* Middle Eastern Belly Dancing * Stories for Dancers *
* Methods and Techniques * Dance Quotations *
* Books for Kids *

* Authentic Costume * Costuming * Tassel Making *
* Textiles *

* Egypt * Turkey & the Ottomans * Morocco *
* Gulf States * Africa *
* Tuareg * Berber * Bedouin *
* Contemporary Middle East * The Harem *
* Arabic Poetry * Books for Kids *

* Techniques & Methods * Creative Process *

* Orientalism * Ottomans * Arabic History *
* Moorish Spain *

* Strengthening * Pilates * Stretching * Healing *
* General Health *

* Arabic Music * Arabic Singers * Ear Training *
* Drumming *

* Makeup Technique * Stage Makeup * Cosmetics *

* Orientalists * Design Images * Ancient Egypt * Erte *

Sacred Woman, Sacred Dance - Awakening Spirituality Through Movement and Ritual by Iris J. Stewart

A note from the author: I just wanted to point out that my book relates to how I discovered the sacred history through my experience as a belly dancer of many years - so it is very relative to this precious art form.

Sacred Woman, Sacred Dance is the first book to explore the hidden history of women's ways of expressing the Divine -through a study of the history of dance as an expression of spirituality.

It describes sacred circles, birth rituals, ecstatic dances, and dances of loss and grief (in groups and individually) that allow women to integrate the movements of faith, healing, and power into their daily life.

The book demonstrates how dance, the highest expression of spirituality in cultures and traditions all over the world, is being integrated into the lives of women today.

Iris investigates how dance came to be excluded from worship, and reveals how dance is once again being brought into spiritual practices. The book includes resources for further instruction in sacred dance.

 Grandmother's Secrets: The Ancient Rituals and Healing Power of Belly Dancing Rosina-Fawzia B. Al-Rawi

Book Description: Come, sit next to me, says Grandmother. Take this chalk in your hand. Now draw a dot and concentrate all your energy into this one dot. It is the beginning and the end, the navel of the world. So Fawzia Al-Rawi describes her grandmother's first lesson about the ancient craft of Oriental dance. Grandmother's Secrets always circles back to this grandmother and this young girl, echoing the circular movements of the dance itself. Al-Rawi has written a strikingly graceful and original book that blends personal memoir with the history and theory of the dance known in the West as belly dancing. (Aziza's Note: not all of the 'history' is accurate.) It is the story of a young Arab girl as she is initiated into womanhood. It is a history of the dance from the earliest times through the days of the Pharoahs, the Roman Empire, to the Arab world of the last three centuries. It is a personal investigation into the effects of the dance's movements on individual parts of the body and the whole psyche. It is a guide to the actual techniques of the dance for those who are inspired to put down the book and move. Al-Rawi conveys in this book not only the history and technique of grieving and mourning dances, pregnancy and birth dances, but the spirit of these age-old rituals, and their possibilities for healing and empowering women today. Rosina-Fawzia Al-Rawi grew up in Iraq and Lebanon and was educated at the Universities of Cairo and Vienna. She is an expert in Arabic studies and ethnology, and the author of Golden Sky, Red Earth: Women's Lives in Palestine. She lives in Jerusalem and Vienna, where she teaches belly dancing.

Among the Tuareg people in the Air Mountain region of Niger, women are sometimes possessed by spirits called "the people of solitude." The evening curing rituals of the possessed, featuring drumming and song, take place before an audience of young men and women, who joke and flirt as the ritual unfolds. In her analysis of this tolerated but unofficial cult, Susan Rasmussen analyses symbolism and aesthetic values, provides case studies of possessed women, and reviews what local people think about the meaning of possession.

Sweat Your Prayers - Movement as Spiritual Practice Gabrielle Roth

Gabrielle Roth's Music

It just arrived and I haven't had a chance to read it yet, so...

Publisher's Weekly: "The soul can only be present when body and spirit are one" ... dance can be the path to soul or true self. Prodding her physically frozen students to sense their bodies and breathe, Roth discovered that "two hours of moving were as powerful as two years on the couch." Roth's entertaining, appealingly conversational tale will tantalize readers into believing that dancing is indeed a joyful way to "sweat" prayers, to seek our innermost truths as they are lived, in movement.

