International Dance Day Celebration featuring Sisters of the Drum

Gift yourself this 3.5 hour playful experience designed to light you up from the inside out and connect you back with your wondrous child like essence in celebration of the beautiful person you are.

If there is a financial barrier, please us the code CELEBRATE for a steep discount. If there are physical or other accomodations we can make, please reach out directly. 

In this 3.5-hour event, you will experience:

Dance Circle led by Whitney Pyles & Taylor Bonga, music by Dede Alder & her Women's Percussion Ensemble

Sisters of the Drum: Women’s Percussion Ensemble. This all female percussion ensemble focuses on the sacred aspects of drumming and music and is inspired by documented female drummers depicted throughout history. The women in this group actively embody leadership, sisterhood, and the feminine divine.

Ecstatic/Embodied Dance is a meditative movement practice that inspires creativity and connection. It is a free form style of dance that asks you to lean into your intuition and trust that your body knows what you need. It encourages you to release into the rhythm and find your own natural flow to embrace playfulness, move through emotions, and find freedom.

Benefits:

* Increases lung function, flexibility, and aerobic capacity

* Merges kinesthetic, rational, musical and emotional function, increasing neural connectivity

* Improves mood and self-esteem by boosting dopamine

* Activates sensory and motor circuits, improving brain health and reducing risk of dementia

* Increases levels of the feel-good hormone serotonin

* Allows us to develop new neural connections, especially in regions involved in executive function, long-term memory, and spatial recognition

* Help us to alleviate stress and anxiety

* Connects us with community

* Inspires new ideas, helps us to feel confident, and builds greater resilience

* Improves proprioception, interoception, and exteroception

* Builds present moment awareness and mindfulness

* Helps us to release fear, limiting beliefs, inhibition, societal constraints, and negative emotions

* Wakes up the body and shifts stagnant energy

* Increases blood circulation

* Boosts endorphins

Sources: New England Journal of Medicine and Harvard Medical School, ‘Dancing & the Brain’

The Emotional Freedom Technique is a mind-body healing tool used to release stuck and stagnant energy in the body in order to experience more focus, presence and clarity in our lives. We utilize this psychological acupressure technique through physically tapping on certain energy meridian points in the body and really feeling "what's up" for us. This practice can help heal emotional trauma, reduce stress, treat anxiety and more.

Benefits:

*Calms the nervous system

* Reduces stress, depression and anxiety

* Can lower cortisol levels

* Beneficial in treating psychological trauma and PTSD

*Reduces pain and headaches

*Improves athletic performances

* Supports a healthy lifestyle

Sources: Dr. Axe

There will be refreshments, snacks and time to mingle while playing games and integrating after this once in a lifetime (or at least 2023) experience!

Volunteer with Kids' Food Basket: https://kidsfoodbasket.org/volunteer/

Donate to Kids' Food Basket: https://kidsfoodbasket.org/how-to-help/

From their website:

Kids’ Food Basket exists to increase access to healthy food for children and families. Their core belief is that food is a right, not a privilege. Because that is not yet a reality, they mobilize human and financial resources to break down barriers that cause food insecurity. Their services include our flagship Sack Supper program, community-driven farming, family food provision and educational programming. Collectively, they are working toward realizing a hunger-free West Michigan for all.