Mapy k extázy

by Gabrielle Roth

In this revised editon, Roth expands on the themes that have guided her: ways of transforming daily life into sacred art.

Genres: Spirituality, Nonfiction, Psychology, Bodies, Paganism, Personal Growth, Self Help

199 pages, Hardcover

First published April 1, 1989

About the author

Gabrielle Roth was a musician, author, music director, dancer, philosopher and recording artist in the world music and trance dance genres, with a special interest in shamanism.

Reviews

[Susan · Rating 5 out of 5]

I read this book years ago at the beginning of my Nia training. I enjoyed it then and got lots out of it AND re-reading it years later after dancing the 5Rhythms regularly, it makes even more sense and the wisdom of this work comes through even more clearly. Read it, but more importantly, dance it.

[Caitlin H · Rating 1 out of 5]

Took this off my shelf because i've decided i'm not going to finish it. It already made me roll my eyes numerous times, & Roth's holier-than-thou tone grated on my nerves so. Much. She had made good points about anger & its validity, but she sure as hell lost me when she talked about her version of compassion, which didn't include meeting people where they were at the moment, but demanding they come up on her physical level-- which was also a way of saying "I think you need to grow up & stop wallowing." How is it that Roth ~knew~ whether or not that person was "wallowing"? That's not compassion, that's that holier-than-thou attitude coming right to the fore. Instead of offering real compassion, she demanded-- forced-- immediate change from a person who was hurting. That's not true compassion.

I also side-eyed the beginning of the third chapter, where Roth insists that we all go through the same life stages & have the same "sacred teachers" at each stage, the first two being "mother" & "father". Can you get anymore rigidly heterosexual? Even aside from that, what about all the people who maybe have only one parent? Or none? Who are raised by other guardians? What about those of us who have a parent walk out on us, whether when we're young or older? Claiming we all have the "same teachers" is extremely narrow-minded & erases many people & life experiences. And saying "mother/father figure(s)" doesn't change this fact.

What really did it for me was the phrase "we're all suffering from emotional AIDS." This book was published in the '80s during the AIDS crisis, for fuck's sake; throwing the disease around for ~impact~ or whatever is disgusting & insulting to all the lives lost from actual AIDS. You don't get to take a highly stigmatized disease, one that at the time was thought to only affect an already stigmatized grouping of people, & one that at the time meant almost certain death if contracted, & apply it to something like this. I literally threw the book away from me when i read that, i was so done & disgusted. It shows a huge lack of respect & decency on Roth's part, & starkly shows her cishet privilege. Only someone so unaffected by true AIDS could have had the gall to use it as a metaphor. And if she had friends who were affected by it, that doesn't change the fact that she should have known better. In fact, it makes it worse.

I went into this book really hoping i would like it, really hoping it would offer me healing in some way. Instead, i avoided reading it as much as possible because it irritated me so much. I kept giving it "another chance" over & over, hoping i might find something worthwhile in it, but after that "emotional AIDS" statement, i'm flat-out done with this book. I lost any respect i might have had for Roth when i read that (& i already was side-eyeing her a ton because of her attitude & tone throughout the book). I'm not going to drag myself through an unreadable book by someone who clearly thought so well of herself that among other things she could demand suffering people meet her where she was (instead of vice versa) & claim that's compassion; as well as thinking it was perfectly okay to freely throw around the concept of AIDS, with no regard to the people suffering (& dying) from the disease & the huge stigmatization of it.

[Bennett Hoffman · Rating 5 out of 5]

swept me away... I got this book after doing a 5 rhythm workshop... the workshop blew me away... the practice enlivens me and makes me happy... the book revealed to me why I have throughout my entire life (I'm now 72 years old) chosen dance and movement as a way to break through my conditioned, rigid patterns and taste the joy of the bliss that is what we are.

Gabielle is the real deal... and her 5 rhythm practice and her books are about much more than a dance. She offers the reader and the practitioner of the 5 rhythms a way to find and embody our eternal selves... our true nature.

