https://vimeo.com/1103638767/5a089decc9
This unlisted link will take you to the video of part 1 of the Shik Shak Shok combo I taught in class today in case you want to follow along. Students did such a great job!!! So many shimmies!!!
Hips don't Lie
Happy full moon in Sagittarius!
This lunation illuminates the bold & daring sign of travel, philosophical wisdom & learning through direct experience!
My focus in dance class tonight is HIPS.
Little known fact that HIPS stands for:
“Happy is (the) Person (who) Shimmies.”
Ok I made that up BUT hips are made to be mobile and move us in all directions. We are going to consider a myriad of ways that we can move the hips starting with
1. Full body warm up
2. Simple hip mobility drills
3. Hip connections both above & below
Your hips don’t lie, but do you even let them speak? Now’s your chance.
#bellydance #daughtersofrhea #shimmies #twists #lifts #drops #snakes #circles
"You Are the Myth" Reiki Radio Interview
Had a great conversation with Yolanda Williams as a Guest on Reiki Radio.
I love that woman. She asks great questions and brings out the best in all those she interviews.
www.speakeasyreiki.com
Dance of Spring
Here's the combination we practiced last night in class.
Great to dance with you all.
CLICK HERE FOR THE RECORDING: Dance of Spring: Sequence of April 2025
Photo credit: Bruce Mount
Enjoy your day!
✨Melinda Melina Pavlata, Ph.D. ✨
CoFounder | Director
Moody Street Circus | Speakeasy Reiki | Melina’s Caravan
Seminars | Ceremony | Entertainment | Reiki
www.moodystreetcircus.com
✨ feel the love & shimmy ✨
Energy Work Sessions / Readings:
All the 8s to feel Great
My Creative Process alway begins with energetic envisioning in a meditative state. I apply this process to my entire life - lesson planning, events, whatever might be coming. I tap into a sense of spaciousness and feel into what would best be of big picture service. In this way, energy flows more easily and freely, creating room for everyone and everything to unfold in everyone's highest and best good. I also draw on my analytical mind, but underneath everything there is a field of larger creative consciousness that holds space for surprise and spontaneity.
I especially love to plan dance class with this open mindset, seeing what is asking to lead. In dance class last night we were guided by aspects of the number 8 in many dimensions.
Figure eights are already a big part of the belly dance repertoire, and the numerology of class day - 4-22-2025 - added up to 8 - so that was already my jumping off point for considering how to incorporate eight into class in a fresh way. 8 is also the number of the strength card in the Major Arcana of Tarot, which we can see is a courageous, golden-light-filled and compassionate energy to dwell in.
It all started in a meditation that morning, with the image of Isis on her throne.
This led to a vision of my skeletal system as throne for our regal but relaxed posture of authority, our beloved bodies a home in which to lengthen spine and breath deeply and easily. Starting by feeling into our skeleton in this way is a beautiful way to begin a movement practice of any kind. And so we did: we brought awareness to our posture and felt into our internal bone thrones. We brought our energies in from the outside world to the sacred studio and the dance at hand, breathing in the energy of 8, imagining it weaving through our system. Structure and Shakti cocreating within our bodies a greater sense of peace and aliveness.
Back to the morning of class..
At the breakfast table, I suddenly remember the used book about bones I had just bought for a dollar at my body worker's office. A healer in her practice is moving back to New Zealand and leaving behind his very eclectic library of books. I got up right away to find the book.
Leafing through Bones, your 100 questions answered while eating my chia seed infused oatmeal, some facts jumped out immediately:
There are roughly 206 bones in the human skeleton
--that vibed with my numerological theme for the night of class, as 2+6=8 --
There are 26 bones in the spine....
8 again!
And 8 that make up the cranium.
By this time, I was receiving validation for the theme of our compassion and the snakey, healing energy of 8 right left and center.
Then I looked at the clock. 8:11. STOPPIT! Too much fun. 8 is 8, 11 is a portal...
And let's not forget about the Rune I pulled out before a meeting later - Dagaz! Its as close to looking like an 8 on its side in Rune land as you can get.
"The Dagaz rune, meaning "day" or "dawn," signifies new beginnings, enlightenment, and a shift in perspective. It represents the culmination of a cycle, often a breakthrough or transformation in personal growth. Dagaz can also symbolize hope, awareness, and the awakening of one's true self."
A beautiful energy to weave into class as well.
