Dear friends,

Sunday's Extended 'Pay-what-you-can' DOWH Workshop, for me, felt like an urban oasis or retreat. I have been smiling with joy for days with the wonderful and luscious memories of fabulous Brazilian drumming by Guiomar Campbell, fluid flute playing by Laura Nashman, and all the beautiful women dancing themselves out of the cave.  We represented maiden, mother and crone. We played. We laughed. We bonded. We opened to the moment, together, in peace and friendship. I am ever so grateful. One of the shining women present was Brenda Clews.  She weaves magic with her poetry and words.  Below is what flowed out of her, inspired by Sunday's movement medicine. Thank you, Brenda! Thank you to all dancing women, everywhere!!!

Erica's Dance Our Way Home, by Brenda Clews

The theme was Amaterasu, Japanese goddess of the sun, a retreat to and emergence from our caves. In the slivers of mirrors we saw ourselves and we enjoyed our shining. We mirrored each others' beauty. Did we become luminous beings by the end of the day of the dance of the shining?

Our sun-wings spread like sun beams caressing the air and we flew as angels of light, I am sure of it.

Everyone's skin was fragile, luminous. Didn't matter what age we were, or size, or what life has carved on us.

Did our eyes shine delicately lit radiating out to illumine the world?

I saw the women's eyes shining; I saw them enlightening the world with their woman-wisdom, their wily smiles, their open-flowered red hearts. I saw their curvaceous dances, their plunging depths, the way they flung themselves into ecstatic states from which they would never emerge, never, if life was composed of the harmonious flowing energies of the dancefloor.

The unwinding from the tight to the relaxed was like approaching an apex and once you reach it you fly. With your feet, your hands, your twirling torso, your wildly swinging hips.

We flaunt it. Our tulle and taffeta and silk and microfibre; pinks and greens and purples and blacks; yogic symbols and alpine wild flowers. Hot breath; luminous, damp and streaming.

In the dance we are embedded in the broad sweeping swaths of sun as she revolves around the planet illumining the world as she goes, spreading rays of wisdom like falling petals of light from the crown of the thousand-petaled lotus that she wears.

We are. In our quiet ways. Or exhibitionist. Or wildly celebrating. Deep. Rich in our sorrow. Visions. Glimmering. Sparkling. Bedazzled. Radiant. Luscious.

Dancing at Erica's Dance Our Way Home (DOWH) is very sweet.