5Rhythms® Dance Berlin
Release your body.
Free your mind.
Connect to your freedom.
Five rhythms, yet infinite dance movements, moods, feelings, and states of mind, body, and spirit.
Join us at x-dance, a weekly 5Rhythms dance workshop in Berlin to explore movement through an eclectic range of music as we go deeper into ourselves in this dynamic practice.
5Rhythms fuses the body, mind, and soul through movement, meditation, and music. By combining dance, breath, and sound into one experience, 5Rhythms connects us to our own sense of self.
Part of its uniqueness is that 5Rhythms doesn’t have any formal steps. The dance arises freely from any structured format and takes on a different form for each person.
It’s meditation and dance ‘training’ combined, but not as you might expect…
The fastest way to still the mind is to move the body.
Why we dance 5Rhythms
As we move and express ourselves during 5Rhythms, we are naturally in a meditative state, ever-present as our physical bodies can be nowhere but now.
Dance is a healing art
It heals the body, it heals the heart, and it heals the mind. It liberates us from our mental chatter and brings us freedom. Dance and movement meditation can help us to moderate or eliminate stress, tension, and fatigue. It connects us to our personal power and it’s a playful way to curiously and non-judgmentally confront our stressors and their effects.
When we step into our authentic, spontaneous movement, we become living, dynamic art.
5Rhythms offers us a flexible framework to explore the benefits of dance. It can help us triumph over limitations and discover new pathways for expression, ultimately tapping into our own inherent well-being and vitality.
Dance reminds us of who we are and what we can be. And when we dance with others, even moving to our own beat, it reminds us that we are never alone, that there are others who feel as we do.
Liberation and creative expression
However we dance, and whichever movements our bodies wish to take, we are offered an exceptional opportunity to freely express ourselves in a healthy, powerful, and meaningful way, one that’s unique to each of us. It can be playful, it can be serious; it can be whatever we want it to be.
5Rhythms dance is the art of surrender and creative self-expression, of letting go and owning both your moment and your movement without restriction or constraint.
Dance is freedom
The world is full of constraints, from the rigidities of school or the office environment through to the demands of society to look, act, feel and even think a certain way.
Samar Linn’s 5Rhythms dance classes and workshops in Berlin offer liberation. It’s a rare space, one in which to practice movement meditation, to explore the regions between conscious and subconscious, ego and id, a place between the poles of constraint and total anarchy.
Freedom through 5Rhythms is allowing the music to penetrate deeply, using the whole body, and stirring the soul through spontaneous dance celebration. Open up new realms beyond the boundaries of one’s ego, express yourself, and let go.
Movement has the capacity to take us to the home of the soul, the world within for which we have no name. Movement reaches our deepest nature, and dance creatively expresses it. Through dance, we gain new insights into the mystery of our lives. When brought forth from the inside and forged by the desire to create personal change, dance has the profound power to heal the body, psyche and soul.
Presence and self-discovery
Dance is a voyage of self-discovery and it keeps us present, much like meditation. It’s an art form that can be enjoyed by all without any previous experience or formal training.
Dance helps us discover and explore our inner selves and emotional well-being. In a UCLA study on conscious dance, for example, 95% of the participants reported feeling more in touch with their emotions. Through dance, we can identify things we might not see clearly in our daily lives, and we can experiment by trying things differently.
5Rhythms is called a meditative dance practice because when we put our minds into our bodies, we are fully present. While our physical bodies are present 100% of the time, our minds can travel into the past or future or get locked in rumination. Not our bodies.
Our emotions without movement can ping pong, get stuck, and we can become a slave to our thoughts. Yet our bodies remain free.
Everything is energy
There is a hidden world, yet it’s all around us if we take the time to notice.
Feel it in the way the wind brushes past our faces on a spring night, or how the sun warms our skin as it shines through leaves. Hear it in the sound of raindrops, or in the gentle roar of a waterfall. See it in sunlight highlighting the delicate shape of dewdrops.
Central to 5Rhythms is the perspective that everything is energy, everything is rhythm. The more we learn to embody these different rhythms, the more available we are to be present and to meet ourselves and each other in life.
Dancing the 5Rhythms lets us tap into these energies via dance. It allows us to experience them more fully and deeply than we might otherwise. By tapping into the innate wisdom of the body through dance, greater joy, peace, and connection with ourselves and life’s infinite beauties is the result.
A human being is just that energy, waves, patterns, rhythms. Nothing more. Nothing less. A dance.
What does spontaneous dance look like?
It looks like people freely expressing themselves through movement in all its potential forms. Think of the dance floor as a laboratory, it’s an unrestricted, curious, and safe space to explore free, creative, and spontaneous movement.
5Rhythms offers us a broad pathway to movement meditation, but there are no formal steps to learn and no set constraints.
Instead, we move our bodies in ways that feel good and right for us, moment by moment. The dance gently guides our practice, with each of the five rhythms offering its own unique qualities and inviting various themes for us to explore through the body.
The five rhythms of 5Rhythms dance
- Flow is an inward energy, of the earth, of that which is circular. The gateway through the body is our feet.
- Staccato is percussive and energetic, it’s the rhythm of the exhale, of fire, of the angular. The gateway through the body is our hips.
