self-decoration with henna
Every Monday, the Greensboro Women’s Joy Circle meets to share stories, sip tea, brag, write, stretch, dance, and meditate…every week it is a different constellation of women, and every week we explore a new theme as we continue to build daring, joyful lives. On Tuesdays, I share what we’ve learned with you.
Okay, disclaimer: the women’s joy circle didn’t actually meet this week. My wonderfully intelligent body kicked the crap out of me because I had decided to take a trip that my spirit, mind, and intuition were all warning me against. (“Just try to go NOW” purred my body from its supine position, too feverish to allow me even to pick up the phone and cancel my airplane ticket.) There is a treatment when sickness has progressed this far: it is called SHUT UP AND LISTEN. As in, put your echinacea tincture down, girl, get some sleep, and next time your intuition kicks in PAY ATTENTION. All right, all right. Sheesh. Anyway, what follows is a description of a women’s circle from last month.
We congregated to celebrate beauty. We stood in that circle and took each others’ hands and looked in each others’ eyes and decided that we would make our own definitions of beauty that night; that we would love and celebrate and affirm what we saw. And then I passed out bellydance scarves and put on this song and we were off. We practiced hip circles, and rib circles; we learned to flutter our bellies and shimmy like fiends. Some of us had never bellydanced before. It didn’t matter. This is a female dance form, sinuous and cyclical. It comes pretty naturally and feels wonderful. It is felt beauty, moving like this, letting the body spiral and shake, and laughter bubbled out naturally from all of us.
Bodies warm and loved, hearts full, we sat on the floor and I brought out my little bags of prepared henna. Continue reading
truebeautyalways 