This article describes dance as a moving spirituality through the case study of a specific practice called Movement Medicine. It addresses how a danced spirituality differs from other forms of spirituality, such as meditation and contemplation, and attempts to explore some of the aspects that make dance a unique medium for an embodied, lived and creative spirituality. ‘Feel good feelings’, as well as emerging from difficult emotions encountered on the dance floor, generate a sense of meaning which is translated to taking sustainable, socially just action. Through dance, different states of consciousness can be experienced through which ‘other’ knowledge is accessed and subsequently embodied. In these states, people can also meet and relate to spirit beings, and simultaneously express that relationship through the moving body. Finally, three qualities of dance are discussed, which contribute to concrete, lasting changes in existing life structures.

Rationale: Patient-initiated Clinics (PIC) have been found to be safe and have patient and service benefits in terms of satisfaction and cost. This paper reports our experiences of implementing PIC and the practical challenges of translating research into practice. Methods: The Knowledge to Action framework was used to inform the design of implementation plans in three different departments in one secondary healthcare organisation. A focused ethnographic approach was utilised to collect data on barriers and facilitators to implementation which were analysed using iterative qualitative analytic techniques. The Promoting Action on Research Implementation in Health Services framework was used to develop the analysis and data presentation. Results: The success of implementation was mixed across the three departments. Despite evidence of effectiveness, contextual issues at a department level, such as empowered leadership and team members, trust in colleagues and patients and capacity to make changes, impacted on the progress of implementation. Discussion: Patient-initiated Clinics can offer a useful and feasible alternative for follow-up care of some groups of patients with long-term conditions in secondary care and can be implemented through strong leadership and teamwork and a positive attitude to change. Although Implementation Science as an emerging field offers useful tools and theoretical support, its complexity may create additional challenges to implementation of specific interventions and so further contribute to the second gap in translation.

This piece shares four invitations to reconnect with your energy, vitality, and wholeness. Shape-shifting into an animal gives you access to a sense of life force that is unmediated by demands and expectations of the human world. With pairs or opposites, you can explore two qualities that exist simultaneously, including emotions, situations or choices. These might be in harmony or tension with each other or within you, and you can explore and learn from both without judgement or bias. Nature as a teacher provides an opportunity to walk with a specific question in mind. Through close observation, you will find guidance or answers to your question. Finally, dancing your soul back offers a danced version of soul retrieval, if you feel disconnected from yourself or from an essential quality in your life. Although they are inspired by shamanic dance practices, you need no previous experience with either dance or shamanism to try them out. You can practise them at home or in a place in nature where you feel safe and connected.

This article is the first of a diptych, to discuss a particular approach to dancing with the spirit world, from a contemporary shamanic perspective as taught by the Scandinavian Center for Shamanic Studies. It emerges from my participation in the Spirit Dance Workshop from 24 to 29 June 2012 in Sweden with Jonathan Horwitz and Zara Waldebäck, which in turn led to interviewing them over Skype on 9 August 2016. After methodological reflections on source justification, personal immersion and embodied enquiry, this article introduces the concept of spirits in (this) shamanic context and discusses the possibility and etiquette of relating with other-than-human-beings through dance. It contemplates the notion of power and empowerment, drawing from three concrete examples of dancing with the spirit of a tree, the spirit of the night and the spirit of a power animal. Instead of a conclusion, I offer an entr’acte as an in-between, linking this first Act/Article/Acticle of the diptych with the second to come, which will focus on community, ceremony and performance.

Abstract