Enter the Mystery of Mary Magdalene’s Path of Ascension — Through Sacred Dance, the Great Tree Within & the Wisdom of the Divine Feminine
What if ascension is not transcending physicality or daily life, but a deeper way of inhabiting and awakening through them?
Journey on an ancient feminine path of spiritual awakening and the ascent and descent of light through the Great Tree Within — a mystical map of consciousness attributed to Mary Magdalene that reveals how love, wisdom, power, healing, truth, vision, grace, and beauty can become embodied within you… and shared with a world that is in dire need of these divine qualities.
You’ll discover how sacred dance can help you shift from simply understanding these teachings to embodying them, catalyzing spiritual awakening that is rooted in the ascent and descent of light into your entire being and the world.
And, you’ll experience your body as the vessel through which consciousness awakens.
Mary Magdalene’s path anchored in sacred dance offers a radical invitation into this mystery…
In The Gospel of the Beloved Companion, Mary speaks of a Great Tree Within whose branches offer a map of her own movement toward spiritual realization. Each Bough carries a particular fruit — a quality of consciousness that becomes available as she releases the patterns that obscure it.
- Love and compassion
- Wisdom and understanding
- Honor and humility
- Courage and strength
- Truth and clarity
- Power and healing
- Light, goodness, grace, and beauty
Sacred dance allows you to enter them as states of being to be embodied, lived, and shared.
During this 7-week sacred dance journey, you’ll enter Mary Magdalene’s mysterious path of ascension Bough by Bough — exploring what each reveals about the nature of consciousness, the body, the Divine Feminine, and your own capacity to awaken.
Throughout this journey, you’ll:
- Discover the symbolic fruit of each Bough and what becomes available as consciousness moves beyond the patterns— the vessel through which Divine consciousness can become lived
- Awaken the root, sacral, solar plexus, heart, throat, Third Eye, crown, and soul star chakras as energetic gateways into the journey
- Engage the elements of earth, water, fire, air, sound, light, and the transpersonal realms through embodied movement and awareness
- Explore Sufi whirling and Sama as a practice of listening, surrender, devotion, and communion
- Discover the descending spiral of light, learning not only to reach toward higher consciousness but to receive and embody what you encounter
- Experience Persian and Iranian dance traditions as gateways into sensuality, vitality, presence, and embodied wisdom
- Release patterns of judgment, ignorance, intolerance, arrogance, fear, illusion, and attachment that can obscure your deeper nature
- Explore holy sensuality and the sacred intelligence of desire, pleasure, receptivity, and the life force
- Open meridians and selected acupoints associated with the chakras as additional pathways into embodied awareness
- Discover how spiritual awakening can become grounded in your relationships, creativity, purpose, service, and everyday life
Mary Magdalene’s feminine path of awakening, invigorated by sacred dance and conscious movement, offers a different vision of spiritual transformation.
The invitation is not to transcend the body; but to experience your body as the place that allows spiritual awakening to happen… lived and real.
You are not asked to reject desire, emotion, vulnerability, power, or human experience.
You are invited to discover what becomes possible when these dimensions of yourself are brought into relationship with the sacred.
Imagine what could change when the wisdom of the Divine Feminine is no longer something you simply read about, but something you begin to feel moving through you.
Course Requirements: This course is suitable for anyone who is interested in accessing the spiritual power of love and awakening through sacred dance. It also offers trained dancers, somatic movement practitioners, psychotherapists, yoga instructors, creative arts therapists, and other movement practitioners the opportunity to deepen their professional skills.
Week 1: Sept 19, 10-11:30am PT
Engage the Mystery of Becoming by Understanding the Foundation of All Things — The First Bough of the Great Tree Within
The First Bough of Mary Magdalene’s Great Tree Within, as explored in The Gospel of the Beloved Companion, introduces the tree as sacred architecture within your own body and consciousness; not something outside of you that you must ascend toward.
Mary describes the first bough as bearing the fruit of love and compassion, which she calls “the foundation of all things.” But she cannot receive this fruit until she has freed herself from judgment and wrath.
Through sacred dance, conscious movement, tribal dance and embodied awareness, you’ll engage the First Bough, activating your root chakra, the earth element and meridians as energetic anchors for awakening.
Week 2: Sept 27 (Sunday)
10-11:30am PT
Unite Inner Polarities to Awaken Wisdom & Understanding and Free Yourself of Ignorance & Intolerance
What have you been taught to fear, suppress or judge within yourself? What happens when you begin to experience sensuality, sexuality and pleasure as expressions of the sacredness of being alive?
The Second Bough reveals the fruit of wisdom and understanding — Mary must first become free of ignorance and intolerance before she can partake of it. This bough invites you into a deeper experience of what is sacred through your own body and the mystery of water, sensuality, desire. You’ll move beyond covert ignorance and intolerance by unifying polarities — spirit and matter, masculine and feminine, darkness and light.
