5Rhythms is a physical and spiritual dance practice which promotes a fullness of life and freedom in movement. At the heart of this comprehensive body of work is the physical experience of your body in motion. 5Rhythms classes and workshops typically include moving meditation sessions in which students dance the five rhythms of flowing, staccato, chaos, lyrical and stillness. The rhythms together form the wave. While dancing the wave we practice allowing our bodies to move freely as we explore the circular and grounding rhythm of flowing, the shapes of staccato and the release in chaos. We discover curiosity and freedom in lyrical and reverence in the spirit of stillness.

Roots of the Work
5Rhythms teachers have lived their own deep and meaningful dance practice for years before being extensively trained by Gabrielle Roth and her Moving Center School faculty. Gabrielle Roth formed this body of work over thirty years ago out of the flames of her passion for music, theater and dance. Currently there are 5Rhythms teachers offering classes and workshops in cities, dance studios and retreat centers all across the world.

Spiritual Practice
The 5Rhythms are a physical, spiritual dance practice that offers a lifetime of discovery. Always beginning with the body in motion, we engage the work of freeing the body, opening the heart and focusing the mind. In this practice we connect to our natural state of being; a fluid body in motion. Through this dance we reclaim our own instinctual nature, and practice being fully alive and present human beings.

Community
Again and again, on the dance floor, we practice being fully ourselves. 5Rhythms dance floors are safe an supportive places for people to experience and study the 5Rhythms dance practice. This dance practice is for, and currently populated by, seasoned seekers, innocent newcomers, young bodies, old bodies, shy bodies, bold bodies, open hearts, broken hearts and all the different parts that together form this world of humanity.

Dancing Life
OlyWaves offers the possibility of living the 5Rhythms as a physical and spiritual approach to life. We return again and again to the dance floor on which we pour our lives into our dance. Doing this, we discover our dance as a source of guidance and inspiration for our lives. The 5Rhythms is a physical and spiritual practice into which we can pour our dreams, our prayers, and our troubles, putting the pieces of who we are into motion, where the pieces can re-form, where we can heal.

In the dance, we tap into these 5Rhythms of humanity, and moving through our Wave we physically dance ourselves into our bodies, dropping our emotional bodies into our physical center, engaging our whole bodymind. We practice being fully human, relaxing into our humanity and the beautiful presence and wisdom that arrives with this deep acceptance of ourselves and each other.

The 5Rhythms is not about enlightenment of the mind, but about embodiment of our selves, and connection to this profound world we live upon. We are awakening and re-claiming an aliveness and love of this one life we are given to live, in our dance, on the dance floor. And we are infusing our whole lives with our connection to our own unique dance.

Our dance is simply larger than we are, and by pouring ourselves into something larger than our individual self, we are always received. This discovery allows this dance practice to be a guiding life practice, where every time we return to the dance floor, we put our lives into motion, finding wholeness and connection to ourselves and the world we live within. As we pour our lives into our dance, finding our feet over and over, we practice becoming free human beings.

Humanity is larger than our individual selves, and it is this humanity that we access when we move our bodies. This practice is inclusive; you can be an atheist or religious, frustrated or already free, broken or glued back together, artist, nurse, secretary or executive, yoga teacher, yoga student, therapist, in therapy, prisoner of love, pioneer in life, confused, nothing, everything. Your personality, your beliefs, your morality, your experiences are but a piece of the pie of your whole humanity. Your dance holds all of this, and more. Your dance holds all of you, always.