About 5Rhythms®

Created by Gabrielle Roth in the late 1970s, and practiced by tens of thousands worldwide.

5Rhythms® is a philosophy, cosmology, perspective, healing art form and a dynamic movement practice rooted in the principle that if you put psyche in motion it will heal itself. Movement is both the medicine and the metaphor, reaching across all languages, cultures and age groups to transform the suffering into art, art into awareness, awareness into action.

Wherever the 5Rhythms are practiced, a community is born to dance, to sweat, to change, to support, and to provide a safe space for each of us to shatter the ego’s hold and awaken the juicy, unpredictable, fascinating, edge-walking, rock star part of ourselves that yearns to be free.

5Rhythms® transcends dance—movement is the medicine, the meditation and the metaphor. Together we peel back layers, lay our masks down, and dance till we disappear.

5Rhythms® is a guided healing movement practice that is

based on somatic principles of the 5Rhythms map.

The map that maps out the rhythms and patterns and cycles of life:

1. Flowing: Earth - Being - Body - Feet - Birth - Feminine - Fluidity - Receptivity.

Connecting to the earth - our ground - Letting in.

Freeing the body.

(Emotion -Fear)

Shadow of flowing: Inertia

2. Staccato - Fire -Loving- Heart - Masculine - Expressive - Tribal - Letting out - extending and meeting the world from the center - childhood- hips and torso - expressing from the heart - connecting with who and what we love.

(Emotion - Anger)

Shadow of staccato - Control - tension - rigidity.

3. Chaos - Water - head- mind- knowing - the dance between the masculine and feminine - surrender -letting go - emptying the mind - creative possibility - releasing structure - relinquishing control -surrendering to knowing and not-knowing, to the inexplicable and infinite mystery.

(Emotions - Sadness)

Shadow of chaos - out of control.

4. Lyrical - Air -Roam of the Soul - Seeing - Hands_ Expansion - Maturity - Freedom - Light -Joy - actor - messengers of the heart - inspired action - shapeshifter - seeing and saying - sharing - dreaming-celebration -Letting go of Letting go. Awakening the Soul.

(Emotions -Joy)

Shadow of lyrical - out of space.

5. Stillness - Ether -healing- spirit- breath -elderhood, death cycle - alchemist- medtation- altar- purity -Big Mind - Essence - Oneness - Open and empty space - return to zero, letting it be.

(Emotions - Compassion)

Shadow of stillness - numbness, death.

These rhythms are a state of being.

They are a map to everywhere we want to go or look on all planes of consciousness, inner-outer, physical, emotional, and intellectual.

Why is the 5R a Philosophy, Perspective and Practice?

Philosophy-KNOWING

Perspective - SEEING

Practice - BEING

From the perspective of 5Rhythms, we see everything like a wave, as a constant cycle of life.

We see beyond that which is matter and perceive everything as energy a way of seeing that instantly makes a significant shift. We see more clearly that we aren’t fixed beings, the mind cannot be fixed, nothing is fixed, everything moves and evolves and changes and shapeshifts, even death itself is a new birth, new beginning.

5Rhythms perspective holds the keys to exploring the shadows and light, sadness and grief, joy and ecstasy, power of forgiveness and compassion.

If you have a body, you can dance. Anybody can dance.

This dance isn’t a performance, look at me kinda dance.

This dance is a medicine, a tool to heal our body, heart, mind, and soul.

This dance teaches us that our body is a vehicle to unlock clogged places within.

This dance teaches us that our body is the temple, to find the god within.

What truly makes us depressed?

Having a lack of inspiration, lack of vitality and freedom?

Its when we are stock in our mind, when we constantly guide by our stories, living in our past.

Fully navigating by inertia. By anger, sadness and sorrow.

This practice has changed my life. Brought me back to life, and it constantly guides me home over and over again.

We never reach the destination, but we learn how to dance the spiral of life, how to get up each time we fall, how to live again and again each time we die.

