May Day Weekend Immersion – John Friend & Desi Springer — Indianapolis, IN
Through Bowspring practice, we align the body and nervous system with the rhythms of Nature, cultivating radiant strength, elastic resilience, and embodied vitality.
Through this immersion, we explore how to welcome increasing life-force with clarity, resilience, and embodied vitality, allowing expansion without strain, excess, or collapse as we step fully into the bright half of the year.
Venue: Dance Works Indy 537 E Ohio St Suite 100, Indianapolis, IN 46204
Friday – May 1: 6:30 – 8:30 pm ET
Saturday – May 2: 10:00-Noon; 2:00-4:00 pm ET
Sunday – May 3: 10:00-Noon; 2:00-4:00 pm ET
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Friday evening – May 1 — Igniting the Bonfire of Life
This is the time of upward ignition. Life is no longer sprouting — it is surging. Sap rises, blood quickens, desire awakens. The body-mind wants to expand, express, and connect. In this first class of the weekend workshop, we will focus on Radiant Heart in its expression of rising up and out through the Central Channel in a variety of Level 1 Bowspring poses.
Saturday am – May 2 — Dancing around the May Pole
The Maypole represents the body’s Central Channel and spine, connecting Earth and Sky. It is around the Central Channel that all the spirals in the appendages – legs and arms – harmonically intertwine.
This class will explore spirals in the body that are flowing in and out of the core of the body.
Saturday pm – May 2 — The Union of the Spirals
May Day is fundamentally about polarity in harmony. The practice of Bowspring is to create a sacred union of the feminine–masculine polarity within the body. The divine feminine energy is the receptive, magnetic, and inwardly spiraling, while the divine masculine energy is the actively expanding spirals out from the core. This class explores the balancing of these polar energies in a dynamic spiraling relationship. The postural focus will be both shoulder and hip openers using the dance of spirals in the body.
Sunday am – May 3 — Creative Emergence
From the union of polar forces arises a third power. This is an evolutionary expression of the harmony between contrary complements, like the lengthening of the Central Channel emerges from the dynamic relationship of rooting and rising. In this class we will play with creating tensegrity – a lightness and springy primal power that emerges from the balancing of spirals through the body.
Sunday pm – May 3 — Celebration of Beauty
The culmination of May Day is a celebration of Beauty found in the heart of each person and in the artistic expression of harmonic relationship of polar opposites. The focus of this class will creating beautiful wavy form, coherent movement, and outwardly inspiring radiance through a well-balanced Bowspring practice.
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A Zoom link will be sent the day before the classes, as well as in the morning the day of the classes.
Registration closes 30 minutes before the start of the first class on May 1st.
A video for each class will be sent out to registrants the following day, and at the end of the Course, registrants will receive access to all 5 videos on Bowspring.com under their personal account.
Indianapolis, IN — May 1-3, 2026 – May Day weekend Immersion – Desi Springer & John Friend
Price range: $30.00 through $250.00
In many earth-based traditions, May Day marks a cross-quarter threshold – between the Spring Equinox (March 21) and the Summer Solstice (June 21) – known as Beltane — the energetic beginning of Summer. It’s a time when light, warmth, and vitality rise, moving from potential into outer expression throughout the northern hemisphere of the Earth. Rather than static balance, this season is about the momentum of life in its growth and rejuvenation.
In Bowspring, we align with the rhythms of Nature, seeking to expand the life force within us, particularly to lengthen and open through a central channel between the floor of the pelvis and the top of the head. In the core of our mind-body field is the Central Channel — the axis between the polar opposites of the head and the tail. This central line functions like the Maypole, around which spiral patterns of connective tissue organize movement and breath. These spirals reflect the dance of complementary polar forces—often symbolized as the divine masculine and divine feminine—moving in harmonic relationship rather than opposition