5Rhythms Movement Practice With Simona
Welcome! I am a 2026 5Rhythms® Teacher-in-Training, mentored by Ajay Rajani and Nikki Ashley.
For me, this practice is an invitation to come into relationship with our present moment aliveness, to move and be moved by it as it unfolds in waves. I welcome you into an exploration of how we are changed when we give ourselves to body, breath, pulse, and rhythm.
What is 5Rhythms® Practice?
What is 5Rhythms® Practice?
5Rhythms® is a movement meditation practice, a way of meeting life as it is, through the body.
It offers a map, but not a choreography. There is nothing to get right, no way you should look, no pace you need to keep. We move with what is here. Sensation, emotion, energy, thought, all of it is welcome into the dance.
Through rhythm, repetition, and awareness, the body becomes a place where experience can move, shift, and reorganize. What has been held can begin to flow, what has been avoided can be met, and what feels fixed can soften.
Over time, the practice becomes a way of living, a way of listening and responding to life with more presence, more honesty, and more capacity to stay in relationship with what is here.
THE 5Rhythms®
THE 5Rhythms®
The 5Rhythms are a wave, a cycle reflected in the patterns of nature, breath, and the aliveness moving through and around us. Each rhythm holds a different quality, a different expression, and together they form a full spectrum of experience, revealing itself uniquely in each body.
Flowing — Earth
Fluid - Free the body - Receptive - Let it in
With continuous, circular, spiralling movement, we find our flow. Through our feet, we connect to the earth and our capacity to be grounded and receptive. With the inhale, we let life in. We soften into fluidity.
Staccato — Fire
Direct - Express the heart - Focused - Let it out
With clear, defined movement, we embody Staccato. Through the hips, we express the fire of our desire for life. With percussive exhalations, we let life move out. We move with purpose, reaching into connection from the heart.
Chaos — Water
Free - Empty the mind - Surrender - Let it go
Breaking free from form, we surrender to the energy moving through us. Letting go of control, the rhythm dissolves resistance and empties us out. Unplanned and unpredictable, we open to dynamic, creative spontaneity.
Lyrical — Air
Light - Awaken the soul - Effortless - Let it transform
After the release of Chaos, we rise into Lyrical. Movement becomes light, expansive, and effortless. New possibilities emerge. We open to joy, to imagination, to the freedom of being moved.
Stillness — Ether
Empty - Embody the spirit - Spacious - Let it be
Turning toward the inner dance, we integrate and complete the wave. Awareness deepens into breath, into the subtle pauses between movements. Shapes arise and dissolve. We are danced. Stillness holds the quiet aliveness of all that has moved.
Thank you, Layah Jane, your words inspired these descriptions.
NOW OFFERING 5RHYTHMS EMERGING WAVES IN TORONTO
Emerging Waves in Toronto - Coming Soon!
Lineage and Gabrielle Roth
Movement and dance have always been part of human life, held within Indigenous cultures across the world as practices of healing, ritual, expression, and connection.
In the 1970s, Gabrielle Roth began to shape what would become 5Rhythms®, guided by a deep curiosity about the relationship between movement, psyche, and spirit. She saw that when we move what is held in the body, something begins to shift, reorganize, and come alive again.
Her work has grown into a worldwide practice, carried forward by teachers and communities who continue to explore the dance as a path of presence, expression, and transformation. I am grateful to be part of this lineage.
My home teacher, Layah Jane Singer-Wilson, was the first person I ever danced with in this practice, and is now a dear friend, colleague, and dancing sister. Her depth of commitment, integrity, and embodied creativity, along with her ability to set a room of hearts aflame, continues to shape and inspire my path. Forever grateful.
I have also been inspired and influenced by the teachings of Shauna Devlin, Anne Marie Hogya, Joanne Winstanley, Adam Barley and Michael Molin-Skelton.
And alongside all of this, the dance itself remains my primary teacher and guide, the rhythms, the waves, the mystery moving through the body, the larger dance we are part of, and continuously learning to listen to deeply and be shaped by.