Read her books if you like, but as Gabrielle advises us,"Dance your dance - If you don't dance your dance, who will?" Gabrielle's passed on now... but she lives in her words and her dance... which are simply an invitation for us to come alive... and offers a way to allow that to happen.

[Karen · Rating 5 out of 5]

The perfect book to read in the last couple of weeks of December, the time of reviewing the old year and setting intentions for the new. Gabrielle Roth was a very wise woman. I look forward to reading her other books.

[Vladimir · Rating 2 out of 5]

Her life would be a good subject for a biography (nudist adventures with Fritz Pearls and dancing with Gregory Bateson are enough for this nerd to buy the book); her 5Rhythms workshops are probably profoundly important to those how attend. However, this book is not good. Writing lacks rhythm (wink wink nudge nudge) and she doesn't really know how to get her point across. What she describes are transformative experiences comes off as boring or just overstated, not to use stronger words. I assume it's because as a dancer she'd be more comfortable using other ways of expressing herself.
It's readable, interesting on occasion but largely new agey, full of chliches and worn out phrases.

[Amy Lewis · Rating 5 out of 5]

I read Gabrielle's book after getting involved with a 5 Ryhythms class. What an amazing and talented force of nature Gabrielle was. I wasn't even expecting her to be such a great writer. This is a must read not only for anyone who's been touched by Gabrielle's spirit through conscious dance but for anyone interested in expanding your consciousness and learning more about the amazing art form of dance.

[Malvolio · Rating 5 out of 5]

Hmmm. I really like Gabrielle Roth. I like dancing to her music. And I like reading her books. This one, as well as Sweat Your Prayers. Very good teaching, leading rehearsal techniques. I dig it. Chilled me out and made me want to move and teach and change the world. Good stuff.

[Alona Perlin · Rating 3 out of 5]

I enjoyed some parts of this book, but it was a little too broad! I wasn't sure what the common threat of book was. It was beautifully written, but lacked focus. I'm saddened to hear that Gabrielle Roth passed away last year. I heard she was an inspired dancer!

[Michael Sasson · Rating 4 out of 5]

The author has a vision of unalienated life without a need for social transformation and often leans towards individual rather than social understanding (e.g. p98 where she blames a lack of a mother instead of a lack of village). This strikes me as a certain type of middle class individualism pushing against collective, working class politics or spirituality. If not for that, I would have given 5 stars as the first 2/3 of the book blew me away as precursor to somatic healing modalities and pointers to joyous, embodied life.

