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 | Sep 14, 2019 |
Tender yet fierce ecstatic dance and music performance followed by a free-style dance celebration
Dancer Banafsheh & musicians Tony Khalife & guests
Saturday, September 14
8:00 – 9:30 pm
Stowel Lake Farm
Salt Spring Island, B.C.
Tickets: $15
Contact: (250) 709-1921 or info@shaunadevlin.net
All are welcome in this circle of love
Come, unleash your wild devotional dance and voice!
 |
Tony Khalife, is a Lebanese born singer, songwriter and multi-instrumentalist based in Ojai. He creates a seamless flow in which the ragas of Indian music flow into Western harmonies, and devotional Sufi dances merge with9 the different accents of Tony’s musical mastery – Indian, Middle-Eastern, flamenco and rock’ n’ roll, all conspiring into a whirling tapestry of time signatures. tonykhalife.com |
by Banafsheh | Sep 13, 2019 |
with Banafsheh and Tony Khalife
7-day Intensive: September 13-20, 2019
Weekend only: September 13-15, 2019
The entire universe belongs to the dancer. If you don’t dance, you won’t know what will come to pass.
-Jesus
Dance invites us to take up space in the world with confidence, conviction and service. It’s exhilarating, joyous, sacred, sensual, transformative, communal, and disruptive. Dance makes us whole and brings us into rhythm with others. Though resilient, adaptable, and flexible, dance also breaks the rules. In dance, polarities unite and birth art. Dance is universal. Dance is freedom. Dance is the hope for our humanity if we accept the invitation to dance our lives.
Experience Banafsheh’s transformational teaching in a fusion of passionate yet peaceful dance to embody Spirit. Explore the secrets of dance technique and philosophy as a conscious vehicle to come in touch with who we TRULY are and can offer in this time of infinite potential and need. Discover how dance and movement can shift, influence and shape consciousness and the environment.
From high-powered guided, and free-style dance to the deep serenity of whirling, and vocal training, take a journey in your inner terrain with Tony Khalife’s blend of Middle Eastern and Indian trance music. Feel your fullest presence in the Here and Now with movement and voice work, luscious and devotion that bring you in touch with your core – peaceful, centered, strong, vibrant, open, free, and in community with others.
7-day Intensive is intermediate level
Weekend Only is open to all/mixed levels
50 hrs towards the 200/400-hr Dance of Oneness® Certification Program
TO REGISTER:
Click here to register
Prices start at $1,588 CAD
Early Bird rates available until May 1, 2019
Contact Shauna Devlin for more information.
Explore the Path of the Dancer
Learn more about the Intensive – including what to bring!
Preparing for a Dance of Oneness® Workshop
More Resources
Dance of Oneness®: Curriculum
Recommended Reading List
By the end of the workshop, I was present in every cell and I enjoyed being a fluid body. I have been in all sorts of classes but in no class whatsoever was there the opportunity to express oneself. To move as one is called to, as one feels like and to explore deeper and deeper one’s own body language and what it says. This workshop allows that.
Gida Hussami, workshop participant, Schweibenalp, Switzerland
The sessions with Banafsheh activate a yummy vibration in my power chakra, the womb space, which feels delicious and self-nurturing. I felt my Dantien grounded and activated as soon as I sat down next to Banafsheh in a sharing circle. Watching Banafsheh perform I feel the ecstasy of her dance physically in my body. Banafsheh’s teaching that I practice regularly take me out of a emotionally dark space into a delicious, blissful connection with myself in my body.
Her teaching is vital to my recovery from “corporate exhaustion. Since finding this amazing spiritual teacher at the beginning of the year, I have dedicated myself seriously to this study.
Tony Khalife was such a powerful addition to Banafsheh’s teaching. His music supported and elevated the experience of her teaching skillfully and magically. Tony led us in vocalizations that gave me a completely new experience of my voice resonating in my body, not squeezed in my throat, even when going up with the tone.
Susanne Bowra, workshop participant, Multiversity, Santa Cruz, CA
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 | 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
