Thank you for inviting me to join the Guidance Panel. I am ready to serve and work together with the other beautiful beings on the panel, to strengthen and support our precious community. The question I am with a lot of the time right now is : How can the Dances and Walks best serve our communities in these times?

I first met the Dances in the mid nineties but it wasn’t until about 20 years ago that they really started to work on me at a deeper level, even experiencing them as a lifeline at challenging times in my life. After completing a 2-year Dance Leader Training with my Mentor Philip Tansen O’Donohoe, I brought the Dances to Newcastle upon Tyne where I live with my partner Simon, (who I met in a Dance Circle at Sacred Arts Camp), and then to Sheffield and Leicester. I then started on the path as a Dance Mentor simply because someone asked me to be their Mentor after I led a session at Sacred Arts Camp. That came as a surprise to me. I now co-teach 2-year long Dance Leader Training programmes (2 so far) with Jilani. It has been an absolute joy and honour to support new and existing Dance Leaders in this way. I would love to support more people becoming Dance Mentors in the UK. I also feel the Walks are under-used, and are a great potential resource we can tap into far more.
Since leaving my career in teacher education 20 years ago, I have set up a practice integrating kinesiology, inner journey work, heart intelligence and relationship coaching. Together with Simon I facilitate Embodied Awakening Retreats, a powerful process for personal and collection transformation. I have been following the path of the Heart (Sufism) for 18 years. Sharing the Dances and supporting heart-centred community is is one of the greatest joys in my life.

I look forward to what we might create together, particularly in these times where the Dances are needed more than ever.

Recently I found in an old folder a flyer from an Aramaic Lord’s Prayer Workshop with Tansen dated 11^th of February 1995. This was the first step on my 25 year journey with Dances of Universal Peace and a whole new and wonderful world unfolded ; a world of a myriad of beautiful prayers , dances , music and people .

I soon felt drawn to do the dance leader training with Tansen in 2001 ….and now teach regular workshops together with my husband Karim (who I met on the dance training ) with a special joy being  Aramaic  Lord’s Prayer days .

I am a mother of five ,  practising Catholic , movement therapist and musician and take  an enormous delight in  finding  the divine within everyday life, nature and my fellow beings ( human and otherwise ), the serious and the ridiculous …..

I was greatly astonished to have been invited onto the Guidance Panel of the Leaders Guild and   hope I will live up to the trust put in me and look forward to a time of sisterly working together and inspiration and serving the dance community.

Thank you,

Susanne