Last October 20 was my birthday.  I was not in the mood to celebrate as I didn't find any  reason to although in hindsight, the fact of still being alive is a cause for celebration.  My brother Sonny however wouldn't hear the end of it and so I ended up preparing for a small gathering that somehow proved cathartic. Our weekly family dinners stopped abruptly and there has been no chance to bond so my birthday somehow gave us an excuse to get together again after many months. 

Nevertheless, I was trying to find some way to make my birthday memorable when i came across this article on "inner dance" as i was surfing the net. Intrigued by it, I decided to research more about it and ended up in Pi villaraza's blogsite Inner Dance. There wasn't much i could find on what it is all about other than a recount of the experiences of Pi that led him to do the inner dance. 

Coincidentally,  a schedule for inner dance newbies happened to fall on my birthday and I wondered could there be some meaning into this.  While the temptation was strong, I could not muster enough courage to join as I was unsure what can happen after it. The fear i think is less on ignorance of what it really is all about but more on my preparedness for the transformation that may happen after it.

Again, by coincidence, Ms.Gilda Cordero-Fernando  comes up with an article on inner warriors as if written solely for my understanding of what inner dancing is all about.

Here I reprint her article:

The following article was taken from The Philippine Daily Inquirer website. But due to some factual errors [personal information], necessary changes have been made through the initiative of Ishilta.

By Gilda Cordero-Fernando
Inquirer
Last updated 04:39am (Mla time) 10/21/2007

MANILA, Philippines – In my senior years I truly enjoy the company of young people.

They are smarter, bigger, handsomer specimens than ever before and less fearful of breaking boundaries set by past generations. Would there be those among them who could slay the dragons that besiege us within and without?

The shadow self, the feared, unclaimed self, is our dragon within and that of other people. Since June of 2007, spiritual warriors, age 22 to 40, have been manifesting one by one in my life. Surely they are descended from the native babaylan of pre-colonial Philippines who were suppressed by the Spanish friars and driven underground.

There are notable similarities and differences between the old and new babaylan. Both are healers gifted with clairvoyance. They have an attachment to the motherland and nature, and use herbs to heal. They are of great service to the community. Like the Mother God they believe in, the new warriors have spacious hearts and a great capacity to empathize with the pain of others.

Possessed by a spirit, the olden day babaylan went into a trance (tumitirik ang mata) while dancing. Today’s spiritual warrior can be both in trance and aware of what’s going on in the physical world.

There was a tradition among the Bisayans of old, of separating (“binokot”) a chosen child from its parents for special training to become a babaylan. The elders do the choosing way before the child’s consciousness has fully developed. Babaylan batch 2007 are fully grown up before deciding, on their own, to accept the calling or not.

A common experience of all mystics is that they undergo some kind of initiation—a serious illness, an abandonment, abuse of some kind, deep depression or grappling with doubt (as in the case of Mother Teresa). As the Buddhists would say, “Despair clears the way.” John of the Cross has called it “the dark night of the soul,” which is letting go of attachments—such as the 40 days and nights in desert, mountain or deserted beach.

Young and focused

The young warriors are very focused (almost messianic) about their calling and can work tirelessly and endlessly at healing. Where did people so young derive such focus? Some claim they are the so-called “indigo children,” born in 1992 or within the last third of the century. They are the promised reincarnation of the old avatars, enlightened souls sent down to help our suffering planet.

Some of them are, in varying degrees, dyslexic or attention deficit but richly endowed in other ways. Indigo children are born to parents who can’t cope with them because they have miserable lives.

In an earlier generation, commented Bong de la Torre, individuals who could not articulate what they wanted were considered crazy. “Yon ang kinakadena, binabasbasan ng pare, nilalagay sa basement ng Makati Med.”

Some examples encountered: a woman who does the rain dance; a schoolteacher who talks to the souls of aborted children who ask to be given a Christian name so that they can move on; a PR practitioner who communes with the souls of Katipuneros like Hermano Pule who want their ideas conveyed to the younger generation; a dancer who believes we have invisible wings on our back which open up when we dance. The wings are fragile and can break and we have to learn how to put them back on again.

Sacred places

For such souls Inner Dance is locating “sacred places,” to which they can retreat—tree houses, beaches, hot springs, mountain retreats, spaces with waterfalls—safe places where they can be natural without being “normal.”

Joseph Campbell writes that we are creating new myths and new legends. It is time to recognize the new heroes and villains. Paraphrasing Best Actor Epi Quizon, who is a “party animal,” today’s heroes can no longer have the trappings of old which would simply bore young people to death.

Today’s heroes can no longer be caparisoned in outmoded trappings to which young people cannot relate. DJs are the new drumbeaters, in much the same way that the drummers of old attracted a crowd around the fire. And the master of ceremonies is the new shaman. (Tim Yap??)