__________________________________________
Here are some of the songs that all this skeleton talk brought up. One is a song one a student mentioned in class that her adorable son likes to sing, and the other is one my dad really likes. I hope they both bring you a smile.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=og4dCZneWMo
https://open.spotify.com/track/4XoVZDCiZAdCKJdtTc0rqn?si=6Y4QVOe5TCWN966bCg48Jw)
While we're at it, here is the Spotify playlist I named "All the 8s to Feel Great" that contains the music I played in class last night:
https://open.spotify.com/playlist/0XxvcgFMP4ADf9kcwQp7Cg?si=vKcmMKCHRlSDxLD2p1OebQ
We explored many dance combinations that involved tracing the energy of 8 both slowly in place, and more rhythmically, including claps and traveling steps. We put lemnikates into various body parts to see how they might move us. The infinity symbol, also called the lemniscate, is an 8 on its side, and represents everlasting, ever-renewing energy. It promotes harmony between our analytical and intuitive minds, especially when danced with the imagination.
Finally, I guided class through the Magician mantra dance I created a few years ago, when I was overtaken with a desire to create various dances and movement mantras for many of the energies of Tarot. Here is the poem:
Thanks for joining in on my intuitively led dance class planning and musings filled with Tarot wisdom and infused with Reiki. It is my way of creating and holding space for beauty, magic and wonder. The cultivation of our precious energy and the empowerment of our spirits is crucial as we dance through these unusual times.
More on my practices around energy work here:
✨Melinda Melina Pavlata ✨
_______________________________
CoFounder | Director
Moody Street Circus | Speakeasy Reiki | Melina’s Caravan
Seminars | Ceremony | Entertainment | Energy Work
www.moodystreetcircus.com
✨ feel the love & shimmy ✨
New Moon in Pisces
Pisces is Mutable Water...
Release control and trust where life is taking you
Pay attention to your intuition
Pay attention to your dreams
Coalesce intentions around healing past wounds and spiritual growth
Release the need to over analyze and over control
Watch for wishful thinking
Pisces is often depicted as Two Fish....
Random Facts I lightly researched today
Pisces is latin name for Fish
on fish gills:
Most fish have gills. These allow the fish to breathe oxygen by extracting it from water.
From Google:
Fish take in water through their mouth, and it passes across the gills on its way out. When it does, oxygen gets diffused into the bloodstream and travels through the fish's body.
This got me considering how fetuses breathe in utero - it is not through gills...
"the umbilical cord provides the baby with oxygen until the first breath after birth. Lung development begins early in pregnancy, but is not complete until the third trimester."
Most of us don't remember our very first breath, but how important was that rite of passage. That marked the moment we went from swimming in an unconscious sea of creation to independently taking in the air of Earth's realm of duality.
Piscean energy is subtle, spiritual, psychic, emotional, imaginative, symbolic, dreamy...
My intuitive impulse to research fish gills and breathing in utero was clearly telling me something about how important it would be to tune into our breathing apparatus for moon ritual class this evening...
In order to get into a Piscean state of consciousness, it helps to gently breathe your way a relaxed expanded field in which the small mind settles, suspends its judgments and analysis, surrenders its material concerns and merges with a larger sense of energetic presence...
It is within this field we will dance.
Dancing with The World
This month we entered an exploratory creative zone in my dance classes, blending universal energies from the system of Tarot with belly dance movements and choreographic phrases.
The World is the last card of the Major Arcana, in which the Fool completes their journey, finding their magic, power and freedom within the wholeness of their own being.
Here are the movement highlights from our latest class inspired by The World.
1. We created spaciousness in the body by tuning into our breath and harmonizing it with movement.
2. Mel's creative "Dance of the World" in which we activated aspects of the card, setting energies depicted free within our movement. We stepped into our safe wreath to celebrate our freedom of movement, to move in our authority. We moved into the initial pose like the figure on the card, tracing the winding pathway of the flowing scarf around our body and lifted by soft breeze. We felt into the four directions and danced the four elements of the four fixed signs pictured on the card -- Taurus (earthy sensuality), Libra (balanced mind), Scorpio (emotional watery undulations and eights), and Leo (fire essence - ruled by the sun - proud, bold, fiery movement choices and energies).
3. When it comes up in a reading, The World card can mean travel is afoot. Thus we practiced traveling steps such as
- "On the Prowl" - a heel to toe cougar glide experience and opposite arm and leg worked together to propel us along the dance floor.
- "Rolling Shoulders" - a toe to heel walk along where we rolled our shoulder which each gentle footfall.
- "Triplet traveling textures"... There are a myriad of ways to travel your triplets .. we highlighted the "As Above, So Below" Variety where the "In the Clouds Triplet" step on relevé with arms flowing back and forth up high contrasted with the "Earthy Hips" Triplet step with grounded flat feet, hips swaying with each step.
