PTA Camp | unicorn camps

Prices

If pre-booked: with early bird discount
£175 Adults (26+)
£100 Young Adults (19 - 25)
£75 Teenagers (15 - 18)
£65 Kids (5 - 14)

If paid on gate:
£195 Adults (26+)
£100 Young Adults (19 - 25)
£75 Teenagers
£65 Kids

DUP

Dances of Universal Peace began 40 years ago in California as a modern Sufi teaching birthed by Samuel Lewis, a teacher within the Chishti order. They work deeply on the various bodies - physical, emotional, mental and spiritual - to heal and clear. We sing mantra and other sacred phrases as we follow simple movements in a circle in celebration and meditation so that higher states of awareness arise within.

bob

New Teachers

Sessions for other Dance Leaders and ‘Dance Leaders in progress’

The DUP are over 40 years old and have spread organically around the globe. As long as people want to join together and Dance them, their future is safe. Unicorn PTA camp offers opportunities to inspire and nurture the next generation of DUP teachers, so if you are one of these then the future of the legacy of these Dances lies with you!
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Next Generation Teachers

Specific sessions will be available daily, as a safe space for “Next Generation Teachers” (Previously known as ET's) to share a Dance and receive feedback from Dance Mentors and experienced Certified Dance Leaders. Advice and guidance relating to Dance Leading and teacher training will also be offered one to one, or in a small group outside these sessions. Musicians will be available to be asked to accompany those who want this.

The sessions will be both for those with some experience and training in Dance leading - and those who are taking their first steps. All walk the same path and can provide support for each other.

Do you fall into one of the following categories?

1. Those who have taken a break from Dance Leading and want to ‘get back in the saddle’ or ‘keep their hand in’.

2. Those with some experience and/or training who are established or establishing themselves in their own group but who would like the experience and challenge of leading:
(i) a group of relative strangers
(ii) a larger circle and/or
(iii) doing this in the new environment of an outdoor/camp event.

3. Those who want to lead DUP but who don’t have a circle of dancers to work with and/or don’t have access to an experienced Dance Leader locally who is available to guide them.

4. Those who have only more recently discovered the Dances yet feel inspired to lead them.

At the camp If you are interested, please attend the morning meetings and watch for announcements on the notice board. Register your interest ASAP.

Opportunities to lead Dances will be given on a ‘first come first served’ basis.

An atmosphere of mutual respect and support for each other is encouraged and, unless prevented from doing so by having your karma yoga, it is hoped that you will attend all the sessions offered so that you can be inspired by, and learn from, each other.

bob

Zikr

Zikr - an Arabic word that means remembrance - is a profound spiritual practice that takes Dances of Universal Peace form to its exaltation. It works to remove layers of mistrust and defense from the heart centre, so that joy can emerge and consciousness unfold. On Thursdays around the world, a million Sufis come together and remember their sacred essence by repeating the name of God with concentrated devotion.

bob

Circle Dance

As the sun sets on the camp, the circle dance band gathers in the middle of the camp, strikes a chord, and like a musical magnet draws everyone who loves to dance to the sounds of Macedon, Israel, Armenia, Greece and Brittany, and to keep alive the community traditions of village life in the spirit of sharing life's beauty and grace. You can join the band to play or sing and you can learn the steps with experienced leaders. Sometimes vigorous, sometimes meditative, it's always joyful!

This week's free Circle Dance music pdf

Legnala dana

Voice

Harmony Singing is an important feature of this camp with a lot to offer dedicated singers, most particularly with the morning sessions of Harmonic Temple. This well-beloved form takes us into the states where angels dwell. Nickomo and Rasullah guide us gently and clearly to learn and enjoy these wonderful sacred chants from all the various spiritual traditions. On Market Day, songbooks are made available for those interested to take them away and teach them later.

bob

Development

Development Groups, introduced in 2009, are intended to offer a wide range of methods that can be used for spiritual and personal development. We want to include anything and everything that can help us to find our path to healing and knowledge, so diverse traditions will be represented: astrology, sufi healing, druidry, christianity, buddhism, 7 words, family constellations and so on. We see this as complimentary to the main theme of the camp, and entirely consistent with the teachings and experience of Samuel Lewis.

Sufi Sam

Samuel Lewis (October 18, 1896–January 15, 1971) was an American mystic and dance teacher who founded the Dances of Universal Peace movement. He was also known under his Sufi name Sufi Ahmed Murad Chishti and was addressed by his mureeds and others as Murshid. This is an arabic word that means, "Exalted Teacher." In the popular press he was sometimes known as Sufi Sam.
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In 1919 Lewis entered a Sufi community in Fairfax, California where he met and was influenced by the teachings of Hazrat Inayat Khan an Indian Sufi teacher and musician . A year later he began Zen study with Sogaku Shaku, a disciple of the Rinzai Zen Buddhist Abbot Shaku Soyen. The twin spiritual influences of Sufism and Zen were to remain central throughout his life. He developed an interest in horticulture and promoted seed exchanges across the world. In 1956 he began travelling the world visiting Japan, India, Pakistan and Egypt, seeking the company of other mystics and teachers.

