The Gurdjieff Sacred Dances consist of very defined and generally unusual movements.

Often the movements of the different parts of the body are not related with each other, and the dancer has to coordinate different rhythms at the same time.

Sometimes the dances are very energetic and lively, sometimes they evoke ancient rituals, sometimes they are simply strange.

This discipline is particularly interesting for musicians, as well as for those who practice dance, martial arts, or body-awareness techniques. However, the movements do not require special body skill or training, or previous experience, but rather the presence of the dancer. In fact they are a training into simply being present in the moment, without any thought about the past or the future, in full acceptance of oneself, playful, and relaxed.

They bring harmony into our physical, emotional, and intellectual center.
The dances are very intriguing and beautiful to look at.

While learning and practicing these dances, we have glimpses of a wider, livelier and more delicious reality.

"To find one's center means to enter oneself, to find just a simple presence, not a person…a silence that is alive, full of its own music, of its own dance…"

Osho

Gurdjieff is a mystic from Caucasus, who lived in the beginning of this century. In his travels in search of the 'miraculous' and of 'truth', he compiled the dances that he had gathered from Sufi Masters, Christian and Tibetan temples, as well as from tribes of desert-dwellers…

Gurdjieff taught these dances, and others that he himself had created, so that they could be of help in two ways.

The first aim was the harmonious evolution of the dancers: to balance body-mind-emotions, and to reach a new possible level in the functioning of man. The second aim was the transmission: to reveal the experience of a different dimension in the knowledge of reality, of energy, and of the universal laws, according to what remote generations already knew, and wished to preserve and refer to the future generations through the dances.
The dances were performed in New York and in France.

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"If somebody is dancing with deep meditation, that dance may appeal, and through the dance, lingering by the side, something of the meditation will enter into your being.
Gurdjieff had prepared a group of dancers: the dancers created such meditative energy, such a great wave of energy, that those who had come just to see the dance suddenly forgot the dance completely. Something else was there by the side, a door opened through it…"

For our everyday life our body uses a repertoire of only three or four hundred movements. These habitual gestures have not been chosen consciously, and depend entirely on the country, the time one lives in, one's profession….

Just in the same way as our body's, also our mind's and emotional movements are almost robotic.

"We are deluded when we think that our movements are of our own choice: they are automatic. Our thoughts and sentiments are also automatic."

G.Gurdjieff

Meditation is the medicine that allows us to come out of the prison of automatic behaviour.

We can reach meditation through any act done with the intention to be aware, awake, and to put ourselves as the object of the search. In everyday life, our attention is taken out of ourselves, to one thousand persons and things. In meditation, we take a 180 degrees turn.

The Sacred Dances are a great technique: we use the body and its movements to help us be centered in the moment. The body is our first tool of the exploration of the within. Maybe inside we will find silence, life, playfulness, wonder, joy, strength.

As we reconnect with your inner qualities, we become more and more capable, with practice, to stay in touch with them all day round.