by maria | Jun 7, 2019 | Uncategorized
The Somatic & Sacred, Inner & Outer Expression of an Ancient Dance in a Modern World
Embodied bellydance® was born out of my personal journey through Egyptian dance that began 30 years ago. As I began to explore the fundamentals of Egyptian dance I felt an instant feeling of belonging. The belonging was of something most ancient, profound and wise. This feeling progressed to a curiosity for the connection the dance held to the spiralling flow of nature, life and the universe. It also spoke of the interconnectedness of the masculine and feminine energy through shape and form and the harmonic correlation to music.
As I journeyed on, I immersed myself in the study of various somatic movement methods that aligned perfectly with the essence of this dance. I also explored the therapeutic value through years of teaching Egyptian Dance and witnessing the effect the dance had on participants of my Dance Movement Therapy groups.
To be embodied in this dance is to be whole. It weaves a story throughout the fluids, connective tissue and spine. The energy and directions radiate out and back via the navel in all directions to all parts of the body. It take from the culture of it origin a joy and respect for life.
Embodied Bellydance® Intensives are designed to serve all levels and abilities of dance. Beginning with those who wish to explore this dance as a philosophy, to professional dancers with their own method who wish to deepen their knowledge and skills.
Embodied Bellydance® can inform and give benefit to all styles and genre of dance.
Embodied Bellydance® asks you to dive into your authenticity. It works through the Physical; to know the true origin of movement, the Emotional; to feel that every movement has an emotional response that can be identified, the Spiritual; to understand that dance is transcendent – to become conscious of things that are unconscious.
Embodied Bellydance® is an essential foundation for bellydancers of any genre.
For those who are professional dancers and teachers most of us know what it’s like to feel stiff in our movements. Some days you just can’t flow from one movement to the next. Other days you can’t hit good strong accents. Improvisation is a scary prospect for many dancers and performing can be very confronting. As for shimmies – well sometimes they just go missing! If any of these sound familiar for you or your students, then you must explore Embodied Bellydance®.
Embodied Bellydance® is an essential foundation for bellydancers and dancers of any genre. Through visualization and an insight into the workings of the body as a whole system, participants are taken on a journey to find the true source of movement. The result is effortless, integrated and dynamic dance. By creating an awareness of this richness, beauty, truth and harmony you will dance from your Authentic Embodied Self.
Embodied Bellydance® give you tools that you can apply to all aspects of your dance and daily life.
Life is a dance, when we can really bring the two together, the molecules inside us begin to change, our breath begins to change and our awareness is heighten so that we always have access to the place of NOW, in our physical, emotional, mental and spiritual Bodies.
Embodied Bellydance® is a healing dance.
by maria | Jun 29, 2017 | Uncategorized
Join Tricia Mary Lee and Maria Sangiorgi, Members of The Sacred Dance Guild, as they facilitate the dance of Being a Sacred Woman in the great accelerated moment in “Herstory” of the Feminine, all of Humankind and of Mother Earth.
To Dance, in a Sacred way is to enter into a communion of heart, mind, body and soul.
To Retreat, invites a safe inner space for contemplation, revelation, transformation and illumination.
To be in Bali, is to enter a place of beauty which is honoured and Blessed in the Sacred traditions of that culture.
This year we will weave our daily dance into rituals for our personal spiritual practice. As Sacred Women we will create our own inspirational movements to express our communion with all that is Sacred in our world. Honouring our inner feminine power, we will bring forward dances for the phases of the moon, for our role as creators, for our emotional connections with the oceans and the tides and for our strength and vulnerability as beings of compassion.
We will share, we will explore, we will grow and we will celebrate together our vital role as Sacred Dancers from all corners of this beautiful Earth of ours.
“Barefoot, Blessed and Beautiful”
Come dance with us!
Costs and Deposit payable via link to SDG web site
SDG Members : US $1,240 , Non members : US $1,300 to include membership for the year
Deposit of $340 secures your place. Balance due in August.
Inclusive Package at our beautiful venue : Bali Mountain Retreat
To join us in our Retreat of October 1st to 7th, 2017, Register here
This includes accommodation in twin share rooms with en suite, all vegetarian meals [ meat available with extra daily surcharge payable to Retreat at end of stay], your transport to and from the Retreat either at Denpasar Airport or Ubud, and all cultural activities [See Below]
The rich cultural part of our stay at Bali Mountain Retreat includes :
- A glorious evening of local music and dance : the ‘Joged Bumbung’ with 20 piece Gamelan Orchestra
- A ‘Havan’ Fire Ceremony of purification and release dedicated to Saraswati, Goddess of Learning and the Arts
- A Relaxation Massage
- A guided Forest Trek to the Temple at Muncak Sari and Blessing by local Priest / Priestess
- A Balinese cooking class with the wonderful staff
- A class in making the hand woven offerings and blessings used daily in Bali
- A visit to the Temple at Sarin Buena for Full Moon Ceremony with the local village people.
