I wake with dancing for joy on my lips but I’m not dancing. I’m lying on the floor of a conference room in London with 150 people seated around me. The first thing I notice are the tops of my stockings and I immediately think: “Why on earth did I wear those?”
People are rushing to my aid. I feel absolutely fine but embarrassed. I’m here to support people with a serious health condition, who’ve come to learn about cellular regeneration, and I’m the one on the floor. What will my Feng Shui teacher, Denise Linn, think having invited me to help her.
When the team gather afterwards to rake over the ashes, it is my turn to explain myself. “I was stood at the edge of the room, leaning against the wall, feeling absolutely fine as Denise lead the guided meditation with her Native American drum. I remember her saying: ‘You are now back (drum beat, drum beat) now back to Source.’ … At which point I passed out. Seconds before I’d seen a ball of energy hurtling towards me – even with my eyes closed – and hit me in the stomach. The sensation was so intense I felt nauseous and passed out.
“Is that it? Was there anything else?” they ask.
“Yes, actually, I had three words on my lips when I came around: “Dancing for Joy.”
“What do they mean?”
“I have no idea.”
Dancing for joy revisited
A few days later, I’m listening to Native American drumming again, this time at home. Out of the blue, I receive what I can only describe as a download of psychic information. This had never happened to me before. In one single transmission, I had the entire vision for a large and spectacular retreat centre called Dancing for Joy. Flabbergasted, I wrote it all down. Its purpose. What it looked like. Who was there and what were they doing. I even commissioned an architect to produce drawings. This was in 1995 when retreat centres were rare. I barely knew what they were let besides getting involved in one.
Over the years since, events have unfolded in a synchronistic way, none of which I’d planned. I’d only just qualified as a Feng Shui consultant when the vision occurred. I wasn’t looking for something else to do. Within a month I discovered I was pregnant. That also wasn’t planned either. Stranger still, my daughter was conceived in Arizona on Native American soil so perhaps Denise’s drumming had summoned her to me.
Dancing for joy lost
Months later I’m a new mum who barely knows how to put on a nappy. My new career in Feng Shui is going well and I’m conducting consultations with my baby in a sling. Dancing for Joy is the last thing on my mind. So I let it go.
When my daughter turned one I began to receive what I took to be ‘wake up’ calls. Three in a row to be precise in the form of car accidents in three consecutive years. Same scenario each time. I’m stationary in the car with my daughter next to me in the passenger seat when someone runs into us. Poor child, it’s a wonder she gets into a car at all with me now.
Something needs to be done about Dancing for Joy because somebody, somewhere is getting cross with me. I began to travel around England with my daughter looking for a site. At the same time I did everything I could to rustle up interest and funding for a retreat centre. By then my marriage had come apart and my ex returned to France leaving me holding the baby. Quite frankly it all got too much and with sadness and frustration I declared: “If I can’t create the Dancing for Joy centre I’ll become it instead.”
I am dancing for joy
The first thing I did was to hire a dance studio. Once a week I danced away with my daughter and any friend who would join us. At the same time I attend 5 Rhythms classes regularly. Then a friend asks me: “You love to dance and you’re good at it, why don’t you teach?” I thought about it and I thought why not. Dance had rescued me as a child from asthma when my enlightened doctor advised me to take up ballet and tap. This developed my posture and improved my coordination and rhythm. I’d danced my way through my teens to rock music. But teaching a dance form like ballet or salsa didn’t appeal to me. I was more interested in the therapeutic benefits of freeform dance-movement.
Looking around for a qualification I spot a PGCE in Dance at the University of Chichester. Instantly I knew this was the place for me and was accepted as a mature student. After doing a wagon load of dance-movement training outside University I began teaching creative dance to children and organic movement to adults. I even choreographed a local pantomime. Dancing for Joy I had become and I called my business precisely that.
Intuition in motion
Creative, organic dance is the voice of the intuition in motion. The immediacy of the moving body – is not informed by a particular dance form or motivated by pre-meditated thought – arises from the subconscious, unconscious and superconscious – and expresses that we don’t yet have the words for. Our kinaesthetic response to the world is the most physical of all three learning styles and it’s tops for me. It calls for a connection with the interior life of the somatic body and enables me to absorb information through touch, movement and positioning in space.
The PGCE in Dance evolved into a Master’s degree in Somatic Arts Psychotherapy. We explored how to capture intuitive insights through the spontaneity and organic nature of the expressive arts – drawing, writing, mask-making, painting, sounding, chanting, clay-making. Engaging with these – and dance too – ticked all my boxes. However, I felt them to be too great a stretch for most people and I wanted it to be as easy as possible for anyone to gain insights into their health and wellbeing through their intuition.
One day out walking in the woods, not thinking about anything in particular, the Intuitive Vision Board process came to me. This was in 2008. It has since become my proprietary method since for seeking higher guidance through the intuitive function. I’ve written a book about it – Awaken Your Intuitive Vision.
What started out as the Dancing for Joy vision led me to the Intuitive Vision Board in which I mid-wife the visions of others besides myself.
An intriguing postscript
Dancing for Joy also took me to Marin County, USA to work with famous dance pioneer, Anna Halprin (now 100). On my day off I took a drive without a map, heading towards the ocean. On route I espied an impressive sign by the roadside: Spirit Rock. Swinging into the long and winding driveway, I followed it up to arrive in front of a magnificent, timber-framed retreat centre. To my utter astonishment it was almost the replica of the building I’d visualised as Dancing for Joy 14 years earlier.
There can’t be many retreat centres in the world that are of that scale, octagonal in shape and with an apex glass roof. This one was the brainchild of Jack Kornfield, one of the world’s leading teachers of Buddhist mindfulness. After a few enquiries I calculated that Spirit Rock would had been conceived around the time of my Dancing for Joy vision on the other side of the Atlantic. Clearly Jack had the means of bringing it to life. But I hadn’t given up either. I’d continued to follow the intuitive thread and allowed it to transmute it into something else of a visionary nature. I did write to Jack Kornfield with my story but I never received a reply.
Mary Nondé is an Intuitive Coach, originator of the Intuitive Vision Board and author of Awaken Your Intuitive Vision – unlocking possibilities you never knew existed.