How to Fit Bellydance Practice into a Busy Schedule
 
The mere thought feels paradoxical! How can one hurry up and bellydance while expecting to experience the benefits of mind-body-soul connection or drilling technique into true mastery? The mere suggestion may trigger a bomb of emotional angst within us as we respond to the, yet again, mixed messaging of our culture which hails self-care as important as ambition thereby dumping the onus on us to be everything to everyone and then everything to ourselves as well…all before 5pm. Understanding that 5pm was used as a joke in that sentence of course! We all know that the end of the work day has become undefinable for most. Honestly, how can we fit bellydancing into a busy schedule? Without minimizing the predicament, here come some tips to bring your love of bellydance into your daily routine!
 
Get Real!
This first tip is the hardest one to accept. But, if we can swallow this pill, the rest can fall into place beautifully. I’m gonna give you 20 minutes. I know you want to practice for 6 hours a day and this sucks to hear, but if you’re reading this blog, I’m going to guess that you need this reality check. The good news is, just 20 minutes a day of uniquely planned practice can transform your dance and your life! And here’s a hack… if you truly can’t stand this idea, you can stack your increments and opt for a 1hr 40 min session on the weekend instead. Now to the good stuff…
 
Get Organized!
I love to make lists! Don’t you? Let’s make a list of categories to organize your daily practice plan.
 
Day 1. Melt into Meditation – 20 minutes
This is the easiest one and perfect for a Monday! Find a quiet comfortable place to lounge with your body supported. Close your eyes. Tune into, slow down, and expand your breathing. Gaze at the vast dark pool of potential at your third eye space. See this spaciousness as a blank canvas upon which to paint. Understand that your dance, your life, and your identity are just like this canvas. This mental break can be a helpful reset so that you can take back the paintbrush as the artist of your life and stay clear through the potential graffiti of outside influence. Honing this ability not only clears space for your creativity, but also teaches us how to become still within chaos. Therefore, this one simple tip could have transformative effects not only on your dance but on your command of your schedule and life as well!
 
Day 2. Indulge in Visualization – 20 minutes
This next one is the perfect combination of calming one’s self and indulging one’s self! It’s a more active form of mediation as you will still be experiencing the benefits of shifting your brainwaves, but you will also begin the process of dance – in your mind’s eye first! This preliminary creative journey builds energy, positive anticipation, and is a very effective way of self-teaching as you will be drawing your creativity from your intuition as you visualize while sending messages to your body of how you would like it to perform when you get physical. Preceding physical practice with free form visualization can speed up your physical progress in any subject tremendously. Find a song that really inspires you. Visualize without limits!
 
Day 3. Enjoy Guidance – 20 minutes
Now you’re ready for guidance! We’ve made this easy for you at Ansuya.com where you’ll find hundreds of video lessons that you can access on your own schedule so you can fit this into anytime of your day! Choose a video in a subject that fits your current fancy, grab a notebook and pen, and enjoy just watching the first time! While there are many short videos to choose from, also allow yourself to pick just 20 minutes of any video lesson as you can continue into the lesson the next week. As you watch the video feel free to make notes of parts that you think may bring you challenge. Relating to the lesson by just watching first will make your physical practice and progress far more effective! 
 
Day 4. Practice – 20 minutes
Now you’re ready to dance! Get up and boogie with me baby! Do your best following the instruction in the video and use your notebook to jot down parts that you may want to review and repeat.
 
Day 5. Little Drills – 20 minutes
This is where you can go back through the video with your notes and brush up on the challenging bits. Take your time as, remember, you can repeat these steps at as many practice sessions as you like! You have no deadline, only a desire to practice daily and you're killing it! Drilling the "sticky spots" will speed up your progress and enhance your joy as you feel your performance improving through taking the time to give those details your love and attention! 
 
Day 6. Progress Post – 20 minutes
Members of Ansuya.com are invited to join our exclusive online Facebook group where you can upload your practice video and ask me questions or just share your proud progress moments! So, spend one or as many practice sessions drilling your work as you like and then video what you've got and upload to the Cyber Temple goddess! It's time to shine! 
 
Day 7. Journaling Session – 20 minutes
Your last day of the week is perfect for a restful journaling session to reflect on what you learned and what you gained during the week and what you are excited about in your upcoming week’s practice. Remember to congratulate yourself on the amazing job you did bringing a balanced practice into your life and busy schedule. If you missed a session, don’t worry. Remember, you weren’t doing this at all before so by doing this at the pace of even once 20-minute session per week, you are still making progress! These small bites will result in huge gains. By the way, reading this blog counts as a session! You are researching the topic of your interest. Look at you go!

