by Banafsheh | Dec 13, 2019 |
5-day Workshop with Banafsheh, Andrew Harvey, Jim Garrison and special guest Calen Rayne
December 13 – 18, 2019
Friday at 7:30pm – Wednesday at 11:45am followed by lunch 12-1pm
Menla Mountain Retreat Center, Phoenicia, NY (Catskills)
Explore the intersection of Sufism, Tibetan Buddhism and quantum physics in the crucible of the Sama (whirling) to gain a deep experiential understanding of living in oneness and manifesting your dreams in service of the Greater, and by implanting new empowering beliefs and perceptions into your subconscious mind.
Whirling and chanting mantras take us into the quantum field where if we become empty of ourselves, we can open to the Greater to pour into us and through us, recreating us so we can become present, fully ALIVE, unchained creators. We can invite this energy that creates worlds and has created us in love, to heal and restore balance to the parts of us that need healing, and transmit healing to people, and to all creatures, conditions and environments in need.
Discover how the latest findings of quantum physics mirror the wisdom of the Sufis and the Tibetan Buddhists. Journey with us into laa makan, the placeless place, where the mantras Om Mani Padme Hum and La Ilaha il Allah beckon us to become no-thing in order to become one with the All. Our vehicle is the Sama, the grand yet simple spin that characterizes everything in our universe from distant galaxies to the minute cells in our body—the practice that made Rumi Rumi!
This workshop demystifies the Sama, offering access to the age-old practice of the legendary Sufi masters Rumi and Shams in a few simple steps. This method allows people of all experience levels to turn for a sustained period with ease. One enters the Sama, listening with the heart, generating theta and even gamma brain wave states, and pure ecstasy.
Banafsheh will guide you to prepare your chalice, your body, with grounding, centering and emptying techniques so you can experience the profound transformative and healing powers of whirling.
Andrew Harvey will recite the love poems of Rumi that flowered from Rumi as he whirled, and together with Banafsheh, who will recite the poetry in the original Persian, will lead the group into the depth of the mantra La illaha il Allah, and the history, symbolism and philosophy of the Sama as a complete spiritual path.
Dr. Jim Garrison will lead the group in understanding and experiencing the symmetry between the fourfold path of the Sama, the Tibetan mantra Om Mani Padme Hum and the mantra La illaha il Allah.
With Dr. Calen Rayne, we will walk and whirl in a labyrinth and explore the teachings and significance of the labyrinth and its deep resonance with whirling.
The workshop will come to a crescendo on December 17th with an evening celebration of Rumi’s Wedding Night or Shab-e Arus, his dying into union with the Beloved that invites all of us into living in union with the Beloved. Banafsheh and Andrew will perform dance and poetry from their work In the Fire of Grace with special guests followed by a group whirling ceremony.
Our days are a balance between movement, whirling, ritual, chantingSufi zikr and the Tibetan mantra Om Mani Padme Hum, teachings in Sufism, Buddhism and quantum physics, walking the labyrinth, exploring the gorgeous sacred land where Menla is located,and nurturing our bodies with delicious organic meals and healing body work.
Join us to experience the extent to which a group of us whirling can channel transformative blessings into the world to heal ourselves and the world.
All levels are welcome.
To Register:
Click here to register!
Prices start at $1,125.00
More information: 845-688-6897 x101 | Email
26 hrs towards Dance of Oneness® Certification Program
Learning Outcomes and Logistics
Learning Outcomes
Logistics
Preparing for a Dance of Oneness® Workshop
Faculty
Andrew Harvey, PhD (Honorary) is a poet, novelist, mystical scholar, lecturer in comparative religions, and one of the most celebrated translators of Rumi. He has taught at Oxford, Cornell, Hobart and Smith Colleges, California Institute of Integral Studies, and UCS. The honors he has received include the Benjamin Franklin Award, and the Mind Body Spirit Award, and the Christmas Humphries Award. He is the author and editor of over 40 books including: The Return of the Mother and Son of Man: The Mystical Path to Christ, Light Upon Light and The Direct Path. He is Founder and Director of the Institute of Sacred Activism, an international organization focused on inviting concerned people to take up the challenge of our contemporary global crises by becoming inspired, effective, and practical agents of institutional and systemic change, in order to create peace and sustainability. www.andrewharvey.net
Jim Garrison, PhD, is the President of Ubiquity University. He has been studying spiritual traditions since childhood as the son of missionaries to China and Taiwan where he was able to delve into Eastern spirituality, particularly Buddhism and Taoism. His double Masters degree in the History of Religion and Christology at Harvard University and his doctorate on a Jungian analysis of ancient Judeo-Christian apocalyptic literature at Cambridge University enabled him to study texts across the spectrum of Axial religions and wisdom traditions. He has written numerous books, including The Plutonium Culture, The Darkness of God: Theology after Hiroshima, The Russian Threat, Citizen Diplomats, Civilization and The Transformation of Power, and America as Empire. Jim teaches a range of courses at Ubiquity in philosophy, spirituality, history and global affairs, including the core courses The Great Books, Wisdom and Civilization, and The Liberal Arts at Ubiquity Chartres Academy. www.ubiquityuniversity.org
Calen Rayne, DMin, MFA, is a Unitarian Universalist Community Minister. His current focus is Institutional Energetics within Ubiquity University. He has an MFA in Writing and Poetics from Naropa University, and DMin from Wisdom University. Calen has studied with great masters of Zen and Tibetan Buddhism, Bon and pre-literate Bon masters, geomancers from both Celtic and Druid traditions, and with alchemists of various indigenous religions, including the first (nameless) religion of the Himalayas, known as “sacred conventions” or “patterns of heaven and earth.” He is trained in Feng Shui/Space Clearing, Egyptian Bio-geometry, and Sacred Geometry. Calen is a Master of Himalayan Singing bowls, a Veriditas Advanced-Certified Labyrinth Facilitator and a Reiki Master in four lineages. www.raynemaker.com
What students say:
We are learning embodied connection to our Divine nature. There have been remarkable shifts into peace for me. The preparation for “whirling” and connecting to our source energy was meticulous and thorough with great attention being given to precision and detail.