- "Two Worlds Meet" - We set up Two Worlds facing each other from across the dance floor - The "Step Hip" world and the "Tripleteers." They had to dance toward each other in their respective dance languages, circle one another in a friendly energy then keep moving to the other side of the room.
Here's another way I have interpreted The World Card-
In her Book The Tarot Handbook, Angeles Arrien writes of The Universe (#21) (another version of the World Card):
"In order to make a contribution in the world with our inherent talents, we must trust our ability to express love with wisdom (the Empress). Love with wisdom can be expressed when we are willing to break limiting patterns (The Hanged Man), release old sorrows (3 of swords), be clear on our priorities (3 of disks), express our integrity (3 of Wands) and communicate respectfully (3 of Cups)."
If you are interested in bringing your energetic system into more harmonious balance through a Reiki session, Tarot or oracle card reading, guided journey or dance movement medicine, please visit www.moodystreetcircus.com/speakeasyreiki - enter the password "abracadabra" - and submit your interest form.
* For entertainment purposes only. Greater well-being may result.
All my best,
Melina
Whole Hearted
"When you are whole hearted about something, however, when you are where you want to be and are participating fully in the moment you are in - sometimes enthusiastic, sometimes mellow, you will experience a new sense of aliveness. You will experience a surge of energy, renewed vigor. This is not because there is actually an increase in energy, but because you are not constricting it quite so much. There is now a better energy flow. There is less conflict, less friction, less not wanting to be where you are, and therefore= for you there will be an experience of more energy." -Erich Schiffmann. Moving into Stillness.
Such a beautiful way of putting it, such a beautiful state to be in, and how I feel when dancing or teaching.
Once we have laid out the pathways of movements for class, starting very slow to feel into the texture of transitions….
Once we come to know the music - its emotion and rhythms;
After we practice again and again to lay down the groove,
The dance becomes smoother and more subtle, it deepens within us and becomes our own unique expression, and we begin to flow more easily with our own life force energy, gently dancing our way to greater vitality.
#reiki #bellydance #presence #practice #peace #vitality #wholehearted
Mel's Speakeasy Reiki
Signature Energy Cocktails launching in 2025….
Mel’s Speakeasy is a quiet place to come relax
And receive messages from your higher self
...a sanctuary for restoration
a place to meet yourself in peace
get to know your energetic blueprint
harmonize the voices in your field
With compassion and care
Speak easy…. A secret room in the back
Whisper the password phrase … abracadabra…
through a small opening
Speak quietly to gain access…
Tell everyone you’ve gone shopping,
they won’t question that...
I once daydreamed of a Nap Bar on every corner of every neighborhood in the land. A place to stop in, sit down and rest in quiet in the midst of all the outward focussed tasks you are rushing to and from. A refuge to go in, put down your bags a moment, and just BE. A “Be” bar! You can hike your hip up to perch on the Reiki table barstool, order up a soothing draught of de-stress with barkeeper Mel and befriend yourself. Instead of leaving buzzed and waking up hungover the next day, order up a "Reiki-tini." Be restored to YOU, feel clearer in your next steps.
If you are interested in bringing your system into more harmonious balance through a Reiki session, Tarot or oracle card reading, guided journey or movement medicine, please visit www.moodystreetcircus.com/speakeasyreiki and enter the password "abracadabra"
* For entertainment purposes only. Greater well-being may result.
"Serpentini"
Melina Snaking Along...Photo by Najmat.
Serpentini - a Musing on The Lunar New Year
Welcoming the Year of the Snake!
Snake medicine: Resilience - wisdom - intelligence - determination - focus - transformation.
With all its sinuous and undulatory movement, belly dance has long been called the dance of the serpent. When you allow your body to move along snakey pathways, the dance can be a catalyst, an agent and a medicine of change, helping people move and evolve more consciously through challenging times.
As you sip on the following snake-inspired movement cocktail idea, which I am playfully calling a Serpentini, you will generate more passion and healing power within yourself.
The body desires to move freely in this instinctive way, instead of being repressed and bound.
The snake is a fertility symbol representing the renewal of nature. It is connected to the energy of the umbilical cord - joining all humans to Mother Earth, the source of our nourishment.
The dance of the serpent has roots as an ancient fertility dance connected to matriarchy and the Mother Goddess, to whom the Snake is sacred.
The snake is associated with the rod of Asclepius, a serpent wrapped around a staff. Asklepius was a deity in Greek mythology associated with healing and medicine. The daughters of Aklepius were also associated with healing, like Hygeia, or Igeia, which means health in Greek.
