Global Facilitation Team

MASTERY CREWWelcome to the Dancing Freedom Community. We practice Embodied Leadership and Living Oneness. Our mission is to serve cultural and spiritual emergence, resilience and thrival by providing a safe and beautiful space for community to gather, pray, process, celebrate and evolve together. Our global team of facilitators invite you to join us in the Dance of Freedom.

Lydia Marolda, Austin, TX & International

Lydia is my name and I was made to dance.  In my early 20’s, I had the revelation that dance was a powerful medicine that could connect me to “Something Greater” than I had ever known. For the past 11 years I have been exploring what it means to use dance and shamanic ritual for healing the Self on all levels, including, physical, mental, emotional and spiritual.

I have a Masters degree in Education and have been teaching and sharing academics and embodiment practices with children for over 9 years. In June of 2010 I left the classroom to deepen my dance practice, continue my healing journey and listen to my heart’s voice. That voice led me to “Burning Man,” where I met the founder of Dancing Freedom, Samantha Sweetwater, on a sprung dance floor on the playa. From the first training module, I knew I had found the perfect synergy of my passions for dance and shamanism. I am now a fully certified Dancing Freedom facilitator and am ready to bring the power of moving our bodies to those who are ready to heed the call, for themselves.

My mission is to use the tools I have gained to remind youth and adults how to embrace their body’s movements and natural intelligence as a means of experiencing life to its fullest. What happens when we remember that life is the dance and we learn to surrender and move to the music? I invite you to come, move, and feel for yourself.  hikarijin@gmail.com

 

Atasiea:  SF Bay Area, LA & London

([Ah-tah-see-ay] a.k.a. Kenneth Lawrence Ferguson), is a healer, actor, dancer, martial artist, and teacher. He currently resides in Berkeley CA. where he runs the Angelic Presence Healing Practice offering Reiki, bodywork, and intuitive readings to support people’s health and well being. In addition to teaching Dancing Freedom, he also teaches acting, and martial arts to youth at various locations in the Bay Area on behalf of the East Bay Center for Performing Arts. Atasiea is called to use dance as a vehicle for personal and collective liberation, as a form of prayer, healing, ritual art, exercise, and spiritual practice. He is particularly interested in working with minority communities and youth in his Dancing Freedom ministry, and is experimenting with the merger of the healing arts  and the performing arts. He is available to teach Dancing Freedom at workshops, conferences, studio classes, and private 1 on 1, or group sessions. To contact him for more information please email: atasiea@gmail.com or call (510)423-1843 cell

Magalie Bonneau-Marcil: SF Bay Area & International

Quebecois native based in northern California, I am a trained Dancing Freedom facilitator and founder of Dancing without Borders. I am a devotee to the power of collective healing, celebration and embodied human spirit. Through dance and rituals I invite everyone to rise, to love and to be who you are and express yourself freely through your body. I have a background in life coaching, yoga, ecstatic dance, world- class sailing, transformational leadership and spiritual activism. I am a certified professional coach and passionate about integrating my experience in personal development with rituals, world music, weaving community and the elemental wave journey of Dancing Freedom.   Form more go to: http://embodiedvisionary.org   magalie@embodiedvisionary.org

Tessi Belle, Portland, OR

Having a vacuum as a dance partner wasn’t cutting it for Tessi. She felt tied down by the cords.  She needed something more.   So, after 32 years of entanglement, she broke free! She found Dancing Freedom!

Tessi comes from a family of musicians and soul singers, and was raised by a luscious, professional flirtatious womyn. She is a spiritual Dance Practitioner who has found great passion, grounding and healing in movement. Dance is both a therapy and a celebration for her. She loves the magic, power and immensity of the transformation and awakening she experiences in herself and others through Dancing Freedom

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Tessi’s early exploration of dance included hip-hop, belly dance, and afro-brazilian. She continues to study form and formlessness in the dance through ecstatic dance parties, contact improvisation, capoeira, West African dance, hooping, and in her play with her daughter, Amma. Her embodiment background also includes training in nutritional consultation and therapeutic bodywork. She is a leader and community resource for natural mothering.