xv In many shamanic societies, if you came to a shaman or medicine person complaining of being disheartened, dispirited, or depressed, they would ask you one of four questions: When did you stop dancing? When did you stop singing? When did you stop being enchanted by stories?When did you stop finding comfort in the sweet territory of silence?
xviii Through dancing I discovered that when you put the psyche in motion, it heals itself.
1 "Then all that remains is to live with joy, love, and laughter." -- Margot Anand, The Art of Everyday Ecstasy
2 We can only reach ecstasy through wholeness.
3 The dancing path leads us from the inertia of sleepwalking to the ecstasy of living the spirit of the moment. Too often our lives are automatically channeled into narrow, secure patterns, set into deadly routines. Some of us want out.
12 Ecstatic dance became my way of jumping out of my personality into my soul [...] to escape the safe, boring confines of being reasonable.
20 I was discovering that if you just set people in motion, they'll heal themselves.
21 I didn't know who I was or how to be with myself. I kept myself busy at all times [...]
29 The first creative task is to free the body to experience the power of being.
30 We live outside ourselves -- in our heads, our memories, our longings [...]
34 We have to learn to know what rhythm we're in, how to ride with it, how to shift; to sense what rhythm others are in and how the different rhythms are complementary or discordant. We need to discover what rhythm predominates in us -- are we a flowing type, a chaotic type? What rhythms characterize the main people in our lives? We need to tune into the undulating rhythms of our days, our weeks, our months, our years.
37 It's ideal to set aside the same time every day, five days a week, and devote that time to doing the rhythms.
38 People practicing the rhythms regularly experience dramatic improvements in well-being.
39 [...] pay attention to your resistances and dare to explore these undiscovered regions of yourself.
41 [...] like making love without sex [...]
43 I eventually ran the massage team [...] and increasingly saw our work as a kind of daily monastic prayer. I was always meeting new bodies, often never saying a word to them but having this deep encounter with each. It was wonderful training in "impersonal" love, love without attachment, strings, complications — just deep giving and receiving in a circle of sharing. [see therapeutic container, reckless loving but w/o touch]
49 Ours is a supposedly liberated, even libertine culture, but it is actually woefully underdeveloped sexually.
55 The second major task is to express the heart, freeing the emotions to experience the power of loving.
Moving the body through the rhythms necessarily releases emotions. Freeing the body leads inevitably to freeing the heart.
56 Unexpressed, repressed, or suppressed, this energy becomes toxic. […] The only real option, the only healthy alternative, is to embrace our emotions, to befriend them, to make them our own, and to learn to experience and express them appropriately in the moment.
57 But there is no route to true joy and compassion except through the prior emotions, and all we get without the experience of fear, anger, and sadness are cheap imitations of joy and compassion — pleasantness and sentimentality. […]
The basic emotions are vital to our survival and total well-being. The challenge is not to transcend them, but to transform our relationship to them.
58 The problem is that we have been taught from our earliest days to edit and deny our emotions.
59 Love is emotional energy flowing rightly. [...] A lover is a child grown up.
60 Essentially, fear protects, anger defends, sadness releases, joy uplifts, compassion unites.
61 We're so afraid of what we're going to lose, so painfully attached to what we have, that we numb ourselves into a living death to shield us from the pain of real living.
62 [...] transform that fear into its natural dynamic partner, excitement [....] Fear properly channeled yields wide-awake engagement.
Anger is an integrity-protecting response to the invasion of your personal boundaries.
64 The authentic release of anger often yields a feeling of compassion, because you move from anger at the violation into a sympathetic appreciation of what caused the person to invade your boundaries. [...]
Sadness is the release, the emotional letdown when our expectations, our wishes are disappointed. [...] Sadness hurts because it involves letting go of what we're attached to -- whether it be a good-night kiss, a gold medal, or a love affair -- and living with loss.
65 Sadness is the transforming medium in our lives that allows us to meld our rigidity, our longing for security, stability, and assurance, with the inevitability of change and the need for growth. The challenge is to accept our inescapable vulnerability and to embrace the experience of sadness when it comes, as the release necessary to living healthily with change. We should never scale back our expectations or our real wants in order to escape the pain of not getting them; rather, we should go for just what we want, what we need, what really satisfies, and literally and figuratively sing the blues if we don't get it. Avoiding sadness results in a superficial happiness, a kind of life laugh-track that masks an all-too-apparent undercurrent of depression: it is the permanent station to which so many lives are tuned. [...] it is the avoidance of these emotions that returns to haunt our lives, especially the flight from sadness.
66 How much do we shield ourselves and our children from disappointment, from pain, from sadness? We have to realize that we are just shielding ourselves and them from the healthful processes of living.
67 When life disappoints us and runs counter to our fondest wishes, sadness is the authentic response, whose cleansing energy allows the free flow of the rest of our feelings.