Jyoti Louise Bruun
This practice of oneness through dance with the Beloved that is so alive in the being of you, Banafsheh, has been a total joy! A truly transformational & healing journey deeper into the love within, into the Beloved. Thank you, for the gentleness & humbleness with which you teach. Thank you for touching my heart with such deep beauty and for the reminder that the love comes from within.
Niomi Starspires
More Resources
Dance of Oneness®: Curriculum
Recommended Reading List
by Banafsheh | Nov 24, 2019 |
5-day Workshop
With Tony Khalife and guest musicians
November 24-29
Esalen Institute
Big Sur, CA
“The whole universe is love’s endless dance.”
– Kabir
Please read slowly, and as you read come in touch with something you are grateful for. Allow the feeling of gratitude to expand inside of you, into every cell, until you feel your wings.
The energy of gratitude is both enlivening and soothing. Let this energy open you to the grace that can live in you and through you for the benefit of all. Gratitude and grace both stem from the Latin root of gratus. Gratitude is about appreciation and extending grace. Whatever you give, you actually fill yourself with. When you extend gratitude, you are filled with grace.
Whirling is the practice of ecstatic gratitude – when you feel genuine thankfulness with such resplendent intensity that you generate a surge of endorphins in your body and slip into a full-scale outbreak of euphoria. In the state of ecstatic gratitude, you are able to navigate harshness and negativity with grace.
Guided by the poetry of Sufi mystics Rumi, Rabia and Kabir, ground your soul and come home to your body with luscious awareness, and rediscover your heart as the seat of the infinite.
Open to all. Banafsheh and Tony will lead a nurturing weave of dance, whirling, chanting, live music, meditation and wisdom teachings.
To Register:
Click here to register!
Questions? Email
26 hrs towards Dance of Oneness® Certification Program
Preparing for a Dance of Oneness® Retreat
More Resources
Dance of Oneness®: Curriculum
Recommended Reading List
by Banafsheh | Aug 12, 2019 |
Week-long Intensive presented by Ubiquity Chartres Academy
August 12-19, 2019
Chartres, France
Join us at Chartres’ holiest time during the Feast of the Assumption of Mary and the adoration of the Black Madonna in procession out in the open for a time for a full immersion in the divine feminine and her union with the divine masculine through deep reflection, joyous celebration, ritual, walking the labyrinth, dance and singing.
This pilgrimage will center us deeply in the heart of Chartres. We will be there on the Feast of the Assumption of Mary (August 15) which honors the Church doctrine, enunciated by the Pope in 1950, that Mary was assumed directly into heaven upon her death and now presides as the Mother of God. Carl Jung believed that this doctrine elevating the feminine into the Godhead marked the most important development in Christian theology in the last 2000 years. This year’s Feast coincides with the full moon. A city that has reverenced the feminine for several thousand years honors the feminine in the deepest of ways. On the Day of the Assumption, the Black Madonna is carried through the streets before being placed in front of the statue of the Assumption of Mary. She is kept in the Choir for one week and then hidden away till the following year.
Parading the Black Madonna recalls the way the Druids in ancient times brought her out of the grotto underneath the granite promontory upon which the cathedral today stands. They honored Mother Earth and the cycles of the seasons through the Black Madonna. Being in Chartres at this one time of the year will both deepen our Memory of ancient rites and activate our souls to a greater reverence for the Mother of God.
It is within this sacred space that we will honor the divine feminine and contemplate how she can most powerfully be present with us today. She has many guises and appears as She wills. The aspect we will explore is new visions of the relationship between the divine feminine and divine masculine, so powerfully depicted in the north (Mary) and south (Christ) rose windows of the cathedral.
There is no issue challenging human society more than how we understand the relationship between the feminine and the masculine in the aftermath of 5,000 years of patriarchy. This mandates in turn a fundamental revisioning of the feminine and the masculine aspects of ourselves. Rising women with Rising men erotically, passionately, dynamically, synergistically and compassionately can powerfully shape the world to come.
