecting kind of experience, and moving a lot tends to abate it for me. But, dancing into a state of ecstasy from being sober has been really wonderful, especially at the places I mentioned. I would very, very much love to travel to Jamaica one day and see how they dance there. I would probably want to spend a while getting to know people first.
The only one I do at the moment is running through nature, that's been one of my favorites since a kid, it can be pretty awesome! :-)
-------------------- Call me not rebel, though { here at every word {in what I sing If I no longer hail thee { King and Lord { Lord and King
|
Ravendance
Wizzerd


Registered: 05/23/14
Posts: 238
Loc: Earth
Last seen: 5 years, 3 months
|
Re: Ecstatic "art forms" [Re: Halayudha]
#21174508 - 01/25/15 11:58 AM (9 years, 3 months ago) |
|
|
Great responses! You can definitely lose yourself in the spiritual side of sex. Sex is just an expression of life! And Halayudha, I recommend the book "born to run" if you are into the spiritual side of running. It touches on the Tarahumara of Mexico and how they viewed running as an ecstatic and spiritual practice. I remember somewhere in the book how it said something about when you see competitive runners, they always have a look of pain and determination on their face, but when you see Tarahumara runners, they are laughing and smiling, and that stuck with me.
|
Halayudha
Empath



Registered: 01/02/15
Posts: 242
Loc: fresh air, nature, warm-i...
Last seen: 6 years, 8 months
|
Re: Ecstatic "art forms" [Re: Ravendance]
#21174626 - 01/25/15 12:25 PM (9 years, 3 months ago) |
|
|
Thank you for sharing this -
and actually, thinking about it, I'm vaguely remembering that very same thought - I've come across it before. Nice to see it again thank you.
-------------------- Call me not rebel, though { here at every word {in what I sing If I no longer hail thee { King and Lord { Lord and King
|
AlteredAgain
Visual Alchemist



Registered: 04/27/06
Posts: 11,181
Loc: Solar Circuit
|
Re: Ecstatic "art forms" [Re: Ravendance]
#21179293 - 01/26/15 01:49 PM (9 years, 3 months ago) |
|
|
I'm not into music or performance art, but getting into an ecstatic state is essential to my creation of visual art. Spraying acrylic paint and glitching the hell out of these paintings, transmuting them into abstract digital forms very much requires a trance like state. On that note, listening to music is an absolute must. In silence I'd probably go nuts.
--------------------
|
Spacerific
- - - >



Registered: 10/13/12
Posts: 4,923
Last seen: 9 years, 1 month
|
|
I was at the Ecstatic Dance workshop thing at Boom 2012 festival. This was a couple of days after my first time taking LSD, so was still recovering, building up energy in my body from all the dancing and adventuring and interdimensional traveling and whatnot.
It was this Canadian "dance facilitator" lady, that I was initially very suspicious of, and in fact I was suspicious of the whole thing to begin with, because why would dancing be anything like tripping, right? I was just chilling in the sun in the main lecture tent because the tent was orange, and then randomly the dance workshop began and I was too lazy to move to some other location, figured I might as well take part 
Well lo and behold, it was actually quite awesome. We did this 4 elements thing, we started on the floor, on our backs, feeling the earth, moving slowly, then we went to water, air, then fire. This took a good couple of hours. The fire thing was quite fiery, jumping and active and everybody was going on like crazy. Epic times.
At the end of it all we all sat down, the lady asked if there's anybody that wants to share something, my hand instantly went up, although I had no idea whatsoever what I was going to say 
But the mike came my way, there were like 2-300 people in the tent listening intently (main lecture tent at Boom festival), and I just heard my voice, amplified in the speakers, spontaneously going:
I would like to say, Live like this. Every day  It was gloriously epic, one of the coolest moments at the festival (at least outside the LSD tripping thing  ). So yeah, Ecstatic Dance, pretty good stuff, recommended
-------------------- Blessed are your eyes because they see, and your ears because they hear.
For truly, I say to you, many prophets and righteous people longed to see what you see, and did not see it, and to hear what you hear, and did not hear it. - Matthew 13:16
|
Ravendance
Wizzerd


Registered: 05/23/14
Posts: 238
Loc: Earth
Last seen: 5 years, 3 months
|
Re: Ecstatic "art forms" [Re: Spacerific]
#21192160 - 01/28/15 03:31 PM (9 years, 3 months ago) |
|
|
That's awesome, man
|
crkhd
☾☼☽

Registered: 12/28/08
Posts: 2,401
Loc: A human sphere enfolding ...
Last seen: 1 year, 1 day
|
Re: Ecstatic "art forms" [Re: Ravendance]
#21197731 - 01/29/15 04:19 PM (9 years, 3 months ago) |
|
|
Yeah I love ecstatic dance. It's the only real counter to psychedelics. It's the only thing that makes you feel warm and bubbly inside without MDMA. Between dancing and shedding tears, I believe there is no further need for emotional healing tools: dance the happiness, cry the sadness, simple as that. Just waiting for some money to come in so I can go join the ecstatic dancers in my city. If anyone knows of free ecstatic dance societies or whatever, let me know. Anywhere in the world, I just want to know if they exist. Might consider going to join them if anything.
If you do it right, the pranic world opens. Chi, 3rd eye activation. Human superpowers. All the good stuff, it's in the ecstatic dance.
-------------------- "Everything there is, and all that there is, is a Pattern of unspeakable proportion. The Pattern contains everything that is, completely fixed in succession, all the minimal particles interconnected in every way that is. Every way that is is not every conceivable way, because not everything that can be conceived is manifest in the pattern." "THE Human, you, is a miniscule but essential part of that pattern. In it lies complete fulfillment. It will never become something it is not, but it will never need to be anything else." - Wiccan_Seeker "If boring drudgery was the way of the universe, everything would have killed itself long ago." - Spacerific
|
Ravendance
Wizzerd


Registered: 05/23/14
Posts: 238
Loc: Earth
Last seen: 5 years, 3 months
|
Re: Ecstatic "art forms" [Re: crkhd]
#21197794 - 01/29/15 04:34 PM (9 years, 3 months ago) |
|
|
I love that, "cry your sadness and dance your happiness".
|
|