Thank You Ecstatic Dance Berlin Community! You're the Best!

Thank you ecstatic dance Berlin community!

What for? For saving my life!

Literally.

You are the best!

Here is a list of a selected few

artists
dancers
djs
facilitators
groups
movers
organizers
venues

I’m most grateful for!

How ecstatic dance saved my life

It’s true, I have written about how ecstatic dance helped me heal from prolonged illness before.

Yet I feel that I want to give back and show my gratitude more to the point.

In a way the ecstatic dance community of Berlin literally saved my life.

Thus I want to thank you now. You people are the best! This post is for you and…

…all those who want to find ecstatic dances around Berlin to partake in the joy!

Who made it into the list and why?

I want to mention those who I came across until now.

Also I thank those who helped me the most!

Yet we are all connected and you can’t exist without the other.

So it’s more than just about the particular people. It’s about the community as a whole.

How did ecstatic dance save my life you may ask? Aren’t you exaggerating a bit?

When I could barely move I started dancing ecstatically. Impossible? Hear me out!

Even disintegrating zombies are welcome!

When I was so sick, needy and so ugly that I felt I did not belong, these people and places made me feel that I do.

When I had more or less fresh wounds all over my face and body people would still

dance with me
hold my hands
touch me
and even hug me!

When I literally was afraid to look in the mirror you people looked at me and embraced me! Thank you!

Nobody loves you?

This was at a time when even my last and best friend of 35 years dumped me!

He told me to “deal with your issues” before my first surgery instead of meeting me even though he lives nearby the jaw surgeon I was meant to go to.

After almost 5 years of separation my wife pressed for divorce as she found a new stable relationship.

Heck, even my parents told me not call them “when I’m in a bad mood” anymore. They did not understand what CFS-like symptoms mean.

So, you can believe me. I truly needed a helping hand and some place to belong.

Do you feel like nobody loves you? Embody love yourself!

Naming the friend

I don’t even know or remember many of your names so just take my

love
gratitude
and joy

whoever you are and for whatever reason you read this!

Especially the names of the people I danced with and who weren’t afraid to touch me while I was covered in fresh wounds tend to elude me.

The names I remember or can look up are the following:

By now famous ecstatic dance DJ Bhavya Theissen alias Vesica who co-founded Ecstatic Dance Berlin was the very first connection I had to the community.

We became friends on Facebook before the COVID-era and once I finally gathered enough courage to attend an ecstatic dance event in the park it was already banned and police was patrolling the area.

Apparently neighbors complained due to the volume, yet strangely enough the high-traffic road between the park and the building with its constant noise was not blocked by the authorities.

I could empathize with the people who complained though as there are many health and family reasons why loud music and joyful people can annoy you. Yet this made me postpone my ecstatic dance indefinitely again.

At the same time I also joined the Ecstatic Dance Berlin community Facebook group where I’ve found most of my dances. I followed it for years before I finally dared to take part in an ecstatic dance session.

Ultimately it was Naf Tali with his MediTANZion open air sessions at Tempelhofer Feld who initiated me. Thank you!

I walked by the dances once or twice but didn’t feel “worthy” enough to join the cool people.

Yet it was the first ecstatic dance “party” I happened to come across when walking the dog around the field in Tempelhof and stopped at one Sunday.

My ex-wife Verena Szewczyk, a truly gifted ThetaHealing master (one of just a few in Germany) who can x-ray your family history, souls and genetic predispositions generations back accompanied me so I did not feel out of place.

She was into the ecstatic dance community gatherings even way before me.

I just started dancing, even with my dog, who usually just did parkour with me or danced with me at home. Yet here she enjoyed even Sufi-like whirling I spontaneously did.

Thank you again Verena and Naf for introducing me to the actual dance!

Yet it needed the energy of Nora Fischer of Natural Flow with her regular classes, who encouraged me to take part even though I was very ill, awaiting surgery and broke.

As explained earlier in length Nora made me embrace ecstatic dance when I was really sick and could barely move.

Nora taught me to “dance my life” and literally get energy directly from the universe by moving. She kept me alive for months when her sessions were the only thing to look forward to!

For months I was so sick her weekly sessions on Fridays at 11 was the only thing I managed to do.

I gathered energy all week to get there and then I returned with more than I had after dancing for almost 2h.

When I was broke after I couldn’t work anymore she offered me even a free session.

Luckily I managed to keep the abundant mindset and always paid. And guess what: I’m still here!

Nora is an incredible power house of energy so that I went there in agony and came back feeling alive.

If you want to learn to truly dance ecstatically not just statically, then Nora’s natural flow is the best to do that!

Currently she just offers a female only course at iconic La Caminada Tanzstudio so I can’t take part. Yet I will never forget what she taught me! I can let go completely ever since!

During the year of my illness and surgeries I never made it to the weekly Radikal Flow by Ben Pavlidis nearby here. I was simply too weak from Chronic Fatigue in the evenings to learn something radically new.

