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Category: Body and Soul

The Longing to Belong to a Dancing Center

If someone asks me who is my spiritual community I’m going to say, “I belong to The Dancing Center of Love’s Hidden Monastery.” For me these are real people and beautiful relationships.


Fortunately or unfortunately, people rarely ask about my people. In my world it seems we’re expected to be pretty much on our own, unless we are attached to family or work. Even when I had membership in a spiritual community, I rarely felt certain that I fit in given my sensitive, mystical, playful, somewhat INTENSE nature. As an elder, I now see more clearly my situation. Maybe the question of belonging is overworked? Do sensitive bodies ever fit? After all, we are statistically one out of five.

Still, if we bodies want to grow in ease and grace, we require a ‘deep enough’ sense of belonging, a grounding, strongish circle that can willingly credential our gifts and purpose. 

Do you dream of deeper connection, but find it hard to create one? Do you struggle with belonging?

 

If you follow what is happening in the Hidden Monastery maybe you, too, are wildly in love with Mystery, magically moved by grace, and compelled to pray in uncommon ways. Like me, you probably know what it’s like

  • To be geographically distant yet intimate in shared practice.
  • To provide service yet often feel alone.
  • To yearn for playful embodied sanctuaries where beauty and truth can rise without interrogation.
  • To endure institutions and groups that resist body and soul.
  • To know justice as both the beauty we give ourselves and what we seek in all relations.
  • To feel the haunting call to honor ancestral and adopted lineages and equally dignify all the Wisdom Trees in Earth’s garden of love and joy.

 
Perhaps you are drawn to what is being pioneered in the Hidden Monastery. If so, you are at the heart of helping redefine spiritual community and practice. This is the art of ensoulment that is happening in dance chapels, the Art of Ensoulment Course, the Creativity Studio, in individual spiritual direction and more.

Would you like to deepen connection, and better enjoy, see, and support The Dancing Center? If so I extend to you my invitation to join me in The Dancing Center of the Hidden Monastery where I will offer you

  1. Grace Notes- a private email list to share prayer requests,  celebrations, and your offerings.
  2. A regular letter that will curate your wisdom, art, poetry, prayer requests, and findings from my trove of resources of contacts.
  3. Supportive references and reviews, social media, and newsletter announcements about your work from Cynthia or other qualified members.
  4. An annual Credentialing Celebration to reaffirm our gifts and purpose.
  5. Discounts on workshops and retreats. (not including the Art of Ensoulment).

 

If you already contribute thank you! Link to join the Circle.
You are resourcing our circle’s future expressions. 

LINK HERE TO JOIN

 

If this is a new practice, please join at $25/month
or make an annual contribution that is right for you.
Contribute Here

 

In gratitude, may we bow together

honoring all,

journeying forward

one dance, one prayer at a time.

 

Cynthia

 

 

 

The Grace Intention

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

In the candlelit temple

of my heart,

I worship silence

and possibility.

I worship solitude

and simplicity.

It’s a small place,

unadorned.

No priest or goddess,

only a quiet

invitation

to become.

Just to become.

To become

unarguably

who I am.

To gather

the congregation

of my interior life,

welcome them all,

just as they are.

Sit together

with myself

on the floor

of my heart

until someone

starts to dance.

 

            ~Penny Hackett-Evans

www.Pennyhackettevans.com

 

Soul Emergencies: Navigating our Mental Health Crisis

I share my expertise and theories for navigating sensitivity and mental health demands in a time of evolutionary change and extreme demands. My thoughts are especially concerned for youth and young adults as they navigate unprecedented initiations or what I think are Soul Emergencies.  See the note below this video

 

 

 

Stephen Porgas writes in The Polyvagal Theory that “to connect and co-regulate with others is our biological imperative. We experience this imperative as an inherent quest for safety that can be reached only through successful social relationships. In which we co-regulate our behavior and physiology.” 

 

African wisdom teacher Malidome Patrice Some wrote in The Healing Wisdom of Africa: Finding Life Purpose Through Nature, Ritual and Community, “without a ritual structure, people undergoing a natural emergence of spirit within often feel as if they are going crazy or are imagining things…community provides a safety net in which a person can rest until he or she has become reintegrated.”  

REST UNTIL SHE OR HE HAS BECOME REINTEGRATED>. Yes, more rest is needed for us all.