Joy is the expansive energy of dynamic well-being. [...] It comes when our emotional energy flows freely in a dynamic of appropriate responses to our experiences.
68 I know that when for years I denied my fear, anger, sadness, which is what most of us do, I wasn't happy. People around me thought that I was happy, because I was fun and funny. But my funniness was a self-deprecating way of masking the pain. I was in constant, desperate pursuit of something, someone to fill the black hole I felt inside. Joy doesn't come through fixes.
[...] We're often as uncomfortable about having hearts as we are about having bodies.
69 Humor releases us [...] frees us from solemn attachments, and it is this freedom from attachments, to be without wanting or regretting, that constitutes real joy.
70 Compassion [...] involves being able to feel what another is feeling while remaining sufficiently detached to know what is needed and then to respond appropriately.
71 [...] our Buddha mission is to lead people to true freedom, not to hold their hand and tell them that everything is going to be all right.
73 Compassion means giving someone what they need, which is not always what they want. [...] Not only does false compassion surround us -- sentimental feelings devoid of ethical obligation -- but so does hardheartedness [...]
74 Compassion supports other people in entering into and releasing their authentic feelings, and exposes phony emotions.
75 In many families, some emotions are okay and others are not. […] I had to learn not to become scared by my husband's anger, and he had to learn to not get angry at my sadness. We had to teach and affirm the alien emotion to each other [...] This sort of exchange is vitally necessary if a really healthy, alive, multidimensional relationship is going to exist. The fact that this exchange doesn't happen is one of the reasons why so many relationships become desiccated and fail. The life blood of a relationship becomes blocked by clots of repression and denial, and our creative, life-building energy is absorbed by exhausting strategies of avoidance.
76 Singing is a simple, immediate way to free the flow of feeling and to keep it flowing day after day. Awaken the singer in you, just as you did the dancer, not with the aim of becoming a professional singer, but just to become a fully functioning human being.
If you're afraid to sing, hum.
77 Your voice takes you to your heart. So can dancing the rhythms. Mobilizing the sound within, and moving your body -- both catalyze emotions.
78 When emotions come, as they inevitably will, dance them, move them, and confront people, situations, and challenges from a point of centered stillness. Blocked emotions end up exploding or festering and have much more impact than they should. [vs Tejaniya/aikido]
80 We live in fear of our emotions and develop all kinds of strategies and coping mechanisms to avoid experiencing them. If we just began to know and express our fears, it would be a great start.
83 All the world loves a lover, but hardly anyone learns how to become one.
85 The third task is to empty the mind to experience the power of true knowing.
87 We need to write to find out what's true for us.
89 To be wise we have to know just how our psyches were formed, how they were wounded, how they were blessed. And how to heal what hampers our full being.
90 Everywhere I look I see wounded children struggling to exist.
91 What to many is a battle, a struggle, is to you a dance, a game. But how many people do you see really having fun, dancing through life?
92 Maturity is hard to achieve in an immature culture. [...] We are not getting what we need. [...] Our rituals are empty; they mean nothing.
93 When you dance, you ritualize how you move. When you sing, you ritualize how you feel. In writing, you ritualize how you think.
98 But for all, the healing process involves becoming your own mother - really caring for yourself, recognizing and filling your own needs. Start with the basics, giving yourself just what you need to eat, giving yourself the time to sleep, to be alone, wearing just what you want.
One special thing you can do is, for once, have a love affair with yourself. [...] Buy yourself flowers, make yourself delicious meals. Write to yourself about what makes you special, praising your special way of being, your accomplishments. Cherish time with yourself, luxuriating in your own company, doing just what you'd love to do. Take that trip, buy that car, rent that place you've always dreamed of.
People with the mother wound often have difficulty being alone. They always need to be with someone else to feel they truly exist, and thus end up in all sorts of destructively dependent relationships — with lovers, friends, coworkers, etc.
101-102 self-knowing journal prompts w/102 also offering "mother meditation"
103 Whatever your relationship to your mother (and therefore to your body), it's important to acknowledge the truth of that relationship and its effect on you.
104 Whether you are wounded or blessed (or most likely some of both) in the first cycle of life, you then move into childhood and need to meet your father as your sacred teacher. He is mother turned inside out, the authority to her permission, the line through her circle, the worldly wise "no" to her cosmic "yes."
105 Your mother taught you how to be in your body. Your father teaches you how to express your heart as he initiates you into the world of relationships with others. [...]
You came out of your mother's body; that relationship [...] is a psychic "given." You and your mother are inescapably one. Father is outside of you. He is your first friend and your task (and his teaching) is to connect to him. In the creation of this relationship, you build the foundation for all your future one-to-one relationships; you learn to relate to the world of people through your father. [...] It is from father that we either do or do not receive the ability to instinctively know the answer to the question, "What does this other person truly need from me?" It is from father that we first learn the art of give and take, of giving and receiving, of friendship. It is the father's role to pass on the paternal instinct, the instinctive ability to relate appropriately to others, teaching loyalty, companionship, sharing, and fairness.
