Inspiration - Maya karasso

<table style="border-style: solid; border-width: 1px; margin-left: 1px; width: 685px; height: 116px; background-color: rgb(136, 0, 0);"><tbody><tr><td valign="middle" style="border: 1px solid ; background-color: rgb(97, 28, 29);"><div style="text-align: center;">We are challenged to become our own teacher. Our path is like subtle, exquisite dance; no set of instruction can replace our own intuitive artistry. When we surpass external rules, claiming our own authority, life become tremendously exciiting. Each step has meaning, and there is no place for guilt- only for courageous learning through tiral and error . Jalaja bonheim </div> </td></tr></tbody></table> <table style="border-style: solid; border-width: 1px; height: 100px; width: 100%; background-color: rgb(218, 7, 7); margin-left: 1px;"><tbody><tr><td style="border: 1px solid ;"><img width="288" height="293" border="0" style="width: 153px; height: 140px;" wfxsrc="belly secrets symbol.jpg" wfxtype="resource" src="/xml/wfxdirect/res;jsessionid=0C3491FA38E90C761D605BBF78FECF14.TC125a?name=belly+secrets+symbol.jpg&type=image" />The Celtic Triple Spiral is a symbol of the Triple goddess (maiden, mother, crone) also, waxing waning and full moon (in ancient times). The Celtic triple spiral can be found inside the megolithic Newgrange passage tomb. It is on the entrance stone, and on some of the curbstones that surround the mound. The triple spiral or triskele is a Celtic and pre-Celtic symbol. "The triple spiral may represent the nine month period of human pregnancy". The symbol at Newgrange is believed by some to be a symbol of pregnancy (the sun describes a spiral in its movements every three months; a triple spiral represents nine months). The idea origionates by the sun representing a spiral in its movements every three months. A tripple spiral represents nine months. These ideas become reinforced by the womb like nature of the structure (Newgrange). The symbol also suggests reincarnation because it is drawn in one continuous line, suggesting a continuous movement of the universe within eternity. "Wheeled" form of the triple spiral symbol, some consider this triskele a solar symbol. Represent the Goddess as ‘the triple source of life energy necessary for the renewal of life. Some researchers are now realizing that this Triple Spiral was inscribed by minds that understood their Place – Earth and Cosmos – as Mother-Creator: this Place itself as the Sacred Entity The Triple Spiral is ‘perhaps the most powerful representation’ of the sacred heritage of ritual celebration of eternal Creation represented in the Wheel of the Year, the phases of the Moon and the lives of all beings17. </td></tr></tbody></table> <table style="border-style: solid; border-width: 1px; height: 100px; width: 100%; margin-left: 1px; background-color: rgb(210, 94, 93); color: rgb(230, 163, 161);"><tbody><tr><td valign="middle" style="border: 1px solid ; background-color: rgb(184, 50, 50);"> The Birth Dance By Anita-Cristina Calcaterra. 1992. It is important for women to reclaim birth as a natural and powerful process. For too long in our modern times, fear, uncertainty and unconsciousness have surrounded birth. Our bodies, from the beginning, have given birth. Much wisdom, both herbal and physical, has been lost since the systemization of medicine. It is a struggle to relearn these things, but it is an important struggle and one that will lead to great healing for many people. The connection between belly dancing and birth is not a new one. Work has been done, noticed and unnoticed to bring the dance to the attention of birth educators. The link was forged as early as 1965 by Carolina Varga-Dinicu known as Morocco. She compared childbirth education taught at Mount Sinai Hospital in New York and major books like Natural Childbirth by Dr. Frederick W. Goodrich to her dance movements as she performed them. In 1976, Gigi Groth Devitt, a member of Birth Day in Boston, collaborated with the dancer Barbara Brandt and demonstrated among other things, that Lamaze and this dance are based on the same method of muscle isolation. Around that same time, Edith Maxwell stressed the importance of movement during labor and showed how the movements of this dance help in “moving the baby down” the birth canal. In 1983, Wendy Buonaventura published a book, Belly Dancing, where she outlined the role of the dance throughout history in many cultures. She showed that the dance has always been a part of the birth process. The most exact comparative work was done by Morgana, in 1981. She compared specific movements of the dance to the phases of birth and the motion of the emergence of the baby. She has shown that the dance movements exercise all the birth muscles and the rhythms, in fact, match the birth process. Her work leaves the impression that the dance could be none other than a birth dance. The circle is a Sacred Shape and is the very foundation of the dance. Moving the heart in a circle strengthens and flexes the upper abdominals. Moving the hips in a circle massages the internal organs, including the pelvic floor, and also conditions the lower abdominals. Tension is released by moving the wrists, shoulders and ankles in circles, and by rotating the spine in small circles. Accents introduce a faster rhythm and they are