On the day I sat in on Professor Robert Weiner’s REL 1.13, “Sacred Movement” class, he lectured about his research on Chaco Canyon — a complex center of Indigenous pre-colonial ruins located in northwestern New Mexico.
According to Weiner, the massive ceremonial roadways of Chaco Canyon, “connected to special places in the landscape,” including mountains, springs and celestial pathways. These roads, he explained, were not ordinary walkways but symbols of “a special type of movement, not just casual walking.”
This idea — that movement itself can be sacred — sits at the heart of REL 1.13, a new course taught this term by Weiner, a postdoctoral fellow in the religion department. According to him, the central question of the class is “What does it mean for movement to be sacred and how does that play out in different religious traditions?”
“Some of the key examples are pilgrimages, processions, dancing, traditions of sacred running … other weeks focused on sacred stillness, or marathon monks in Japan,” Weiner said.
Julia Lin ’25 was drawn to “Sacred Movement” partly because of her own curiosity about religion.
“I didn’t really grow up religious, and I [felt] like I [didn’t] have much knowledge about why people are religious,” Lin said. “I was interested in the movement aspect, incorporating that into our lives — I feel like it is super impactful.”
According to Lin, the class has studied a variety of rituals — from firewalking ceremonies in the Pacific Islands to the Camino de Santiago pilgrimage in Spain. Some of its most impactful lessons come from experiential learning days, including a “class procession” around campus, Lin explained.
“We had drums, people were playing recorders, so we actually got to experience the stuff we are learning,” Lin said. “It felt kind of silly in the beginning, [when] we could talk freely … but there was a point where we [stopped] talking, and at that point it felt like we were doing something sacred.”
The class procession culminated with a feast on the Green, with passerby turning to watch the group gather in a circle.
“It was almost an eerie feeling with every face turned toward [us],” Lin said. “We just sat in a circle and ate. I felt like we kind of bonded as a class.”
Maddy Stewart ’25 enrolled in “Sacred Movement” specifically for “interactive” experiences like the one Lin described and “really liked” the experiential learning days, including a silent meditation with the visiting Plum Village Monks.
“That’s kind of the reason I signed up for the class, under the assumption that we’d have some chance to try these things out,” she said. “It’s kind of nice to take a break from lecturing.”
Beyond providing a chance to get outside the classroom, the shared experience of these rituals has brought the class together, according to Stewart.
“I feel like during the experiential labs, you saw everyone’s faces more because you weren’t sitting in a classroom,” she said. “There is sort of that sense of community that comes with doing these things together.”
For Weiner, these days outside the classroom provide an important opportunity for students to understand sacred rituals of movement “at a deeper level, while we engage in embodied learning.”
“We have four experiential labs … to underscore the fact that learning is not just something we do sitting still while reading, or in lecture,” Weiner said. Future experiential learning days include a Qigong practice, or traditional Chinese meditation, and a study of an exhibit at the Hood Museum.
Students are encouraged to reflect on their takeaways from experiential practices. According to Weiner, the assignment represents “a few minutes to think, ‘What was that like? How did it differ from reading it or learning about it in lecture?’”
“We had a reading about walking meditation, and a lot of people wrote about how it is peaceful and idyllic,” Weiner said. “But actually walking that slowly and being very present with our minds and our thoughts is radically different than just reading about it.”
For their final project, students in “Sacred Movement” will have the choice of a traditional research paper or a creative project which, according to Weiner, encourages them to relate the themes of the course “to their individual interests and passions.” Stewart, for example, plans to perform a dance related to her involvement in the Alaska Native Cultural Committee.
“I’m involved with the Alaska Native group, and we’re performing at Powwow, so I feel that would be rewarding for me,” she said.
Heading towards the end of spring term, the class also takes on special significance for the seniors preparing to graduate, many of whom are enrolled in the class, according to Weiner.
“Many of the seniors are about to embark on the sacred ritual tradition [of graduation], finding their own sacred movement,” he said. “We are constantly moving at Dartmouth, [so I ask students], what is the sacred goal towards which you are striving? Maybe it’s economic success, or deep intellectual fulfillment — there is so much symbolism of life itself.”
Lin added that the class has proven valuable not only in learning about new forms of sacred movement but in reevaluating the sanctity of “so many things in everyday life.”
“It’s interesting to learn about the concepts of what is sacred and what is a ritual — a lot of people have daily rituals that they do even if it is not officially part of a religion,” Lin said. “The things that I do on a daily basis could be sacred to me.”
Ultimately, Weiner hopes for all students to investigate what it means for movement to be sacred, helping them “to engage in these practices in ways that are within an appropriate context.”
“It’s to expose people both intellectually and through a little experience to understand something about humanity, but also perhaps find something helpful and change how they live,” Weiner said. “I’m encouraging students to think about aspects of their lives that can be understood through the principles of ritual movement.”
