Ecstatic Roots: Somatic Movement at Foxhollow Farm

Get rooted into your own soul and the natural world around us through Ecstatic Roots – a movement experience designed to dig deeper, get grounded, and foster connection. Open to all ages and experience levels, this class invites you to release stored emotion through intuitive, body-led flow free from judgement, expectations, or strict choreography.

Like the biodynamic philosophies stewarding the land here at Foxhollow Farm, we too are invited to use somatic expression to compost what no longer serves us. Join us as we nourish our roots and build strong branches connecting us to ourselves, each other, and the land holding it all together.

This monthly movement class, co-facilitated by Lindsey Winkler @pilates.louisville and Clayton Hart, is donation-based and open to all ages. The class is offered on a sliding donation scale benefitting Dare to Care Food Bank and their mission to combat food insecurity across Kentuckiana.

What does it mean to dance ecstatically?

Ecstasy is “A state of emotion so intense that one is carried beyond rational thought and self-control.” To reach this state in dance we must feel safe enough to give our bodies full freedom to express whatever emotion they need without controlling the experience. Emotion is simply energy in motion, but when we don’t feel safe enough to express it, we block its flow. This causes it to becomes stuck and stored on a physical level as tension. Ecstatic dance is a great way to revitalize this stagnant energy because, after all, what better way to restore motion to trapped Emotions than through physical motion itself!

Ecstatic dance is also at its core a somatic flow practice. Common characteristics of a flow state are being fully absorbed in the present moment, acting spontaneously & effortlessly, and not worrying about what others think or about your own self-image. To enter this state requires the ego to release control and surrender to the body and soul. This is much easier said than done, but when we can truly step outside of our rational mind’s conditioning of what dance is and how we ‘should’ move, we often surprise ourselves with what we can do.