Dear all,
Happy New Year one and all!
As we enter this new year I feel I'm looking over a new horizon. Part of that is the upcoming 18th birthday of the 'School of Movement Medicine' on the 10th January. I feel proud, grateful, and amazed. At the same time, it feels so appropriate that this beautiful practice is 'coming of age'.
In January we will return to the Amazon Rainforest in Ecuador with Fundacion Pachamama and our "Dancing with the Heart of the World" journey, which, for the first time, is full to the brim with Movement Medicine dancers. As we prepare, I am recognising that I have not visited these communities which I feel so connected to since February 2020, just before Covid hit. Last time we were going to go together, in 2023, Ya'Acov went without me, as my father was becoming very frail and so I stayed home with him. That was such a good decision. During that time, we made the film about his life, I wrote the Amazon Blog and Ya'Acov had a life-changing experience for which it was probably better that I was not there.
Recognising all of this now is giving me pause to contemplate these last 5 years and the sense of coming out of what I'm beginning to call the cave of my menopause.
This 'cave' has many elements, including the imperative served up by my changing hormonal landscape to go deeply slow and quiet. Having been on the road pretty frequently for about 30 years, it was time to stop. Fortuitously my increasingly urgent need for this coincided with the Covid lockdown time, as well as the launch of the Movement Medicine Study Hub in April 2020, which we'd been planning for several years.
In 2021 my father had come to live next door to us in Dad's Den, our converted garage, for the last years of his life. Accompanying him in his journey towards his final letting go in July 2023 was so important to us both and, at the same time, it was a stretch. I'm immensely grateful for how Ya'Acov supported me and my father in so many ways during this time. And I'm still grieving the loss of my Dad. And, then of course there were the Covid years themselves - the deep impact of which I feel we are only just, collectively, beginning to recognise.
During this "cave time" I have gone on teaching Movement Medicine chiefly through the Movement Medicine Study Hub, our online Tribal Heart ceremonies, making the Embodied Listening self study course, a very few special workshops abroad, offering (together with Ya'Acov) our Professional Trainings and the Long Dance.
Meanwhile, Ya'Acov has been doing an extraordinary job keeping everything going and doing his profound and effective courses online and on the road. Being a woman going thorough the menopause is a particular kind of fiery initiation. Being the partner of a woman going through the menopause is also a strong initiation. From my perspective now, both of these require a growing up, a maturation. And naturally, this is not always easy. I'm really happy, grateful and proud of the depth of love and learning our relationship continues to bring and we celebrated our 35th wedding anniversary this autumn. Thank you life! Thank you Ya'Acov!
One of the special things about this time has been that, because we are recording Movement Medicine practices for the online Study Hub, we've had the opportunity to do them ourselves. In the last 5 years I have danced more Movement Medicine as a participant than ever before. I'm both loving and learning so much about Movement Medicine from this perspective. Not to mention, noticing the benefits of regular embodiment practice. In terms of my own evolution, these years have been a fast track.
A few weeks ago I witnessed an incredible rainbow just after having a powerful conversation with a friend in which we were both acknowledging a sense of broken-ness, both personal and collective. I'd been sharing my sense of the heartbreaking grim, grind of the ongoing wars, ongoing ecological destruction and our seeming inability as a human race to simply stop resorting to violence as the go-to response to conflict and difference. My friend had been sharing her own personal sense of brokenness. As we shared we found ourselves sobbing deeply side by side. As this subsided, we both felt a rising energy of strength and love - like the Phoenix rising once again from the ashes. And then the rainbow came. As Malidoma Somé says, if we want to experience joy, we need to let go to our sorrow too. Witnessing myself, I've always found this to be true. This rainbow felt like a confirmation beyond what I had experienced before.
Recently, Ya'Acov and I were doing the 15 minutes 'Remembering' Mini Embodiment practice together from December's Hub lesson, and I had an unexpected revelation. I had been expecting to witness more of how hard the last year has felt, also on a personal level. However, when the guidance suggested allowing what was important to be sensed in a more embodied way, a completely different perspective emerged. I had a moment of discombobulation when I realised that our new School of Movement Medicine website had only been launched in April. We put so much into that project on all levels. The intention was to bring this medicine to many more places and people than it has yet reached.
I know how Movement Medicine can help people heal, re-find and continuously evolve their energy, vitality, dignity and love, and empower their own offering in the world. It always stirs me when I see the unfurling of soul on the dance floor - the way creativity, wild beauty, tenderness and love rise and burst forth through the process. I had hoped the new website would do the job right away.