Through sacred dances, ecstatic movement, and Persian and Iranian dance, wisdom becomes available through the dissolution of what prevents us from seeing. You’ll awaken the sacral chakra and its water element while exploring the energetic pathways and meridians associated with this center, releasing shame, guilt and inherited patterns that constrict your life force — and allowing vitality, beauty and receptivity to return.
Week 3: Oct 3, 10-11:30am PT
Ignite the Fire of Selfhood to Reclaim Your True Self, Inner Power & Sovereignty — The Third Bough
Can your power become an expression of love rather than control, force, or the need for differentiation?
At the Third Bough, the journey moves into the fire of selfhood, vitality, sovereignty and spiritual power — the deeper authority that arises when you remember who you are. Honor and humility are the fruits of the bough.
Mary’s teaching illuminates a path out of duplicity and arrogance toward self-love, honor and humility. Not a diminishment of the self, but a purification of power: a shift from needing to prove yourself to inhabiting your inherent dignity. Mary does not become smaller in essence. Rather, she becomes free from the false self that needs to inflate itself, defend itself or prove itself. This freedom ignites the inner sun.
Experience how awakening the solar plexus and fire element provide an embodied gateway into this transformation. Through Flamenco-inspired movement that awakens the solar plexus and fire element, and engages your womb dantian, meridians and selected acupoints associated with this center, you’ll awaken your inner sun and begin to feel what it means to stand in your own light without making yourself larger or smaller than you are.
Week 4: Oct 10, 10-11:30am PT
Enter the Heart of the Beloved: The Great Meeting Place of Love, Fear, Vulnerability & Courage — The Fourth Bough
What becomes possible when you allow your heart to remain open without abandoning your center?
The Fourth Bough marks a profound turning point in Mary Magdalene’s ascent. Here, you’ll encounter fear as one of the great thresholds of transformation and discover that being strong and courageous does not mean the absence of vulnerability; it means becoming willing to remain open in the presence of what is difficult, uncertain and unknown. The heart becomes the great meeting place — between body and spirit, human and Divine, suffering and beauty, self and Beloved.
Through the heart chakra, air element, and sacred dance practices, you’ll explore how the physiology and energetic pathways of the heart and lungs allow the body to experience love as a living force. Drawing more deeply from the Sufi understanding of the heart as the home of the Beloved, you’ll begin to polish the heart of separation and rediscover love as a way of being.
This Bough invites you to make room for grief and beauty, vulnerability and strength, giving and receiving — and to discover that an open heart is not a fragile heart, but a courageous one.
Week 5: Oct 17, 10-11:30am PT
Release the Voice of the World & Embody Your True Voice with the Fifth Bough to Become a Clear & Conscious Vessel for Spirit
At the Fifth Bough guides us into clarity and truth, transforming the question, What do I want to say? into, What is asking to be spoken, expressed or moved through me?
Having rejected “the deceiver” in the fourth bough, you’ll begin to recognize yourself as a child of the Living Spirit, just as Mary did.
The Great Tree opens at this bough with an extraordinary opportunity: no longer hearing or identifying with the voice of the world but with silence.
Here, Sama — the Sufi practice of whirling that means to listen — becomes an embodied experience: from control toward surrender, from noise toward silence, from knowing toward direct experience.
You’ll learn to ground and center before entering the spiral, allowing whirling to become a prayer and the stillpoint within movement to become a place of listening. Mary’s path describes a movement beyond the forces that keep consciousness bound in fear and illusion, toward clarity and the recognition of yourself as a child of Spirit. This is the threshold between personal will and Divine receptivity.
You’ll explore your throat chakra and element of sound as portals into embodied listening through chanting, breath, meditation and sacred movement that open the pathway toward authentic expression.
Week 6: Oct 24, 10-11:30am PT
Awaken Inner Sight & Healing through the Power of Your True Self
The Sixth Bough carries the fruit of power and healing — not power for domination or personal aggrandizement, but the power that becomes available when the soul is no longer governed by the illusions it previously identified with. Mary’s Gospel describes this fruit as giving her the power to heal her own soul and prepare for the next stage of ascent.
This is the place where the visible world begins to reveal what lies beneath it. Mary path invites you to question the structures through which you have been taught to perceive reality and to become receptive to a deeper form of intelligence. Here, seeing is not merely an act of the eyes or the analytical mind… it is an opening of consciousness.
Through the Third Eye chakra, light, sacred dance, meditation and refined Sama practices, you explore the relationship between movement and perception.
The meridians associated with this center and the mysteries of the pineal region offer additional pathways into this exploration.
The Sixth Bough invites you to loosen your attachment to what you think you know and become available to what is waiting to be revealed.
Week 7: Oct 31, 10-11:30am PT
The Descent of Light: Discover the Divine in the Way Your Inhabit the Earth — Boughs 7 & 8
What happens when the soul moves beyond perceived obstacles and becomes light itself?
Light, goodness, grace and beauty are the fruits found on the final two Boughs of the Great Tree Within, revealing the deepest mystery of ascension — how light returns to the world through the body. Here, the light you have encountered through ascension is invited to descend fully into your body, heart, relationships, creativity, purpose and service.
