Melina's Belly Dance Choreography Creation Deck
When you are feeling sluggish or want a fun creative challenge, grab the magic purple velvet drawstring bag, shuffle the deck, draw some choreo cards from Melina’s deck and get inspired to move!
Melina created this card deck in 2020 during lockdown to make space for movement & imaginative play. Sometimes it takes a game or a little challenge to draw you out into the dance floor - even if it’s just in your kitchen.
Just the idea of taking out the deck and pulling a card gets you off the couch and moving! Combining the cards inspires you to create pathways outside of your usual repertoire. You can even use them at parties to challenge folks who have never belly danced before to just make stuff up and have fun in a positive group setting.
Melina leads belly dance workshops and retreats with the cards and will be teaching from them this month in studio. More online offerings will be coming this summer.
There are so many ways to play with Melina’s choreo card deck.
The deck, which comes in a purple velvet drawstring bag on gorgeous glossy card stock - is available for purchase online through her studio website: Moody Street Circus
Melina commissioned the gorgeous original artwork for the back of the cards from artist Mariana Cabral. Find her on Instagram @marianacabralart and on YouTube at: Mariana Cabral Art
Breathing Goddess
The breathing goddess - one of my favorite cards from the The Energetic Alchemist Oracle Card Deck by Yolanda Williams - relaxes & enjoys life. She appreciates the simple gifts that surround her. She represents our connection to - our embodiment of - Delicious, Wild Nature and the Cosmos. She has a wonderful and loving relationship with herself, adore-ning her hips and head in roses, Aphrodite’s shell, golden jewelry at the heart and wrists, and a cosmic wreath of 12 zodiac stars.
She invites us to savor the simple treasures that surround us, in harmony with our own nature.
She understands breath as a pathway to presence and peace.
As a belly dancer she shows the beauty of hara - her navel - sacred center of her being - the wombiverse from which we all spring.
She knows she is worthy of abundance and opens her hands to receive!
Tune into her energy to tap into your creativity
to cultivate strength
to be a magnet for unexpected gifts and pleasures.
Follow her lead: step out of your analytical mind and drop into a relaxed body at peace with the energies that flow through.
Melina's Mystical Caravan Experience
Take time for yourself to connect to your body and spirit through beautiful ritual. Journaling, journeying, dancing, oracle cards and more! Calm your nervous system and open your creativity channels through movement, play & sacred exploration. Allow Melina's mystical caravan experience to lighten your energetic load.
My intention with Melina's Mystical Caravan Experiences is to...
- ...make space for self-love, reflection & laughter..
- ...harmonize body-mind-spirit through enjoyment of belly dancing, percussion (drums, finger cymbals & tambourines), guided journeys, breath work, tarot & astrology, sacred writing, juggling scarves, dancing with veils...and more, depending on the month!
- ...tune into your inner knowing/intuition & soothe your inner overthinker/overdoer
- ...emerge with greater clarity on how to proceed in the month ahead
- ...unplug & gather in private, supportive community (no phones, no cameras)
- ...consider how the moon phases, the elements, beautiful oracle cards, numbers & astrological placements of the moment can be wise guides
- ... befriend & learn from the energies you are currently dancing in
In the mystical caravan experience, I blend in fun exercises and practices that I have benefited from as an academic as well as an international belly dancer and circus artist. I often share what I have learned from Reiki practitioners, Qigong masters, shamanic teachers & oracle card creators. I love the details but always keep in mind the big picture. I believe in the healing power of tears to help us through the shit-shows of our lives, then shifting whenever possible to laughter.
Melina's Mystical Caravan Workshops are held monthly at Moody Street Circus on the first Sunday of the month.
Winter Solstice Dance
The Winter Solstice is a time of transition, the longest night of the year before the days grow longer into the next two seasons.
For this solstice I felt like celebrating the depths of night wisdom. I wanted to explore how Hekate and Persephone goddesses, dreams, shadow could inform a dance class in a way that helped dancers tune into this pivotal moment of Nature & their own bodies.
Then, as the days grow longer and Spring rears up from the soil, we are directing actions from a deep well of bubbling fresh spring water that has been refreshed by the pause of darkness & the soft light of the moon.
This year I have been learning from Hekate, the triple moon goddess. She is a powerful guide who gets to the root of all issues. You can't dance around issues with Hekate. There is no BS ing her. This year her energy has urged me to look under the rock of long-buried emotions, to sit with even the smallest fears, doubts and discomforts to see what lessons they hold. Once you choose Hekate as a coach, you can rescue yourself from most quandaries and grow your personal power. It might not always be comfortable, but it will be worth it.
So - with Veils - Myth - Imagery - dreams - appreciation for dark and light - we will be dancing with the Solstice.
The moon will be in her waning phase, a perfect time to allow dead skin to fly off with gentle earthquake shimmies.
In Chinese medicine, winter is considered a Yin, not a Yang, season. A time for rest, reflection, inferiority. We'll embrace the mysteries and delights of darkness by flowing with concealing veils.
We will be creating an altar of candle light to close, setting intention for how we want to use our energy for the new dawn and days ahead.
Science of Happiness
Here is a Greater Good Science article I really enjoyed from the Science of Happiness podcast on the the Science of Synchronized Movement --
It explores the question
"Can moving to the same beat make us all more kind to one another?"
The answer makes me want to get up and dance with you all right now!