How to find the way back home.

5RHYTHMS GLOBAL

Private movement session 1:1

To discover new pathways through the somatic experience. Open the body and its unlimited possibilities to move freely and remove all the emotional blockages, and stories that prevent us from being free embodied beings.

You will receive the tools how to listen to the body when each emotion arises, and energy gets stagnant in your life – and you will discover that the only way out is through the body.

Through these sessions, you will deepen your personal movement practice, and understanding of the dance as a medicine, as a healing practice.

Reach Out for details

Tata Leban offerings

5Rhythms® waves practice weekly classes

Darkness becomes a sacred place when we allow ourselves to dance within it, Diving For Light.

We come together to drop into the body, to meet right where we are.Deep down raw true. With the power of music, soul-full beat, medicine dance.Together we peel layers, lay our masks down.We come to be danced, and dance till we disappear.

Events schedule

~Kate J - From NYC

I have had the pleasure of participating in 5rhythms classes for over a decade, with occasional breaks in between. However, attending Tata's workshop marked a significant milestone for me as it was my very first 5rhythms workshop experience. To say that it exceeded my expectations would be an understatement. Tata's leadership, guidance, and direction illuminated the rhythms in a whole new way, enriching my understanding and leaving me immensely grateful.

The workshop delved deep into the principles of the rhythms, revealing their shadows through expressive movements. Throughout the weekend, I was confronted with the challenge of embodying the concept of saying 'no' during staccato rhythms. Tata's support and encouragement were invaluable in helping me channel my attention into truly embracing and expressing the essence of 'no' through my movements.

I am genuinely thankful for the transformative experience Tata's workshop provided. It has given me a profound insight into the rhythms and enriched my practice in ways I could not have imagined. I look forward to continuing my journey with 5rhythms, fueled by the newfound inspiration from this exceptional workshop under Tata's expert guidance.

-July 2023

~Marissa Pennington - From NYC

I was nervous to take this deep diving weekend workshop with my limited 5rhythms dance experience and a teacher that I didn’t know. Once I stepped into the studio, I dropped my fears. It was evident that Tata is an expert in shadow work. She embodies authenticity and is laser focused on accomplishing her mission: to fully support each one of us during this moving meditation. She created the space and maintained it the entire time with her soothing voice over the microphone along with her openness to step out and dance with us. She made me feel safe to truly let go. Safe to reconcile with all parts of myself like shame, people pleasing, and inertia. Safe to love my ugliness, my mistakes, and my sensitivity. The work is experiential, more powerful than talk. Tata is everything you could ever want in a 5rhythms teacher. She will bring the magic.

-July 2023

~Nina Bilan - From NYC

I am deeply grateful for I had a chance to attend Tata’s workshop Arise into self. It was transformative for me, intense and liberating. I realized how much I carry in my body and to face and flow through my shadows was not easy.

I am grateful to you Tata for the safety that you created, I am grateful for how you held space for each one of us, I am grateful for the music that kept me moving even though I was sometimes exhausted, I am grateful for your loving energy that shined from your heart, I am grateful to you and the magic you created.

After Your workshop I have this urge to dance my life, dance my frustrations dance my pain, grief, dance my liberation toward the light and dance it all. Thank you!

-July 2023

~Sonia Muller- From NYC

Sonia/Nalu here... so much is still germinating for me-- things that didn't seem like seeds at the time, have taken root and bloomed deeper understanding, more questions, more curiosity, and continued love for this practice which I've participated in for 10 years- (the first 7 with a lot of resistance:-)

I found the 5Rhythms Light & Shadow workshop so valuable. The teaching was clearly communicated and the ways we integrated the ideas into the body/dance were creative and so much fun.

I would recommend this workshop to everyone interested in loving themselves and others more. It was worth it, it was EXCELLENT, and i am looking forward to more offerings.

The 5Rhythms community and beyond is so fortunate to have Tata in a leadership role.

