What a beautiful clear day it is today. The sun is shining brightly and it is like an early Spring. Peace Awareness Labyrinth and Gardens really shows itself off on days like this. I am very excited about today’s Spa Day. It entails a concept I have been quite familiar with for a long time, and have been revisiting — devotional movement. For me, what makes this particular Spa Day so special is that Pauli Sanderson is the Facilitator. I know I’m going to enjoy whatever she does and it will be fun, Light, casual, with laughs. I arrive early enough to have a short chat with Pauli about my own experience with devotional movement and dance this year and how it has affected my life, bringing about change and expansion.
It’s 10:00am and we are all asked to take our seats. Carol Jones, Director of Events, introduces herself and welcomes everyone, particularly those who are here for the first time. Carol gives the group a brief background sketch of Pauli’s experience, having been a dancer from a young age, and eventually a teacher of dance, Tai Chi, and more recently co-authoring a book with John-Roger, the founder of the Movement of Spiritual Inner Awareness (MSIA). Carol also mentions Pauli being on the development team for the Doctor of Spiritual Science Class in which she directs the classes in various devotional movements. We all welcome Pauli with applause.
Pauli starts by calling us forward into the Light, and we chant using one of the devotional and sacred names of God — Ani-Hu, one of the sounds we are using today with movement. Pauli speaks about how she got started with devotional movement and her experience with dance and choreography — how creating movement with expression works as a creative process of spiritual activity, allowing the body to move to it’s flow organically. So it becomes a process of tuning in.
In this process of natural flow and tuning in there are no rights or wrongs. It’s a moment by moment field of play. I can testify to that personally. Pauli goes on to tell us that in 1964 she met John-Roger when teaching her very first dance class. He himself was a teacher in the same school. John-Roger spoke to Pauli many times about connecting with the Light and the various uses of spiritual Light. Pauli went on to say that John-Roger always reminded her to put the Light around her body, and from there she started to see how working with Light movements makes a difference.
From there Pauli spoke about her current role in the DSS Program with Light Body. That Light Body is a disciplined way of inviting the Light into the body with devotional prayer movements. She finds that Light Body works in a powerful way for people. It can strengthen our devotion as a way of worshiping God.
Pauli guides us through some breathing exercises and then starts adding sound with that breathing. As we get more familiar with that, we start doing some small body movements. On the easel are four devotional statements. Pauli starts to demonstrate the movements of each of the four sacred statements. We all stand and do the movements and it is awesome. I can feel the Spirit come more present inside, and the statements are very simple and right on. We do this several times and a lot of “Oooo’s and aaahhs” are heard throughout the room. There were also a few “Whoa’s”.
Then Pauli started a closed eye meditation. As we are ready, we are invited to move into our own physical devotional movements. We do this as soft flowing music is playing, with a bit of an Irish flavor I particularly find inviting and easy to move to. I watched for my queue to get up and dance, and when it came I found myself embraced by the loving in the room. I feel like silk moving about with greater ease than ever, and a I experience a gleeful happiness inside of me. Little by little others join in.
We come into a quiet, and once again Pauli asks us to put the tone with the movement. Then coming to another rest, we have a seat. Pauli then shows us another group of movements to yet another group of positive and devotional statements of grace and goodness. After her demonstration we do several of these movements to the point of subtle laughter in the room. Folks swiftly started writing down the statements to take home. Following this exercise is brunch! We certainly worked up an appetite.
Today we are being served by Elaine Kitchell, one of the staff chefs at the gardens. Elaine is a long time chef and caterer with a keen eye for beautiful food, not to mention the awesome flavor. Oh yeah. It’s good. This lady knows her stuff. Elaine and her team prepared a scrumptious buffet starting with baby greens and fixin’s, a prepared Italian bread salad with a delightful tossed dressing. A large bowl of yummy fruit salad (all my favorites). Steamed green beans with toasted almonds, roasted yams, spicy Mexican chicken, egg and dill Souffl
