This Is My Body: Embodied Prayer With the Aramaic Words of Jesus

Through the practice of prayer and meditation we “tune our instrument” to the love and inspiration of the Infinite Source. Through silence and stillness, with movement and invocation, we can align our whole selves with the will of Alaha (‘God’ in Aramaic). This experiential session explores the Aramaic teachings of Jesus through chant and movement, as inspired by Neil Douglas-Klotz and the practices of Dances of Universal Peace. We move in a circle and intone the words of Jesus in the Aramaic language that he spoke. Aramaic contains within it a cosmology and a spirituality that seeks expression in the movements of the dance. Practitioners directly experience its sound and feeling as we sing these sacred, ancient verses in the language in which they were first heard. Accessibility to the dances is always accommodated by inviting dancers to sit inside or outside of the circle if preferred and to participate vocally, silently, or energetically.