Top 65 Quotes & Sayings by Gabrielle Roth

It takes discipline to be a free spirit.

We dance to reclaim our brilliant ability to disappear in something bigger, something safe, a space without a critic or a judge or an analyst.

You just have to determine to settle for nothing less than being FULLY ALIVE, to show up, be who you are, and share your gifts.

Each of us has the power and responsibility to heal ourselves, to be our own medicine man or woman. Awakening our innate powers of being, loving, knowing, seeing, and healing involves ongoing work at all levels and in all dimensions of our self. Exploring the range of rhythms and emotions, achieving insights into our conditioning and ego, moving through the energy levels of spirit – these are all activities to be integrated into our daily lives.

Put your body in motion and your psyche will heal itself.

Between the head and feet of any given person is a billion miles of unexplored wilderness.

There is no true joy and compassion except through the difficult emotions - all we get without the experience of fear, anger, and sadness are cheap imitations of joy and compassion - pleasantness and sentimentality.

The fastest, cleanest, most joyful way to break out of your own box is by dancing. I'm not talking about doing the stand-and-sway. I'm talking about dancing so deep, so hard, so full of the beat that you are nothing but the dance and the beat and the sweat and the heat.

In many shamanic societies, people who complain of being disheartened... or depressed would be asked,... When did you stop dancing? ... This is because dancing is a universal healing salve.

The spirit in motion heals, expands, circles in and out of the body, moving through the layers of consciousness from inertia to ecstasy. Open to the spirit, and you will be transformed.

Each of us is a moving center, a space of divine mystery. And though we spend most of our time on the surface in the daily details of ordinary existence, most us hunger to connect to this space within, to break through to bliss, to be swept away into something bigger than us.

Your soul is a seeker, lover and artist; shape-shifting through archetypal energy, between your darkness and fields of light, your body and spirit, your heaven and hell, until you land in the moment of sweet surrender; when you, as a dancer, disappear into the dance.

There is a dance that only you know how to do

We dance to fall in love with the spirit in all things, to wipe out memory or transform it into moves that nobody else can make because they didn’t live it.

Our soul, our true self, is the most mysterious, essential, and magical dimension of our being. In fact, it is not a separate reality, as traditional Western thought views it, but the cohesive force that unites our body, heart, and mind. It is not a ghost trapped somehow in the physical machinery of our body but the very essence of our being.

When I am dancing, it feels like my prayer. It's like an offering. I offer my head back to the dance, I offer my shoulders back to the dance, my elbows, my hands, my spine, my knees, my feet, my whole self, my bones, my blood, my experience, my suffering... I offer it all back to the dance and I say: take it, do whatever you want with me. Release me.

When we give ourselves over completely to the spirit of the dance, it becomes a prayer

Mine is the art of inspiring people to turn themselves inside out, transform their suffering into art, their art into awareness and their awareness into action

Compassion is a chameleon: it can wear the face of fear, anger, sadness, joy or even dispassion, depending on what's needed at the time. The compassionate Buddha has a smile in one eye and a tear in the other, and our Buddha mission is to lead people to true freedom, not to hold their hand and tell them that everything is going to be all right. In teaching, compassion means doing whatever needs to be done to get to the next phase.

To sweat is to pray, to make an offering of your innermost self. Sweat is holy water, prayer beads, pearls of liquid that release your past. The more you dance... the more you sweat, the more you pray. The more you pray, the closer you are to ecstasy.

Imagination is powerful. Imagination is healing. All you need is the courage to visualize what should be, and then give yourself to its creation. The result may not be what you expected, but it will be right.

My work is giving space - learning of its way and being in its service at the same time. We each have responsibility to express ourselves. And in this expression is the key to our healing.

Don't be afraid to show your light.. If it ends up being too much for people.. tell them to wear sunglasses!

Your body is the ground metaphor of your life, the expression of your existence... So many of us are not in our bodies, really at home and vibrantly present there. Nor are we in touch with the basic rhythms that constitute our bodily life. We live outside ourselves - in our heads, our memories, our longings - absentee landlords of our own estate. My way back into life was ecstatic dance. I reentered my body by learning to move my self, to dance my own dance from the inside out, not the outside in.

I believe in the power of motion, the wisdom of gravity, the emptiness of true love, the fact that there is no way out but through the body, no way up unless we all go together, no way down unless we follow the beat, no way in unless we embrace the dark.