[...] In this whole process you learn to become, to a greater or lesser degree, your own father, your own friend.
108 The ideal is to have a biological mother who teaches us how to be in a body and trust ourselves, and a biological father who teaches us how to express our hearts.
112 It's interesting to make a list of your friends, then sit and contemplate what each has to reach you. Meditate on each name and ask your-self, "What does this person really need from me?" "What do I really need from him or her?" Keep asking until answers come.
Who nourishes you? How? Why? Who drains you? How? Why? Who do you avoid? How? Why? Who do you reach out to? How? Why?
Bring your relationships into the moment, including the one with your father.
[...] We need relationships that are alive, vital, changing, moving — relationships that move through all the rhythms. [...] It is particularly important to have a moving relationship with one's father, as this relationship is the key to all other friendships. [then father-related writing exercises]
114 He's probably as lonely as you are. Are you afraid of your father? Afraid for him? Are you angry with him? How does he bring you joy? What's the most compassionate thing you could for him? Let it all out now. The healing will be wonderful for you both.
[....] Since your father was your first friend, you probably treat your friends the way he treated you.
115 father meditation
117 But because mothering and fathering tend to be so diffuse and erratic in our culture, we often arrive at puberty without the strong nurturing and relational instincts that allow us to step out boldly and assuredly on the path of individual self-discovery.
119 [...] we usually learn to be at home in our sexual bodies later in life, if at all.
120-22 exercises to stimulate completion of adolescence
123 The transition to the cycle of maturity should take place by age thirty in our culture. But the transition often never is complete [...] often without having resolved the challenges of the earlier stages. So marriage ends up being more therapy rather than a mature relationship; work becomes more a matter of making a living than an encompassing solution to the challenge of making a difference, a contribution.
124 As puberty is the time to find out what you have to give, maturity is the time to give it. [...] In maturity we're called to live in permanent and responsible relationship to others [...] Maturity involves knowing and taking responsibility for one's part [...]
125 If society is fragmented, [...] then achieving maturity becomes a heroic task. It requires remarkable individual effort and insight, special help, and incorporation into at least small islands of social sanity in the midst of the insanity of the wider world. [...] only healthy individuals can heal a soulless society.
128 And the cycle of maturity is the age in which we must get on with the business of healing the wounds of infancy, childhood, adolescence. [then writing exercises]
131 But how many people divorce out of failure and frustration in middle age and spend their last years beset by needs that friends and children can't fulfill?
139 Here are some exercises to help your appropriation of life's cycle:
1. Think about and write down how you will relate to loved ones, say, your parents and your mate, as they get older and approach death.
2. How would you like to spend the last cycle of your life? How would you choose to die? What can you do to assure that this happens?
3. Write your epitaph. Write your own eulogy. Write your ethical will -- your legacy of wisdom for your survivors.
141 The fourth task is to awaken the soul to experience the power of seeing. Seeing the difference between the real and the unreal in ourselves and others. Living from the soul, rather than the ego.
151 Freud adjudged normalcy according to how well people could hold this outer shell together. But I've come to assess psychic health according to how well we can take the shell of normalcy apart.
152 I withdraw so I get lonely enough to join long enough to fed up and withdraw so I can get lonely enough to join ....
175 The fifth task is to embody the spirit in order to experience the power of healing. [...] To the extent that our spirit remains dormant and uncatalyzed [...] we operate at the level of inertia; when our spirit fills us to overflowing we are in ecstasy.
176 The dancing path is in essence an ongoing, ever-new journey from inertia to ecstasy.
181 As a temporary resistance to the demands of life, inertia is simply a place from which to start. [...] the simplest way out of inertia is to start moving [the body]. [...] your responsibility to create your own reality. [!]
183 Imitation [...] is the vital first step in escaping the grip of inertia. [...] The key is not to get stuck in imitation, not to believe that taking the well-trod path and following the rules is the aim of spiritual development.
185 Security is the ego's holy grail. A way designed to be a catalyst for growth easily can become a cover for inertia.
188 At some point, from deep within, we all realize that we're not becoming who we truly want to be and begin to yearn for what we don't have -- a rooted connection to an original, creative self.
189 I know ex-Jesuits who go through the rest of their lives disappointed that nothing ever seems as [...] worthwhile, [...] as admirable as the Jesuit life they could no longer [...] be satisfied with. [...] adolescence [..] involves severing bonds with our parents [disagree: renegotiate, not sever]
201 And everyone must dance the dance distinctively for themselves with body, heart, mind, soul, and spirit. Anything else is idol worship, and no road to ecstasy.

