Gulzar [DUP / Integration Practice in Community]

Sharing the Dances and creating heart-centred community is one of the greatest joys in my life.
I lead Dance days and Retreats in the UK and abroad, also combining the Dances with the powerful practice of Heart IQ (Embodied Awakening) which I offer with my partner, Simon.

I am a Mentor for Dance Leaders and am delighted to be able to share the love of the Dances in this way.

I have been co-creating and teaching 2-year long international Dance Leader Training programmes for 6 years.

I am currently honoured to be serving as the Camp Advisor for our beautiful camp. Apart from my love of the Dances, I hope to bring to camp safely held spaces to practise deep listening where people feel included and accepted, especially deeper connection and understanding across the generations.

My passion is that camp can serve as a resource and inspiration for the world we want to create in our communities.

Yelena Swarana [DUP]

Yelena Swarana is a dance mentor-in-training who encountered the Dances in 2006. Since then, she has been compelled to serve as an organizer for Dancing Heart camps and events, a role she has continued for the past 16 years. Her passion lies in traveling and sharing the Dances in various locations, including the Baltics, Poland, the UK, New Zealand, Turkey, and Israel and Sri Lanka. In collaboration with Vasudeva from Russia, they initiated the first Indian annual camp, attracting both international leaders and local dancers.

For a decade, Yelena has spent several months in India, visiting the holy mountain Arunachala, which she considers her home. Through the Dances and mantras, Yelena shares the joy and sweetness of the heart. In her professional life, she works as a freelance architect and serves on the board of directors of DUP International.

Looking back on her transformative experience, Yelena says, "The Sacred Arts camp in 2007 was the first international camp that changed my whole life. It is my sincere joy and a great honor to be here!"

Nathalie Blanc [DUP]

Nathalie fell in love with DUP in 2002 at the international camp in Lavaldieu.
Year after year she has found inspiration through wonderful teachers at the Sacred Arts and Unicorn camps, including Dakini, her Sufi guide, and Jilani, with whom she is a mentor in training.
For more than ten years she was part of the holding group and DUP team at the French summer camp, and now leads DUP weekends and events in Brittany, often with other teachers and musicians, including her husband, Robin Ireland. Nathalie is the mother of four grown-up children, has worked for 30 years as a trainer of school teachers and is passionate about literature and art. In Rennes, she is part of a choir singing East European and Yiddish music and she loves Circle Dance. She transmits the dynamic and uplifting energies of DUP as well as the deep and meditative.
As a Sufi, she respects the authenticity of each spiritual tradition, and is especially drawn to the Aramaic dances created by Saadi. Nathalie embodies enthusiasm, delight and simplicity in her teaching of the Dances, these living mandalas through which we can create unity. More than ever during our troubled times, the DUP are a way to practise peace and to strengthen our hearts and spirits, to bring together different cultures and generations and to encounter each other soulfully.

Glen Unmana [DUP]

Glen Unmana is originally from England, now living in Berlin. A student of the dances for twenty-five
years, he has given hundreds of workshops and longer retreats across many countries in Europe and
beyond.

Glen speaks of the Dances in this way: "Through the use of mantras, music and movement, these
Dances reconnect us to the flow of life, to our hearts and to our divine nature. Simple in appearance, on
a deeper level they are also a channel for the transmission of blessing."
Accompanied by his guitar, Glen's craft takes us into the depths of our being and transports us into a
state of pure joy and heart opening – the state of natural presence. May we dance, may we sing, may we
celebrate together our innate and underlying connectedness and unity!
www.dancingforjoy.weebly.com

Gaiatree Claire [DUP]

I first danced with Amida Harvey in a field in Glastonbury when the Dances first arrived in England. I enjoyed many years of dancing together and went to the first Peace through the Arts camp!
That was always my favorite thing to do, being in a field with people I love, making amazing music, singing, dancing, and cooking together! have been leading The dances of universal peace and Zikr since I came to America in 1992.
It was wonderful To be at Sacred Arts camp last year, dancing and singing on the land and I'm so happy to be returning.
My role this year will be different. Throughout the week I am holding space/facilitating the morning session for other dance leaders and emerging dance leaders who wish to share a dance.
I look forward to being with you all and creating a magical morning meeting where we travel together in Love, Harmony and Beauty with whatever we bring in the moment!