Extra Tip
This practice plan is scalable! When you are on "go mode", you can skip steps 1,2 and 7 and slam on more and more challenging videos to make your practice time uber challenging. Just remember, you can fall back into this "home practice" anytime to keep your connection grounded, your process loving, and your expression authentic.
 
Now, sign up for the online video lessons at Ansuya.com, start your practice plan and I’ll see you in the Cyber Temple goddess!
 
Still feel like you could use more guidance or accountability? With just one hour a week, we can meet live on zoom for a group or private class and I will absolutely guide you! Just message me: ansuya@ansuya.com and we’ll get started!

The word “seduction” can have a negative connotation. However, as with many words today, its meaning has shifted throughout time, bending to describe subtle nuances best understood by its surrounding language, the intonation of the utterer, and by the full picture being portrayed by whomever is expressing this fascinating word. With Valentine’s Day coming up, my guess is that this word is being contemplated more during “the month of love” than on any other month of the year. So how can we, as empowered women, make this word work for us versus us work for this word?

Let’s start by turning the tables on a central theme that is often assumed to be at the core of any woman using her power of seduction, and that is that she is in want or need of love. Instead let’s reframe this by imagining ourselves as creators of love, as guides toward love, and as powerful wellsprings of this magical element called love. But how do we put ourselves in this mindset and how do we self-generate this kind of energy? Tired women everywhere want to know! 

With everything from our fitness, to fashion, to make up, to demeanor incessantly being sold to us as needing to meet media standards in order for us to be an effective part of the chase to win the survival race, we are often exhausted from this outward push to grab attention that many of us don’t even want in the first place. So where does this leave our mental, emotional, physical, and spiritual health when, instead of feeling like a balanced, self-sustaining oasis of sensuality, we feel like withered, dehydrated shells begging for a sip of vitality from those who seek only to drain the last drops of ours for themselves? Not feeling anywhere near seductive, I’ll tell you that! 

So, let’s flip this dynamic! I often say, “the more love we put into ourselves, the more love we can put into the world”. Imagine this in material view. What if your fitness regime was designed to help you feel a certain way rather than look a certain way? What if your fashion was part of a personal ritual adornment practice that had everything to do with your own intuitive color therapy, authentic attraction to the feel of certain fabrics, and with your vision for designs that complemented and comforted your figure versus hurt and defiled it? What if your make-up was worn only when and if you want and was painted according to the picture you have of beauty for yourself versus an image being sold to you as beautiful? What if you could meet yourself as queen of your domain in this arena? Who would you be?

I think asking these questions is a fantastic self-care centric start to the art of seduction! Why? Because if you begin to fall in love with yourself, those around you will feel the vibrational resonance of that sensation and become attracted to it. You’ve begun the art of seduction! Now with regard to demeanor…

Every woman has a goddess within her just waiting for a context where she can blossom into an empowered seductress ready to enchant onlookers and lead them down a path toward love! Bellydance is that context!

With movements that activate our chakras, Bellydance is an art form designed to elevate our sensuality and set an example that directs audiences toward the feminine divine! 

Often, how we hold our posture in daily life, how we flirt with our body language, and how we dance with our bodies can feel like disconnected pieces struggling for integrated expression. We get that feeling of “is this what you want?” coursing through us which is nowhere near the sensation of radiating divine levels of love. But, as we learn to take all of our energy centers (chakras) with us into our daily existence, the story changes. We bring our primal, creative, social, heartfelt, truth seeking, visionary, and spiritual desires to our art of seduction, thereby offering a wholesome, intelligent, and wildly healthful experience to anyone who beholds us in a state of seduction. We beckon those to follow us into this energetic field from anytime we simply walk across the room all the way to when we are directing this flow of energy through dance or when we are directing this flow of love toward a sensual partner. 

The mystical practice of Bellydance helps us to understand how we want to feel, how we want to be treated, and how we want to be able to treat others with the power of love. Every move we make is opening us to a channel of knowledge within, teaching us self love and guiding onlookers to understand how to treat us and helping them discover how to treat themselves. That is why the art of Bellydance is so positively seductive!! 

Fear not as the lines between sensuality and sexuality begin to weave together. Bellydance is a fantastic gateway to help us emphasize words like seduction and sexuality in a healthy context and give these words a positive connotation!

