New Retreat: Alchemy of Oneness – Sacred Dance & the 3rd Force

Location: Menla Retreat Center, NY

Answer your soul’s longing for peace and wholeness as you dance, whirl, meditate, commune with a like-hearted community in this 4-day retreat at the transformative Menla sanctuary in New York.

You’ll explore how compassionately weaving paradoxes together creates a third force — one that initiates ecstatic embodiment, healing, and transfiguration, a profound spiritual process Sufi mystics described as the alchemy of the heart, Rumi called the meeting place beyond opposites, and modern quantum physics understands as emergence through coherence and superposition.

At a time when our world feels fractured by uncertainty, polarization, and power-over politics, this retreat invites you into ecstatic embodiment as a path to unity and your deepest calling — where body and spirit, energy and form, stillness and wildness are compassionately unified through movement, intention, and presence. 

https://danceofoneness.org/e/alchemy-of-oneness-sacred-dance-the-3rd-force/

Banafsheh Sayyad, MFA, Choreography and MA, Chinese Medicine, is a master sacred dancer, choreographer, and visionary teacher of spiritual embodiment whose life’s work is devoted to helping people activate greater health, awareness, and resilience through conscious movement.

Internationally acclaimed for her pioneering fusion of spirituality and sensuality, she is the founder of Dance of Oneness®, a Divine Feminine lineage of healing and transformation uniting Sufi whirling, Persian dance, flamenco, mysticism, and Taoist wisdom.

Her forthcoming book, Dance of Oneness (St. Martin’s Essentials, March 2026), invites readers to rediscover the body as a portal to presence, vitality, and joy. Drawing from her own awakening through dance that transmuted the pain of exile from Iran, Banafsheh weaves Rumi’s poetry, feminine mysticism, and embodied healing into a radiant call to live as a channel of love and light. Born in Iran to legendary filmmaker Parviz Sayyad, she defied cultural taboos to create a feminine expression of Sufi whirling, transforming dance into a pathway of liberation, divine communion, and activism.

Through her non-profit Dance of Oneness and her transformative teachings at centers such as Esalen, Kripalu, Omega, and Hollyhock, Banafsheh has inspired thousands across the world to awaken, embody love, and dance the divine into being.