9/22/24 Inner Sanctum: Dancemeditation with Dunya in Santa Fe

“Dancemeditation is to the body what dreaming is to the mind.” – Dunya McPherson

Sunday, September 22nd
1 – 3pm  
Tesuque Roundhouse
3 Ave De Melodia, Santa Fe, NM 87506

Sliding Scale Donation $25—$100

This beautiful body-based meditation work rooted in the Shattari Sufi lineage, regenerates, heals, connects, and transports us to embodied presence again, and again. Dancemeditation™ helps us trust ourselves. We move through the crust of harried surface worries and into our huge spiritual intelligence. Body speaks to us from the flow of our most Original self, freeing us from habitual patterns, and increasing our awareness of embodied present-ness. Wordless in the sea of beautiful music, with eyes open or closed, in the continual flow of breath awareness, we weave our inner and outer space and ignite our spiritual heart.

We turn away from the external and turn toward the internal, away from disembodiment and toward embodiment. We turn toward awareness of breathing and motion, toward the sensation of skin and bone and fascia into an intimacy with self & Self and the joyful mysteries within Presentness.

Dunya’s powerful teaching guides participants into their depths, their aliveness, their presence.

What We Will Do
The workshop begins with Dunya leading a period of relaxing, wordless instruction to focus participants attention followed by a few simple, rich moving meditations to sink down a couple of notches inside the self, touching Self. A generous time for participants to do their own exploratory intuitive movement digests and integrates meditative efforts, and flowers into Creative Unfolding. Always there is delicious rest.

We will focus on Sufi Slow Movement, Deep Dance, and Gentle Bellydance.

Please bring:
– a mat or blanket
– a veil if you have one (3 yard length of lightweight fabric)
– journal & pen

“I am in love with the journey…I’m learning something very deep, something words would never cover…” – K.

Dunya Dianne McPherson is a pioneer in the field of embodied mysticism and the founder of Dancemeditation™. She holds a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Dance from Juilliard and a Masters in Writing from Leslie University. She trained for two decades with Sufi Master Adnan Sarhan and did significant study in Middle Eastern Dance with Elena Lentini and Anahid Sofian, and in yoga with Shri Dharma Mittra. 

A critically acclaimed dancer and choreographer, Dunya Dianne McPherson has been described by Jennifer Dunning in the New York Times as “…a modern day Isadora Duncan…approaching Ruth St. Denis…a vibrant performer…an unusual and talented choreographer.” Carman Moore in the Village Voice called her, “…killer creative choreographer…”, and Elizabeth Zimmer in Dance Magazine, has said “…she evoked something essentially female, essentially powerful…the pure, solid dancing has never seemed so welcome…”

She was awarded a prestigious National Endowment for the Arts Choreography Fellowship, as well as commissions which include Lincoln Center Out-of-Doors, Dance Uptown, Barnard College, Victoria College of the Arts, Santa Fe Performing Arts Center, and she is the recipient of numerous grants including the CETA Artists Grant.
She has been a faculty member at Barnard College, NYU, and Montclair State University, and the Chair of the Modern Dance Department at Victoria College of the Arts, Melbourne, Australia. Artist-in-Residencies include Swarthmore, Hunter, Oberlin, Amherst, University of Texas, and Princeton University.

She has been a featured presenter at major healing arts centers including: Kripalu, The Contemplative Studies Institute at OSU, the Netherlands Mystik Festival, and for the late Claudio Naranjo’s Institutes in Mexico, South America, and Europe. She was a Featured Presenter at the global 2020 Embodiment Conference.

Dunya’s first book Skin of Glass: Finding Spirit in the Flesh, a memoir of her journey of dance and mysticism, is admired and beloved. She is a contributing author to several books on healing and spirituality. Her new guidebook and practice companion is  Sojourn the Inner Heaven: Movement Meditations for Awakening

“During tonight’s session, I noticed how much I lean into your presence and anchor, Dunya, to find the courage to be alone with myself, to venture into my inner world. If it weren’t for your commitment to this work, I would have missed out on knowing the depths of myself and feeling the intimacy of being present. I would have skimmed the surface of so many moments, afraid of the void, the pain, the vastness of everything. I feel I can trust the authenticity of your movements and your expressive soul. Because I know you are there, I dare to be here.” – G. M., psychotherapist

“The work transcends the therapeutic— it’s profoundly finding the self as part of the spiritual path.” – P.

“I was tickled…by ‘it all,’ the infinite in everything…Especially me & my experience.”  – J.

“These Dancemeditation sessions have meant so much to me.  I am deeply grateful to you for making them possible for us all to be together while going down deep.  It is hard to describe what I have been experiencing.  The work helps me access my heart body. Nurturing myself, feeling the softness of my animal self.” – S.

“The continuous flow took me deep within. I experienced myself from the inside out. Time stopped. It seemed like we had just begun when you said it was time to ‘rest.’ I actually checked my watch because I couldn’t fathom that so much time had passed.” — K.