“I invite you to join me on a life transforming journey to self healing through ecstatic & somatic embodiment.” – Tessi Belle

Contact Tessi: 503.893.TESS (8377) /ammas.mahma@gmail.com


download-1Lauren “Lotus” Thomas , Sebastapool, CA
I have been a dancer since childhood, and was drawn to become a facilitator of Dancing Freedom to bridge this passion with my life’s purpose of supporting personal to global transformation. My approach emphasizes the power of embodied prayer by creating sacred space, intentional playlists and energetic exercises to clear blocks, open chakras, and empower conscious manifestation. I design each dance to relate to a theme such as healing karma, universal oneness and anchoring the future. I guide participants to use the elemental vibrations of the music and collective field to move energy individually, for community, and for the world. I am available to facilitate workshops year-round in the New England and New York area, with weekly classes in Danbury, CT starting Fall 2009. I am also available to facilitate workshops in California during the summer months.

Contact Lotus at LquinnT@gmail or (707) 486-4672


Jennifer Jerabek (Arneson), Mt. Shasta, CA,

is a Dancing Freedom Facilitator specializing in community development and work with kids.  “I see Dance as an art form of communication, connection, meditation, and prayer.  Dance teaches us how to live in love and unity with one’s Self and all of life.”

Growing up in Wisconsin, Jennifer remembers enjoying dancing as a little girl, but lost her connection to dance as a teenager.  Through Dancing Freedom she reconnected with the freedom, joy, expression, connection and self-acceptance that dancing gives her, and loves to share this awareness with others.  Jennifer’s dance facilitation is enriched by her 10 years of experience in the healing and creative arts. She offers certified massage therapy, and facilitates energy healing for clients. She also integrates her personal practice of Tai Chi, yoga and oil painting into her practice.  She encourages dancers to create their own unique forms of self-expression through the use of costume as well as movement.  Jennifer also performs belly dancing and has co-facilitated workshops on the Brazilian Orixas dance forms that express universal elemental energies.

NOTE from Samantha: Jennifer is an AMAZING massage therapist.  I totally recommend calling her for   some nourishing touch when you go through Shasta.

For information:  EMAIL Jennifer@DancingFreedom.com or  jenniferdancingfreedom@gmail.com or CALL 530.859.2492

Ethan Feldman, San Miguel, Mexico

Ethan trained as a dancer from the age of 19 to 21 before leaving the studio to find a viable career that suited his need to be in both the kinesthetic and healing worlds. He found this in is his occupation as a chiropractor, but always looked back to freeform dance to find unconstrained access to the greater whole.He first discovered Samantha and Dancing Freedom at Burning Man in 2007 and found himself in the dance journey descending into deep catharsis and regression into his very young self: uncovering feelings that were walled away and discovering resulting newly emergent strengths and sensitivities that came from dropping into that deep space.

He sees Dancing Freedom as a superb vehicle for the exploration of the inner archetypal selves that exist within all of us. He is particularly drawn to leading men through dance journeys, using music, myth, and movement, to break through ingrained left hemispheric dominant thinking patterns and expand connectedness to the many facets of authentic expression of personality that lie within the mind and body. He sees this work as a way for men to let go of rationally dominant thinking and access the right brained and full-body sources of experiential perceptions which are so necessary for fulfillment of our spiritual and emotional and physical potentials.


tnNicola Povey, British Columbia

is a mother, a community leader, an herbalist and a delighted dancer.  She shares the gift of Dancing Freedom to weave a safe, supportive, playful and transformative space for her community.

Be held in the container of what is in the moment, dance into union of body, mind, spirit, soul, heart. In dancing Freedom dance and discover what the body knows, what the heart has to say, what your spirit aspires to express and where the mind steps into stillness. Dance to be with yourself, to be with others. Dance to let go, dance for peace, Dance the dance of joy and greater freedom of being!

Dancing Freedom ~ an ecstaitc embodyment practice for self liberation!

EXPERIENCE IT!!!

Nicola is a community organizer, mother and love warrior who serves the earth through grace, intelligence and gentle presence.

Classes held weekly on Pender Island , watch for up coming classes in Victoria, B.C.