Step by step, breath by breath, heartbeat to heartbeat, sole to soul, we are dancing for health, for happiness, for harmony.
“Dancing the Sacred, Moving the World”
by maria | Jun 28, 2017 | Uncategorized
Date: Sat 21 Sun 22 October
Time: 9.30 am – 5. 30 pm
Venue: Mind Body Heart, 81 Nanson St, Cnr Grantham St, Wembley WA
For general information please contact Rowena Coshen: +61 419 240 944
Before I began to study Egyptian dance a Psychic told me of 6 past lives that were important to my present life. That was over 30 years ago. I have and am, living the relevance of each one of them now. But the one that has played out in the many layers of my life is the one I lived in Egypt. It was said that in ancient times I lived in the desert with the women and that I was a dancer and that to this life I brought with me the love and spirit of the music and dance of the desert. Now as I said, I had not began to train in Egyptian dance or ever think about it then. I thought she was talking about my love of dance in general. How, when I danced the music would enter my body and I would become connected to a power greater than myself. That when I danced I felt the part of me that is wild and free. Five years later, I attend my first class. From that day, my body memory began to awaken to the healing nature of the spirals and circle. I entered into the serpentine movements of the spine and the rhythmic shaking, the movement of the hips and pelvis, all swirling around the navel.
In the early years when I first begin to teach, the instructions would pour out of my mouth. It was my voice, but what I was saying was coming from another source. I would be thinking how do I know this . . . is it true? The answer was and still is Yes! As time passed the voice and I grew to become one. I became what I was teaching.
Over that time more information came. I was a healer in Egypt but also in other places at other times. I belonged to the tribe of women who were burnt or left behind. Dance, ritual, herbs, a body wisdom and earth wisdom were our tools. Many of those woman are my friends now.
Today I am alive and not left behind. 8 years ago I went to Egypt and made peace with the Goddess Isis at her small temple behind the temple of Hathor at Dendera.
Now I teach this dance as a healing dance and a dance of Joy. Firstly it is for women, so that they can know their bodies and the movement that give them ground and strength. The movements that Awakens them to the power of Snake energy, that connects earth and heaven.
Men can have this too, but first women need to truly unite and know that the Feminine is strong. Know that it is not weak to show emotion, to be vulnerable. To be sensual and sexual as women for women, not what the male driven world wants us to believe. Because what is projected upon us only keeps us disempowered. All women of all shapes and sizes as. All ages.
Sadly as women we have been challenged by the patriarchal story that binds us to compete against each other. This has been going on for millenniums. It is not our fault, but it is our responsibility to do something about it.
The sacred and therapeutic dance of Ancient Egypt can help us to heal this story. Through this dance we empower ourselves by weaving the our bodies to wholeness. I know because it is my story. I have been weaving myself to wholeness for 25 years and I continue to do so.
Come join the circle and weave your story with me and other women.
Learn the find your centre through the energetic spiral. Learn to yield to your strength that lies within, a strength based on ebb and flow. Letting go of the rigid amour that holds us together.
As we dance with joy with women as equals, creating a wheel of life that can lead us into a future full of Authenticity and Femininity.
This dance journey is beyond Embodied Bellydance® this is a Dance Journey for the Awakening Heart. Although for anyone who has been working with me that knows that each time they dance with me, it is not only the technique that gets better but other things happen. They cry tears of joy and sorrow. This time we are going to dive into the tears and dance them into our hearts.
I am grateful to all the amazing women in my life who I know will,nod their heads in the knowing or cry when they read this.
When I first introduced this workshop both in Italy and Australia I had never had so many women contact me. They all shared a need to be able to express their femaleness as it is. They wanted to feel the freedom to be a full bodied sexual being. Nothing fancy, simply as it is, nothing seemingly out of reach or a best kept secret as if often portrayed to us.
Come as you are be in your skin, dance your skin and all that it contains.
Meet yourself in your Sacredness in the presence of others
My passion is to take people on a Shamanic* Journey through dance and somatic awareness. A dance of change and transformation. Traveling through the varied layers of the psycho-physical and psycho spiritual realms. Allowing the dance to tell the story and then to listen attentively to the story through sensations, emotions, and thoughts. Because here lies the truth. Embracing the authenticity of the self through love and compassion.
Shamanic to me, means to facilitate change and transformation. Changing shape and form, rearranging the bodies internal and external landscape. Redirecting the path to pave a new way of being, beginning in the body through Heart Soul and Spirit.
This workshop was presented in 2015 in Melbourne Australia and Milano Italy.
