The above picture depicts the sleep stages, from which the innerdance playlist might be understood in dialogue and through exploration.
As an introduction to the 12 Stages traditionally experienced in the innerdance, here is a podcast enumerating various nodes represented in the stages of the journey process.
1. Satisfaction (Delta) Trust is instilled in the facilitator, the participants and the room itself. As people ease into relaxation, breathing and heart rate slows, decreasing tensions as Delta music is played in the background.
2. Dissatisfaction (Theta) The music slowly builds up from Delta to Theta, where initial movements might begin. Emotions might be expressed at this point, mirroring the initial releases of body tension in the N2 sleep stage. The heart pulsation begin to speed up as breath becomes erratic.
3. Threshold (rising from Theta, Alpha to Beta) The build up in the music continues from Theta to Alpha or Beta, as some participants might begin to experience intensities in their chest, their abdomen, their arms, neck region or head. Fear and anxiety intermix with unnamable energies, as intentions to heal stimulate deep states of surrender.
4. Purgation/Release (Alpha-Beta) Emotional musical elements come in at this point, bringing about release of sadness, frustration, anger. Tears are common in this stage, especially in people who have met ample conditions within themselves to letting go of deeply stored pain. The energy that awakens in the lower body often break through release processes in the chest and the throat area, due to activations that often happen in the thyroid and thymus glands.
5. Disintegration (Delta) After deep purgation, rest occurs. Breath rate slows into deep sighs, as slow Delta music envelopes the room. This particular stage mimics the N3 Sleep Stage, where sleep paralysis begins to occur. The mind may travel into unknown places, given this space to rest and digest all of what had come up. 6. Awakening (Theta or Alpha) The music slowly builds up once more, in much more positive and elevated moods, bringing feelings of renewal to the dark phases of life that were deeply felt in the previous tracks. Without losing touch with the deep delta frequencies that hold down inhibitory elements in brain and blood, frequencies begin to slowly combine, with delta as a base and more active sounds to emerge from it.
7. Illumination (Alpha or Beta) Building on the previous stage, the music continues to increase tempo carrying with it positive messages, bringing levels of affirmation towards the many questions that arise in the Awakening, even as more questions arise. The facilitator at this point decides intuitively where to take the session, based on what is taking place in people's bodies.
8. Choice (Alpha) On this part, the playlist and facilitation modalities invokes embodiment, allowing insights generated in the process so far, to ground themselves in conscious awareness. Participants receive validation and strong support in the ways they are touched, held or given care. At this point, people often sit or stand up. 9. Strengthening/Failure (Mu and SMR) Waves in the music signify paradox and contradiction, as the dualities of life bring participants towards highs and lows, in preparation for a deep exploration that is about to take place in the Dark Night. Fear and Trust become aspects of each other, driving persons forward from the perspective of active witnessing, detached willfullness.
10. Dark Night of the Soul (Delta) On the deepest meditative Delta undertones, the mind travels into Code and Cosmic, sending out sympathetic nervous system chemoreceptors into an intense admixture with parasympathetic neurotransmitters. Participants lay in savassna or the corpse pose, able to process their lives beyond the elements of the personal story, purely witnessing what comes through in pure observation. The Dark Night is a time of grieving, a goodbye process where one lets go of previous truths as the childlike mind paves the way for a new vision of the world.
11. Unitive State (Delta, Theta, Alpha and Beta) Going back to tempo and rhythm, people awaken into a renewed sense of life, rising up to the challenges of a complex world, childlike in their strength, trust and intuition. There are no more decisions to be made. Everything is connected, nothing is separate.
12. Reintegration (Delta or Alpha) The process ends with a meditation, ending as it all started, in a loop of peace which allows for a reintegration of what had been disintegrated.
The following video shot in an island in Hawaii, one of the first innerdance group journeys held outside of Asia, shares the multiple experiential facets of the innerdance playlist, bringing awareness to the power music holds in bringing people from various modes of resistance, to a shared state of Surrender and flow.