is the founder of Dancing Freedom and PeaceBody Japan, synergizing body-centric practice, soul empowerment and sustainability leadership training in an integral offering for individual and planetary evolution. Her transformational offerings create a safe space to open the heart, express the soul, and to reconnect with the self-generating capacity to experience wholeness. A Priestess, Guide, Soul Coach and Author, she leads and loves through authenticity, integral perspective, divine play, and presence. Samantha holds a self-created degree from UCSC in Social Theory and The Dance (with Honors), is a certified yoga instructor, somatics practitioner, massage therapist, Dream Coach, Reiki Master, and an ordained priestess.

At the age of 13, Samantha found dance as a life-saving passion. In it, she discovered a home for expression, integration and healing. Whole dances started flowing. She began choreographing epic pieces about war and peace, unspeakable spiritual states, and the meaning of relationship. At 16, she found her second great passion, “Eastern Religions”, and began practicing yoga – a way of seeing and being that influenced all of her art and has infused every aspect of her life. After college, she became a successful independent choreographer, director, dancer, yoga teacher and community organizer in San Francisco. She founded and directed the performance group THICKET, co-founded The Body Cartography Project with Olive Beringa, Tom Sepe and Tracy Vogel, was a co-founder of C.E.L.L. Space, and an organizer for the West Coast Contact Improvisation Festival. She danced with Scott Wells, Kim Epiphano, Anne Bluthenthal, Robert Moses & Kin, and others. She taught yoga in an emerging world… a world before Yoga Works and Yoga Tree, before the industry really understood itself. She sees conscious dance now at this same pregnant moment in its evolution.

As she learned and grew through injury, bliss, failure and intimacy, she became ever more fascinated with dance as a mirror for life – a gateway for individuals to experience themselves in the universal journey of embodiment. So, she created Dancing Freedom (and the Contact Improvisation based form called Dharma Dance), which she has been sharing for over 15 years. She has taught on five continents (still moving towards Antarctica and Africa). She has led classes, workshops and retreats in such venues as Esalen, Kalani Retreat Center, Harbin Hot Springs and Grace Cathedral, at events such as Bioneers, HUB’s “Actioning Your Brilliance,” Earth Dance, Harmony Fest and the Economics of Peace Conference, and with health experts David Wolfe and Gabriel Cousens. She is also the developer and director of PeaceBody, Japan.

She is currently developing curriculum for Social Permaculture, Sacred Activism and Regenerative Culture in partnership with the Common Circle in Berkeley. These formats bring Dancing Freedom techniques into leadership training and self development contexts to more fully anchor the learning in the body. She enjoys a dedicated Soul Coaching practice, working with individuals to activate fulfilling and soulful lives in service to the greater whole. Additionally, she is working towards a combined Masters/Doctor of Ministry degree with Wisdom University.

Find out more about Samantha’s Soul Coaching and Intuitive Guidance Sessions.

To book Samantha’s services for public workshops and events, or for non-profit and corporate leadership development, contact: trainings@DancingFreedom.com