Belly Dance and The Feminine Face of God
Dancing is perhaps one of the most highly enjoyed, widespread ways of achieving a number of goals: exercise and fitness, happiness, spiritual connection and others. Regardless of your reason for dancing, one thing is for certain – it can be incredibly enjoyable as well as addictive. Nothing quite beats moving to the music in your own way, feeling the rhythm course through you and letting it take you away while you shimmy and shake.
Dancing is found throughout the world, featured throughout cultures that stretch back to the beginning of time; sometimes used as a communicative tool and sometimes used as a spiritual bridge between our world and the Divine world. A combination of music and movement passed down through the generations, almost its own living entity evolves itself over time and becomes something that everyone can get involved in and now today we have fantastic dancing traditions that many people can enjoy – either as dancers themselves or as spectators.
The Divine Feminine is an important aspect in not just women's health and wellness spiritually but also psychologically and even physically. The concept that we all retain a piece of divinity within ourselves and that we ourselves are divine beings is important to remember – when we honor the Divine, we must also remember to honor ourselves as we are Divine as
well. This helps us build up our confidence and our self love, which is one of the most important aspects of being healthy and confident in ourselves.
Belly dancing was used in ancient traditions as a way of connecting with the Diving Feminine – as it was primarily women who danced, it was a strong and wonderful way to channel the Divine. This helped women have a beneficial and strong relationship with not just themselves and the Divine, but also the community as well as their soul sisters who danced alongside them. Depending on the location, the dance moves took on different forms according to traditions and some of the movements had specific meanings or ties to folkloric traditions. Belly dance was used as a birthing dance to welcome new life to the Earth, as well as, in ritual dance to channel high frequencies of divinity. Even today many birth
use this dance to help make the birthing process easier. Belly dance moves evolved over time and location – and developed depending on who was doing the dancing from slight, subtle movements to the more risqué and theatrical movements you see in the Turkish traditions and American Cabaret style.
Connecting within to the Divine Feminine energy that resides within us all (even within men!) helps us to become more in tune with our intuition and the cycles of our bodies as well as our Earth. This helps drive us to live our lives fully and to care for one another as well as our planet, using the dance to help bring forth the energy to cleanse away the negative and bring in the good, balanced energy needed to take on such tasks. In this sense, belly dancing is beneficial for everyone, everywhere and is more than just a fun way to get in shape. Much like yoga, it's a channel for a spiritual connection to the universe as well as to ourselves.