Banafsheh and Tony are back leading a 1-day workshop in Los Angeles in February. Register for the whole day to receive the full transmission or join only the morning or afternoon session.
The extreme times we live in demand that we be PRESENT, PASSIONATELY ALIVE, PEACEFUL, and stand in and for what we believe in. The time is NOW to surrender to the power of love and dance to liberate your body and experience the living fiery passion in your heart that can initiate you into being a true human being. Dance in community with others to align your body, heart, and mind with your purpose for being alive. Immerse yourself in Banafsheh’s transformational fusion of rigorous and healing dance with embodied spirituality set to Tony’s mesmerizing music from the Middle East and around the globe.
Suitable for people with some background in movement or dance, trained dancers, yoga and other movement practitioners.
Morning Session 11am – 1:30pm Mixed levels
Session includes mixed level guided and free-style dance, meditation
Afternoon Session 2:30 – 5pm
Intermediate level
Session includes intermediate level guided and free-style dance, Sama (whirling), Zikr (chanting), meditationExperience the profound movement meditation of Sama (whirling) as a way to surrender, listen for guidance from your soul and uncover and nourish your passion and purpose.
Limited space. Please register early to secure your spot.
Address will be provided after you register.
Session times and arrival
Please arrive 15-20 minutes earlier than session time to find the location, park and get ready for our session.
Attire Comfortable clothing suitable for movement that feel you beautiful in.
Make sure to have layers as the weather is unpredictable.
Soft-soled dance shoes or socks to dance in.
What to bring
If you are staying for both sessions, please bring a light snack with you for lunch that doesn’t require warming and a water bottle. There will be drinking water on site.
Preparation
If you’re only coming to the afternoon session only, please don’t eat a heavy meal within 1 hour prior to session.
Local wifi and phone signal The signal is very weak around this location, so please make sure you have looked up the address, the directions and photos before you head out, and please email or call (747) 998-8039 with any questions from now till 9am on the 16th.
To Register:
$55 for each session $100 for full day (use coupon code ONENESS upon checkout to receive $10 off when you sign up for both sessions)
Purchase a ticket. Scroll down until you see “tickets”
My experience was subtle and deep. The magic of the dance was the medicine, but the medicine was activated and potentiated by the graceful, whole hearted presence of Banafsheh. All at once she is warmly nurturing and absolutely clear in her power and devotion to the Beloved in herself and every dancer in the room.
– Melissa Nobels
Banafsheh is the ambassador of peace, love, and oneness. She is also a healer who reconnects body and soul.
– Farzaneh Aryaee
Workshop with Banafsheh, Andrew Harvey, Jim Garrison and special guest Calen Rayne
5-day Workshop – December 13-18 Weekend Only – December 13-15
Friday at 7:30pm – Wednesday at 11:45am followed by lunch 12-1pm Menla Mountain Retreat Center, Phoenicia, NY (Catskills)
*Contact Amber at Menla Registration for rates: (845) 688-6897 EXT 101 or Email
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
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
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
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
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
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
Banafsheh’s dance is a manifestation of Beauty, a taste of the divine through all the senses…both unearthly magic and a full incarnation of what only human beings can do – to speak of the Beloved in entirely new creative ways in each moment.
Jane Garland, MD, Audience, Canada
What people say …
"I am so inspired by this beautiful practice - what it does for the female collective and the healing of the feminine as well as a deep embodiment of the god force that it helps me tap into. Banafsheh embodies both the wild & the deep."
Cat Wilson, Student, Canada
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