Yet I was always looking forward to it and it inspired me among many other influences in my own way of moving meditation I called “dancing with the walls”.

See at the bottom for more on that. Also it was not just the type of movement that influenced me.

The very idea that you can come up with a whole new movement method that works for you, add a name to it and teach it to others worked in my unconscious mind for many months.

Of course Ben is not the only individual to ever have coined a term for a type of movement practice they introduced.

Yet here he was, a more a less regular guy (even though he is pretty popular in Germany with his numerous projects) just a few years younger than me, a guy from the neighborhood doing it. How inspiring!

Thank you Ben. I hope we will finally meet soon and move together! I’m looking forward to joining you with your weekly session once you find a new venue.

Make sure to also join Ben’s own conscious movement Facebook group to find out about his unique approach to moving bodies.

Truly amazed by my experiences I want to thank Rising Spirits or Anna and her partner Ismail for their mystic ceremonies.

Their vision dance was indeed my first regular ecstatic dance session I decided to attend on purpose.

They are truly rising spirits! It’s not just a name!

I literally had a vision of Egyptian Sun God Ra during their Blue Lotus ceremony!

When I first went to their session I was in agony.

I was very weak and tired on that day, dragged myself to UHU (Urban Healing Unit) in Berlin Treptow, was late by then, and just listened to Anna’s words for a minute or two.

I got into the Theta meditative state almost instantly and danced for almost two hours after that.

This was indeed third eye opening to me. On the way back I was super energized and walked back for 45 minutes home talking to a stranger who had also attended with no major effort.

After that I knew that I wanted to experience that again. It took me more than a year of illness, surgery, weakness and returning symptoms to finally be able to attend another of their by now regular sessions at Haus Lebenskunst in Berlin Kreuzberg.

Yet I often “danced my life” ecstatically during that year.

I am very grateful to the breathtaking ecstatic dancer and poet san.sation who was a solace to me on many nights with her ecstatic words before we even met.

She finally convinced me to witness and take part in the sophisticated Blue Lotus ceremony in April 2024.

Up until then I suffered from too much social anxiety to even be with so many people at once. I only took part in sessions with several participants but rarely more than a dozen.

Yet here we were, dozens of ecstatic dancers close to each other and hugging at the end.

I still felt very self-conscious with fresh scars and my from many zombie wounds on my face.

Yet dancing alongside and in the shadow of such a shining ecstatic dancer made me feel invincible instead of wanting to be invisible.

An unforgettable experience for many reasons and I didn’t even mention the vision I had during the meditation at the beginning.

I had to look that one up from memory. Apparently I saw the Sun God Ra with his large eye.

The rather organic or “tribal” and “World Music” influenced DJ Set by Ismail was energetic from the start and kept up rising the spirits with slower interludes until the end.

I was exhausted, energized, sweaty and happy afterwards.

Usually over the past months I visited the Transformative Movement Collective. It was the place I turned to in my neighborhood of Kreuzberg/Neukölln.

It’s right on the prestigious Paul-Linke-Ufer opposite the less glamorous but even hipper Maybach Ufer in the Zentrum für Yoga und Stimme Studios on the third floor.

Their regular transformative dance sessions were less ecstatic but more equally welcoming and allowed me to move once a week whenever I could not afford to miss the opportunity to raise my vibration.

Thank you Mira, Jala, Julian, Martha, Michelle and others for making me feel welcome even on my most wounded, grumpy and desperate days.

Whenever you search for a place that feels like home on a Wednesday, make sure to join the regular weekly transformative movement sessions!

Are you ready to transform? Transformuse (formerly Transformusic) or Ayam Am and her partner in life and music Chris Tala do it with their live ecstatic music, singing and dancing concerts.

They also make very spiritual and conscious music. I’d even tend to call their musical genre transformusic as they were formerly called. It’s not just describing transformation. It’s also facilitating it!

For months when I was sick and could barely move I was looking forward to attending one of their open air ecstatic dance live concerts. I finally managed after my first surgery. It was the last session in the summer of 23.

Ayam would contact me personally for months whether I’d like to join them and each time the thought of one day being able to kept my spirits high.

She even went out of the way after the session to help me identify and find a woman I mistakenly gave the wrong name of the dance training I went to.

It was of of course the above mentioned Transformative MOVEMENT Collective, not what I wrongly recommended as “Transformative Dance Collective” [sic!]

Also Transformuse are pop stars by now after covering and improving upon the huge nineties hit Sweet Harmony:

I was lucky enough to be one of the chosen few being able to attend the world premiere of the actual video which embraces the beauty of diversity in a direct and metaphorical way.

The live session was pure magic and I enjoyed it to the fullest! I was in the now and flow state for 4h! No thoughts crossed my mind.

Also thanks again to the ecstatic text poet san.sation for accompanying me. Alone I would probably either miss it or enjoy it way less. This way we could practice sweet harmony much more effectively!

I was indeed flattered and delighted when they asked me for help with their marketing earlier on, not that they need much of it. This song and video will become a hit again in any case!