Connections: The Threads of Intuitive Wisdom

Copyright © 2014 by Jonathan Horan

Published by Raven Recording, Inc.

PO Box 271, Cooper Station

New York, NY 10276

First printing hardback edition

Copyright © 2004 by Gabrielle Roth

Jeremy P. Tarcher/Penguin

a member of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

All rights reserved. This book, or parts thereof, may not

be reproduced in any form without permission.

ISBN 1-58542-327-0

eISBN: 9780615962313

Cover photo by Konstantino Hatzisarros

Cover design by Nilaya Sabnis

Book design by Pat Rasch

foreword

Dear Gabrielle,

When I was five years old, you took me to the Hawaiian Islands and I was introduced to one of my greatest teachers, the ocean and its waves.

There, underneath the magnificent sun, in the warm tropical water, our lessons began. Lessons of trust, surrender and faith.

Mother Ocean sent me small pulses from far away, the wind off shore from a continent an ocean away would find its way to us at those exact moments. The swells greeting us would pick me up off of my feet, sliding me, rolling me, tumbling me up the sand and back down. Each time I ended back on my feet with a huge smile, laughing in ecstasy.

That little body loved surrendering to those waves, being a part of something much bigger than itself, much stronger than itself. Instead of being afraid of the unknown in these waves – where were they coming from, would they hurt me – I learned immediately to trust them. In this trust, in this surrender, I found myself in bliss. This first teaching was about letting go and just being in the flow, no matter how chaotic, trusting that everything will be exactly how it is meant to be.

Flowing is my home rhythm. It is my unique tempo and timing. It is my natural state of being. It is where I am grounded, centered and fluid, and where you always taught me to start from, to return to.

Gabrielle you were my spiritual master, friend and beloved mother. You gave this world a most precious map, a great dance of life.

You were a modern-day mystic of the mysterium.

You were a revolutionary of moving bodies.

You showed us that there is only one of us here.

You taught us that it is our life’s journey to turn our wounds into a dance and allow the dance to give us healing in return. The fragmented leading the embodied, the embodied leading the fragmented. Turn our suffering into art, art into awareness, awareness into action.

You gave us back our bodies, where we could find all of the answers we were searching for.

When I was a child and throughout my life, you kept repeating, movement is medicine. You identified these movements as Waves, you asked us to create good beginnings and good endings and acknowledged the space for them to cycle over and over and over again, creating the journey that is our lifetime. You raised me to love, respect and have compassion for this whole journey. You showed me that this body is the journey. I am not in it. It is in me.

In May 2012, we set off with Robert, Lucia and Sanga, our family, to where the 5Rhythms began: Esalen Institute in Big Sur, California. This sacred land was the mother of many profound bodies of work that have forever changed the world as we know it. This land and the people who served it gave you a platform and place to search for the soul using the body, and you effortlessly gave this healing work back to every body that crossed your path until the day you died.

The wound of your cancer was carving through your body on these days, and you channeled your pain to feed this workshop that would bring you full circle, creating a good ending where the 5Rhythms were birthed. You didn’t say it would be your last workshop then, but I think you knew that it would be.

And you were clear: this was not the end of your legacy. This was the beginning of the next wave of energy.

I loved working with you. Every moment was inspiring. I heard you speak many times on the same subjects but I never heard you say the same thing twice. Your knowledge seemed to come from within your blood, from your bones. You were not a teacher; you were a teaching.

You taught me that to be a teaching one must be a seeker. You were searching for your feet. When you put your mind in your feet, you became something indescribable, fascinating and compelling.

You were the most authentic person, woman and human being I have ever met. You redefined what authority was to me. You knew what you were, who you were and where you were going. And when you uncovered how you were going to get there, with this language of the 5Rhythms, you were not surprised to find feet-searchers around the world to accompany you on this journey.

Two months before you passed, you composed this final letter to me, knowing, somehow, from somewhere deep, that I would need to hear your words one day.

Six months later I received these words from you to me on the very day that I gave birth to the vision for the next wave of 5Rhythms Teachers:

My Jonny,

I had Miss Morgan type this for me to give to you 6 months after I’m gone. This letter is for you and I feel these words will be heard by many. Let them fly.

I held one mirror.

I held this mirror facing myself to dig deep within.

I held this mirror facing others to dig deep within.

I held this mirror facing me and others to dig deep within together.

This mirror allows anyone to walk away from it.

This mirror allows anyone to walk back to it.

This mirror does not shatter.

I gave this mirror to you.

Hold this mirror as I did.

When you look into this mirror you will always see me.

We are one. I love you.

I hold this mirror now, Mom, with honor and gratitude.

My teacher Richard Heckler, an Aikido Master, taught me that in Japan there are three different levels of gratitude.

• The first one is the kind that you show someone who opens the door for you.

• The second is for someone who you would trust leaving your kids with.

• The third is reserved for the highest form of gratitude, when someone changes your life totally and completely forever and we are filled with a sense that what has been given could never be repaid.

