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For the past six Januarys, Delilah's Visionary Bellydance Retreat
has been held on the island of Maui. Each year's retreat has been a
unique 10-day-long, adventurous and intensive bellydance study
program. Each year's retreat seeks to unite and explore the creative
relationship between the music, the dance, our lives and nature. The
theme for this retreat was Celebrate Life! This was a rather unique
performance adventure undertaken in January 1996
In 1995 Steve and I discovered a location on Maui that looked
like a set for the book/movie Clan of the Cave Bear. It wasn't
exactly what one pictures automatically on the island of Maui. It
was a place of coastal cliffs, rocks, tide pools and caves, barren of
vegetation. The locals called it the Birthing Pools and the folklore
about the place took two different turns. The first story we heard
was that a long time ago native women came and birthed their
babies in the brackish tide pool sanctuaries there. I could not find
any information to verify this from my friend Nona Kaluiokalani,
whose Hawaiian family line of royal cantors is very connected with
their native heritage. From my intuitive point of view after two
natural childbirth experiences, I could see how the pools might offer
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some sort of therapeutic comfort, under the right weather condi-
tions. The rise and fall of the surf in the deeper bay beside the
higher tide pool area was rhythmic and powerfully hypnotic. The
huge volume of the water undulated like the belly of a mighty
bellydancer or yogini.
There is a popular birthing process nowadays where women quite
literally give birth under water. I know a few of these mothers and
offspring who opted for this method. The water offers a warm and
soothing transition into this world. But is there more to it? Could it
be connected to our cellular memory of our distant past?
Eilene Morgan, in her fascinating book The Descent of Woman,
postulates that there quite possibly was a time in human experience
when human beings lived mostly in the water: aquatic ape-man and
women. One primary piece of evidence is the characteristic pattern
in which our body hair grows or has been washed away. The
elephant, hippopotamus, pig and rhinoceros all have woollier close
relatives. The theory states that they lived in land-based environ-
ments and were forced to change to primarily water-based habitat,
causing the loss of hair and increase in size. This most likely took
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