-July 2023

~Julia Faga Alves - From NYC

Tata teaches the rhythms like no other. With her, we experience their shadows to find their light. By having lived through all of them herself, by being open and vulnerable about it, with a touch of tough love, she leads us through them all too. The rhythms are alive in her, from the darkest to the lightest version. It is really art that expresses through us, through her, through the group, and in several different shades. It is a collective individual experience. Lonely and loving, sad and joyful, disconnecting and grounded.

It was in this workshop that I truly experienced staccato's truth; to embody and express my masculine energy. To say no with my whole being, from the hips. How to lovingly and clearly say no. By dancing the shadows, I felt deeply the tiredness that comes from losing control or overdoing it. I started to welcome the sign of tiredness as a need for a shift, or maybe even an invitation to getting deeper into the shadow so we cannot avoid but to release it. After the first day, I got so tired of my shadows, that all I had left was light. At the second day, I was dancing in the light, but my shadows were always sneaking in. his was already probably true throughout my whole life. But, this time, my awareness had changed. I noticed the heaviness, the anger, the self-destruction, the fake, the dead and was freer to choose to dance them or not. Embodying my judgments, fears, apathy, desperation, and so much more made me no longer fear them that much. Expressing the stories of negativity that pops up in my head while dancing in the shadows too. If I stick around, those emotions carry in themselves the seeds of their own destruction.

After the workshop, I realized my deepest resistance is dancing with people I don't connect with. I decided to face my shadows upright and went to a Contact Improvisation class. Before and during the workshop, I was saying no to contact in a confused manner. Now, I know there is something about contact and partnerships that I like and a lot of things that I don't. I feel more prepared to clearly say no and set my boundaries right to what is intrusive so I can say yes to the light they are protecting. And, if I get lost in shadows, as I will most likely will, I trust that they are just a wave, inviting me to dance with them and transmute them into light when the time comes.

These are my stories about shadows and light.

Shadows:

Flow: I did not ask to be born. I don't care about life. I don't mind being nurtured.

Staccato: I reject this earth.

Chaos: I just want to die. Everything is a lie, anyway.

Lyrical: But, if others can live in this lie, maybe I can too.

Stillness: I don't care anymore, I am not special enough even to die.

Light:

Flow: The earth did not ask to be born too and still, when in partnership, we can nurture each other, we can love each other.

Staccato: And we can protect that love and all the fake Gods dressed as easy pleasures that get in the way of true love.

Chaos: The only way to know what to say yes or no to is to find the connection with your own center, connecting and making space at the same time.

Lyrical: Only then can find awe and thank the spirit that created us all.

Stillness: so we can rest in peace, loving the earth below us and honoring the spirit above.

-July 2023

~Daniel Khasin- From NYC

Lost in life in my mid 30s, and cynical of new age spiritual movements the same way I am of religion, this year brought about lots of pain that destroyed every ounce of my being. In an attempt to rebuild myself after utter destruction, I made a promise to myself to try things outside of my comfort zone, opening myself up to virtually everything. Tata’s workshop showed me that in fact I am not alone in experiencing confusion and grief in trying to figure out this thing called life.

She is an incredible speaker and visionary and her words, along with 5Rhythm’s dancing helped me connect a lot of puzzle pieces in a world without an instruction manual. Thank you for expanding my mind and my consciousness!

-July 2023

Ritaly Rapaport - From NYC

Tata Leban is more than a dancer or a teacher. First and foremost she is a conduit of energy and wisdom that is deeply rooted in something greater than herself. Something ancient.

This will be evident from your first interactions with her.

From this place, Tata shares her dance practice. While all 5Rhythms practices have a spiritual element to them – Tata begins and ends with spirit, with heart, and creates a safe space, container.

Tata creates experiences for her students which enable them to listen to their bodies, feel them deeply and channel their energy into movement. Hang around long enough and you will become an embodied dancer. Not only through knowledge or theory – but rather through your own experience, which she will carefully and lovingly curate for you.

-May 2020

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