There is nowhere this exploration is more appropriate than Chartres, the locus of sacred power of the feminine since time immemorial, and the cathedral that represents the union of the divine feminine and the divine masculine in full splendor.
Daily Program
Each day will include Sacred Practice, an opening Session, presentations on the Divine Feminine and Masculine, a sound bath, sacred dance, immersion in the Cathedral, and personal time for meditation and exploration. Women and men will meet separately and together during the course of our time together. We plan to have one private evening in the cathedral devoted to walking the labyrinth, accompanied by Gregorian chant, and another private evening in the crypt. We will spend time in the cathedral reflecting on the many aspects of Mary and communing with the Black Madonna.
Faculty: Anne Baring (virtually), Apela Colorado, Ruth Cunningham, Jim Garrison, Andrew Harvey, Banafsheh Sayyad.
Ubiquity Chartres Community Webinars – Join the faculty and participants in our monthly webinar on the second Sunday of every month for discussions on the topics included in the intensive. Register for the Webinars here. Watch past Webinars here.
TO REGISTER:
Click here to register!
More info: Email | 702-358-0551
36 hrs towards Dance of Oneness® Certification Program
Preparing for a Dance of Oneness® Retreat
More Resources
Dance of Oneness®: Curriculum
Recommended Reading List
by Banafsheh | Jul 7, 2019 |
Week-long Intensive presented by Ubiquity Chartres Academy
July 7-13, 2019
Chartres, France
Join an extraordinary confluence of thinkers, artists, movers and shakers to explore the influence of the heavenly bodies on our psyches and destinies in the context of the 7th liberal art of Astronomica. Step into a field of empowering grace through reflective time in the cathedral, shared dreams, ritual, walking the labyrinth, singing and dancing the patterns & rhythms of the cosmos.
In studying the seventh and highest of the liberal arts of Astronomica, begin to contemplate the entire cosmos as a divine work, designed to express beauty. Through astronomy, ascertain the laws which govern the heavenly bodies, and by which their motions are directed. Through astrology, investigate their archetypal characteristics and seek to discern their influence upon our psyche and destinies.
Dancing the Planets
In Astronomica, celebrate the spiritual relationship of the human being to the Cosmos and to the Earth through dance, awakening the soul to a conscious experience of the harmony of the spheres – an experience through which the divine origin of the human being becomes tangible. The dances create dynamic living mandalas as a flowering of the life forces, giving human form to the harmony of the planets and stars.
For the Chartrian Masters, the liberal arts were ultimately an artistic impulse, through which the highest appreciation of the sacred is expressed. Dancing the patterns and rhythms of the cosmos opened sacred communion with the world of the stars. The labyrinth no doubt emerged out of their cosmic contemplations. Led by Banafsheh Sayyad, whirl like the planets and stars, echoing that which from heaven streams down to human beings and animates us to becoming luminous reflections of love.
Daily Program
Each day will include Sacred Practice, Dreamwork, an opening symposium, a presentation on astrology, immersion in the Cathedral, and personal time for meditation and exploration. Dance the movements of the planets, and sing. We will have one private evening in the cathedral devoted to walking the labyrinth, accompanied by Gregorian chant, and another private evening in the crypt.
Faculty: Richard Tarnas, Apela Colorado, Ruth Cunningham, Jim Garrison, Andrew Harvey, Caroline Myss, Calen Rayne, Banafsheh Sayyad and Linda Tucker.
Ubiquity Chartres Community Webinars – Join the faculty and participants in our monthly webinar on the second Sunday of every month for discussions on the topics included in the intensive. Register for the Webinars here. Watch past Webinars here.
TO REGISTER:
Click here to register!
More info: Email | 702-358-0551
36 hrs towards Dance of Oneness® Certification Program
Preparing for a Dance of Oneness® Retreat
More Resources
Dance of Oneness®: Curriculum
Recommended Reading List
by Banafsheh | Jun 21, 2019 |
Weekend Workshop
Friday, 21 June – Sunday, 23 June, 2019
Waldhaus Centre Lützelflüh,
3432 Lützelflüh, Switzerland
Dance for the Sun that gives you life, and cultivate the energy of the Sun within. Embody and live your dreams, and create positive change in yourself and the world.
Loving kindness is the Sun within which makes us most ALIVE and vital. Affirm life like the Sun and generate ALIVENESS like the Sun in the world of darkness.
Learn to trust your deepest understanding and unleash your wild sweet nectar through sacred dance, whirling, poetry, and meditation. Gain transformative tools for living creatively in your day to day life and make true positive contribution to our world.
Mixed levels. Most appropriate for those with a background in dance, yoga or other movement modalities.
Click here to view the German translation.
TO REGISTER:
To register, email or call Nurgül Usluoglu
Email | +41 77- 412 82 93
10 hrs towards Dance of Oneness® Certification Program
Fees:
Tuition Early Bird rate until May 20 2019: Fr. 275.-,
After May 20: Fr. 300.-
Accommodations at Waldhaus: start at Fr. 230.-
Please arrange for your accommodations directly on www.waldhaus.ch
Preparing for a Dance of Oneness® Retreat
More Resources
Dance of Oneness®: Curriculum
Recommended Reading List
