you know how river otters slide down the muddy bank and scramble up again, laughing with their friends?
or how babies lie on their back and watch their fingers meet their toes for the first time (or the umpteenth time)?
or how children spin around until they fall down laughing?
that is prayer at its finest... playful exploration of senses and how the divine is expressed through them...
my most earnest dancing prayer is an invitation to the divine to play with itself.
(thanks for asking!)

i think traditionally prayers would be about asking a god for something. salish tradition has "stiowilh", which is kind of more like casting a spell or about aligning oneself with a "power" but i think what theistic prayer and "stiowilh" have in common is intention and offering.

when we dance all night i think the movement and the sweat are the offering.

to the temple of dance last weekend i brought an intention: my family was in grief after my nephew committed suicide and i wanted to pray for both the living and the dead. it was hard to concentrate on this heavy because the other dancers were extremely beautiful and fun. there was also an element of flirtation that i didnt know how to connect to the tragedy.

I pray by touching the divine in moments--by recognizing, appreciating, acknowledgements. My conversations with God, the Goddess, the Tao, what have you, rarely go beyond "Hi." But for a universe that's not much of a conversationalist, that's something big, because it's usually at a moment that he/she/it says "Hi" right back.

Dancing as meditation? It's an all-night acknowledgement. Dancing at a concert is how prayer should be. Conventional prayer, in the concert metaphor, is a lot like shouting requests. Part of the experience, but to do it constantly is to dictate the divine. Don't shout a request after every song. Just dance.

Thats me, anyway.