Sufi Dancing!

(Dancing from the Heart)

by Mark Siegchrist

Picture a large circle of folk dancers singing a light-hearted, peaceful song, each dancer performing simple, stately steps with a partner, then moving along to repeat the same verse and the same steps with the next partner. Gazing gently and steadily into each others' eyes, the dancers swirl gracefully around each other, their melody mingling with the guitars, flutes and drums in the center of the circle.

This is Sufi Dancing. It looks like easy circle folk dancing, with one basic difference: folk dancing (or any dancing, for that matter) becomes Sufi Dancing only when the dancers consciously pool their mental energy - not only with each partner, but with the whole circle, the whole room, the whole planet, the whole universe.

In ordinary folk dancing, as long as your feet are moving correctly nobody cares what you might be thinking. You could be wishing you had worn your flashy new outfit, or wondering if maybe you should stop for ice cream on the way home, but as long as you continue to move perfectly you are still doing perfect folk dancing.

But Sufi Dancing is different. A Sufi dancer who is mentally comparing flavors of ice cream would be quite spectacularly missing the point. The special magic in Sufi Dancing only happens when everyone in the dance focuses on sharing their common energy. Ideally, all the dancers feel as vividly as possible that they are not so much individual units as portions of the whole dynamic circle, all taking part in the weaving and unweaving of its patterns, moving rhythmically in the cosmic geometry of the atoms and the galaxies.

The more the dancers feel their boundaries dissolve into the circle, the less they feel like separate individual egos, and soon they come to a state where they are not so much doing the dancing as being the dancing. They just get their egos out of the way and allow the One Light to use their bodies to dance with. So one way to look at it is, Sufi Dancing is something you don't do personally.

Expanded consciousness is easy enough to think about, but we often find it elusively hard to experience. And of all the techniques that cultures around the planet have evolved for inducing this blissful state, Sufi Dancing must be the most fun. Sufi dancers fall effortlessly into an innocent and joyful meditation. As they stand together between each dance, closing their eyes and holding hands, they continue to feel a powerful harmonious energy sweeping through the circle, washing away their thoughts and leaving their minds flooded with pure light. Sufi Dancing is irrestibly good-natured. It's impossible to leave a Sufi Dance feeling depressed.

Actually, the cheerful folk-dance versions of what is now often loosely known as Sufi Dancing would be quite unfamiliar to orthodox Sufis, who belong to a branch of Islam that grew up in Turkey around 40 A.D. Historically, Sufism is the practical, technical wing of Islam, much as Yoga can be considered to be the practical, technical wing of Hinduism.

Not being interested in theories or doctrines, the purest schools of both Yoga and Sufism focus on learning (and using!) techniques that can successfully transform consciousness. In order to experience the joyful infinite space within, Yoga uses the method of sitting silently in solitude, doing nothing. To reach the same state, Sufi Dancing uses the mehtod of harmonious social movements. Both methods achieve the same effect, scaling a common peak from opposite directions.

So, classic Yoga often has an exotic Sanskrit flavor because it emerged in India at a time when Hinduism was dominant. Sufi Dancing sometimes has an exotic Middle Eastern flavor because it emerged in Turkey at a time when Islam was dominant. But of course there is nothing particularly Hindu about sitting to meditate, just as there is nothing particularly Islamic about dancing to meditate.

Since meditative dancing is such a widespread phenomemna, a certain amount of confusion surrounds its name. Nowadays, many people know these dances as Prayer Dancing, Circle Dancing, or Dancing from the Heart.