Yuba DeviYUBA DEVI, Los Angeles, CA
Yuba Devi dances through this world in a passionate, brilliant, and wildly loving way. She is committed to healing through embodiment practices such as Dancing Freedom, clear communication, massage therapy, permaculture and intimate “seeing” of each other. She holds her community in the most dear and supporting way and has been part of numerous collectives including circus caravans, bamboo building teams, and song and dance troupes. Her schooling in The Cafe Gratitude School of Transformation has expanded her receiving and giving to all around her. She brings Sacred Commerce practices to Eden Balifornia, a rapidly blossoming bamboo design/build company she co-founded in 2009.
Yuba Devi can paint the sky a rainbow with her dazzling clear blue eyes and continues to serve her community as teacher, priestess, instigator, and friend. Her work with Samantha Sweetwater has brought her into a tender and wise space, a place of oneness with the forest and waters, from which all is possible and the sweetness of life can be tasted right here and now.
yubadancingfreedom@gmail.com

Grael Corsini, Ashland, OR

I am the Creatrix of The Flying Lotus Community Activation Center of Mt. Shasta where I guide bi-weekly classes in Galactic Groove Ecstatic Dance sweetly influenced by Dancing Freedom. I am also a Ritual Theatre Director, Mother, Writer, Dancer, Priestess, and Midwife Assistant. I teach internationally, and perform Rites of Passage for Teens and co-creative community enrichment with a focus on conscious childbirth, and the Keltic Wheel of the Seasons.

Visit www.theflyinglotus.com and www.avashaclan.org for Grael’s event schedules. Email: grael@dancingfreedom.com

Note from Samantha: Immense gratitude to Grael for being the heart-anchor and priestess of sacred space for our Dancing Freedom facilitator training home: the Flying Lotus. And, thank you for being an infinite reflection of community and sacred dance!

Malia 2009Malia Oliver, Los Angeles, CA & Hawaii

is a Dancing Freedom Facilitator, Source Tantra Educator, Certified Laban Movement Analyst, teaching artist, bodyworker and former professional dancer. Since 1990, she has facilitated movement experiences for populations as diverse as women in prisons, senior citizens, and special needs children. In her experience as a lifelong dancer, Malia believes Dancing Freedom to be the most profound ecstatic dance method for encouraging deep wisdom through embodiment.

malia_ma@yahoo.com

Brooke Jillian YantziBrooke Jillian Yantzi, Toronto, ON Canada

Born and raised in a small town in South Western Ontario, I have always been fascinated by dance, movement, alternative health and spirituality. I have trained in all types of dance genres for the last 20 years and have recently realized that my love for movement came from its ability to assist me in connecting to my true self and source. This lead me to Dancing Freedom’s spiritual healing modality of movement. My classes are divinely inspired by high vibrational play lists, conscious and spiritual living, embodied awareness, connection through nonverbal communication, playful imagination and embracing oneness. I am committed to supporting individuals on their path by creating a sacred community of love and light to heal, nurture, ground, expand, grow and empower.

This dance compliments my ongoing study and practice of various modalities of energy healing, alternative healthcare, conscious co-creation and manifestation of living my purpose as well as inspiring others to live their own. I am constantly open to and embracing ways to grow and learn about the mind body connection, bringing it into all of her work. I am currently residing in Toronto and teaching Dancing Freedom twice a week, and I’m always open to collaborating and exploring the world by living my purpose.

Contact Brooke at: yant0170@wlu.ca

See the Toronto Schedule

Join the Toronto Facebook Group

Ash from SukiAshley Klein, Sedona, Arizona
Ashley facilitates Dancing Freedom, plays as a raw food chef and café manager at ChocolaTree Organic Eatery, and spends time with the Sedona amazing red rocks. Ashley’s movement background ranges from ballet shoes to pom poms and includes a love for Brazilian and West African dance. To Ashley, dance is home- a place of connection and expression of self and all that is. She enjoys holding space for others to discover and share their truth. Ashley also has a background as a school psychologist, working with children and teens with special needs, and intends to share Dancing Freedom with these populations.
Contact Ashley at: Ashley@DancingFreedom.com

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