August 2012

In this Issue 

 News and Update

 Elements of Mastery: 

Saced Space - 

The Dances as Worship 

by Farrunnissa Rosa

"Dancing the Path"

By Diana Lyon

Dances of Universal Peace International  

PO Box 55994,  

Seattle, WA 98155-0994 USA    (206) 367-0389

 Seattle Office

Director's Office

Community Coordinator 

This article continues our Elements of Mastery column in which we explore the art, craft and spiritual practice of Dance leading and mentoring. Mentors are invited to submit their reflections on this topic to the Guidance Council.

No dance is a Spiritual Dance because it is called that; it does not mean a certain form or technique, nor a ritual. What must remain is the sacred phrase; this, the sacred phrase, and not the form, is the foundation. - Samuel L. Lewis (Murshid Sufi Ahmed Murad Chishti)

What is the power of the Dances of Universal Peace?

What is the secret of their enduring appeal?

Why have they spread all over the world, continuing to spread even as we speak?

Ask a dozen Dancers, and you're likely to receive a dozen different answers. For some, it's the power of community, a precious chance to join together with others in a deep experience that is always new, even as it's always familiar. For others, the secret is the feeling-sense that can result-joy, peace, compassion, equanimity, ecstasy. Some will say they love to sing, or love to dance, or love the hugs. Others will say they don't know why they come; it's just something they must do, a call that must be answered.

For me, the power of the Dances lies in the shared, sustained, embodied Sacred Space created by sounding a sacred phrase with simple, heart-felt movement. I know of no other spiritual practice or artistic discipline that is based on these specific combined elements. Each time we join hands in Dance-worship, what can result has the power to transform, to heal, to unite us individually and as a group with All That Is, to bring us home to our true Self. Through the Dances, this power is accessible to virtually all human beings, regardless of age, background, capacity, or belief. This gives us as Dance leaders infinite opportunities to call forth this Sacred Space in myriad ways for countless participants, answering the need of humanity in our time, which is the core principle of the Sufi Message of Spiritual Liberty of Hazrat Pir-o-Murshid Inayat Khan.

Here we offer the heartfelt, personal reflections of a young Dance Leader on Dance leadership as a tool for individual development. Diana Lyon serves on the Sufi Ruhaniat International Board of Trustees, chairs its youth committee and attended the Riding the Wave gathering in Colombia in April, 2012.

I began dancing as a young child immersed in the Sufi Ruhaniat community of Northern California in the 1980s. My earliest memories of the Dances come as images, sensations, snippets: sitting with a friend on a cool cotton quilt looking at books while the "grown-ups" danced and prayed together; lying on a redwood bench, covered in my mother's shawl as music and voice carried me into sleep; the taste of almonds and dates mingled with the words, "My house shall be a house of prayer for all people!" I remember clearly the first time I joined in the Dance. An earnest 9-year-old, I faced my partner and sang out with unembarrassed joy, my bare feet firmly planted on the linoleum floor of the Sebastopol Methodist Church rec hall.

So when I began my journey with Dance leadership eight months ago I had the foundation of two decades of dancing to get me started. As I've practiced leading in Mexico, New York City, Massachusetts and Colombia most of what has arisen in my learning so far has been unsurprising: It's important to have a good handle on the music; how deeply I've incorporated a mantra into my personal practice has an effect on the transmission to the group; leading provides an opportunity to balance effacement in the practice with maintaining ego presence in offering guidance to the group. You know, beginner stuff.

What has been surprising, and very rich, is learning how much Dance leadership can be an aid in self-knowledge and unfolding on my path. Whoever brilliantly articulated the guidelines for leadership on the Dances of Universal Peace International website wrote:

The Dances are powerful vehicles of energy. When they pour through us they touch not only our highest realities, but also stir places still unlit and unresolved. Developing leaders understand this and acknowledge shadow potentials in order to work with unconscious projections that naturally arise.

We certainly should be aware of the capacity of the Dance to stir shadow elements in the psyche, but I would also offer that the experience of Dance leadership can reveal any truth that we may be asleep to in ourselves, including those in the light and love realms that can live inside of us inherently and perhaps without recognition. I have had plenty of moments in stepping in to transmit a Dance when I faced fears, anxieties, projections, my need for approval and plenty of moments as well when beautiful wildness, latent bodily knowledge, or deep in-dwelling gratitude was revealed. I have come to think as of each Dance transmission as an experiment and an opportunity for growth. In the same way that in my meditative practice I allow a mantra to take its effect, I allow the Dance to work on my psyche in unfolding whatever it may.

As leaders and dancers we all know that the Dances are a powerful form of embodied spiritual practice. We've seen the power of Dances knit a roomful of individuals into a resonant community. Through the Dance we've delved into spiritual traditions with which we were less familiar and gone deeper into ones with which we are strongly connected. We've felt it when a mantra hits home in a way we didn't expect, moving some stuck place in the internal field. Perhaps we can take this last occurrence one step further, allowing not only the Dance to be the teacher, but the leadership experience itself.

I am reminded of a fragment of a poem from Mevlana Jelaluddin Rumi,

This being human is a guest house.
Every morning a new arrival.
A joy, a depression, a meanness,
some momentary awareness comes
as an unexpected visitor.
Welcome and entertain them all! - Coleman Barks, Translator

Rumi writes of the human condition itself, but just as we can use this passage as a guide for meeting each day, we might also use it as a guide in reflecting each time we lead a Dance.

As-salaam-alaikum
Peace be with you!

Diana Lyon

July 25, 2012