This 16 hour weekend course is designed to acquaint participants with the Healing Dance. The history, theory and applications of the technique are covered first. Then, entering the pool, each participant is given a direct experience of Healing Dance through receiving a mini-session. Body mechanics and body awareness are emphasized through games and dance on land and in the water. Students discover how to support and move their receiver in the water. These skills enable them to learn a simple practice sequence that will prepare them to take Basic Healing Dance.

Basic Healing Dance

In Basic Healing Dance the entire session takes place above the surface of the water, yet it elicits many of the same responses experienced in an underwater session. The giver enjoys the pleasure of her or his own dance, bringing the grace of movement to the receiver. The form follows the natural tendencies of the body moving in water in a variety of waves, circles and figure eight’s with the legs free to experience the sensation of the water flowing past. Positional sanctuaries, releases, creative stretches, and transitions, including the Matador and Vortex, are part of this level. Students learn the principles of relating and mirroring, moving by example, generating a rhythmic field, and applying advanced body mechanics to be able to travel smoothly across the pool to create "virtual currents".

Advanced Healing Dance builds on the moves and positions already learned in Basic Healing Dance and adds in spirals, some effective bodywork techniques and new mini-sequences. These include Seaweed II for working the upper body, Come Here! for its strong stretches and flying circles, more releases, the Easy Eights, the tender, low key Chagal, the nurturing Klimt and some creative stepwork. Also included in this class are exercises to help students adapt and improvise in their work. Ideas for sequencing a Healing Dance session are discussed, and the concept of channeling movement is explored. It delivers the fullness of Healing Dance's surface repertoire giving participants the tools and confidence to dance with their receivers.

This class is designed to bring the principles of Healing Dance into the underwater experience. Maintaining flow above and below the surface is integral; the material explores how to smooth out the moment of submerging and surfacing. When rhythm, movement shape and body position are pre-set at the surface, the receiver experiences a less radical change at the moment of submerging. The coursework begins taking Watsu’s Basic Moves underwater and extends this idea to the whole session, introducing a variety of takedown moves from the repertoire of the Healing Dance. From the feedback of practitioners working with Above and Below we know that it is indeed making going underwater possible for people previously unable to allow themselves to be submerged. Taking the moves below the surface becomes a fluid dance, bringing the receiver to a place where there is no need of breath and bringing the giver to a joy in movement and presence. This class offers a toolbox of moves that are simple, elegant and intriguing to enrich your experience in the water.

Shape and Space consists of a beautiful and exciting repertoire of moves and an exploration of free flowing improvisation. It is a collection of dives arranged in a viable order, one that could be used outside of class time practice in a real session. In their construction, the dives embody a language with its own grammar and syntax. The key idea in Shape and Space is learning how to create pure, generous movement shapes that speak their embedded messages to the receiver while conveying her across the length and breadth of the pool. The movements of Shape and Space are rooted in human developmental movement; in the animal movement of dolphins, seals, sharks, snakes and whales; in elemental movement patterns seen in flowing water, and in archetypal templates that mirror our relation to spirit. The principle of chaos is honored in movements of a dynamic, arrhythmic, angular quality and also appears in formless free flow. In addition, Shape and Space explores the art of adaptation to and facilitation of the interactive receiver. Shape and Space is for those practitioners who believe in the healing power of movement and want to learn how to truly dance with their receivers underwater.