It is this third level of gratitude that I share with you, my mother, teacher and best friend. And I know I am not alone on this earth in that.

We can never repay you for what you’ve given us. We each have a choice to offer it back to the circle, give these wounds, these journeys and these dances back to the energies of the 5Rhythms that guide us through our cycles in this body, in this lifetime.

When I look at the 5Rhythms tribe around the world, I see unity in uniqueness, uniqueness in unity. We cannot lead if we cannot follow. We cannot follow if we cannot lead. As you wrote in the words in this book, the moving center within is what we must follow. Trusting the source, the center of the body to lead us through this life’s journey.

I will continue to be a seeker, continue my offering to dancing bodies around the world and continue your legacy of being a teaching of 5Rhythms.

You dedicated this book to me many years ago, honoring me as keeper of the flame. I honor you now, Mother of all revolutions.

Dance In Peace Gabrielle.

Love,

Your student, your teacher, your best friend,

your eternally grateful son,

Jonathan

Up to her very last days, as Gabrielle became more and more ethereal, she worked wholeheartedly to prepare this tiny masterpiece for its second unveiling, leaving us with one final, parting gift. She always considered this her little black book. Indeed, she has given us a guidebook to our intuition, the thread that ties us to the Great Mystery. Enjoy these magnificent stories and teachings. May they invigorate your dance and bring more magic into your life. Restore the mystery.

JAH 2014

to jonathan

beloved son,

keeper of the flame

acknowledgments

I have the coolest publisher. Joel Fotinos rocks. He inspired this book and gracefully and patiently guided it and me through the process. I thank him and my lovable and loyal agent, Candice Fuhrman, for being so fully present for me whenever I needed them.

For my editors, I fall on my knees. They lifted me out of the dark ten thousand times. I am deeply grateful to Linda Kahn and Hal Bennet. Linda began and ended this journey with me, and although we never left my couch, we traversed many lands of mystery. Her craft was crucial to the destiny of this book as were her wit and wisdom. Hal Bennet met me in the middle and through endless, long-distance conversations and drafts informed this project with poetry and passion. And big thanks to Robert Ansell, my sweet man, who tirelessly (well almost) read, edited, typed, and tapdanced across every page of every draft.

Many amazing people offered their art, creativity, and stories. I especially want to thank: Jewel Mathieson, for her badass poetry; Jonathan Horan, for living the medicine life and sharing himself fearlessly and generously, not to mention for keeping me real on the way.

And I couldn’t have made this journey without my posse and several strangers: Donna Karan, soul sister, for carrying me across the great water, over and over again, turning me on to yoga and to my amazing yoga teacher, Rodney Yee; Terry Iacuzzo, my shamanic buddy; Johnny Dark, closet mystic; Lynn Kohlman, warrior babe; Eliezer Sobel, Zen man; Lorca Simons, rock star; Bobby Bethea, trusting soul; Robby Anton, savage angel; Marty Klein, edgewalker; Martha and Zeet Peabody, electric muses; Muireann O’Callaghan, relentless researcher. And to Jared Pitman, my seatmate on United Flight 10 from LAX to JFK, whose innocence and curiosity broke through my writer’s block.

And I want to thank The Moving Center road warriors for always being ready to give, to serve, to sacrifice, and to soar—Kathy Altman, Susannah Darling Khan, Ya’Acov Darling Khan, Jonathan Horan, Andrea Juhan, and Lori Saltzman. Indeed, my gratitude includes all of my students— each having been a catalyst for deepening my awareness.

And, at Tarcher/Penguin, huge thanks to Terri Hennessy for her joyful, fun approach to editing as well as for her help in making sure the book made it through the system—no easy task; Meredith Phebus for her production wizardry; and Mitch Horowitz for his enthusiasm and support.

contents

foreword

acknowledgments

contents

prologue

cruising emptiness

dancing in the dark

slow dancing with chaos

spinning the web

all i can do is dance

resources

permissions

Let it be for you a great and high mystery in the light of nature that a thing can completely lose and forfeit its form and shape, only to arise subsequently out of nothing and become something whose potency and virtue is far nobler than what it was at the beginning.

PARACELSUS

prologue

Your art is the Holy Ghost blowing through your soul.

JACK KEROUAC

Twenty years ago I embarked on a search for the perfect place to live in Manhattan. For seven months I traipsed from one side of the island to the other, looking at apartments, townhouses, lofts, even vacant churches. I think I drove my Realtor to a support group. One day after looking at an apartment in the Village we got stuck on a one-way street. I looked out the window and saw a scrap of paper taped to the door of a building. Something made me hop out of the car. It was advertising a loft for rent upstairs, on the fifth floor. I rang the buzzer and the owner showed me the place. The minute I crossed the threshold I knew I was home.

A friend of mine had been skiing for a week in Aspen. Just when he was scheduled to go home, a huge storm was predicted, one that would leave a foot of fresh powder. He had no pressing reason to go home—he was single and self-employed—but for some odd reason he boarded the plane, which was the last one to