By Emily Liss
Herbal Dances explores the healing potentials of combining herbology with dance & movement therapy. It shines light on how herbal medicines and psychotherapeutic body techniques are nourishing medicine to humans and the environment.
This artistic creation addresses environmental issues and human mental, physical, spiritual and emotional wellness. Western culture is excessively focused on our individual minds, and to be whole, well beings, we must also value healing with our bodies and celebrating our connection with the mother body that sustains us, Earth. To ease common struggles, like stress and loneliness, science and ancient cultures know that we cannot only use talk and mind therapy, that we need to combine this with embodied processing and integration of new states, like relaxation, unity and confidence.
The first phase of this dream is to combine my herbal medicine business with art, and create a website that shows scientific, written, danced, musical and visual art depictions of the medicinal offerings of the plants. Research in this project will investigate the effects of being in the presence of plants, using plant medicine (including teas, salves, tinctures), and pairing these effects with movement therapy exercises. Technology exists that lets us create music to the frequencies emitted by plants themselves!
This foraging season, as I harvest plants to make medicines with, I will record their music and create dance rituals and performances, which are my interpretation of the messages of the plants. Future phases of this project include workshops in listening, breathing and dancing to the plants, as well as dance performances honouring the plants.
Did you know that mother earth often grows plants most healing and nutritive to humans in soils disturbed by human activity? Plantain, heal-all, dandelion…this project begins with common “weeds”, and uses art to influence our cultural narrative around these magical species, connecting humans with the environment.
The impact of the project is that humans deepen our embodied intuition and appreciation of the planet, leading us to choose lifestyles that are more environmentally-friendly and caring to our mental, emotional, physical and spiritual wellbeing.
Funding for this project will allow me to buy technology for recording the sounds of the plants, create a website, edit dance videos, forage and meditate with plants, choreograph dances, share this work, and more! Support for this project will keep it alive, inspired and weave it’s offerings into the web of existence.
Contact me at dances.of.unity@gmail.com to chat, mentor, or gift this creation, and donate to support this project to emilypearlliss@gmail.com via paypal!