I literally just finished my holiday decorations which are filled with, you guessed it, lights! In my house we blend the celebrations of the Hindu holiday of Diwali and the Christian holiday of Christmas while editing the heck out of both to suit the fact that none of us are wholeheartedly behind any one religion but rather passionate about picking up what resonates with us from any source. One thing that Diwali and Christmas have in common that we love is the tradition of celebrating light! With Diwali this ties directly into “light triumphing over dark” as in good versus evil. With Christmas this ties back to the Pagan ritual of Winter Solstice. Also known as Yule, Winter Solstice celebrates the return of light as the season changes and the days once again become longer bringing the relief and gift of life that light and warmth offers the earth and its dwellers. To participate in these sentiments, we love to put candles everywhere and string lights on the house to experience the ahhhh effect that comes whenever we set our gaze on the flicker of light. But why do we feel this sensation of enchantment when our eyes meet the light?

"Let's get into what makes the Moroccan Guedra and the Egyptian Zar so compelling for today's modern Bellydancer!"
Photo of author, Ansuya Rathor

"Guedra Dancers, Morocco"
Art found on Pinterest
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Clip of author, Ansuya Rathor, randomly responding to street art in Lake Worth, FL. 

Image found on Google
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"They do do sometimes appear as a form of theatricalized entertainment at shows, festivals or gatherings."
This video beckons us to visit the Taralgate Festival in Morocco. This festival has featured the Guedra. See video below. 
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A small taste of some of the movements of the Guedra as seen at the Taralgate festival in Morocco.

I was raised with trance dance all around me. I grew up in a small town where time seemed to stand still with a culture paused in the 60’s and 70’s even though I was a child there in the 80’s. Here there were African dance classes, reggae music bands, hippy parties full of altered states of consciousness, our mayor was even a yoga teacher. As a child, I was encouraged to trance out through Bellydance, Indian dance, African dance, yoga, playing in nature, and through all kinds of unleashed body movement at parties. This behavior was considered less akin to spacing out and more comparable to tuning in! I’m a second generation Bellydancer who learned the art form as an expression of divine connection. I was trained to tune into expanded energy through intuitive improvisational dance to the sound healing aspects of Middle Eastern rhythms and melodies so that I could experience “Tarab”  - a feeling of unity with the heightened frequency generated between music and movement, musician and dancer, performer and onlooker. The intention was not to become out of control, but to attain a heightened state of awareness and thus, broader control. As an adult who has studied extensively in the areas of yoga, chakras, quantum physics, and meditation, I now understand even more deeply how this process can work, and as my understanding gets deeper, my explanations get simpler! 

After realizing that… 

• With increased breathing we send more oxygen to the brain making it easier to activate the pineal and pituitary glands for increased awareness 

 

• With increased circulation we nourish the intelligent cells in our organs which allow us to feel or receive messages from different parts of our bodies

 

• With increased focus we change our brain waves and adjust our nervous systems and can come out of habituated mental patterns and allow for new thoughts

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• With sinuous movement we can relieve our muscles of tension which has been stored from past emotional trauma

  
I can now conclude for myself that performing a good trance dance is like taking a great yoga class, enjoying a really good run, finding peace and exaltation in nature, or feeling the shift from depression to ecstasy that can come from something as simple as a great chat with a friend! The most mystical seeming things often feel unreachable when hidden in the shadow of taboo for too long!

Photo of author, Ansuya Rathor, by Keith Drosin
Ansuya is pictured here in a fusion costume ensemble that mixes Tribal style Bellydance costuming with Indian bindi's, Amazigh Berber tattoos, and Egyptian assuit fabric (inspired by the black veil of the Guedra called the Haik). Ansuya, being of East Indian descent, is fascinated by the possibility that the Guedra may have roots that reach as far back geographically as Asia. 

By the time I was a pre-teen I had already presented aspects of the Guedra and full length Zar dances in well reviewed theatre shows for fellow industry professionals, a wide range of ethnic audience members, and Americans alike. The process felt natural as I added signature regional movements and costuming aspects to my foundation in Bellydance and was encouraged by my teachers to tap my own intuition and physical dance capacity for further individualized creativity. For this I was significantly rewarded as my reputation as a respected innovative fusion artist grew in my field. 
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Image found on Google​ 

The practice feels earthy, dramatic, physically percussive, sinuous, and can lead to trance like states of ecstasy. Understanding what it means to invoke positive “otherworldly” energy in the context of female empowerment and learning to transmute any negative feeling energy into positive form is a passion of mine! The effects can be transformative for their power to activate self-healing, tune into intuition, and expand spiritual awareness. Both the Zar and Guedra involve head movements that induce trance, an altered state of consciousness. In Guedra it is in order to invoke joy and positivity! In Zar, it is in order to transmute negative energy into positive form!