How to create “new ceremonials” with real meaning. Since dancing and healing can give one a “high,” says Pi Villaraza, who introduced the Inner Dance movement, “Wouldn’t it be a great way to rehabilitate so many young people dependent on chemical energy? Enlightenment would be such a fun experience.”

Representative

The young healers I met are limited to Inner Dance organized in April of 2007. They are a representative slice of so many young people with babaylanic traits who want to “heal themselves, heal their neighbor, heal the community, the nation and the planet.”

I met Bong de la Torre in Greens, the vegetarian restaurant near Max Q.C. where convergences keep happening. He has a good inkling of how the spiritual universe works. He is a connector and most of us got linked thru Bong.

Psychic to the max, Bong, a theater person, hears messages whispered into his ears by spirits of different realms. This makes him talk furiously and endlessly. But asked a question by a true seeker, valuable answers will easily flow through him.

I met Pi (Pai) Villaraza in an Inner Dance healing session in Bong’s apartment. Surprisingly, there were more males present than females. Pi was obviously a leader. Everyone was dancing and healing one another by putting their thumb on the crown of another’s head with the rest of the fingers spread upward. The energy this emitted quieted the mind. The receiver became one with the body and that was how the healing began. While still sitting, people began to dance with their hands, then eventually, on their feet with their whole body. Some went into catharsis or wild dancing. Others just quietly moved together. Everyone felt peaceful and happy, healed in their souls and the luckier ones in their bodies as well.

Thirty one-year-old Pi is a gifted medical intuitive and the turning point in his life was when he lived for months in a deserted beach, surviving on coconuts and bananas he gathered himself. Based in Mindanao, he was a transient in Manila.

Pi never wanted “disciples” nor a closed circuit group. He encouraged everyone to join and so each session is unique. The group energy is so powerful it moved someone to comment, “ET sila, di ba?” (Definitely!)

Another time I met up with John Pinlac, 22, a UP student who’d rather be called Ishilta. A scholarly fellow, he prefers spiritual lectures and gatherings to gigs and gimmicks. He belongs to the Philippine Wiccan Society, to Peacemakers, and of course, Inner Dance.

“In any esoteric practice,” Ishilta observes, “you need to move your body somehow after meditation. Inner Dance is all-in-one. You meditate while you’re moving.

“Inner Dance is about being your authentic self. You move free form—no one dictates what you should do—you can cry, you can laugh, you can shout. Exercise is on the physical level. Inner Dance is on all levels.”

Music room

The music room in Troy Bernardo’s house is Inner Dance’s favorite gathering place. Troy is a handsome, lanky Spanish mestizo with a peaceful demeanor, the only one, according to Bong, who has completed the deadly 365 days of esoteric Christian meditation based on the book “A Course in Miracles.”

Troy was initially attracted to the meditation path to remedy a skin condition. He was a habitué of dark places like cocktail lounges and discos. When Troy realized that to heal was his real calling he went on a rampage of healing—his family, his relatives, even his dog.

Since it is a cleansing ritual, some strange (and also beautiful) things happen during Inner Dance. In one of them (ex-Manila), a lawyer, stressed all the time, with aches all over his body, felt a surge of energy envelop him. It filled the man with forgiveness which is a different kind of divine love, feminine and, like a mother’s love, unconditional. He felt like he was being cradled and rocked.

The body of another pained male was unexplainably tossed all around the floor. Before Christmas, though, he went on a 36-day meditation and emerged healed of a recurring illness. Thereafter, he moved to a fishing village and began his own NGO healing ministry.

Matching energies

Each person in Inner Dance has his own particular way of healing and one always gravitates to the person whose energy best matches one’s own. I am invariably attracted to the strongest energy in the group. I therefore found myself paired with Joe Mar Obejas who has this big round head and close-cropped hair.

Joe Mar and I easily partnered. An arnis teacher, he had a strong flowing energy and his give-and-take of it was flawless. I could feel the bulging knotted muscles of his arms and calves. His palms and soles were as tough as leather. He said he worked in a computer company but only as a messenger. They say he is also a good masseur.

Joe Mar could see spirits but was afraid of ghosts. Sometimes he would be talking to one for a long time before realizing it was a ghost and would get really frightened. Joe Mar seemed well on the way to mastership and when I expressed such, Pi agreed.

It was becoming very clear that shamanship had no distinctions of social class, educational attainment, looks, gender or seniority. Everyone learns from everybody. I could see, too, the markings of the true babaylan. The best ones have little or no ego and are terribly psychic.

