Nidhi speaks about her book project: Sing your Shadow, Dance your Demons
I appreciate the set-up of the digital world so much because I am able to reconnect with so many friends from our times of living communally at the ashram, in Rajneeshpuram, and worldwide centers. A while back I saw a photo of the mala shop in Pune 1 where Nidhi was featured among the entire group and felt to connect; one thing led to the next, and we recently managed to speak on Skype.
Danish-born Nidhi and her beloved Sangeet have been living in Marin County, California, for the last sixteen years. It is important for both of them to have a solid base, a nest so to speak, and Nidhi said their life is a quiet one, which doesn’t mean it is not intense! They are involved with their artist community and an inquiry group and also love to connect occasionally with the many sannyasins in the area, Marin County being one of more intensely sannyas-populated hotspots on the planet, along with Byron Bay, Fremantle, Berlin, Cologne, Munich and Tuscany to name a few.
While Sangeet – remembered well as one of the dashing peace force members and Rajneeshpuram’s Fire Chief – enjoys his work in his woodshop in San Rafael which he shares with Pravasi ,whose specialty is interior finish (we will show off their creativity in a separate post), Nidhi is in the process of writing a book which is entitled Sing your Shadow, Dance your Demons: Creative Expression as Healing and Spiritual Path; it is based on her personal experiences:
“I am not writing it, it is writing me,” she exclaimed. In the book she openly shares her life memories and how her journey has weaved its way from studying Jungian therapy to graduating from Theater Academy to being an actress on stage, film and TV until leaving for India and Osho in 1977; moving on, she is now sharing with others by teaching what she has gathered and learned.
She told me that her life had a difficult beginning and she was close to death three times as a tiny tot. Living in an orphanage at a very tender age made her focus strongly on feeling safe. “As a child I felt very much being out of my body, I felt I wasn’t really existing; and this became an incentive to become alive! Creativity and expression has been my way to connect with myself again, with my body and impulses…my heart…to let the different parts of me have a voice, meeting the wilderness that exists between my head and my feet, and touch spaces of presence and availability so something bigger than I was able to move through…
“I find expressing authentically through our entire system is a powerful meditation. In essence it is something that has been known intrinsically as an ingrained part of life through the ages, processing and honoring birth, death, fertility, harvest, marriage – often connected to heightened states through rituals and rites, dances in temples…but deeply rooted in cellular life, reaching to bridge the worlds of God and Man.”
“As a part of the teaching and healing work I am doing here in Marin, I have for the last fifteen years been very involved with singing and particularly in using song to reach and express deeper layers of being. It involves a lot of exploration through improvising with the voice, creating through song and energetic sound expression on the spot, and it is a very potent way to inquire into who we are and what we feel in the moment. I love what can happen when we feel free and safe enough to just let out what’s inside – and use it artistically. Or…if we are afraid, to let that state live and sing as well.
“You can start out with a sigh or a gruff, or a growl if that’s where you’re at, stomping your feet…and before you know it, if you let each step have its say the energy is carrying you through your inner landscape, revealing vistas you might not have seen or known – and often you are finally delivered to some beautiful spot; your tones are clear, voice is open, an inner connection has solidified. You have learned something about yourself and become more accessible – and maybe even created a song!
“And to witness people doing this is enthralling and spell binding – because they are embodying their truth in the moment – it’s alive.
“As a performer I have done several concerts here in Marin playing with improvisation as well as singing standards that touch me, and weaving it all together with sharing and poetry, including my own songs and writings. It’s a dance of really having to be present and okay with being seen just as I am. For me it’s all part of learning how to welcome and love all of Nidhi…and ultimately loving our humanness in all its revelations.
“And now this book is happening!
“The process of writing is amazing for me! When I am really cooking on a subject or chapter I often wake up in the middle of the night and have to write out long paragraphs as they come pouring in. And I don’t go anywhere without my little notebook! So many aspects of my life and work are crystallizing through writing about them and bringing them into form. I see and understand connections in my journey I wasn’t aware of – and it feels incredibly powerful to be able to speak and say what’s in my heart, extremely freeing and sometimes also scary – as if there would be consequences or repercussions. So, as the writing is happening, the creative process with all its trimmings continues – of course!
“The unfolding never stops…Heaven is all the way to Heaven…
“And then at times…what comes through carried by the words is profoundly moving to me as if my own writing is speaking to me, touching and healing me. So beautiful.”
Nidhi is happy to reconnect with old friends, so write that e-mail already!
nidhi@creativexpression.info – creativexpression.info
Bhagawati for Osho News
Comments are closed.