Undulations and the 9 of Pentacles
12/6/2022
The overarching theme for last night's class was undulation - from the latin undula, which means wavelet. The tarot card of the night was the 9 of Pentacles.
Waves move through matter more easily when there are no constrictions, obstructions, or blockages. Our bodies undulate best when we have first released tensions and connected to a sense of spaciousness in the body. Then we can surrender & allow the wavelets to flow through us, a nourishing, freeing and beautiful feeling from the inside.
I had planned for class that we would be practicing undulation energy by way of body rolls up and down, by practicing traveling with the 'camel walk,' and with snake arms.
On the morning of class, I pulled a tarot card asking for a message that would weave some wise energy into the lesson. I shuffled and fanned the deck, holding the cards in my left hand as the fingertips of my right hand slid along the edges. My hand stopped of its own accord. I trusted and teased out the card. Here it is:
[Nine of Pentacles is from the Rider-Smith-Waite tarot deck]
The nine of pentacles shows a woman luxuriating with an exotic bird in her peaceful private garden. Right behind her are luscious vines dripping with juicy grape clusters ripe for the picking.
The suit of pentacles in tarot is associated with the element Earth. We always recognize in belly dance that we are Earth dancers, connected to Gaia, Sky and World through our body, expressing Cosmic shapes and energies - circles, spirals, waves, shimmy vibrations - through our form.
In this deck pentacles are golden disks with a magic star etched on each; they relate to things on the material plane -- body, garden, home, finances, e.g.
When I draw pentacles for a dance class it is always validation that the attention to cultivating good energy in our bodies through dance movement will grow our self-connection & enhance our well-being overall.
The woman's fingers right hand rests gently on the top of a golden pile of 6 pentacles (6 in numerology represents love - nurturing). This pile supports her and accentuates her connection to love, abundance and self-nourishment. The other three pentacles of the card (3 is the number of creation and the creative force) are grouped together near the elegant train of her gown. It is as if wherever she glides, creations & creativity flourish in her wake. The woman's intention, attention and seemingly effortless magnetic energy has attracted a rare bird that has flown to rest on her left hand. It appears their relationship has been established over a long time since she is wearing her birding glove and has gained the trust of this wild winged creature.
A small snail in the foreground suggests the savouring of slow movement, which I tried to bring into class practice, as slowness is a beautiful teacher of embodiment.
The woman's sumptuous robe feels good on her skin. She is comfortable and at ease. The fabric is adorned all over with flowers that resemble the Venus - goddess of Love - symbol. This symbol echoes the theme of love contained in the 6 golden disks that support the woman in the card, and since the flowers are on fabric close to the body - this element reminded me that through our dancing and undulating we are cultivating our own love of our bodies.
Our bodies are gifts of nature that carry us through life. The 9 of pentacles validates that we are right to take time, slow down (snail energy!) and cherish our form and presence in body in a way that is not selfish, but self-loving. This nourishing energy in turn amplifies out to the world and invites in blessings of rare birds and abundance in all forms!
This card vibrates a juicy oasis of peace and calm, her red lined (color of VITALITY!) robes and relaxed demeanor shows her appreciating what is pleasing to her under an illuminated golden sky. Do at least one thing every day that sumptuously PLEASES YOU! Fill yourself up with your own beautiful energy tea so you can serve others tea from a sense of abundance.
9 of Pentacles has an energy of maturation - the woman has, through dedicated practice, cultivated these qualities of peace, calm, self-care - she has cultivated that relationship with herself over many years to arrive at this sense of home in her space.
And so with undulating we allowed the 9 of pentacles energies to flow in, around and through us, with pleasure gracing the process.
Reiki Radio Interview with Melina
YOUTUBE LINK TO CONVERSATION
Yolanda Williams, The Energetic Alchemist -- host of Reiki Radio -- has been my spiritual alchemy guide, energy coach, meditation teacher, Reiki, Astrology and Tarot guide for the last 3 years. I was honored to be interviewed on her podcast.
Meli
The concept of 'Tips from the Hip' emerged from a childhood of belly dancing on Greek taverna stages under the Parthenon at the willful, wild and eccentric hip of my Saggitarean mother, Rhea of Greece.
Through Rhea, I come from the lineage of Jamila Salimpour's Troupe Bal Anat. Through my father's guitar, my baby self was steeped in folk music, circus arts, (probably too much second-hand weed) & hippie love.
Today I follow my calling as movement artist and seeker. In these internet channels and in my studio space I share my "tips" on movement, energy, well-being and more.
Like any goddess worth her salt, I have crossed cultures and taken on different names along the way. Melinda is my birth name but Melina of Daughters of Rhea became my stage name as a kid, since the owner of the Athens by Night taverna, George Pantelopoulos, would introduce me that way. Every night I balanced a tray of lit candles on my head for hundreds of international tourists. I got to know a bit about the entire world from an outdoor stage beneath the acropolis.
Both names contain Meli.
Meli means honey in Greek, and I love honey.
Works for me!
Along the way I have changed my life - and name - times. Each carries its own energy imprint and experience. However you met me is the perfect name to call me!
Changemakers Podcast
I just got interviewed for my first podcast and it was a lot of fun. Thanks to Cristina Pujol for having me on Change Makers Mind podcast.
How to train your intuition? | Dancing with passion and consciousness With Melinda Pavlata and Cristina Pujol
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
