Interview with Andrea Juhan

By Joanne Winstanley

As well as your work in the 5Rhythms, you have a rich background in psychology. How have your studies in psychology influenced your approach to the 5Rhythms?

Well, Integrative Body Psychotherapy is one form of psychology that I’m informed by, and I am also deeply informed by Gestalt Practice and Gestalt Therapy as well as Systems work, Object Relations, pre-natal, and birth work. There are a lot of different aspects of psychology that inform my understanding of our growth and our development as it manifests in the body.

I would say that what I bring to the 5Rhythms movement practice is an understanding of psychological and spiritual development. I am interested in the potential for psychological healing, growth and balance, and I see all these different components interwoven as part of our dance practice. My studies and experience as a therapist inform how I see people dancing – and what I see them dancing.

All of our history and all of our future potential, in terms of our psycho-spiritual development, is manifested in our dance, it’s manifested in our body; it’s manifested in every cell. So when we dance, I don’t see just the dance - I also see all of those stories, and all of the dilemmas of our personality and our emotions and our history – it’s all visible… (laughs) remarkably visible. And we feel it – it’s not only visible but it’s felt by the participants, whether they’re conscious of it or not, all of those elements informing and shaping their dances. I think we all feel that. Because when we dance, it’s not just random movements – our movements speak the story of our conditioning, of our being, our essential self, and of our spiritual unfolding and potential.

In working with you, I would say that you have a very developed capacity to witness others. How does that skill help you in your role as a facilitator?

Yes, that’s very important to me, the witnessing process and what I see - and what we all can provide, by witnessing others. The ability to witness helps me support somebody: to see what’s needed, to open up the next leg of that person’s journey towards opening to spirit.

To the degree that we have a really good, skillful, integrated psychological functioning, we can focus on spiritual development; this is very hard to do when we’re not grounded in our body. When we’re emotionally and psychologically a mess, it’s hard to focus on our spiritual development: our personal problems are so compelling that we are very identified with the "me" story. We can try to skip over what is difficult or un-integrated and raw in our psychology, and just mainline straight for spirit (often called spiritual bypassing), which is a choice – and which can give us a necessary taste of what is possible - but I have not found this to be a sustainable practice. I think we need a measure of psychological skill to ground our spiritual orientation and awareness.

How do you see the 5Rhythms supporting this process?

For me the 5Rhythms are such an elegant and beautiful, grounded, physical practice.

No growth happens if it isn’t supported. And resourced. We can’t shift behavior, we can’t shift patterns, we can’t even really have awareness if we’re not fully supported and grounded in our bodies. And the 5Rhythms does that – first and foremost, it grounds us in our bodies. The 5Rhythms gives us that language and vocabulary; it gives us a focal point for the mind, a mirror and a reflection of where we’re at and what resources or support we might be lacking. And the dance itself offers us the essential nutrients needed for our own growth. Each rhythm offers something specific.

The structure of the 5Rhythms helps people start to identify where they are stronger and where they may need a little more support, such as, ‘I could do with a little more skill or familiarity in Chaos: I don’t deal well with everything falling apart and changing," or, "I do really well there, but I space out – I love it, but it’s hard for me to stay present in that place with another person..."

So the whole structure of dancing the 5Rhythms with ourselves, and with others, and all together as a group, gives us this amazing practice and mirror for how, through the dance, we are feeding our own development. Development is such a clinical word. It’s our own evolving, our own emerging at our highest potential, our own quest for God – for being, becoming, and knowing ourselves as God, or Spirit, or the One…

Psychology is interested in change. How do we change? How do we change the way we feel, who we think we are, our self identify, our behaviors, emotions and reactions, and so on. In the 5Rhythms we have an amazing vehicle for studying how we change. Our bodies are a very concrete experience of this. They are the physical mechanism of change. So, by engaging with this physical practice, we can get a very real experience of how we move through a changing world, in a changing body, with the change that happens between one person and another, between us and our environment…

In the 5Rhythms, change is not a concept, it’s a reality, from moment to moment. It’s felt. The 5Rhythms give us many structures that support us in learning how to be with the change... As dancers, we begin to understand our self as change; we are the dance and the dance changes moment by moment. The whole study of rhythm is about change – rhythm is movement, movement is change, and we are not separate from any of this.