The journey comes full circle: you do not leave the Earth to become divine. You discover the Divine within the way you inhabit the Earth.
The Seventh and Eighth Boughs are not an escape into some distant spiritual realm — they complete the movement of Mary Magdalene’s path by revealing what happens when consciousness becomes embodied and light is shared. Discover how your crown and soul star chakras become gateways into transpersonal awareness, while the wisdom of Sophia and the Divine Feminine opens a deeper remembrance of humanity as a meeting place of Earth and Cosmos, matter and spirit, body and light.
You’ll go deeper into Sama, meditation, sacred dance and the descending spiral of energy as you experience the difference between ascending toward the light and becoming capable of carrying it. The journey now turns downward as much as upward. What has been awakened in consciousness is invited into the body, the heart, the voice, relationships, creativity, purpose and service.
The final initiation of the Great Tree Within is embodied remembrance: allowing the light you have encountered to become a way of living, loving, creating and moving through the world. The tree is no longer simply a map of your ascent — it has become a pathway through which the awakened light within you can take root in the world.
Deepen Your Journey
Unlocking the Hidden Mysteries of Mary Magdalene through Movement
A 4-Part Recorded Video Series with Banafsheh through Mystical Chartres and Provence, France
Deepen your journey beyond the live sessions with Unlocking the Hidden Mysteries of Mary Magdalene through Movement — an immersive video journey recorded in France by Banafsheh during a pilgrimage in the footsteps of Mary Magdalene.
Through onsite video footage, candid commentary, and transmissions by Banafsheh in both Persian and English, you’ll gain a rare view into the path Mary walked following the resurrection and the hidden mysteries of her transmissions and journey unlocked by Banafsheh through sacred dance.
All videos in this series will be accessible once class begins on September 19.
Select this option at check out.
Learning Streams
Dance & Movement
A combination of new sacred movement and routines from the Dance of Oneness repertoire, Sufi whirling, Persian dance, yoga, seated meditation, and free-style dance.
Divine Feminine Wisdom
You will be initiated into the mysteries and wisdom transmissions of the Divine Feminine. She calls us to enter a harmonious relationship with all Her creation. By coming into loving conscious awareness in your body, you’ll dissolve inner divides and experience greater wholeness, vitality, joy, and presence.
Mystical Teachings & Science
Experience gnosis, or the experiential knowing of the Sufis and the Taoists, and drink from the poetic wellspring of Jalaleddin Rumi and other mystics. You’ll also explore parallels between these mystical teachings and insights from quantum physics.
Healing
Experience the full-on transformation that comes from discovering and releasing deep-seated beliefs that have blocked you from living your full potential. You’ll find the balm you yearn for to heal the wounded places inside your being. And, you’ll discover the medicine you carry within you to heal and bless our world.
Community
Through dancing and sharing, you’ll enter an energy field that supports each of us in finding our unique gift. Our own light becomes magnified when shared and merged with like-hearted people.
Dance Experience
This course is mixed level and open to ALL who love to move.
Additionally, this course offers trained dancers, somatic practitioners, psychotherapists, yoga instructors, creative arts therapists, and other movement practitioners the opportunity to deepen their professional skills.
Please find FAQs and read our health disclaimer here
Mary Magdelene’s Map of Ascension through the Great Tree Within
7 Saturdays, September 19 - October 31
@10-11:30am PT
Permanent Access to Recordings
Reg Price: $325
Now through August 22: $297
What Students Say
How this Dance Journey Works
- Each session is 1.5 hrs long including instruction and a community sharing circle after we dance
- Sessions will be conducted on Zoom
- Recordings of live sessions will be available up to 48 hrs post session in the student dashboard
- Pre-registration is required
- Registration includes permanent access to session recordings, music list, and course material
About Banafsheh
Banafsheh Sayyad, MFA, Choreography and MA, Chinese Medicine, is a master sacred dancer, choreographer, and visionary teacher of spiritual embodiment whose life’s work is devoted to helping people activate greater health, awareness, and resilience through conscious movement. Internationally acclaimed for her pioneering fusion of spirituality and sensuality, she is the founder of Dance of Oneness®, a Divine Feminine lineage of healing and transformation uniting Sufi whirling, Persian dance, flamenco, mysticism, and Taoist wisdom.
Banafsheh’s forthcoming book, Dance of Oneness (St. Martin’s Essentials, March 2026), invites readers to rediscover the body as a portal to presence, vitality, and joy. Drawing from her own awakening through dance that transmuted the pain of exile from Iran, Banafsheh weaves Rumi’s poetry, feminine mysticism, and embodied healing into a radiant call to live as a channel of love and light. Born in Iran, she defied cultural taboos to create a feminine expression of Sufi whirling, transforming dance into a pathway of liberation, divine communion, and activism.
Through her non-profit Dance of Oneness and her transformative teachings, Banafsheh has inspired thousands across the world to awaken, embody love, and dance the divine into being.