Warning: this film shows the hardship of life for animals in this region, living and being used for work and food.
Also note that the dancer and choreographer may have used creative license in this presentation of the Guedra.
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Click the "Watch on YouTube" link in black rectangle above to see video playback.
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"On a physical level, the movement and breath can allow the activation of the pineal gland, gaining one access to  different dimensional planes where you may be able to see, or make contact with, otherworldly beings. (I personally also correlate this to being some of the science behind one part of a witch's magic.")
Antique photograph print of "Circle of Witches" available on Etsy
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I personally believe that ghostly phenomena do exist, but am careful not to jump to the conclusion that someone experiencing strong negative emotions may be possessed by an evil spirit requiring exorcism. That said, I concede that it is possible, because I certainly can’t prove that it isn’t. As a feminist who believes in self-empowerment, however, instinct tells me that if you are coming into a Zar practice with good intentions, you are unlikely to engage with or attract negative forces but rather, clear a path for negativity to drain away, leaving you refreshed, renewed – and relieved – of your own inner demons. For me, dance has always been one very powerful way to work with my emotions. I feel exalted after any good performance and trance dance movements are another way to tune into wellness on deep levels. 

During the season of Halloween and Day of the Dead celebrations, we may be extra intrigued by the idea of paranormal experiences such as contact with other worldly entities.  When we glorify, rather than degrade or persecute, the women and men who have the ability to make contact, we have an opportunity to expand our awareness of what uncommon things might be viewable in our universe, or perhaps an alternate dimension, humming along at a frequency we have not yet learned to tune into.  Let’s consider what it is about the Zar that could be facilitating this opportunity…

The movements of Zar can oxygenate the spinal cord and brain, helping facilitate third eye chakra opening, enhancing one’s capacity for psychic vision. On a physical level the movement and breath can allow the activation of the pineal gland, gaining one access to different dimensional planes where you may be able to see, or make contact with, other worldly beings. The ability to navigate, control and transmute one’s own energies also speaks to the law of attraction and the quantum field. If like attracts like, with enough focus, one can attain a magnetic point of attraction and draw entities and experiences into view. 

Rather than fearing this process, if we understand that this is the natural order of personal manifestation and how we are building our lives by default every day, dance and witchcraft can become modalities for taking, rather than losing, control. 

In my workshops we modify the head and torso movements for safety while being sure to ground our balance, our energy, and our emotions as we work through them.  

All of the above regarding Zar is my personal interpretation of the dance. Traditionally though, Zar was practiced as a dance of exorcism in Egypt, the Sudan, Tunisia and surrounding areas. In my deeper research, I encountered some truly scary shit that I’m glad to say was redacted from my childhood awareness. We’re talking animal sacrifice, what I felt might be opportunities for wrongly charged victims of possession, and supernatural tricks (though reported as having caused no injury in the article I read about them in) that had to do with a man putting a knife through his own neck, another man eating cactus as the needles poked through his cheeks, and what most might consider child endangerment when (albeit in trance) needles were put through the ears of young boys in Zar trance. Happy Halloween – yikes!!

While I’m personally ok with adults experimenting with mind over matter control – I’m made nervous when children are involved and I’m 100% against harming any animals for anything ever. That said, I would venture to guess that there is good science behind the self-healing benefits of the dance versus ridding a devilish spirit or Djinn (naughty genie) from the body. Feeling your feelings without repression and seeking modalities for exaltation are not the same as being possessed and needing an exorcist! Here is where I am intervening and influencing the context of and definition of Zar for myself. This is educated, by choice, empowered cultural appropriation in action!​​

Example of theatricalized Ethnic Trance Dance
Choreography by Ansuya
Gypsy Sugar Show 2002
West Valley Playhouse Los Angeles
Dancers: Tahiya, Mikaela, Ansuya, Akasha, Olu.
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​"Use your freedom and all the tools you can to express the art in your heart on behalf of female empowerment and in the spirit of turning darkness into light!"
- Ansuya Rathor
photo of author, Ansuya Rathor, adorned in a theatricalized version of the Amazigh style facial tattoos - another artistic expression of the Moroccan Berber people. Read more about this tattoo art at this blog:
​ Morocco World News
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