[Edward Amato · Rating 5 out of 5]

Reading this was like visiting a Lon lost friend. I was introduced many years ago to G.R.'s work and it was an epiphany for someone who carried a lot shame, bad self image and anger. I was blessed to be able to meet Gabrielle in Seattle and understood what it was like to be in the presence of an "illuminated soul." Years have passed since then and I have lost touch . A friend gave me this book and it has reawakened those gifts that this amazing woman has shared.
I had also learned that GR had died in 2012. Made the reading bittersweet and even more relevant to her message. Live now!

[Monica · Rating 5 out of 5]

I read this book several years ago when I was first introduced to 5Rhythms but now that I have been practicing on a more regular basis I feel that Roth's explanation of the various maps makes so much more sense. And the truth is that as others have said reading the words is only a small sliver of the work-- you need to dance and move your body to come to understand the maps.

[Assem Elsheemy · Rating 3 out of 5]

The first two or three chapters were amazing... Every word made me wanna step up and dance!

The rest of the book is Gabrielle's advice about life, emotions and spirit. I am not spiritual in any sense, so I did not enjoy this part at all.

[Theremin Poisoning · Rating 2 out of 5]

It's as if the school counselor from Heathers and Professor Trelawney wrote a new age self help musical. Not my speed at all.
"Life is sacred. Life is art. Life is sacred art. The art of sacred living means being a holy actor, acting from the soul rather than the ego. The soul is out of space and time and hence always available, an ever-present potential of our being. It is up to each of us to celebrate and to actualize our being, and to turn each meal, conversation, outfit, letter, and so on, into art. Every mundane activity is an opportunity for full, authentic self-expression. The soul is our artistic self, our capacity for transforming every dimension of our lives into art and theater."

I guess it reminds me of the know-it-all voice of so many Boomer hippies advising X-ers through the 1990s. No thanks. Your experience does not apply to mine.

ALSO:
Includes the line, "We're all suffering from emotional AIDS" And in the next paragraph, she compares the experience of having an imperfect relationship with a parent to children in the Vietnam war.

I can't.

[Aelia]

As Gabrielle writes in the introduction of her first book, she always felt like an "obsessed cartographer surveying the geography of inner space" (p. xviii). Through her own work exploring the "uncharted interior" to observing the movements of her students, she came to see patterns that guided any dance. She came to believe that those guideposts (5 rhythms) were not individual but universal. They were an underlying structure of all experience and a "living language". She called them maps.

I am reading this book as my ongoing study of the five rhythms which I came to know and dance in 2019. I am reflecting on her approach in my blog https://experiential-dance.com/2022/0...

Writing is easy and not something that lovers of literature would look for. Despite it, it is a good source for those interested in dance as a movement practice, as a self-exploration/expression/healing method.

On another note, it is my aspiration to bring dance to more people eventually, perhaps I will do it as a teacher of 5 rhythms...

