Recently I attended a belly dance show where, for a solid ninety minutes, I saw some exciting and fascinating performances of traditional Belly Dance.

Although one’s general perception of belly dance may well be from such angles as eroticism and mere entertainment what I was seeing here was something far deeper than that. Perhaps I was reading too much into this, but what I was seeing with my martial mind was ways by which the belly dancer can monitor, enjoy and benefit from energy creation and energy release.

In much the same way as some Kung Fu practitioners wear iron rings on their forearms in order to gain  energy development and energy release I was seeing here, by way of the belly dancer’s ‘noise belts’ (as they tend to call them), the very same result. These ‘noise belts’ are pieces of fabric that hang off the dancer’s waist and into which are sewn round coin-like discs that make a pleasant and almost hypnotic sound as the dancers move elegantly around the floor. Indeed, this hypnotic state (or ‘extended focus’ state) may well be another reason for the wearing of these noise belts. Read More→