Suzie Daggett: Former executive dances to a new tune

Michael Stone holds classes at the South Yuba Club in Nevada City.

Michael Stone uses his feet and mind to achieve well being

Do you feel like moving, dancing or exploring life in a new direction without judgment? Can you find freedom of expression and healing of mind, body and spirit in dance and movement?

The answer for many lies with the work that Michael Stone, aka The Reverend DJ Divine, creates in his Moving Meditation classes, Sweat Your Prayers and 5-Rhythms practice at South Yuba Club in Nevada City.

 Michael, a former business executive, changed his life when he realized people need to feel and use their bodies more than just using their heads and minds for a fuller expression of living as well as a healing practice. He shares his thoughts with us:

 What is the compelling reason you dance?

 While what we do looks like dance and is a lot of fun, there is something much deeper and more profound going on. Moving meditation, trance and ecstatic dance are based on a 75,000-year tradition of movement as a form of prayer, healing and a celebration of the spirit that moves in all life. As my teacher, Gabrielle Roth, says, “when you put the body in motion you heal the psyche.”

The practice of the 5Rhythms is an exploration into the energetic states that comprise our essential self. Conscious movement takes us out of our head and assists in the healing of the mind/body/spirit split. People of all ages, abilities, shapes, and sizes come with little or no experience or understanding of what is behind the practice. They come to have fun, exercise or enjoy the community experience leaving them with a sense of empowerment, exhilaration and calm centeredness. The 5Rythms Dance and music open our awareness to instinct, intuition and deep creativity. It creates the space to traverse the mind-field, which is fraught with distraction and habitual behavior. There are no steps to learn or particular ways to be. The only requirements are silence and awareness of personal space in the context of the group.

You offer many different types of dance events. What are the differences?

Every weekend people come from as far as Reno and Sacramento to participate. The Friday class is a structured practice of the 5Rythms, which explores the vast territory of maps of consciousness.  On Sundays, we have our dance church called “Sweat Your Prayers,” which expresses our prayers in motion as art. I also DJ for special events or 5Rythms dance fundraisers for environmental or social justice causes and local organizations like the Peace Center.

You interview Environmental, Social Justice, Cosmology and Spiritual experts on your show “Conversations” on KVMR.  Is there an overall theme you have learned from your guests?

For me there is no separation between my movement work and “Conversations.”  Movement seeks to connect with spirit by accessing and releasing the repressed parts of ourselves.  Similarly, “Conversations,” which is broadcast at 1 p.m. on Tuesdays, brings to the KVMR listening audience interviews with a wide range of authors, thinkers and activists whose work serves to inform, inspire and activate a new story of peace, equality and right action towards all life. Both explore our power to heal the beliefs and assumptions that limit us and serve in bringing more love and peace into the world. 

Suzie Daggett, constantly curious about the mysteries of life, is the author of Healing Destination, publishes the Insight Healthy Living Directory and produces the Insight Lecture Series. She can be reached by calling 530-265-9255 or visiting www.insightdirectory.com. Michael Stone can be reached by calling 530-477-7757.