In Indigenous First Nation cultures, snake animal medicine is very powerful alchemy connected to transmutation and assisting with changes in consciousness. “Feel Snake’s rhythm and you will dance freely, incorporating those transmuting forces of the universe as part of your sensual dance of power.” (Medicine Cards: The Discovery of Power Through the Ways of Animals by
"The spine, viewed from the side, looks and moves like a snake. It symbolises everything within our bodies and mind that moves under the surface, hidden from the light of consciousness." (The Serpent and the Wave, a guide to movement meditation by Jalaja Bonheim). But when we bring awareness and undulatory movement to the spine, kundalini energy can rise, a greater flow of energy pulses through. This nourishes all aspects of your system and can help keep your health in harmony and balance.
Serpentini is like a martini - except maybe better, as you will wake up the next morning feeling renewed and refreshed, full of shakti power
Love,
Melina
Veil Dance
I love co-creating with veil. I love the surprise of emerging into a new shape, of moving with varied speeds and intensity of force, of sculpting new visions with veil. Every veil is unique - in size, weight, texture, shape, color…. Each you have to get to know. Each has its own messages to share and way of working with the dancer.
Veils must be allowed to shine their personalities - sometimes you have to get out of the way. You cannot always control each moment, but they teach you to be spontaneous when necessary and make a new, unanticipated shape with graceful acceptance.
The fabulous dancer Najia, one of my mom’s West Coast contemporaries, writes of veil on the Gilded Serpent webzine:
"Be ready to interact with whatever shape the fabric and the influence of air upon it produce. Be spontaneous and prepared to accept serendipity.”
Veil dancing has ancient roots.
On the Parthenon, Athena's temple of Athens, Greece, you will see an etching in the marble of a lady with a half circle veil behind her.
The veil is a theatrical prop, an elemental partner catching air and light, a spiritual symbol, a beautiful dream.
The creative shape shifting of veil allows a dancer to connect with &
express different aspects of herself.
She extends into space &
dances her powers.
She hides and reveals as she wishes —&
in her own time
with patience,
able to find creative ways to release the knots of her fabric &
expand in freedom
Strength Card from Melina series Belly Dance Tarot
Healing Dance
How you begin matters.
Melina as The Hermit
There is a prologue:
First find breath, peace & center within yourself
Enter the dance space
with energized reverence.
You are in charge of setting the energy of the stage - don't let the stage or setting dominate you.
You are a queen and deserve to be there, you will receive sacred attention from your subjects, you have beautiful energy to offer and secrets to reveal in the symbols of movement.
Keep breathing throughout and smiling in your heart.
Never apologize for taking up space or time on a stage. You are there, so own it. Stay centered in your own pure intention and enjoyment of your movements. Don't be afraid of stillness or repetition, but let even simple moments be backed by some inner emotion, image or story you have mapped in consciousness.
You can do a step, hip a thousand ways, each of them with a slightly different texture.
You have a relationship with your music that is sacred, behind anything to do with the audience or even this time-space continuum.
You are there to enjoy yourself, and in doing so you please them. For slow moves take your time, follow your hands with your eyes, be conscious and present.
You are unaffected by the lower registers of the audience; lower registers slide off of your golden light emanation to be transformed.
Keep always to your highest ground. Send out the purest energy and intention as you dance and the audience will tune itself to your frequency.
In this way the dance can be a collective healing.
Melina as The Hermit
We are in a Universal Year 9
Be True to You & Shine your Light
Join in!
Here's how to gain access to the temple: www.moodystreetcircus.com/newdancers. Since our time and space is sacred, we have a couple of communication items we ask you to complete through that portal. The registration process gives you time to feel into whether you align with our guiding philosophy of mindful movement practice. You can also reach out via email with any questions you have.
The Serpent and the Wave
No matter what you've got going on, it's always a good idea to dip into Jalaja Bonheim's book The Serpent and the Wave for anti-authoritarian movement inspiration. In case you don't have the book, here's one of my favorite excerpts:
“Whenever you move with pleasure, you stop comparing yourself with others. The questions is no longer, “How good do I look? How well am I performing? How will I be perceived?; rather it is, “How good does this movement feel?”
Because true pleasure is rooted in your individual uniqueness, it is by its nature anti-authoritarian and a good indicator of whether a movement is appropriate for you.” -Jalaja Bonheim, The Serpent and the Wave: A Guide to Movement Meditation.