Somewhere along the line, psychology safely separated itself from movement and the body, but it’s really not separate at all.

So using this movement practice, informed by that psychological perspective, is a way to re-integrate that?

Right. Or, to be aware of the wholeness of that. Because you can’t really separate the psyche from the body, you can only pretend to separate it. So it’s a way of becoming aware of the innate interconnectedness that is already here. It’s just a deepening, a widening, a strengthening of our awareness, of these multiple layers of our experience. Of our body, our emotions, our psychology, how we think and feel and how we evolve as spiritual beings: what is the highest, deepest self that’s trying to emerge through our being?

Can we talk a bit about the specific workshops? With Curious Love, what I wonder is, what brought you to this particular investigation? What were you seeing on the dance floor, or in your own life, that brought relationships into focus for you?

Yes - for me, it’s that as human animals, we are exceptionally social. We are relating to others all the time. We can’t not relate to others: even choosing to be isolated is a statement of our relationship to others. I am interested in understanding what our choices are there. Why do we make the choices we make? What habits and patterns and conditioning do we have? And what does the highest or essential self, our own evolving, our soul’s unfolding, need – and have to offer - in relationship to others?

On the dance floor, I see this particular dance all the time. We are always awake to the comings and goings of others - to the attractions and repulsions, and the interactions – even if seemingly we are just trying to be with ourselves. Even that is a relationship with others. I see it so often on the dance floor that I think, this is a valuable investigation. It’s so deeply needed, for our relationships: we need that kind of pulse on what our souls want, in relationship to others – not just on the dance floor, but using the dance floor as a meditation to become aware of that pulse in all of our daily life. Because it’s a problematic area! We struggle with others: our children and family and mothers… And we have a practice that helps us listen, deep down in there, for what’s truly needed. The dance helps us understand the patterns and the conditioning, all of the wounded parts, the defenses, the protections – all of that is important. That’s part of what we’re navigating.

It’s so fun to dance with others - and to dance alone - so why not use those dances to investigate the big picture? Who are you, and what are you doing on this planet – (laughs) with all these other people? And what do you want to be doing? What’s your gift here?

How would you approach that question? How can the dance put us in touch with our unique gifts?

I think the answer is to see what spontaneously emerges. To see what naturally comes, from your body, from your being, when you are practicing getting out of the way. We are so often conditioned to think, "I’m supposed to be this way in relationship to others. I’m supposed to be caring, or sexy, or something" – instead of listening, in the deep, deep wonderful way that we can in the dance, to what naturally, organically, emerges inside of us when we are with another. That’s our gift – it’ll be there. It’s unique to us, it’s natural; we don’t have to pull it together.

And then, once you start to listen, you may see, "ah, this joy or openness or understanding or curiosity or clarity…. this does arise for me…" We see our protective patterns but we can feel underneath those patterns, too. We may sense this in terms of a particular response or gesture or thought, or maybe an image - we each receive information differently. Not everybody receives it as a feeling. Sometimes it’s a thought-form, an emotional response, a vision or a kinesthetic sense. It can even be a particular foot-pattern that emerges (laughs). There are different ways our bodies, and our souls, talk to us.

Once you start to listen into that, and you start to discern this underlying essence, you can realize "ah, this is my gift, this is the place inside of me that I want to be aligned with – now, what in my life do I need to do, to support myself in offering that?" In being that. In welcoming that. Welcoming it in others, and being that with others. So we start to ask, "How do I need to structure my life so that that’s what is encouraged to emerge?" Because very often our lives do not support that particular unfolding – they support some other agenda we’ve got going, that came from some other place.

So can you say something about the discovery process that happens on the dance floor? Sometimes you can have these amazing revelations in the dance… but how do you bring that wisdom or insight to your life beyond the dance floor?

Now that’s the big question - the one that everybody asks - and the one thing we can realize is that it is already happening off the floor. We can sharpen our awareness about how what’s happening on the floor is also happening outside. The new choices I’m making, the new possibilities I’m experiencing on the floor, will naturally start to happen outside. If I can learn to pay attention, I will be able to feel the truth of how I am already changing. Because by dancing again and again I’m re-routing, I’m re-patterning, I am changing, I am reconnecting with the fact that I am change itself. That’s what I am practicing in my body, awakening to potential possibilities. So it will already be happening. That’s the first step, is to cultivate a sharp, focused, awake, alive witness inside of ourselves, so we can catch these moments as they happen on the floor and off the floor.

