Gabrielle Roth, the founder of the 5Rhythms® was born in 1941 and died in 2012. She was passionate about dance, movement, and the liberation from the ego, in order to let our creative self unfold, and let it shine in all of its glory. She inspired countless numbers of us and many people gathered around her. She had a great charisma, a lot of humour and yet still remained very approachable. She brought people back into movement, through her workshops, books, music and theater. Together with her son, Jonathan, she chose to spread this movement practice world-wide, by training teachers. In all these ways she left an immeasurably rich legacy behind for humanity.
It’s very hard for me to put words to how I (Nancy) experienced Gabrielle. I’m really full of gratitude that I knew her as a person and experienced her as a teacher - and a teaching - in a lot of workshops. She had an unending and contagious passion for the freeing up of the soul and the person by their own movement, one dance at a time, one breath at a time. One of the most important gifts which she gave me was an experience of being totally accepted, unqualified permission to be myself. Also, what I really loved about her was her humour (including an ability to laugh at herself) which softened things inside me, helping to open doors in me. In fact, the essence of my experience of her was that she was an opener of doors in people, which they might not even have realised were there beforehand.
I (Edo) was first seduced by her books at the end of 2003 and then, at the start of 2004, within a month, by participating a workshop in Antwerp with an international 5Rhythms® teacher. This was immediately followed by many classes and additional workshops in Flanders, the Sinai, and, at the end of that year, a workshop with Gabrielle herself, in England. After that, I attended many workshops with her, in Europe and in the US, and finally, the Teacher Training. She struck me with her enquiring mind, her incredible intuition, her open-mindedness, her groundedness in reality, her quest for (the sometimes uncomfortable) truth, and her compassion. I am forever filled with gratitude for her, because she attracted many people around her, and one of them was my life partner (Nancy), whom I found on the path of the 5Rhythms®.