is not just a form of dancing. It is also a powerful activity to bring balance to your energetic spheres, kind of yoga, a devotional dance for some, a dance of women for their bodies.

In its cores, BellyDance has nothing to do with eroticism per se. It is one of the oldest dances and combines dealing with the body’s energy with preparing woman’s body physically to become pregnant, carry the baby, give birth and take care of an infant. In origins it was a dance to the great Mother Earth, or to the goddess, to this part of universe which is feminine and deals with the feminine, the wild power ready to be directed by a male factor (but not tamed).

Except for disposing the energy (that is why you make movements so to say ‘gathering’ the flow of energy, to the self), the dance strengthens the muscles and joints responsible for and used through all the stages of the birth-giving and child-minding (beginning with strengthening the muscles of spine, arms or legs to carry the child, to stretching hips and the neck of the womb, which will have to stretch during the growth of the foetus and delivering). It also helps to keep the skin taut and flexible.

The traditional way of bearing hands during the dance is to keep the ring finger and the middle finger together, often joined with the thumb. This is most likely connected with Apan Mudra, a healing mudra for urinary and cytological disorders, cleanses and purifies the body.
In the East there are still ritual childbirths during which women together dance with and for the lady in labour. They may dance in the other room in a sort of a prayer to ease her pains, or – even more traditionally – dance with the dancing to-be-mother, who dances until she finally delivers the infant. The women who dance during the labour cannot believe that there are women in the world who would want to lie in bed during the act, as they find it extremely painful not to dance. The dance itself is a remedy for the pain, tension and, most probably, excitement.

Currently, BellyDance became a commercial art and has little to do with what it actually represents. Often, even the bellydancers do not know or do not care about the origins. On the other hand, in the West, we have to go to a course to learn how to use muscles we do not even know that exist, while in the East the baby-girls are still confronted with BellyDancing and sort of assimilate it. BellyDancing is not a cool, strange thing you can do in the evening. It is a way of life, even if you are not dancing at the moment. The BellyDance is not thought for or directed to men. It is not thought to arouse sexual excitement. It is allowed to male audience only since the early 20th century. Of course, men as well as anyone else may watch, if you feel ready for such experience, but remember about the huge intangible power you have within you. For now, I myself do not dare to play with it.

There are different styles of dancing, Egyptian style being the most popular, probably, but each country in the East probably has its own technique (i.e. – stomach pulled in or relaxed, legs closely together or slightly astride, hands moving only vertically or not). There are few main rules and some basic figures you need to know to practice your own BellyDance movement. Your body will tell you later on which movement, technique and figures it craves for. After all it is the flow of joy and uncontrollable light.

No two women can dance the same dance because no two energies and no two bodies can be the same.