And the other is taking a hard look at what’s happening in our lives that isn’t supporting what’s emerging. And asking what kind of support you may need, to create change. Often that means some group support or support from teachers… or if you are really stuck, you may want to get some individual therapy to help you shift. Sometimes it comes from the group – the 5Rhythms ongoing groups are such big support for that. In this school, I would say that the ongoing groups provide the deepest support for change – but even in a single workshop we can start to get something and work with it, and follow it through on our own.

I also think witnessing is a key part of it. Sometimes, if we just feel a shift inside of ourselves, our new awareness can dissolve back into old patterns. It can be hard to manifest change when we’re not speaking about it and being heard, in relationship with friends and colleagues and our teacher. I think that helps us keep our focus on change in the conscious world, so that we can take the next steps. Because sometimes we have these amazing experiences but we might not speak about them, and then that awareness or new possibility can stay locked inside your own world. You don’t really follow through on it when you haven’t brought it fully into your conscious mind. Our growth or unfolding can stay in that dreamy, sub-conscious, creative world as potential but misses the actions and support needed for follow through. So I think articulation is important.

The Open Floor is really good for that. It helps us articulate and really state things out loud, in word and in movement – being heard and being seen.

In Curious Love, we also start to do this: we start to express and explore some of those patterns out loud and we are witnessed. We start to name and feel what we do, in the gestures and patterns of movement in our bodies

Would you like to say something about the other workshop you’ll be offering, Creative Sanity?

The Creative Sanity workshop is probably a reflection of my own experiences, learning to withstand the power of my own emotional self. For me, I have always been stunned – stunned! – by how deep and raw and primal and overwhelming my emotional life feels to me sometimes… a lot of times. I know what it feels like to be out of control. And I don’t want to replace ‘out of control’ with ‘control.’ I want to find a way, inside of myself, to live with this amazing passionate emotional being, without being thrown all over the place by that.

I think psychology has offered some really good tools for understanding and navigating one’s emotional world – and for me those tools and insights, in combination with the 5Rhythms….. I think there’s a path there. (Laughing) Some days, I think that’s not entirely true… but for the most part, particularly as I’m moving into the second half of my forties, I can see that I’ve learned to reap the benefits of my emotional life instead of just feeling whacked around by it. To reap the creative benefits of that, and to realize what I would call my sanity.

I think of the word Trungpa Rimpoche uses: ‘workability.’ One’s sanity becomes a sense that our minds and our emotions are workable – not that we can control them, but that we can work with them and make use of them, that there is something creative about that process. I think we can engage with that directly, through the process of embodied mindful dance, without being frightened, or shut down, or dissociated - or my own personal style, which is to be over-reactive and overwhelmed. Different people have different styles – but (laughing) that has been mine... and I think I’m not alone.

When you talk about noticing your own patterns, that makes me wonder, what else does your teaching practice give you?

Oh, boy, the biggest thing that my teaching practice gives me is an amazing sense of awe and wonder and compassion, for what we all are dealing with. It’s so inspiring, to see so many of us, forging our way towards our higher selves. To have the privilege and honor to be a person along the way that helps shape the path towards the greater good – I take that very seriously, it is very grounding and nourishing for me to have this role.

And I get to witness the unfolding of other individuals in a beautiful, raw, non-verbal way that you see in the dance. For me, that’s an inspiration. It opens my heart.

And it also keeps me very focused and challenged and intrigued. I have not veered off the path much. I have been in this field my entire adult life. I realized, I have been with Gabrielle twenty-eight years – jesus! (laughs) I must be finding something! That is such a long time to spend with anybody or anything and it’s not just with her, I have always studied parallel disciplines – for me they are all different textures of the same process of unfolding to our highest self, of unfolding to our spiritual potential, whatever that is – and I’m not a spiritual teacher so I’m not entirely clear about that but I do know, along the way, it’s about finding ways to open and trust, to get present and get out of the way. We have to lower the noise so we can actually hear what Spirit might even be. Many other disciplines are geared toward the same thing – I think psychological work and spiritual work are massively important. From different places, we are all working on the same project.