Vision Magazine, San Diego, CA, May 2001

Healing Dance Fun for All Levels

Music and movement have a magical way of easily accessing deep levels of emotion to free chronic stress and restore a sense of lightness and well-being. The mind ceases its endless chatter as body and soul are easily swept away by exhilarating world beat rhythms, high-energy rock `n roll and sexy jazz.

Yoga Meets Dance™ is dance for non-dancers, lovers of yoga and everyone else. It involves moving through the yogic chakra energy and elemental systems in the body. No knowledge of yoga is needed. Yoga Meets Dance™Global Dance will excite your soul and open your heart.

Beth Rigby, top-rated program director from the Kripalu Center for Yoga & Health and student of Soto Zen Meditation, has taught this joy-filled dance throughout the country to mainstream and special populations including wheelchair patients and teenage trauma survivors for the past six years, most recently in San Diego and Orange County.

“There is an increasing trend to dance one’s way back to well-being and health. Yoga Meets Dance™ provides an exhilarating aerobic work out for the body, nurtures the soul and is always different, never feeling like exercise,” shared Beth, who has taught over 2000 classes nationwide.

“Beth’s class was one of the most refreshing and spiritually rewarding things I have done in a long time. It was nice to get out of my head and into my heart. Beth lovingly and gently cajoles our spirits to emerge and dance the dance of oneness.” says Jill Mangino of San Diego.

Yoga Meets Dance includes unique imagery of the elements that comprise our globe- fire, water, earth, air and spirit- as they relate to our bodies and music. Each class begins by relaxing with some gentle yoga. and simple breathing exercises to calm the mind. Musical rhythms slowly build into a wildly fun, high-energy cathartic experience. Old energies like grief and worry are easily released as layers of stress are peeled away. Participants move at their own pace and Follow their own timing and rhythm. You might even call it a Zen state of mindlessness, laughter and sweat.

It’s outrageously fun, non-competitive, and loosely structured. A class then ends with a meditative cool down period, dancing into stillness, sitting with profound clarity, centered in the heart enjoying visualizations for inner-peace and global healing.

As Beth explains it, “We send the magnificent stillness and love experienced at the end of class out of the dance room and around the globe with guided visualizations. We dance not just for our own healing, but for global healing as well.” Adding that “teaching yoga and movement has taken me to many places inside myself as well as around the world.”

Beth has taught on the Inner Voyage Cruise in the Caribbean, and she also directs Healing Retreat Adventures, combining hiking, yoga, and dance in the spectacular natural beauty of Sedona, Arizona and the Grand Canyon, where she lives.

Teacher trainings and Sedona retreats can be found at www.yogameetsdance.com or by calling 928-300-6944.