In this practice, I suddenly saw the whole picture in a different way. Instead of the perspective of what I wasn't achieving, my view changed to seeing the beauty of what already is. I saw the accomplishments of the last year, including the fulfilment of the dream of this new website which so much more than we had managed before, represents the beauty of this work.
I saw this spectrum of incredible professionals who've chosen to train with us and who spread this elixir of ground breaking, holistic healing Movement Medicine in so many ways and in many different contexts around the world. I also saw our longterm plan to pass on our work really beginning to flower on another level through those who've gone the whole CPD (Continued Professional Development) route and are now offering Apprenticeships (the next one starts in a few days).
I saw the many 1000's of people of all ages and many different backgrounds and starting points, who've entrusted us and the people we've trained to hold a safe and transformative space. For us, that journey began in January 1989 so we'll be celebrating another 35 year anniversary as the year turns.
And I saw how the School has grown and matured with so many people playing key roles within it over the last 18 years. All this gave me a sense of what an honour and privilege it is for us to be doing the work we came here to do. Thank you to each and every one of you who have graced this journey. And thank you to life itself.
And I felt so grateful, so awed, so tearfully happy to see what already is. And to see how easy I find it to forget this. I taught this very thing on the recent Hub lesson on Fulfilment. I danced with this very practice in Delos, in Greece, and here I am needing to find it for myself, again, and again - to remember what is already accomplished, what is already good, what is beautiful and aligned with the dream of my soul and to celebrate that and give thanks for that, now.
I need to sustain this and remember this in order to be able to bring forth something helpful for the world. And maybe even more profoundly, if I am to honour life by actually noticing its miraculous beauty right now, I need to take my eye off the far horizon of what "should" be, in order to be with what is.
This perspective does not replace the knowledge of suffering and the call to make a difference. On the contrary, it strengthens it. It's simply an important thread that its easy to forget, if you, like me, are pre-programmed towards life being "a long hard slog" - the unexamined assumption that working hard and valiantly at something really difficult is how I will deserve love and acknowledgment. That was a big thing for me to see about myself. Once again, it emerged recently within a Movement Medicine dance practice.
I remember reading John Gray speaking about the real need, at the time of life of being a young elder, to share what one has learnt in one's life with one's people. And, so, as a young wild elder myself, I feel so grateful that there are many people, from so many different areas of life, who want to tune in, metaphorically speaking, to our radio Movement Medicine and share our distillation of what we have learnt and are still learning.
I recently met Catherine Llewelyn when she was researching 'conflict in the conscious dance community' for the ICMTA (International Conscious Movement Teacher's Association). We had a profound meeting. Towards the end of the year, Catherine interviewed me for her podcast "Truth and Transcendence". Our episode is the 200th of this series and is called "Dance, Empathy and Letting go". Catherine just told me that "Truth and Transcendence" is now amongst the top 5% of global podcasts in terms of listeners, and my episode will be published on 24 January. Catherine has a beautiful way of allowing deep communication to emerge, and there are some great things to listen to in the previous 199 podcasts!
As I emerge from the menopause, I feel a new wave of energy coming. I need to move it, share it and so I'm delighted to be back on the road in the coming year. I'm finding being in the room together once more, saturated in the dance, to be a powerful and deep alchemy of healing and resonance, for me, as well as those who come. Thanks to all those who are welcoming me so warmly back 'in the room'.
Maybe we'll see each other in one of those workshops as well as, I hope, on the Study Hub, which supports dancers all around the world to bring the medicine into the daily rhythm of their home lives. I simply love experiencing the vibration which emerges when we practise Movement Medicine, whether it's online or in the room.
Upcoming highlights for me include: Metamorphosis (Aarau, Switzerland 28 Feb - 2 Mar).
The Phoenix Retreat (a residential intensive) South Germany (8-13 April).
And Fierce Wisdom (Zagreb, Croatia 9-11 May).
Plus all the lessons, practices, Refuge Live Classes and Tribal Heart ceremonies (next one is Imbolc Fri 31 Jan) coming up on the Movement Medicine Study Hub, which have become the drum beat of practice in our lives.
I want to say a huge "Thank you!" to all the people out there, including you right now who have chosen to share your precious attention with me and us.
I wish you a beautiful new year of soul tending, of full spectrum living, and I encourage you to take some time to support your journey by visiting an in room or/and online Movement Medicine dance floor with me or Ya'Acov or one (or many!) of the brilliant teachers we've trained.
And last but not least, thank you to Anouska Beckwith for the photo of Ivanhoe and myself looking over the new horizon, and these precious words from Amma. Thank you to Kristin Glenewinkel for sharing them with me.
With love and gratitude,
Susannah Darling Khan. January 2025
"*" indicates required fields
