Dance of Oneness®: Call to Love
with Banafsheh and guest musicians
5-day Women Only Dance Retreat
+ Optional 6-day Journey to Konya & Gobekli Tepe
May 16 – 21, 2024 ○ Gokcedere, Yalova, Turkey
Dance of Oneness®: Call to Love and Freedom
with Banafsheh and guest musicians 7-day Women’s Dance Retreat
June xxx, 2023
Mutlu Baba Cultural Center, Gokcedere, Yalova, Turkey
with Banafsheh and guest musicians
7-day Women’s Dance Retreat
Open the treasure house of abundance from inside yourself.
Open your being to what can live in you and through you in this time of great need and potential.
A Call to Love is really a call to heal and to truly live! Let this call inspire you and open your being to what can live in you and through you in this time of great need and potential. With peaceful groundedness and sovereign yet passionate engagement, you’ll move, dance and whirl to embody love’s intoxicating yet lucid power.
Dance is the joy of the soul. The soul’s entry into the body is a dance. Regardless of what you do, your soul wants to dance — to touch and kiss the infinite — and that can only happen through deep surrender and learning how to trust and love yourself as the Beloved’s beloved… nakedly, presently, right here, right now.
Sacred dance is not just about feeling blissed out and flying into transcendent light. It’s about doing the real work of embodiment, disentangling yourself from your dramas, opening to the greater field of consciousness and letting the transcendent light flood your body, heart and mind — and the world through you.
When you surrender to the alchemy of the dance, you’ll move beyond the personal and collective stories that have traumatized and limited you. You literally move the stories to break them open and transmute and heal the traumas, so you can feel yourself as a “Ray of divine majesty.” (Rumi)
Join us and dance, whirl, meditate, chant, soak in natural hot springs and enjoy intimate sharing circles… to cultivate the strength to persevere in love in these times of extreme turmoil and rapid change in community with like-hearted people.
Mixed Levels. Suitable for people with some background in movement or dance, trained dancers, yoga and other movement practitioners as well as healing/medical practitioners. The only pre-requisite is a desire to connect your mind, body and spirit in healing and wholeness through movement. (30 hours towards the 400-hr Dance of Oneness Certification Program)
You will learn to:
- Develop a keen awareness of your energy anatomy and heal, tone and sculpt your body while dancing the passion in your heart
- Decode the mysteries of feminine wisdom teachings and claim your birthright to take up conscious residence in your body with love in the full radiance of a woman’s power — both tender and strong, receptive and discerning
- Transform sensations of fatigue, depression or anxiety into lasting exuberance, joy and serenity as you put love into action in your life!
- Cultivate the strength to persevere in love in these times of extreme turmoil and rapid change in community with like-minded and like-hearted people.
- Dance to free yourself — and cultivate strength, dignity, passion, wildness, audacity, and courage
- Dance to live with nobility and poignancy — to hold both the joy and the pain as inseparable dance partners, let wild grace inspire and carry you
- Learn to trust your deepest understanding and unleash your wild sweet nectar through timeless, sacred dance, whirling, free-style dance, chanting, mystical poetry, meditation — and lots of laughter!
- Gain transformative tools for living creatively and passionately in your day to day life and make a true positive contribution to our world
- Feel the full embrace of the Great Goddess — learn to trust your deepest understanding and unleash your wild sweet nectar through timeless, wild sacred dance
What Students Say
Dance and soak, whirl and soak, and nourish your soul and your body with exceptional Turkish cuisine.
Benefits:
Connecting to your life’s purpose
Awakening your inner and outer feminine beauty
Cultivating the ability to observe and manage your life dramas without being overtaken by them
Gaining tools to transform limitation to possibilities
Reducing stress
Healing various stubborn ailments and cultivating a well-balanced body
Connecting with an international community of like-hearted sistas
- Laughter therapy!
Tuition for the 5-day Dance Retreat:
Please pay in full or a non-refundable deposit of $500 by December 15th to secure your spot. We need to meet our minimum number of 25 people by December 15th in order to go forward with the retreat. If we do not meet this number, we will refund your payment. Early Bird rate will be available until December 15th. Email us if you need to set up a payment plan.
Temple Communal Lodging
- Communal Lodging
- No meals included
- Access to nearby restaurants & shops
- In the same building as sessions
- Pay with Venmo or Zelle to save $47
Hotel Double Lodging
- Share room with another person
- Exquisite buffet breakfast & dinner
- Free access to thermal pools & spa
- 15-min walk to Temple
- Pay with Venmo or Zelle to save $68
Above fees include:
We provide roundtrip ground transportation from the Yenikapi ferry dock in Istanbul to the hotel if you arrive at the designated departure time on May 16 and if you plan to go to Istanbul on May 21.
Fees do NOT include airfare to Turkey, visa, roundtrip transportation from the airport to the Yenikapi Ferry dock in Istanbul; lunch; and any massage, kiseh (body scrub) and facials at the hotel.
Lodging Options
Hotel:
5-star hotel with natural spring thermal water pools, Turkish hamam, massage, and a royal feast for breakfast and dinner.
You will enjoy stellar single or double occupancy accommodations in a beautiful hotel built on an Asclepion site, the sacred worshipping grounds οf doctor and healing god, Asclepius, with healing natural hot water springs with onsite hot and cold pools and a fully equipped Turkish hamam or spa. Exceptional buffet breakfast and dinner with vegetarian options are included. If you wish to have a third meal in the day, there are lots of options to choose from in the village.
The juxtaposition of staying in an abode of opulence and holding our sessions in a Dergah, an abode of simplicity cultivates the importance of bridging worlds for a messenger of Oneness and Love.
Sufi Temple (Dergah)
If you choose to stay in the Temple or Sufi Dergah, you will be in the same building as where our sessions take place and enjoy quant communal accommodations including one room for women and one for men, several bathrooms, and a kitchen to store and prepare food. The nearby village offers a wide variety of inexpensive restaurants and grocery shops.
Special discounted work/study rates in Dergah lodging available for residents of Turkey and Iran who are unable to afford the regular prices. Email for more info
Planning Your Trip:
Airport: Istanbul International Airport, Istanbul
Arrival:
Please plan to arrive before noon on May 16 at the latest.
Transportation to Dergah:
- Take the train, bus or taxi to the Yenikapi Ferry Station
- A guide will meet you at the Yenikapi Ferry Station in front of the entrance to area where people board the ferry to Yalova with your ferry ticket.
- A bus at the Yalova ferry station will bring the group to the hotel or Dergah.
Our orientation session will begin at 8pm on May 16 after dinner.
Early arrivals:
If you plan to arrive earlier or later, you can take a small bus or dolmus to the Thermal. Tell the bus driver that you’d like to go to the Limak Termal Hotel.
Post Retreat Journey to Konya & Gobekli Tepe:
Please stay tuned for details.
About Banafsheh
Banafsheh Sayyad is a master Persian sacred dancer, choreographer, activist and founder of Dance of Oneness®. She is a deeply profound and highly accessible spiritual teacher of embodiment. Banafsheh performs and teaches internationally, initiating people into the wisdom of their bodies. She inspires all to live in these modern times grounded in love for the Earth and centered around our abiding true nature. Her signature style of holy wildness infused with ancient wisdom ignites transformation and illumination in all those who dance with her from around the globe. Banafsheh invites the dancer within to remember, reclaim and resource the innate healing intelligence streaming through us and spiraling all around us. Her easeful instruction and welcoming spirit empowers students from all stages of life to feel a true sense of belonging in their bodies and passion in their lives, by integrating wisdom teachings proven throughout the ages.
