Body and Soul with Gabrielle Roth

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"The fastest way to still the mind is to move the body," says Gabrielle Roth, the dancer, musician, and self-described urban shaman who made it her life's work to seduce spirit back into the body. In this lively archive dialogue recorded in 1998, she traces her path from a devastating ski injury to the hot springs of Esalen Institute, where Fritz Perls invited her to teach movement, and on to the manic chaos of Manhattan, where she learned to take refuge in the still point within. Roth explains how centuries of religious suspicion turned the body into an enemy, why we breathe so shallowly, and how fear keeps us from truly feeling. She describes her five rhythms (flowing, staccato, chaos, lyrical, and stillness) as a map of the soul in motion, each with its own teaching. Along the way she tells of a 64-year-old student riddled with arthritis who became a revered elder of the dance, finds a portrait of the soul in chaos in the improvisations of Robin Williams, and speaks with hope about a younger generation hungry for meaning. Her message is simple: to sweat is to pray, and it is never too late to begin. (hosted by Michael Toms)

Bio

Gabrielle Roth (1941–2012) was an internationally renowned dancer, musician, theater director, and movement innovator often called the "urban shaman." As a young dancer she arrived at Esalen Institute in the 1960s, where Fritz Perls invited her to teach movement to his Gestalt therapy groups, and where she went on to run the massage program. Out of that work she created the 5Rhythms movement practice of flowing, staccato, chaos, lyrical, and stillness. In 1977 she founded The Moving Center in New York City, and in 1988 she began training teachers; today her work is taught around the world. With her husband Robert Ansell she founded Raven Recording and produced more than 20 albums of percussion-based trance dance music with her band The Mirrors. She also founded 5Rhythms Reach Out, a nonprofit that brings her work to prisoners, inner-city children, and the elderly. Her son, Jonathan Horan, carries her work forward through 5Rhythms Global.

Gabrielle Roth is the author of:

• Maps to Ecstasy: Teachings of an Urban Shaman (New World Library, 1989)
• Sweat Your Prayers: Movement as Spiritual Practice (Tarcher/Putnam, 1997)
• Connections: The Five Threads of Intuitive Wisdom (Tarcher/Penguin, 2004)

To learn more about the work of Gabrielle Roth visit www.5rhythms.com

Topics explored in this dialogue include:

• How the soul lives in the body and speaks through rhythm, bones, blood, and energy
• Her healing journey to Esalen Institute after a ski accident, and her encounters with Fritz Perls
• How religious attitudes turned the body into the enemy and split spirit from flesh
• Why the fastest way to still the mind is to move the body
• The "silver desert," a shift in consciousness she first experienced at age seven
• Breath, fear, and why so many of us breathe so shallowly
• Movement and aging: why it is never too late to dance
• From Big Sur to Manhattan: finding the still point amid urban chaos and seeing the humanity of the homeless
• The five rhythms (flowing, staccato, chaos, lyrical, and stillness) as a map of the soul in motion
• Chaos as creativity, and her hope for a younger generation and reconnecting young people with elders

Host: Michael Toms                Interview Date: 1/21/1998                  Program Number: 2704