the power of the dance because they provide an outlet for inner impulses. Hip thrusting teaches control and builds concentration for focusing on one body part while the rest relaxes. Shimmies, all the different varieties, are the endurance of the dance. They require intense concentration and control of deep inner muscles. They loosen the back and hips and allow the focus to shift from pain to movement. Body undulations are the flexibility of the dance. The movements mirror how a woman’s body stretches to allow a baby to grow, and at the same time prepares the birth muscles for the task. Undulations also require concentration and focus, mainly because the muscles that need to be activated are unfamiliar to most people. All of these qualities - relaxation, focus, endurance, and flexibility are needed in the birth process. Belly dance can be done standing, kneeling, lying down or walking. Lastly, belly dancing while giving birth means movement in general is encouraged while trying to give birth. It gives the power back to the process and allows women to find their way through the pain and fear of giving birth.</td></tr></tbody></table> <table style="border-style: solid; border-width: 1px; height: 595px; width: 687px; margin-left: 1px; background-color: rgb(184, 50, 50);"><tbody><tr><td valign="middle" style="border: 1px solid ;"> <h1 style="text-align: center; color: rgb(238, 190, 184);">Belly Dance and Women's Spirituality: Some Background</h1> By Barbara Brandt. 1992. Long before people thought of God as a man, God was a woman – the Great Goddess, she who created the heavens, the earth, and all the people who live on it; she who controls the cycles of life, birth and death, of day and night and the seasons; out of whose body the sun is born each morning and to whom it returns each night; from whose body seeds grow into plants, then die back and are reborn the following year; and in whose image women bring forth both male and female children and provide them with their first food. The Great Goddess was also honored as giver of civilization, since women developed most of the early-civilized arts, such as agriculture, textile and pottery, healing, etc. Although many peoples throughout the world (including the primitive tribes of Europe) worshipped the Great Goddess over thousands of years, some of the greatest centers of her worship were in the highly developed agricultural cities and towns of the ancient Middle East – Babylon, Mesopotamia, and early Egypt. From this part of the world also, emerged the art we call “belly dance”. It is still practiced today as both a folk art and a form of entertainment in countries of the Middle East, Asia Minor and North Africa. (We now think of this area as the heart of patriarchal Islam, but that came much, much later.) Over the centuries, as patriarchal cultures and civilizations displaced the worship of the Great Goddess and overthrew the correspondingly powerful position of women in those early civilizations, the art of belly dancing likewise took on new forms and meanings, so that it now most frequently calls to mind such images as “a dance of seduction performed before lascivious men by women confined in a harem.” But, as we increasingly learn more about women’s history, and rediscover the role and symbols of the ancient Great Goddess, it becomes obvious that belly dancing itself is a sacred art, which in its original purpose reflected the essential Act of Creation and the power of women as mirror of the Great Goddess. This representation occurs on many levels. At its most practical, belly dancing is a dance of childbirth. Its movements are similar to exercises done in modern childbirth preparation classes, and some parts of the dance actually depict phases of the labor process. In addition, many of the traditional belly dance movements can be recognized as classic symbols of the Great Goddess and her creative, life-giving powers: including body patterns such as the circle, the half-circle, and figure eight; the rolling of breasts, pelvis, and belly; gestures such as upraised arms; and movements which imitate flowing water or the snaky serpent. Even the traditional belly dance accessories, the finger cymbals and veil, are related to ancient symbols of the Great Goddess in her act of creation. Finally, the dance is in part a celebration of a woman’s own body, pleasure, and sensuality. It is a sexy dance. And this reminds us (contrary to male-dominated assumptions) that to the ancient peoples who revered the Great Goddess; “female lust” was the essential force without which life on earth would not happen.</td></tr></tbody></table> <table style="border-style: solid; border-width: 1px; height: 100px; width: 100%; background-color: rgb(210, 94, 93); margin-left: 1px;"><tbody><tr><td style="border: 1px solid ;">Modern woman, although separated by time and is not only question of space from their ritualistic roots, can still connect with through dance “it is not only question of true art, it is a question of race, of the development of female sex to beauty and health, of the return to the original strength and to natural movement of woman’s body.” Isadora Duncanger. Mata Hari described her dance as “a sacred poem in which each movement is a word and whose every word is underlined by music.” </td></tr></tbody></table>