If you want to give birth to your true self, you are going to have to dig deep down into that body of yours and let your soul howl. Sometimes you have to take a leap of faith and trust that if you turn off your head, your feet will take you where you need to go.

Sweat your prayers, dance your pain, and move on.

Freeing the body inevitably leads to freeing the heart.

If you have a body you are a dancer

Your voice takes you to your heart.

If you don't do your dance, who will?

Your body is the ground and metaphor of your life, the expression of your existence. It is your Bible, your encyclopedia, your life story. Everything that happens to you is stored and reflected in your body. In the marriage of flesh and spirit divorce is impossible.

As Einstein queried, 'Why is it that I get my best ideas in the morning while I'm shaving?' Shaving is like meditation with a sharp object. When the mind is empty and receptive, big ideas flow through every cell of our body. When we're thinking too hard, we tense up and nothing can flow through us; our energy gets stuck in our heads. Sometimes you have to take a leap of faith and trust that if you turn off your head, your feet will take you where you need to go.

Rhythm is our universal mother tongue. It's the language of the soul.

Movement is my medicine, my meditation, my metaphor and my method, a living language we can rely upon to tell us the truth about who we are, who we are with, and where we are going. There is no dogma in the dance.

Life is sacred. Life is art. Life is sacred art.

Your body is the ground metaphor of your life, the expression of your existence. It is your Bible, your encyclopaedia, your life story.

I want to take you to a place of pure magic... It's the place athletes call the "zone". Buddhists call "satori" and ravers call "trance". I call it the Silver Desert. It's a place of pure light that holds the dark within it. It's a place of pure rhythm.

Ride the energy of your own unique spirit.

It's beautiful to dance alone, beautiful to dance with your children, beautiful to dance with your friends, beautiful to dance with your lover, or even collectively. But the ultimate dance is the one we do by ourselves, when we make ourselves known to God.

We're constantly changing and any practice meant to serve our authenticity should reflect our fluid nature.

Art is not just ornamental, an enhancement of life. It is a path in itself, a way out of the predictable and conventional... a map to self discovery.

If you just set people in motion, they'll heal themselves.

There is a dance only you can do, that exists only in you, here and now, always changing, always true. Are you willing to listen with fascination? If you are, it will deliver you unto the self you have always dreamed you could be. This is a promise.

The fastest way to still the mind is to move the body

When your world falls apart and you're left with just yourself, you're forced to discover who you are without all the beliefs, expectations, views, & self-image provided by some teacher or system. The calculating mind gives way to the intuitive mind, Knowing without Thinking.

Movement practice gets all your creative juices flowing. It doesn't just release your body, but it opens up your heart and empties out your mind, as well.

Each of us is a moving center, a space of divine mystery

After you leap, before you land, is God.

The dance is not where we lose ourselves. But where we find ourselves.

The self is a dance, constantly in motion.

To shed the past, forget the future and fall into the moment feet first.

Anger is an integrity-producing response to the invasion of your personal boundaries.

Healing is movement. Disease is inertia. If you put the body in motion, you will change.

We all share the wound of fragmentation. And we can all share in the cure of unification. Healing is the unification of all our forces -- the powers of being, feeling, knowing and seeing.

Energy moves in waves. Waves move in patterns. Patterns move in rhythms. A human being is just that energy, waves, patterns, rhythms. Nothing more. Nothing less. A dance.

Dancing, singing, storytelling and silence are the four universal healing salves.

When we experience moments of ecstasy-in play, in art, in sex-they come not as an exception, an accident, but as a taste of what life is meant to be. . . Ecstasy is an idea, a goal, but it can be the expectation of every day. Those times when we're grounded in our body, pure in our heart, clear in our mind, rooted in our soul, and suffused with the energy, the spirit of life, are our birthright. It's really not that hard to stop and luxuriate in the joy and wonder of being. Children do it all the time. It's a natural human gift that should be at the heart of our lives.

Life is sacred. Life is art. Life is sacred art. The art of sacred living means being a holy actor, acting from the soul rather than the ego. The soul is out of space and time and hence always available, an ever-present potential of our being. It is up to each of us to celebrate and to actualize our being and to turn each meal, conversation, outfit, letter, and so on, into art. Every mundane activity is an opportunity for full authentic self-expression. The soul is our artistic self, our capacity for transforming every dimension of our lives into art and theater.

The body is the womb of the soul, a begging bowl for spirit.