Cost: $285
Please pay a deposit of $100 or total amount to secure your place. Total amount due by the 15th September
SEE PAYMENT PLAN
by maria | Dec 16, 2016 | Uncategorized
Place: Inner Movment Centre
32 Lower Heidelberg Rd, Ivanhoe
Skin is the largest organ of your body. Its many functions include; sensing and regulating, absorbing and eliminating toxins, protecting what is inside, separates from what is outside. Your Skin defines you through shape, form and colour. We are a work of Art. Immediately beneath your skin is another large organ, the Lymphatic system, and below that the Superficial Facia weaves its way from head to toe. When you lightly touch your skin and stoke it, you are are moving the lymphatic system, when you apply slightly more pressure and move the skin around you are touching superficial facia. What connects all of these marvelous systems is water. We all share this experience (unless there is a problem) but the beauty of each one of us is that, no matter how the same we are, we are different and our skin plays a large roll in the differentiation.
In this workshop we will explore, through your creative expression, dance, drawing, writing, sharing, the story of our skin and what lies beneath it, biologically, physically and metaphorically, witnessing our way through this journey.
Some themes we will explore
What is it like to live inside your skin?
What is beneath your skin?
What does it mean to you to be thick or thin skinned?
Are you comfortable in you skin
How do you feel about the colour of your skin and the skin of others?
How do you respond to people with different coloured skin?
Who would you be if you skin were say, a different colour?
How does it separate or connect you to others,?
Do you feel your skin breathing?
Can you feel the atmosphere on your skin, the breeze that passes and caress your skin?
How does if feel to touch and to be touched?
Does does it respond to the touch of a feather or does it need a deeper touch?
How does touch affect you?
Food for lunch and snacks and water
Sacred object for the Altar
Comfortable clothing, leggings under skirts.
“To be beautiful means to be yourself. You don’t need to be accepted by others. You need to accept yourself.” ~
by maria | Mar 27, 2016 | Uncategorized
Hotel and Hostels
Brooklyn Arts Hotel Fitzroy – http://www.brooklynartshotel.com.au/ Maggie is happy to negotiate cheaper price than on the website. Please mention you are from the intensive.
The Nunnery Fitzroy – http://www.nunnery.com.au
Apartments, Houses and units
https://www.airbnb.com.au/
http://www.takeabreak.com.au
http://www.budgetplaces.com
Heaps more on the net
Possibility of Sharing an apartment with other participants.
Public Transport and Parking
Parking: All day parking in Convent car park is flat rate of $* per day. Good to car pool. There is also some free parking in the area but not much. Also remembering that on Saturdays there is often a Market so the car park is very busy.
Bus: There are buses that run along Johnson St coming from the city via Carlton and Fitzroy.
Train: Hursbridge or Epping line get off at Collingwood or Victoria Park less than 1lk walk.
Myki Card: you will need to buy a card and to travel on PT.
Check Metlink for comprehensive PT info
http://www.metlinkmelbourne.com.au
Billeting
There is a possibility for billeting with local workshop participants at a negotiable sum with the host – It will be up to their discretion what that is.
Contact Maria
by maria | Mar 22, 2016 | Uncategorized
I offer a payment plan to those who feel that for some reason they are unable to pay the full amount at one time.
I acknowledge that :
You would like to attend a workshop, take classes or work with me one on one
You would benefit form paying in increments rather than a lump sum.
In taking up the plan I trust that you respect and adhere to the terms and conditions that are agreed upon.
Terms and Conditions of the Payment Plan
- You will first pay the same nominated deposit for the class or event.
- We negotiate how much you can pay and how often your installments will be paid: weekly, fortnightly or monthly.
- The plan will begin as soon as the agreement is made.
- The total amount will be paid before the commencement of the event
- I will send you an invoice
- If you have not paid before the commencement of event, you will not be able to participate and you will loose all that you have invested. (You will need to write to me if you have a good reason that you cannot pay and want to attend. We can reevaluate the situation)
- You will manually or electronically sign a written agreement
- If you pull out of the event the same general Cancelation Policy applies no matter what stage of the plan you are at.
The methods of payment: DIRECT DEBIT for Australians. PAYPAL for international participants.
Payment plans need to be honored and respected so the energy of good will keep flowing.
Disclaimer
I am a small business – sole trader. I truly understand what it is like to have limited cash flow. I have been helped many times the same way that I am wanting to help you. I do not charge extra because you are not paying the full amount and I feel it is counterproductive to offer a payment plan for those in need then charge extra.
I ask that you please respect my position, your actions affect me directly, there is no corporation to buffer the effect of loss of income or the annoyance or being left in limbo and needing to chase you up for payment. It is a great waste of my time and unfair.
I wish to be respected as my wish is to respect you and to continue to offer the payment plan.
