The Healing Power of Sacred Dance

O ne day a young doctor noticed an elder from the local Indian pueblo sitting in the waiting room of his clinic, watching him examine patient after patient. At the end of the day, the doctor, Carl Hammerschlag , then a recent graduate from Yale University Medical School, approached the elder and asked if he was next. The elder eyed him for a while and then said: “I am curious. They said a healer has come to the pueblo.” Carl chuckled proudly: “That’s me! I am a doctor.” There was quiet. Then the elder asked him: “Do you dance?” Carl laughed again: “No.” The elder rose and turned to leave, and said: “Then you can’t heal.” This experience, which took place on the pueblo in New Mexico where Carl did his post-graduate internship, changed Carl’s life and his entire way of practicing medicine. Years later, at a Walking Stick retreat that he and I co-led, Carl (now a nice Jewish doctor in Arizona) realized that the pueblo elder could just as easily have been Reb Mendl of Kotzk, or Reb Nachman of Breslav—that the Jewish tradition shared the same mindset around the power and sanctity of dance and its role in healing and in spiritual practice. M A R C H / A P R I L 2 0 1 0 W W W. T I K K U N . O R G T I K K U N 61 TheHealingPower ofSacredDance by Miriam Maron COURTESY OF MIRIAM MARON RabbiMiriamMaron,B.S.N.,R.N.,M.A.,isaspiritualhealerandmentorwhoteacheskabbalisticand Jewish shamanic healing modalities and sacred dance. A singer and songwriter, she has seven albums to her credit (www.MiriamsCyberWell.com). Rabbi Miriam Maron seeks healing and transcendence through sacred dance. Thewordfordanceandthewordforillness,taughtRebbeNachmanofBreslav,arerelated: ma’cho’l for dance, machah’lah for illness or affliction. Not by accident do they both share the same root. After all, dancing brings one to a state of joy, and when the body is in a state of joy, the negative energies contributing to illness begin to dissipate (Likutei MoHaRaN Tanina, chapter 24). After all, the Shechinah—the godly life force that moves us along our life walk—is drawn more into manifestation in our lives when we are in a state of joy (Talmud Bav’li, Shabbat 30b). Rebbe Nachman also pointed out that when the Torah says of our ancestor Yaakov, “he lifted up his feet” (Genesis 29:1), it implies dance, as the second-century Rabbi Acha commented : “His heart lifted his feet” (Midrash B’reisheet Rabbah 70:8), meaning that when his heart was stirred to joyfulness after his reassuring vision of the ladder that connected earth to heaven, and after God’s promise to him, it moved his feet to dance (Likutei MoHaRaN, chapter 32). Commenting on the words of the prophet Isaiah—“Joy and celebration shall they seek, and trials and tribulations shall then be driven away” (Isa. 35:10 and 51:11)—Rebbe Nachman wrote the following in Likutei MoHaRaN Tanina, chapter 23: When one is pulled into a circle of dancers, one should not leave one’s troubles outside , but invite them into the dance to thereby transform them and heal them. It is usually the case that in such situations, one would be inclined to leave their troubles outside the dance. But one ought to in that moment pursue their troubles, seize them, and bring them into the dance, to heal them and transform them into joyfulness. As David wrote in Psalms, “You turned my grieving into dance” (30:12). When Reb Moshe Leib of Sassov heard that his friend the Rebbe of Berditchev had become ill, he repeatedly muttered his friend’s name over and over again and prayed for his recovery. Then he suddenly put on his new shoes, laced them up tight, and danced himself into a frenzy. A disciple who was present at the time reported how “power flowed forth from his dancing. Every step was in itself a powerful mystery. A strange kind of light then spread across the house and everyone watching it saw angelic spirits joining in his dance” (my own rephrasing of Martin Buber’s...