on 5R
why i’m leaving
the leadership
- put simply: both johnny and the org appear to be unredeemably toxic
- specific stories of johnny showing up to workshops late, drunk, being abusive in hallways
- the organization appears to be extremely controlling (more on this in discussion of the teacher training). i get the impression from both practitioners and even some teachers that there is hope that things will improve once he dies. but if he has a succession plan i imagine that control will continue, and if he doesn’t, the organization appears to variously be enabling or working around him and i am unsure whether whoever inherits it will be able to transform it into something healthy
- maybe even the practice itself has toxicity baked in. stories of gabrielle putting people on the spot, in front of everyone, and shooting at them with a squirt gun if she thought they were being inauthentic
- perhaps gabrielle really was a generational genius, extraordinarily skilled at being able to open people up. i could believe it
- but it appears that much of the community reveres the stories and approach she was using then, and has ossified them into an orthodoxy
- in the 90s, any amount of opening people up was good; now we have much higher standards of care in trauma healing circles, as we should
- and given some of the things gabrielle has said - e.g. “it’s all meaningless unless you take your transformation to the streets” (to effect societal change outside yourself) - i am not convinced she herself would continue to behave the same way; surely she would have adapted her approach to suit the times
- i’ve had some very negative experiences with the 5r old guard, variously being told:
- there is no substitute for 5Rhythms; any prior spiritual practice is not relevant
- that being tired of facilitation and wanting a Sweat Your Prayers means that 5R is not my practice and i should go dance ecstatic
- that listening to my body and letting it be still is not correct because i should always be at least in some movement
- anything other than live drumming is soulless and cannot be a vehicle for spirit
- …all of this from a form that claims there is no wrong way to do it.
- it seems that the older a teacher is, the closer they worked with gabrielle, and the more they credit 5R in particular as being responsible for their healing, the more dogmatic and rigid they are.
efficacy and the teacher training
- while the particular 5R form appears to be helpful for some people, it’s unclear to me whether it’s necessary or sufficient
- in particular, the myth of “watching people have transformative dances and noticing the sequence of movement patterns” doesn’t necessarily mean that you can drive transformation by running it in reverse. perhaps this is well understood and any given class is an expression of hope that this particular wave will align with the emotional state of some of the participants
- it seems that 5R wants to be totalizing: not only are the 5 rhythms your movement patterns, they’re also your emotions, your life stages and relationship with your parents, and your psyche. and the elements, and shadow work… everything must be Five!
- the 5R teacher training doesn’t teach how to set the container, how to handle folks who are activated or in crisis – the kinds of skills i believe are necessary to hold a healing container responsibly
- i would want to learn those skills myself before teaching (especially at the kind of depth i feel drawn to), and if the 5R teacher training doesn’t teach it then i’d have to seek out my own curriculum
- this is not to say that no 5R teacher does a good job here; i know of a few, who i highly respect. but they’ve done the work to get there themselves
- in which case, what’s the point of the 5R teacher training? permission to use the brand, engagement with the community, in exchange for teaching to their standards and, i am told, restrictions on what you can teach in terms of movement practice in perpetuity
- apparently amber and kate had to hire lawyers in order to extract themselves from the contract when they broke off to form Open Floor
it’s a shame, because i really love 5R practitioners as people. they’re embodied people (obviously!) who are very willing and capable of meeting themselves. there’s real depth to them. but membership in the organization seems like a poisoned chalice
what do i believe?
- music is a hotwire to emotional state
- a skilled facilitator can use music to get people into emotional states
- it helps if participants are willing co-conspirators in this: primed and susceptible rather than skeptical and defended
- participants will experience the music in the context of their own lives, finding their own resonances, and thus shifts in music might help along a corresponding shift in emotion about whatever’s come up
on what i want to do now
- i’m really tired of 5R facilitation, so i’m either going to dance with facilitators who are new to me (novelty helps), or at Sweat Your Prayers no-facilitation style events
- basically, this rules out NYC classes for me
- i will do workshops with teachers i know and trust because i do think there’s depth available in the practice
my personal thoughts on becoming a facilitator
- i was on the 5R teacher training path myself. now i’m not
- i may still do PhDJ but i’m not well informed enough about what it teaches
- i’m not clear to what extent my work in this space is around dance in particular
- i think my work in this space so far has been an expression of my own lack of healing, and i think facilitating from an unhealed place can cause great harm
- it’s unclear where i would learn the skills i think are necessary to be a responsible facilitator
more thoughts at the end of this piece
on the hippie dance community and healing work in general
- this is a community of people who have some kind of trauma and are looking for relief
- the crowd is… credulous, by the standards of modern western science
- genuine belief in astrology, tarot, crystals, energy, sound healing etc all very common
- perhaps there is real efficacy in some of these things but my fear is that people are so in need of healing (and so willing to embrace “woo”) that they’re vulnerable to all kinds of unscrupulous folks
on workshops and accreditation
these comments not limited to 5R
- once upon a time i had the belief that if you’re doing a workshop you’re probably joining a cult
- the barrier to entry for running a workshop is basically your own chutzpah
- it’s unclear how to evaluate the competence of workshop facilitators. even the existence of an accrediting institution says very little
- i have a friend who is a brennan school energy healer. that’s an expensive four year course in energy work which guarantees all students will graduate. how am i supposed to trust this?
- you wanna go hang out for a weekend to learn tango? go nuts. but to work on emotional or spiritual stuff when it’s difficult to impossible to know whether the instructor is any good? that’s a much tougher sell
- i have written about this before
- have we tried going to therapy?
- of course, plenty of therapeutic modalities are poorly studied too. but at least academic institutions hang their reputation on teaching and research; at least some papers are written
what i’m looking for now
- i do feel called to some kind of healing work
- i’m particularly attracted to using music; that need not be dance
- i don’t know what kind of training gives what i’m looking for
- some framework for thinking about the practice, and real skills to handle and help process trauma
- some things i want to look into: strozzi instutute, somatic school, zendo project, dance and movement therapy, treleaven’s trauma sensitive mindfulness