TOWARDS the One
The perfection of
Love, harmony and beauty
The Only Being
United with all the illuminated souls
Who form the embodiment of the Master,
The Spirit of Guidance.
The Dances of Universal Peace are a powerful way to connect with others, to experience the true heart of many spiritual traditions and draw on them for inspiration.
From the beginning of time, sacred movement, song and story have brought people together at time of seasonal ceremony and celebration, as part of everyday life and during life passages, in daily renewal and meditation. The Dances of Universal Peace are part of this timeless tradition of sacred dances. They are a form of celebration and meditation in song and movement, the sacred phrase being an important element of each Dance.
Through remembrance of our divine unity we can experience peace, harmony and healing – opening the pathways to inner peace and sensations of positive energy.
The Dances of Universal Peace were originally created in the late 1960's by Samuel Lewis, who studied many of the world's spiritual traditions: Zen and Hindu, Christian and Kabballah. His Sufi teacher Hazrat Inayat Khan, who first brought Sufism to the West, inspired the Dances. Following Hazrat Inayat Khan and the "Unity of Religious Ideals" – that the truth at the heart of all religious is the same truth - Samuel Lewis envisaged a dance form, which would embody this ideal, one that would allow people to directly experience for themselves such states as joy, peace, harmony and unity.
He saw the Dances as a form of "peace through the arts", a way of shearing the blessings of peace throughout the world and within each individual. He was also greatly concerned with the environment and global understanding.