FEEDING THE SNAKES: The necessity of finding your voice and creating your dance

FEEDING THE SNAKES. What ideas, feelings, dance moves, or way of being of yours is longing to be expressed? Do those dreams and longings reside in your belly, churning and disrupting your sleep or work day? What do you need to do to feed these snakes? What action should you take? (Art by Hallelujah Truth)

To discover your authentic self you must be willing to abandon yourself--to YOURSELF!  It is through the BELLY HOWL and DANCE--tending to the snakes writhing in the pit of your stomach--that your VOICE and natural GRACE is discovered!

Hallelujah Pilgrims for mentors who share their well-traveled paths with us and by doing so “light” our way to explore and develop our own journeys!

Currently, MOVING or DANCING is my “coffee with Hallelujah” or my 15 minutes of creativity every day even though I am a dedicated visual artist. As I experience “moving” with the Dancing Flowers for Peace, the Dance Church, the Atlanta Wave, or by myself, I am discovering my dancing mentors.

Today, I would like to blog about what I have just learned from Cynthia Winton-Henry in the beginning pages of her book Dance—The Joy of Movement as a Spiritual Practice.

Why move? Why dance? Why sing? Here is my summary of Cynthia Winton-Henry’s “The Dancing Parable” or “Feeding the Snakes”:

It is a story about a woman who has a grumbling, churning stomach and cannot relieve herself of its pain or noise. While consulting a wise woman in her village, they both listen closely to her belly’s rumblings and are surprised to hear yellow-bellied snakes making demands to hear “their” song.

So…the troubled woman, determined to appease her disgruntled belly snakes, journeys to other villages, learns many songs and returns home without having found the song which would free her from the pain in her stomach.  The yellow bellied-snakes are not satisfied!

FEEDING THE SNAKES BY DANCING AND SINGING AUTHENTICALLY. Perhaps it takes the darkness of despair to thrust us into the magic of ourselves. When we have discovered that the resources available to us in the world are not enough to speak our truths, we must venture into the forest alone. It is there at this darkest, most fearful moment that we  fall into our true selves, and it is from this starting point, that we find many other ways to uniquely express ourselves.(Art by Hallelujah Truth)

After the woman discovers the same grumbling has begun in the belly of her oldest child, she rushes to the forest wailing, moaning, and thrashing about. During this outcry of duress, she discovers that each new movement and each new sound she makes with her voice pleases the snakes. They stop grumbling.  They are at peace.

From then on, as long as the woman attends to her snakes by singing and dancing in a way that is unique to her, the snakes stay quiet.

THE END (or beginning of dancing and singing)

There are some important take away ideas from this parable of feeding the snakes:

1) We all have a voice and a way of being that long to be heard, listened to, and expressed (the snakes).

2) When we ignore our inner voice and its natural expression outward, we harm our bodies (the snakes writhe in anguish).

3) Expressing our ideas in ways that follow traditional songs and dances does not satisfy our desire to experience our own authenticity (the snakes are not appeased).

4) We can trust our intuition joined with our life experiences to forge a “new” song and dance each moment, each day (the wailing, moaning, and thrashing worked for the woman because it was real).

And finally, the most important of all…

5) Who you are is good enough! What you have to say, sing, move or dance needs to be expressed; therefore,

BE SURE TO DO YOUR FIFTEEN MINUTES OF CREATIVITY EVERY DAY. FEED YOUR SNAKES!

That’s coffee with Hallelujah! Soul blog with me and tell me what you will do today to feed your snakes? Will you dance or sing?