Ty Lynne [Yoga]

Ty is offering a morning yoga space at Sacred Arts 2024 - a safe space open to all, where we may honour celebrate and wake up body, breath, heart with a flowing life-affirming practice of self massage and warm up stretches, sun salutations, classic asana, pranayama, and deep relaxation xxx everyone is welcome xxx

Ty was first introduced to yoga by lovely Elizabeth while living in the Thai jungle in 1990s and then completed teacher trainings with Sivananda Yoga UK and Devon School of Yoga. She is inspired and humbled by the vastness of the yoga path, from the physical practices that take wonderful nourishing care of the body to the richness of philosophies and teachings offering lifelong guidance, context and inspiration

Amanda Hamilton [Yoga Nidra]

So joyfulto return again supporting crew and camp in sinking into the Earth, dropping deep into the healing available through the power of complete rest. A daily offering held in the arms of song, sound, invitation and silence. We flop on the ground, reboot to our nervous systems and maybe sleep through a visualisation taking us into the mystery of relaxation.

I walk a shamanic path initiated by Grandmother Spider, the Medicine of the Sweat Lodge and the Four Elements, interwoven with five decades of yoga practice and teaching. My life's purpose is loving transformation, supporting humans to raise consciousness by returning to Nature, coming into community and weaving an attitude of devotional service to life. I am writing my book, Grandmother Spider and the Four Elements, which is the navigation system for my life.

Katie Carr [Green Space]

Katie is a facilitator and guide, supporting people from all walks of life as they face into the reality, scale and urgency of the climate crisis. She offers mentoring to other facilitators who are growing their capabilities for working on this very challenging topic. Her work integrates internal family systems (IFS), somatic approaches, and deep listening/relating - supporting people to cultivate presence, emotional resilience, and the courage/capability to lovingly dismantle and heal where they have internalised the harmful structures and beliefs of patriarchal consumer capitalism. She also teaches counter-cultural leadership in the context of the climate crisis. And she’s a mentored leader of the Dances of Universal Peace!

Chris Sylla [Drumming/Firenight]

Chris is an accomplished and widely experienced percussionist and community musician. Her Main instruments are West African drums and balafon, although she has the capacity to play many other percussion instruments. Having been a teacher and educator for over 40 years Chris is a skilled group facilitator. She is self employed but currently working with Soundlincs delivering a range of community workshops to SEN adults, those with early stage dementia and families, as well as doing some social prescribing. Also delivering music in hospitals with Air Arts.

A Sacred Arts Camp veteran Chris is delighted to be back playing and teaching again this year.

Chris [Qi Gong]

Chris teaches Taiji and Qigong in Ulverston, Cumbria. He began practising the Chinese arts in 2001 and has been teaching since 2005. He follows Patrick Kelly's Taiji system; the 'World Wide Way'.

Qigong with Chris
Qi (Energy) Gong (Work). Qigong means working our energy, generally by means of physical movement; breathing and stretching, or using intention; moving light around the body.
Qigong can range from quite strong physical exercises to pure meditation. The physical is used to anchor the mind into the sensations of the body, allowing the mind to deepen and inner work to begin.
 Physical energy: Energy purely associated with the healthy functioning of our body and fed by the Earth.
 Deep emotion energy: Energy associated with our true self, our soul.
 Spiritual energy: The part of us that is beyond comprehension while on Earth. The beyond.

I am delighted to be leading the Qigong morning practice this year at camp. Qigong is an excellent way to wake up, loosen and warm up our bodies and anchor our awareness in our heart minds.

No experience necessary.

"The camp leaders and loyal campers are amazing people, they run the camp like the most nurturing home with open arms to newcomers like me.  Many people came and

chatted or just smiled to me over the course of the week and by the end

of it I felt we had become part of an amazing family." - Emma

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