Free SACRED Dance Guild Event – Dance: Sacred Art of Ensoulment

Have you heard of the Sacred Dance Guild?  

 

The Sacred Dance Guild initiated me into my life’s work. I’m forever grateful and happy to lead one of their upcoming Guild Sacred Sundays on zoom.

The Sacred Dance Guild serves as a “spiritually diverse, international, non-profit organization with a commitment to advocate for dance as a sacred art and to promote dance as a means of spiritual growth and integration of mind, body and spirit.” They describe sacred dance as “any type of dance that is done with an intention to connect with or communicate something about the sacred, however that may be understood by the dancer or the choreographer.”

February 13, 2022- 4:30 pm pacific/7:30 pm EST – check local times!!

 

In their free, weekly  SACRED SUNDAY online gatherings, dancers can be  “Socially Present” while “Physically Distant“! The live-from-our-living room-sessions are free, informal, intimate and interactive sharings.

I will introduce Dance: The Sacred Art of Ensoulment” under the theme of Attunement.

Join a journey of discovery as we honor body and soul and tap into four artful wisdoms that align humans to the sacred in all things, no matter what! In the dance we’ll welcome our spiritual support, creative birthrights, divine purpose, and a way to bow to suffering by dancing on behalf of one another.


To register email pres@sacreddanceguild.org with “Sacred Sunday – Ensoulment” in the subject line. 

The InterPlay-based practices are found in Dance: The Sacred Art: The Joy of Movement as Spiritual Practice.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Last Chance to Enroll in Art of Ensoulment Course

I love teaching the Art of Ensoulment Course! I get to explore the body wisdom of soul with beautiful people who willingly engage the creative spirit of InterPlay.

Though the groups are full. I am holding the door open if you meant to join but lost the thread.

The course starts next week. You can join for the first four sessions and then decide if you want to continue for the rest of the year.  Just fill out the form and send your $50 deposit. 

 
Second Monday Group
Jan 10, Feb 14, March 14,  April 11, May 9,  June 13, July 11, August 8, Sept 12, Oct 10, Nov14, 2022,  Dec12

• 2pm pacific
• 3pm Mountain
• 4pm Central
• 5pm Eastern


Second  Wednesday Group
 Jan 12, Feb 9,  March 9,  April 13,  May 11,  June 8,  July 13, August 10,  Sept 14, Oct 1 2,  Nov 9,  Dec 9

• 10 am pacific
• 11am mountain
• 12 pm central
• 1 pm est

Or consider the Ensouled Creativity Studio with me and Ruth Showalter on third Mondays 2:30-4:15 pacific. 
 
 
 
Send your deposit to Venmo @Cynthia-Winton-Henry, paypal.me/cynthiawintonhenry, 
or checks in my name at 4025 New York Ave #317, Fair Oaks, CA. 95628
 
 

“A Coming out” Letter to the Hidden Monastery

 

December 2021

 

Dear Friends,

 

After much consideration, I decided to come out. It’s hard to confess how horrible 2021 was for me. The world, too, seemed to shine with a particular horror as I coached highly sensitive, creative, soulful leaders. Even for those with great healing gifts, play, and love, it’s just been hard. Maybe that’s why at the end of the year I called in the pink fairies, elves, and god-us-ess. Horror warrants its winsome opposite. How else can I make it?

 

What I am about to share is held alongside a multitude of graces! For instance, I successfully left my Executive Director job as the cofounder of InterPlay with supreme gratitude and satisfaction. My creativity, joy, and family remain intact. Christmas morning brought blessed serenity. My daughter and son-in-law decided to legalize their marriage.

 

Still—-Six months ago my daughter nearly died from heroin. Her opioid use started with a prescription in her teens for a back injury. Addiction runs in her birth family and my family tree, too. People with the genetic predisposition need forms of pain management other than addictive substances!

 

Sadly, our journey is not unusual, especially for the one-in-five humans who are highly sensitive. Neuro-sensitivity leads us to feel more, sense more, notice more, and care more. In the face of danger, we move toward mastery and when that doesn’t work to deaden or lift our spirits, we may transform into healers and activists who raise the flags in times of trouble. Too often, we overdo, over-adapt, and overextend. We isolate. We fight too hard. That’s why we’re the ones who also teach and find solace in meditation, contemplation, art, and play.

 

Sensitivity is a blessing and curse….(Continue to full letter here.)

 

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