Transforming the Human Spirit With DIANA TURNER-FORTE

Diana Turner-Forte is a Teaching Artist in Dance and Movement. She danced professionally in Canada, throughout the United States, and in Mexico City. After many years of nurturing and mentoring young people in the art of respect for their bodies, carrying themselves with elegance and confidence, and trusting their muses; Elder Diana currently directs her ballet teaching skills towards the 55+ population. With the focus less on precision, attention is directed more toward exploring the joy of movement, sustaining mental health, balancing inner and outer well-being, and cultivating healthy social interactions.

Pursuant to her lifelong commitment of experiencing the spirituality of the human form and practice in the healing arts, Diana envisions elderhood as a time to further process this asociation and potentially inspire holistic artistry. As a Dancer, Holistic Health Professional (HHP), Reiki Master Teacher and Practitioner (RMT), and Certified Chakra Healing Master (CCHM), her creative energies are leaning toward developing a template of movement, poetry, and self-healing techniques as a service to others.

For decades using writing as a cathartic introspective outlet for unveiling inner messages and discerning truth in current events, during elderhood, Diana is indulging in putting pen to paper to share with others. She has crafted two volumes of poetry, A Feather In the Wind and The Cosmic Pause and has been published in Kosmos Journal, The Franciscan Times, and Ariel Chart International Journal.

In 2014 following a nudge to fulfill a nearly 45-year quest to join a religious order, Diana became professed in the Third Order Society of St. Francis (TSSF). She admits the formation process itself was hellacious as well as intriguing and humbling, revealing a lot of her shadow-side. And she is discovering the ongoing discernment to be just as revelatory and heart-opening. For this, she is grateful and much more where she resides in North Carolina. .

PERSONAL REFLECTION on AGING: These days I find that I am living into mySelf a proclamation that I state with the deepest humility. And the humility is ignited with a spaciousness that is all-affirming, all-searching, and awe-inspiring. This sensation is both holy and wholly. I’m daring in ways that even a few months ago I would consider inconceivable. Tears and laughter come as they may and the essence of the consciousness is pure Beauty, Light, Forgiveness, and Love with a knowing that I’m held by some divine agency, a Presence. And yet, even with that Wisdom — like Hafiz, I need to remind myself why I was created.

Created for Joy

I sometimes forget

that I was created for Joy.

My mind is too busy

My Heart is too heavy

for me to remember

that I have been

called to dance

the Sacred dance of life.

I was created to smile

To love

To be lifted up

And to lift others up.

O Sacred One

Untangle my feet

from all that ensnares.

Free my soul,

That we might

Dance

and that our dancing

might be contagious.

— Hafiz

www.dianaturnerforte.com

https://dianaturnerforte.substack