This talk of pleasure can also bring up its opposite - it surfaces the struggles I sometimes see students grappling with in class as they practice both the segmented isolations & fluid pathways of belly dance movements. A new way of moving doesn't always feel great in the body right away - and why would it? That's okay at the beginning. Anything unfamiliar feels strange at first. The real issue is - how do you deal with the rub? Can you soften your relationship with the internal micro-challenges that arise, trusting that learning a new way of moving will bring subtle shifts that, in the end, are quite powerful and have the potential to broaden and deepen movement pleasure? I propose...softening into breath, tuning to inner smile frequency, and taking your time to initiate movements from your center line -- all this will make everything feel so much better.
When you are first learning to move through new energetic pathways in belly dance (and in life), there can be initial discomfort and frustration - even resistance. You may be used to trying to force things to happen in your body, or applying too much external energy, or think that a shape has to look and feel bold and big. That doesn't always work with the path of the serpent. A relationship with the internal, learning to feel into your central channel & harmonizing with subtle dynamics -- all this needs time to develop. Be patient and loving with yourself when resistance of any sort comes up - either from the brain or body - and relax into the process. This more yielding yin energy increases the likelihood you will even notice the micro pleasure moments when they do arise.
If you trust the process, if you patiently strengthen new muscles that support the expansion of your movement potential from the inside out - and are you are willing to diligently practice ... a shift always occurs. The body knows when she is being honored. She likes to move a bit slower than fast-paced minds. She will more pleasurably respond to your requests if her natural timelines are being heeded.
Step, hip - breaking down the dance of love
First, plant the seed.
That's the "step » of the belly dance traveling movement step, hip
The seed is intention and attention to your own Venus nature.
The step is to establish your presence, authority, regality and magic.
The step is with a flat foot. Not flat as in dead, but flat and alive, flat and all parts feeling the ground. A sensuous earth foot. Have you forgotten your foot is not just for putting in a hard shoe? This step, barefoot and optimistic, is the foundation of the movement, and should be enjoyed.
Don't be too quick to move on here -
Feel your weight on that first step leg, energy rooting down into the ground with a soft knee. Locked knees can be jarring. Rigid. Send you off balance. Soft knees have a slight bend, and allow the entire leg to be more animal, have more potential. You feel more life force rushing up from your planet with a soft knee, you breathe easier, your body is primed for movement in harmony with the elements & your spirit.
For those who wish a straightforward, less poetic description, supple knees act as shock absorbers so movements do not stress the system or jar the spine.
The ball of the other foot contacts the ground in a "floint" - a point/flex hybrid. « Floint » is the word we make up when pointed ankle energy meets a flex at the toe basin. The heel remains lifted even as you move your knees and hips, as if you were wearing a high heel shoe, but your aren't, you are holding your heel up with your brilliant mind. This a position I sometimes like to call the "Dainty Dominatrix." In this pose, I imagine myself cracking a whip on anyone who questions my authority to teach using poetic imagery. THWACK! Begone.
Finally, the Hip, rising from the skeletal arrangement you have set up so lovingly, blooming like a beautiful rose from the earth soil.
Step, Hip!
Love,
Meli
Happy New Year!
Belly Dance Log, 1/1/25
I have a tradition of offering an extended workshop on the first of the year, and this New Year's Day Belly Dance Balm Ritual Class was one for the ages.
The first day of the year carries a special hush of sacred newness. Inspired by the #1 Card in the Major Arcana of Tarot, we began class with the Magician Arm Pathway. Sinuous and circular, it involves the entire body and being. It an enchanting warm up, and we did it on both sides of the body. We considered what thoughts and energies we wanted to seed into the New Year, and created sigils at the end of class. We literally "rang" in the New Year with community finger cymbals using numerology to guide the patterns, and let it all hang out sharing happy dancing together.
In numerology, 2025 is a Universal Year 9, and 9 of us were gathered in a circle to toast the New Year with a beautiful juice blend my daughter and I had prepared. Beets, lemon, ginger, apple, pineapple, oranges - gifts of earth blended with love to promote life force energy - delicious!
I guided the class through 9 movements / steps / pathways that formed a dance story. At the end we did spins! which evokes the wheel of the year as well as a hopeful harbinger of next year - 2026 - a 10 year - and 10 in tarot is the Wheel of Fortune... May we all be fortunate this year and have a fulfilling year, reaching out for help and support when we need it, dancing and moving energy through the body, staying curious and open to new learnings, and challenging ourselves to follow through on our creative ideas and intentions.
We concluded class with relaxation. We lay down on mats, stretching, lounging and drawing our symbol or sigil for the year on blank tarot cards we provided.
Each dancer had a self-validating & encouraging sign to bring home for their personal altar.
Happy New Year everyone!
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