Joshua Tree seems to be made of scorched dirt and crispy greenery, all painted over with brushstrokes of bright light and stark shadow.

It’s my first time here.

Wavy brown hills. Desert vibes.

Compared to the mountains and the ocean, it feels like a blank canvas.

I’m here for an ecstatic dance retreat.

Ah, yes. What’s an ecstatic dance retreat?

I don’t have one simple answer for that, so here are several:
It’s something I do to help myself feel.
A “movement meditation,” is perhaps one way of looking at it.
A “sober dance party” is another.

Honestly, it’s one of many things I do that seems to resist concise explanation.
(Read: ayahuasca ceremonies and Burning. Man.)

One of those you-have-to-do-it-to-understand- it things.

(And, that’s not just to make it sound more mysterious, or exclusive or woo-woo.)

It’s because, when it comes to things like these, it’s not the thing, but your experience of it that constitutes the thing.

Unlike, say, a movie, right?

Because, like, the movie had a director that had a plan for how you would experience the movie. He wanted you to laugh, or maybe he wanted you to panic. And, yeah, ok, you and I may each end up having our own opinions on how the move came out, but the movie was experienced by each of us within the same bandwidth of potential experience.
Unless, of course, one of us was on ayahuasca while watching it.

Then, all bets are off.

Because, just like an ecstatic dance retreat, ayahuasca ceremonies are only the gateway to the main event. The real experience is what happens inside of you, in the very real place that isn’t the man-made world, isn’t the societal conditioning, isn’t the illusion.

It’s the inner ether, untouched by whatever happened to us out there, and—usually only entered on occasion, and by accident. Or on purpose, if you know where the trap doors are.
One such trap door being, ecstatic dance sessions.

Also, Burning Man and Ayahuasca ceremonies, like I said.

But, there are others, and they are no secret. They are available to all. They are things like meditation, walking, journaling, yoga, therapy and breathing deeply. And, they seem like cliches, don’t they? So much so that the idea of them actually providing any kind of meaningful experience seems, null, no?

Like really? The meditator meditates herself into the vastness of her inner world where she encounters the truth of her own existence?
Yes, really.
And, the journaler journals her way there, and the yogi does a series of postures in such a way that she begins to move in perfect synchronization with her breath and suddenly she is one with her inner being, and free—for those moments—from the outside experience that seems, so convincingly, to be directed by someone else. Like a movie.
Yes, really.

So, the question about the ecstatic dance retreat isn’t “what do you do there?”
(We dance.)
Just like at the ayahuasca ceremony—we drink ayahuasca.
The real question—the important question—is, where does it take us?
And the answer…
is home.