The 5Rhythms have positively shaped my life in immeasurable ways. Through this practice, I have learned how to turn greed into generosity, hatred into love, confusion into clarity and boredom into opportunity.
When I started the practice 20 years ago, it stripped down my belief system and I questioned everything. I was living like an ascetic monk and did not realize that living a sensual, creative, and abundant life were a healthy part of the spiritual path. I believed that denying pleasure meant that I would be rewarded by some invisible god. Thank the uncountable spirits that it did not turn out to be true. I discovered how to live a life worth living by embracing all parts of my self; warrior, embodied leader, lover, magician, entrepreneur. I wanted to inspire artists to be leaders and leaders to be artists. The 5Rhythms brought out the hidden artist and activist in me. I sweated out a visionary entrepreneur from the inner depths of body wisdom. The ascetic monk was really just a guy who wanted to create a diverse international community of healing and transformation and contribute his small bit to the whole.
Thanks to the Rhythms, I moved from survive to thrive and found four ways to freedom: Money, Movement, Mindfulness and Mystery. Money was the last thing I freed myself from. It seemed too shadowy and shallow to embrace as a path to self-awareness. All my spiritual teachers, including Gabrielle Roth told me I was working backwards. I had penetrated the mystery of life through Vipassana meditation first, then learned the importance of mindfulness through Buddhism and after that, explored the body, conscious movement and embodied living through the 5Rhythms maps. Meditation and movement were vital for my healing. After reaching a healthy and stable level of mental and emotional maturity, I noticed a peculiar phenomenon. I was joyful and calm most of the time and the only time I really felt stressed is when the energy of money arose in the mind/body. It would put me instantly into fight, flight or freeze. When it came to money, I was living in the shadows of all the rhythms. It was challenging to flow with it. A mountain of resistance washed over me. Sometimes it would make me erupt into a rigid volcano and I would get gittery. I was normally so swift with my staccato warrior but when it came to money, I became rigid, controlling and self-destructive. At times my shadow lyrical self would emerge and I was a superficial phony around it. Money twisted my knickers into tightly woven knots. At my worst, I felt numb, hopeless and frozen around it. At best, I felt like it was useful at times. What the fuck is Money anyway? I started to wonder why it has such a hold over us. All these great teachings and transmissions and the money energy form eluded me for years.
A thought arose one day. What would it be like to explore money through movement? What if I combined all the principals of movement and looked at money through the lens of the body? Was it possible to unravel the most taboo subject of all time through body-based investigation? The answer was YES!!! And what a journey it has been. from the suffocating feeling of this primal energy is liberating beyond words.
Since money is a relatively new energy on the planet in terms of evolutionary time, humans have not learned to integrate it. We are dis-integrated, dis-embodied and treat it like it’s a real entity. We call it names like evil and perverse and disgusting and dirty…Reality check… Money is a tool. People created it, so people are responsible for how it is used. We keep projecting on it and struggle with it because we have not learned to manage and align the energies of mind, body, heart and spirit. Do you take ownership of your energetic imbalances? When you unravel the unconscious around money, the body will reveal some undeniable truths about self.
We dance and explore just about every theme in the 5Rhythms so if you resist this theme then it is most likely what you need to explore most. What one resists persists. In fact, every one needs to come to this workshop to understand why we have made money our modern day god and attached our self-worth to our net-worth. We are so much more than just animals trying to survive. We are psycho-nauts (navigators of the soul) seeking ways to become the heroes of our own stories.
Through this exploration, I emerged with a powerful message to anyone overly obsessed with money or in complete denial of its power. Money cannot buy you happiness but the lack of money sure can buy you misery.
What role does money play in my life? This is my order of priorities:
1) People 2) Purpose 3) Profit.
“Abundance” it is not something we acquire, It’s something we tune into with our body. Imagine the outcome of exploring the 8 money archetypes through movement? When does the dance of: The Victim, The Innocent, The Warrior, The Martyr, The Fool, The Artist, The Tyrant, and The Magician show up in your life?
Thanks to this journey, I no longer worry about money and love living in this spaceship called “body”. I know that spirit will take care of me and this body always and all ways. I rarely get tricked now. This is what makes one wealthy. To live with courage and faith knowing that it is in the universe’s best interest to keep us alive happy and flourishing. We live in a kind, mysterious and infinitely generous universe. It is the “I” that forgets constantly. Do you wish to live in the here and now? Free from fear? Free from all the stories? Every last one! Which unconscious story are you ready to release into the dance?