I discovered that the males connected to their warrior selves. Most of them took up martial arts, especially arnis, in order to explore its connection to Filipino spirituality. The composition of Inner Dance is mostly creative people—painters, singers, filmmakers, actors, dancers. They have no fear of their bodies and will readily dance—“the spirit loves a performance.”

Seated on Troy’s sofa were two Phil-Americans who connected to Susan Quimpo’s New York group who were on an exposure trip in the Philippines. One was Justin Hakuta, a gentle American-Filipino-Japanese who does beautiful healing. A Fullbright-Hayes scholar, Justin is a composer and a rapper. The other had magnificent tattoos from forearms to wrists, and his name was Nathaniel. He somehow learned how to dance like an Ifugao.

Hubert Posadas writes story lines for comics, gives workshops and does work with “security forces.” He frightens most of the group because of the guttural animal sounds he utters during the sessions.

“He eats demons,” says Bong de la Torre. Opens his mouth, spews them out and then catches and chews them. It’s savage, but Hubert is very lucid and knows what he’s doing. His is a Lemurian consciousness that can enter the animal self. Hubert likes to connect to his lower chakras which he is currently in the process of cleansing. “Actually,” continues Bong, “it takes great courage to know your shadow self and to be able to say, like Hubert, I’ll even embrace Satan to see what I can learn from him! After all, I am an autonomous being and make my own decisions.”

I met Orlan de Guzman when he was still the office manager of Chacra (Center for Health and Creative Arts), a trailblazing spiritual health initiative in the ’90s. Hardworking and angelic, he was in everything that Chacra was into and more. Orlan has probably the vastest experience among the members of Inner Dance, and as such is able to compare the different styles of accessing the spirit.

Magic mommy

What about the girls? Lisette G. Salazar took to Inner Dance like a duck to water. She had her epiphany in Mt. Apo. Lisette, 28, is in a down-to-earth garments business and owns a restaurant, both of which she found easier to manage after Inner Dance. She has seriously incorporated dance in playing with and healing her two kids who call her “Magic Mommy.”

Chato Dominese is Inner Dance’s valued manager. A lay member of Pamayanan of the Good Shepherd Convent, she loves NGO work. Chato first experienced the energy of Inner Dance when she introduced it to the nuns in Tagaytay. Chato has taken on the serious responsibility and the vision for spreading the word.

Becky Misa, former singer of The Ambivalent Crowd and occasional actress, is also instrumental in spreading dance as therapy.

Janelle Young is the youngest original member of Inner Dance. She is a young soul with a clean (uncomplicated) energy and is a very fast learner.

Joy Domingo is a filmmaker doing a college thesis on the babaylan. She has all the earmarks of a female warrior and dances it spectacularly (although before this she never danced in her life). Joy always had a beer in her left hand and a cigarette in her right. But these were dropped when the girl got hooked to the healing force of Inner Dance.

Free movement

Come to think of it, in the ’90s, we used to do a similar dance in Chacra which Mariel Francisco began. It, too, was free movement which meant no fixed form, just follow your feelings. Our facilitator was a Javanese dancer named Prapto. The difference was that the early one was only introspective and didn’t try to include “the other.” Pi acknowledges that Chacra paved the way for Inner Dance.

“We were just a bunch of housewives seeking enlightenment,” said Mariel. “We read on spiritual subjects, did research, tried so hard. Now all these things we know just flow so naturally out of the mouths of these young warriors. Sapul na sapul nila. (They fully comprehend it). And they’re real enough, grounded enough to believe in while still retaining a sense of magic na hindi na kailangang pang naka lotus position. What used to happen in workshops, which was very ‘male’ in being so forcefully planned and directed, just flows through Inner Dance. It completes and makes sense of our Prapto activity.”

Now is a time of convergence. Everyone in the world is into some kind of healing. All the initiatives are coming together—pranic healing, reiki, “praying over,” meditation, channeling. Yoga, anthroposophical studies, chi gong, kalimasada, body movement. Crystal healing, angels, chanting and drumming. Astrology and Buddhism, ETs, Al Gore, Philippine millenarian movements, biodynamic farming and caring for Mother Earth.

Who’d ever believe 12 years ago that the last insights of Celestine Prophecy would have come to pass, that “holism” is now passé, that the hologram of the whole body can be seen in a drop of blood, in the iris, the tongue, the ear, or the foot? As if all the little candles we’ve been lighting here and there, almost unnoticed, are finally joining together to become one big light. And it doesn’t matter if we’re calling on Jesus or Buddha or Allah, it is illuminating the world

I value the young warriors who believe I can be their small bridge to the older generations. We are finally becoming one. It’s a privilege to be alive.

Source: http://showbizandstyle.inquirer.net/lifestyle/lifestyle/view_article.php?article_id=95751