[Andrew · Rating 5 out of 5]

Gabrielle Roth is a rare transcendent human. Her journey of healing herself and healing others through movement, and the way she sees and writes about life's journey in Maps to Ecstasy is truly unique

It was difficult to get through at times due to the abstract nature of her content, plus my own reading style (where I struggle to focus on the highly abstract), but well worth it. Because of this though I don't recommend it as the first book anyone should read if they're just embarking on their spiritual journey and don't have any experience or intuition about it, whether through dance or meditation

But for those who have ventured into dance or some other spiritual practice, and have taken steps along their spiritual journey this will definitely fill in the gaps and provide strong insights

[Cherie Kephart · Rating 4 out of 5]

Insightful, poetic, and raw, Maps to Ecstasy is less than a map and more of an intimate voyage equipped with an experienced guide. Gabrielle Roth unveils the rhythms of life through movement as she has come to know it, thrusting us into unseen places within ourselves so we can discover our own rhythm, our own healing. There were a few parts in the book that jarred me and with which I did not resonate. However, I feel that is a natural facet of being daring enough to expose our truths—which this author has done. Her language is engaging and invites us to venture into the recesses of our lost lives, waiting to be brought forth into the world, igniting our own unique living ecstasy.

[Amy GB · Rating 2 out of 5]

I came to the 5 Rhythms through actor training with a Pure Movement teacher. It's been a brilliant practice for me and I do it weekly with some friends. Thought this book would offer more about the practice, but it's mostly about how the philosophy of the practice connects with a larger worldview. And there are some beautiful, insightful gems of wisdom in here. But it's hard to disentangle them from the heteronormativity, woo-woo spirituality, and faux anthropology. I'm so for building non-religious spiritual practice. But this particular one doesn't suit me.

[Tim Paul · Rating 5 out of 5]

I read this book on a off over 1 year and feel it’s a book I will come back to. As a 5 R dancer it was wonderful to get the structure behind the dance form and also how Gabrielle Roth applies the 5 states to so many other maps of life

For example:

Emotions —
Stages of life
5 R
Stages of being
Types of personas

And others — intuition

And more that I can’t recall

I will be returning to this book again

[Sarah · Rating 5 out of 5]

I've just recently discovered 5 Rhythms dance as a movement practice. Gabrielle Roth is the creator and this book explains her psychological and healing framework for the practice. Her framework intuitively suits me and healing through movement is where I'm at in life at this moment. There is so much food for thought in these pages.

[Clay Lowe · Rating 5 out of 5]

I bought the book to understand more about dance as a spiritual practice. And it did not disappoint. While the book is principally about movement, it's so much more than that. It's about healing, about spiritual philosophy, about being a modern day shaman. If you're into transformational practices in general and spiritual healing specifically, Maps to Ecstasy is a good choice.

[F J Gilbert · Rating 5 out of 5]

The seminal book by the founder of the 5 Rhythms method of dancing, which I have found quite liberating. Roth's mixture of autobiography, therapy and instruction is compelling; she has the force of a prophet and the vulnerability of the best autobiographers. A revelation.

[J Crossley · Rating 3 out of 5]

Gabrielle Roth transforms everyday life into art. She combines movement with healing. She talks about five sacred powers and five life cycles that we go through. This book works with these cycles by teaching you to free your body to heal.

[David · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.5 stars. My experience with ecstatic dance drew me to this book of remarkable light, energy, and wisdom, from a woman remarkably so embodied: Gabrielle Roth, godmother of ecstatic dance, urban shaman, a master. Who I wish I’d been able to meet, and move with.

[Connor Wilson · Rating 5 out of 5]

What I needed for where I was at.

[Layna T · Rating 4 out of 5]

** 3.75 some problematic and aged concepts but i really enjoyed this overall

[Maryana Palamar · Rating 5 out of 5]

Great

[Claudia · Rating 5 out of 5]

¡Espectacular!

[Marina Ricart · Rating 5 out of 5]

Me encantó. Fue el inicio de un viaje hacia mi cuerpo.

[andrés torres · Rating 3 out of 5]

me gustó que estuviera en primera persona, algunas partes se sentían como chisme, not my cup of tea tho

[Aleta · Rating 3 out of 5]

same review as "Sweat Your Prayers"