Acrobats of the Gods: Dance and Transformation (Studies in Jungian Psychology by Jungian Analysts) Joan Dexter Blackmer

Publisher: A timely reminder of the interaction between body and soul. Relating the rigors of dance to the travails of the alchemical opus, the author, herself a former Martha Graham dancer, allows us to experience the process that for many gives birth to an enhanced awareness of the Self. A timely reminder of the interaction between body and soul. 40 illustrations.

A Woman's Book of Balance: Finding Your Physical, Spiritual, and Emotional Center With Yaga, Strenth Training, and Dance Karen Andes

Karen Andes Web site & email

Synopsis: Tailor-made for a woman's needs and sensibilities, A Woman's Book of Balance uses yoga, strength training, and dance to build the body as a healthy, beautiful and sacred space. With easy, step-by-step instructions, Karen Andes offers full mind-body-spirit exercises that can be done throughout life. The benefits for women are many:

• Strength training thickens muscles and bones and improves sense of self
• Dance quickens the heart rate and unlocks passion
• Yoga kneads away tension, improves flexibility and helps achieve hormonal balance
• Proper alignment allows energy to flow freely through the body

"An integral approach to fitness--one that involves body, mind, heart and soul."-- Michael Murphy, co-founder, Esalen Institute and author of The Future of the Body

The Creative Fire: Myths and Stories About the Cycles of Creativity (Cassettes) Clarissa Pinkola Estes

Kypris: Written and recorded by the author of Women who Run With the Wolves. I bought these tapes a few months ago when I was at an all-time creative low, and they helped me tremendously. Mostly they are stories that talk about the nature of creativity (and you can listen to them in your car!). There are two main lessons that I remember from these tapes that I'd like to share:

1. Creativity is a cyclic process--there will be highs and lows.

2. Creativity is like *excretion*, you have to do it every day or it builds up and becomes toxic.

The Artist's Way: A Spiritual Path to Higher Creativity also Paperback Julia Cameron, Mark Bryan

Reflections on the Artist's Way (Cassettes)

The Artist's Way Morning Pages Journal: A Companion Volume to the Artist's Way

Robyn: A wonderful book for anyone who is feeling burnout. This is a gentle workbook for bringing artists (of all genres, whether acknowledged or unacknowledged) back to the point of feeling passion for their work, and helps the reader discover her secret dream.

I worked through this book and it was fun, enlightening, and really helpful during a rough spot.

Amazon.com: With the basic principle that creative expression is the natural direction of life, Julia Cameron and Mark Bryan lead you through a comprehensive twelve-week program to recover your creativity from a variety of blocks, including limiting beliefs, fear, self-sabotage, jealousy, guilt, addictions, and other inhibiting forces, replacing them with artistic confidence and productivity.

This book links creativity to spirituality by showing how to connect with the creative energies of the universe, and has, in the four years since its publication, spawned a remarkable number of support groups for artists dedicated to practicing the exercises it contains. Julia Cameron presents an exciting method for artists to recover their creativity from limiting beliefs, self-sabotage, inattention, fear, jealousy, guilt, addictions, and other forces that inhibit the creative process.

The Vein of Gold: A Journey to Your Creative Heart Julia Cameron

Booklist: Cameron's mind-freeing exercises are the basis for many a workshop and writers' group, and the wisdom she has gained through teaching has inspired her to develop new and even more probing techniques for liberating what she believes is our innate creativity. Cameron characterizes her teachings as "a process of creative individuation and emergence," or, to use that dreadful New Age phrase, of freeing the inner child.

This companion to the best-selling The Artist's Way contains essays on the creative process and more than one hundred imaginative exercises that help readers reach new spiritual heights and expand their creativity.

This is an ambitious set of exercises, and it will take you some time to do them, but the reward is there if you follow it through...

When the Drummers Were Women: A Spiritual History of Rhythm Layne Redmond

Booklist: Women's spirituality circles have taken to drumming in a big way. Redmond has been a leader in reintroducing the frame drum, which, she persuasively argues, has been an instrument of spiritual transformation for millennia. Her marvelous book brings together mythology, history and prehistory, personal experience, musical lore, and scientific information on the healthful effects of drumming. Scores of illustrations show stately goddesses holding frame drums, wild maenads tossing their heads as they pound, and priestesses sanctifying space with the rhythms they beat.

The Drummer's Path: Moving the Spirit With Ritual and Traditional Drumming Sule Greg Wilson

The Drummer's Path: African and Diaspora Percussive Music/CD and The Drummer's Path/Tape

I don't have any info on this one yet, but it looks interesting. I'll update when it comes in..,