- Chaos is cathartic aliveness, it’s explosive and releasing, the energy is downwards, free-form water, of that which is messy. The gateway through the body is our heads.
- Lyrical is an upwards energy, of the expansiveness of air. The gateway through the body is our hands.
- Stillness is all-encompassing. The energy is everywhere and nowhere, the liminal ether. When we dance stillness we explore mysteries beyond. The gateway through the body is through our breath.
Rhythm is our universal mother tongue. It's the language of the soul.
Each of the five rhythms allows us to enter different forms of relationship with ourselves and the worlds around us. When we let go of stories and judgments, we discover feelings and sensations beyond words.
When danced in sequence, the five rhythms form a Wave, one that peaks slowly and then ebbs, bringing us back from a trance-like state into ourselves and the world with a new perspective and felt-sense experience.
After dancing for more than 15 years, you taught me how to finally let my hips dance. I feel amazed! I always love it to go over my resistances!
5Rhythms Berlin is for all of life’s ecstatic dancers
5Rhythms classes are a safe and sacred space. Everyone is invited to experience life more fully through the transformative power of music and movement.
There is no right or wrong here, no leader or guide critiquing or correcting your movements, and 5Rhythms is open to everyone, whether you’ve spent life dancing or you’re taking your first steps.
X-dance and Samar Linn’s other 5Rhythms classes and workshops in Berlin are for everyone. You are invited to come as you are.
Join the dance
5Rhythms is an invitation, you are the dance
I can express myself in Samar's class in a way that surprises me, energizes me, and gives me more self-esteem.
About Samar, your 5Rhythms guide
Samar is a certified 5Rhythms® teacher who runs regular 5Rhythms classes and workshops in Berlin. She is also a counselor who offers online and in-person sessions, all with a focus on integrative counseling and somatic bodywork practices as a catalyst for lasting change.
Her work includes various workshops and classes that help people discover themselves, build confidence, and learn how to embrace the magic that’s to be found in day-to-day life. A life-long lover of both music and freedom of expression, Samar is particularly interested in how music and movement can support people to express themselves.
5Rhythms Berlin FAQs
An integrative meditation and dance practice that was founded by Gabrielle Roth in the late 1960s. It’s a map, a universal set of five rhythms that can be used by anyone at any time, anywhere.
In addition to its physical benefits, 5Rhythms dance is a deep spiritual practice that helps participants understand their relationship with themselves, other people, nature, and any higher powers they believe in.
Chaos rhythm is one of the five rhythms in the 5Rhythms framework first developed by Gabrielle Roth and practised by people all over the world. The rhythms, in order, are flowing, staccato, chaos, lyrical, and stillness.
For many people who dance 5Rhythms, chaos is a crescendo of sorts. Following the serene flow rhythm and the more energetic staccato rhythm, chaos is lively and offers a chance for cathartic release.
Depending on the individual dancer, chaos may be wild and physically demanding with large and expressive movements that follow the driving rhythm. Or it may involve smaller, rapid movements. It doesn’t matter what form the movements take during chaos rhythm, it’s about letting go and releasing from whatever is holding us back.
It’s the final rhythm in the 5Rhythms dance framework, following flowing, staccato, chaos, and lyrical.
As the music slows down in stillness, you are invited to finish your wave with whatever energy is still moving through you. Stillness invites movement and pauses, an opportunity to integrate everything we experienced during the wave.
The stillness rhythm can be likened to the Shavasana in a yoga practice, as an integration to the entire practice, albeit carried out with gentle movement; it’s a time to rest, recuperate, and reflect as the practice concludes.
Yes, dancing is excellent for both physical and mental health. There are many benefits to dance including improved flexibility, balance, strength, and coordination, as well as improved circulation and respiration.
It also increases confidence, body awareness, and self-esteem. Dancing promotes creativity and relaxation, helps relieve stress, improves mood and reduces anxiety, and increases our energy levels.
An ever-growing bank of peer-reviewed research shows that creative arts therapies, including dance movement practices, provide numerous benefits across varied health and well-being circumstances, be they physical or cognitive. Little wonder dance has been used to promote well-being for thousands of years.
Not quite. 5Rhythms and ecstatic dance are two separate practices, although there are some similarities between the two. Ecstatic dance is a broad term encompassing any form of dance or body movement in which the dancers do not follow formal steps and seek a sort of abandon in the music.
5Rhythms, while unstructured and there are no set ‘steps’, does involve a framework of five distinct rhythms. When combined one after the other, these rhythms form what’s called a Wave.
Like ecstatic dance, dancing 5Rhythms offers a way for people to step outside the mind and focus wholly on the body. In this regard, the two practices are related.
They differ in that 5Rhythms is designed to help dancers tap into any feelings and energy states through the different rhythms and is considered a philosophy, as much as a meditation and healing art form. More broadly, 5Rhythms has its theoretical roots in a range of practices and belief systems including shamanism, transpersonal psychology, and Gestalt therapy.
We don’t currently offer online classes or workshops. One of the most beautiful things about dancing 5Rhythms is the sense of community, of kindred spirits joining together in the same space yet being and moving independently.
When dancing 5Rhythms in a class, we are on a voyage of discovery, one that’s aided by common camaraderie.