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Dance of Oneness
Discover healing, transformation, and joyful liberation through sacred dance with this empowering guide to embodied spirituality.
Most of us live in our heads and miss out on experiencing our bodies as a portal to the present moment and true happiness. In this guide, Banafsheh Sayyad offers a transformative healing path to reconnect with yourself as a being of love, ground your spirituality in your body, and embrace ease, joy, and freedom.
This work isn’t about professional dance techniques. Instead, Sayyad shares how dance can help you honor the body as the physical expression of the miraculous, wise, and full of wonder. Through her healing modality, Dance of Oneness—a fusion of Taoist, Sufi, and Divine Feminine wisdom with flamenco, tai chi, Persian dance, and Sufi whirling—Sayyad guides you to release blockages, activate your light body, and rediscover your vitality and purpose. For the first time in a book, readers are initiated into whirling as a portal to higher dimensions and profound transformation.
“Dance of Oneness invites you to live your life as a dance that brings you into unity with all, through embodied love,” offers Sayyad. “True embodiment is about experiencing yourself as a channel of light to help heal the earth.” With wisdom teachings, embodiment practices, insights from Rumi’s inspirational poetry, and Sayyad’s own story out of Iran and into the freedom that dance spirituality gave her, Dance of Oneness invites you to open to the flow of love and embrace a soul-filled life.
Most of us live in our heads and miss out on experiencing our bodies as a portal to the present moment and true happiness. In this guide, Banafsheh Sayyad offers a transformative healing path to reconnect with yourself as a being of love, ground your spirituality in your body, and embrace ease, joy, and freedom.
This work isn’t about professional dance techniques. Instead, Sayyad shares how dance can help you honor the body as the physical expression of the miraculous, wise, and full of wonder. Through her healing modality, Dance of Oneness—a fusion of Taoist, Sufi, and Divine Feminine wisdom with flamenco, tai chi, Persian dance, and Sufi whirling—Sayyad guides you to release blockages, activate your light body, and rediscover your vitality and purpose. For the first time in a book, readers are initiated into whirling as a portal to higher dimensions and profound transformation.
“Dance of Oneness invites you to live your life as a dance that brings you into unity with all, through embodied love,” offers Sayyad. “True embodiment is about experiencing yourself as a channel of light to help heal the earth.” With wisdom teachings, embodiment practices, insights from Rumi’s inspirational poetry, and Sayyad’s own story out of Iran and into the freedom that dance spirituality gave her, Dance of Oneness invites you to open to the flow of love and embrace a soul-filled life.
304 pages, Paperback
Published March 10, 2026
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
March 11, 2026
I really enjoyed this book. Sayyad shares her personal journey from her upbringing in Iran and her path to using dance as a spiritual practice to overcome the trauma of exile. Highly recommend.
November 19, 2025
This book is part dance memoir and part practice guide. It wraps wonderfully Flamenco, Tai chi, Gurdieff's teaching and Sufism in one of the best books on dance I've ever read. Because it's a personal story, a story of perseverence and liberation but also because it's unexpectedly wonderfully written.
To me this work and this search for the sacred dance has been a revelation. I read in awe the author's superb and profound understanding of flamenco and I have learned so much about Sufi, all through Rumi's words and the author's experience.
I am grateful to have received this book in order to share my view on it and I can't recommend it enough, it's an engaging and such a fascinating read.
To me this work and this search for the sacred dance has been a revelation. I read in awe the author's superb and profound understanding of flamenco and I have learned so much about Sufi, all through Rumi's words and the author's experience.
I am grateful to have received this book in order to share my view on it and I can't recommend it enough, it's an engaging and such a fascinating read.
April 17, 2026
It took a while for me to get through this book - started as an ARC and ended up waiting to get the physical book from the library. I was interested in this book as a dancer who has been told that the music dances me, so I was interested in hearing from an author who has combined professional dance with spirituality. It did not disappoint.
In a quirk of timing, it was also helpful to hear from someone who grew up in Iran who wrestled with the difference between her deep Islamic faith and the rules of the Islamic brotherhood. Early in the book she talks about that process. In subsequent chapters she talks about the various paths she has gone down, both in dance and in spiritual study, that led her to develop her Dance of Oneness. As someone who loves flamenco but has never studied it, I really appreciated her discussion around it as a spiritual practice.
The book is very well structured. It's divided into 3 parts. The first part sets up the spiritual lens we'll be using. The second is the longest and itself divides into sections to group together the teachings and practices of what she terms the Upward Spiral. The third is the Downward Spiral and it's where we get to dancing in her style. There's a lot to take in - this isn't a book to knock off over a weekend.
One thing I really appreciated is that there is a table of contents behind the tradition table of contents that points you directly to the various practices in the book. Since I usually read the book first then go back and do the practices this has been incredibly helpful, as has the webpage with audio and video components so I can immerse myself in the work. Having had health challenges which restrict my ability to dance, I haven't tried those exercises yet but I am looking forward to them.
If you are a dancer into spirituality, this book is a must read. Can't recommend it highly enough.
In a quirk of timing, it was also helpful to hear from someone who grew up in Iran who wrestled with the difference between her deep Islamic faith and the rules of the Islamic brotherhood. Early in the book she talks about that process. In subsequent chapters she talks about the various paths she has gone down, both in dance and in spiritual study, that led her to develop her Dance of Oneness. As someone who loves flamenco but has never studied it, I really appreciated her discussion around it as a spiritual practice.
The book is very well structured. It's divided into 3 parts. The first part sets up the spiritual lens we'll be using. The second is the longest and itself divides into sections to group together the teachings and practices of what she terms the Upward Spiral. The third is the Downward Spiral and it's where we get to dancing in her style. There's a lot to take in - this isn't a book to knock off over a weekend.
One thing I really appreciated is that there is a table of contents behind the tradition table of contents that points you directly to the various practices in the book. Since I usually read the book first then go back and do the practices this has been incredibly helpful, as has the webpage with audio and video components so I can immerse myself in the work. Having had health challenges which restrict my ability to dance, I haven't tried those exercises yet but I am looking forward to them.
If you are a dancer into spirituality, this book is a must read. Can't recommend it highly enough.
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews