Activities & Ideas For Ecstatic Dance Groups & Workshops

Learn over forty fun activities to try in your ecstatic dance groups and workshops!

What you’ll learn
New exercises and activities to try in your ecstatic dance group
Approaches to intrapersonal and interpersonal healing through dance
Activities that encourage a broader range of dance movements
Dance exercises that build group cohesion

Requirements
Basic experience in ecstatic dance facilitation

Description
This course explores a wide range of different activities, exercises and ideas that ecstatic dance facilitators can try in their ecstatic dance workshops and groups.The course is based on a broad conception of ‘ecstatic dance’ that refers not only to dance practices aimed at ecstatic and otherwise heightened states of consciousness but also as an arena in which to explore other aspects of mental health improvement, personal development, and social and emotional growth. To this end we explore a range of fun interpersonal dance activities as well as more typical activities that involve mindfulness, embodiment, and visualisations.Activities range from the silly to the serious, some focus on interpersonal development whilst others focus on intrapersonal healing, some ideas are fully-developed whilst others are ‘half-baked’ and put forward in the hope that you will add seasoning; the course aims to explore as wide a range of possibilities and ideas as possible and I hope to add new ideas to the course as students contribute to it.The activities and exercises in this course are based on my 15+ years of attending ecstatic dance workshops and groups around the world, the countless hours I’ve spent in personal private ecstatic dance practice, many nights dancing like a lunatic on psytrance dancefloors, a lot of reading on the subject, as well as my own imagination!The ideas, activities, and exercises explored in this session are offered in the hope that ecstatic dance facilitators will use them in more experimental approaches to ecstatic dance: I hope that you’ll try some of them out and see what works for your group and which ideas are of benefit to your ecstatic dance workshop participants.The course is light-hearted, unpretentious, casual and informal! It’s aimed at ecstatic dance facilitators, dance instructors wishing to explore ecstatic dance in their work, and dance and movement therapists. Keywords: ecstatic dance, conscious dance, dance rituals, ecstatic dance facilitator training, ecstatic dance workshops, ecstatic dance activities, ecstatic dance group exercises, professional development

Overview
Section 1: Introduction

Lecture 1 Introduction

Section 2: Ecstatic Dance Activities & Ideas

Lecture 2 Mindfulness & Embodiment Practices

Lecture 3 Pairs, Fours, and Circles

Lecture 4 Walking Dances

Lecture 5 Practicing Non-Verbal Consent on The Dancefloor

Lecture 6 Paired Mirroring & Dance Tag

Lecture 7 Alternatives to “Dance as if nobody is watching”

Lecture 8 Circular Dancing

Lecture 9 Manifesting The Spirit of Nature

Lecture 10 Converging Lines

Lecture 11 The Squiggly Snake Method

Lecture 12 Body-Part Isolation Techniques

Lecture 13 Dancing A Concept

Lecture 14 Exploring & Expressing The Full Range of Emotions

Lecture 15 The World of Dancers

Lecture 16 Contact & Close-Contact Dancing

Lecture 17 Eye-Gazing Meditation Dancing

Lecture 18 Breathwork Exercises

Lecture 19 Astrological Dancing

Lecture 20 Manifesting Animal Spirits

Lecture 21 The Dance of Yin & Yang

Lecture 22 The Evolutionary Process

Lecture 23 The Life Process

Lecture 24 Inner Circle & Outer Circle Activities

Lecture 25 The Dance of The Necromancer

Lecture 26 Chod Dancing & Feeding Your Demons

Lecture 27 Encouraging Others To Dance

Lecture 28 The Dance of The Cosmos

Lecture 29 Dancing in Gratitude

Lecture 30 The Puppet Dance

Lecture 31 Chanting, Roaring, and Screaming

Lecture 32 Empowerment Through Posture

Lecture 33 Silly Dancing & Clowning Around

Lecture 34 “Show Me Who You Really Are”

Lecture 35 Energy Balls

Lecture 36 The Spirit of The Age

Lecture 37 The Sacred Fire

Lecture 38 Seated Dancing

Lecture 39 From Robot To Human

Lecture 40 Couples Sessions for Intimacy & Connection

Lecture 41 Use of Reflection Questions

Lecture 42 The Spiritual Conga

Lecture 43 Pattern Breaking Activities

Lecture 44 Channelling Energy Upwards

Lecture 45 Dancing Your Life Story

Lecture 46 Self-Contact Dance

Lecture 47 Eye-Closure, Proprioception, and Dancing With The Energy Body

Ecstatic dance facilitators,Those wishing to run their own ecstatic dance workshops or and groups