In 1967 whilst recovering from a heart attack in a hospital Lewis claimed that he heard the Voice of God speak to him and say, "I make you spiritual leader of the hippies." For the remainder of his life Lewis travelled around California developing and teaching the Dances of Universal Peace which draw on all the spiritual traditions he had encountered. The movement he created continues today in a formal way as Sufi Ruhaniat International, as well as informally through the wide adoption of the Dances of Universal Peace by many other Sufi and non-Sufi groups.

Training

If you are relatively new to the Dances...

The best way to learn the Dances is to do them with an accomplished teacher. Like many of the sacred traditions of the earth, this work derives from a native mysticism that has always been communicated from teacher to learner. For this reason, it is not possible to fully systematize their teaching, since the primary quality communicated in their transmission is sacred atmosphere.
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The Certification Guidelines specify the quality of attunement you will need to demonstrate, as well as the number and type of Dances and Walks you will need to master. How you pursue your learning, demonstrate it, and arrange for the learning to be evaluated is negotiated between you and your Dance Mentor.

The International Network for the Dances of Universal Peace INDUP links the many Dance circles around the world. Peaceworks Inc, the supporting 'not for profit' organization, maintains a registry of dance leaders and networkers, publishes journals, supports the work of the Mentor Teachers Guild and offers tax deductible member.

bob

Open Space

We are experimenting with a new way to create the programme that allows a wider input of ideas. Anyone can offer or request an activity and Barbara Morgan, with helpers, will build the afternoon programme from what arises: this is Open Space. More
It is a technology, developed in 1985 by Harrison Owen, which offers a method to run meetings of groups of any size. It’s a self-organising process; participants construct the agenda and schedule during the meeting itself and the process enables groups of any size to address complex, important issues and achieve meaningful results quickly. It functions best where more traditional meeting formats fail: in situations involving conflict, complexity, diversity of thought or people, and short decision-times.

People have used it in widely diverse situations, from designing aircraft doors at a large aircraft-manufacturing company to engaging street kids in defining a sustainable jobs-program. OST meetings have a single facilitator who initiates and concludes the meeting and explains the general method. The facilitator has no other role in the meeting and does not control the actual gathering in any way. Practitioners have used it more than 100,000 times in 132 countries for purposes as various as peacemaking in the Middle East, corporate strategic planning, community-project design, and many others.

At the beginning of an Open Space the participants sit in a circle, the facilitator will greet the people and briefly re-state the theme of their gathering, without giving a lengthy speech. Then someone will invite all participants to identify any issue or opportunity elated to the theme. Participants willing to raise a topic will come to the centre of the circle and announce it to the group.

Someone writes the topics on sheets of paper which get posted on a wall, creating an agenda. No participant must suggest issues, but anyone may do so. However, if someone posts a topic, the system expects that the person has a real passion for the issue and can lead the discussion on it. When someone determines that the posting of all issues has finished, the meeting sets times and places for the individual sessions; and participants sign up for those individual sessions.

bob

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pta camp 21 - 29 august '10

What's this camp really all about?

celebration of spirit

dance Spirituality is a many-splendoured love that we honour in all its forms. Hinduism through bhajan and yoga, Buddhism’s mindfulness meditations, Sufism’s healing practices of Ilahinoor and the danced prayer of zikr. We have Aramaic and more western Christian prayer, Native American Dance of Life, and Earth Magic too.

Above all we have the Dances of Universal Peace, whose central purpose is to soften distinctions and differences that arise between people as a result of their convictions.

psychological healing

dance Emotional release can be a healing event when it’s done with awareness in the atmosphere of compassion. Self-awareness as an aspect of that process and include here: Family Constellations, Astrodrama and the 7 Words.

Additionally, the whole business of community camping in circles and learning how to live on the land together in harmony is also profoundly therapeutic.

celebration of joy

dance We dance a lot, we sing a lot and we play a lot – as shown by the excellent programme for everyone. There is Harmonic Temple, Circle Dance, volleyball and teen sports, a Creativity Area for kids and parents, and a hundred colourful moments in every hour in every circle; we are also rather proud of our café with its special relaxed caring atmosphere.

Teachers

For 20 years Unicorn Camps have attracted teachers at the highest level of attainment and influence and have seeded camps in such countries as Germany, Ireland, Latvia, Russia and America. Entirely new aspects of wisdom have often arisen in thousands of workshops – Harmonic Temple, 7 Words, new songs, new dances, new flower essences, novel methods of healing with crystals, sound and linguistics, empowerment of teens and adults, and other evolutionary experiments in 3rd-milleneum social processes.

On camp this year are the founders or co-founders of many important initiatives: Sufi healing method Ilahinoor, Harmonic Temple, Lammas Housing Project, 7 Words Self-Realization Method, Oak Dragon Camps, PTA International Camp, Khanqah Salaam Sufi Retreat Centre, Campscene Directory, Unicorn Camps Ireland, Unicorn Centre Vilnius, 7 Words Doula Training, 7 Words Theatre, Editor of the Family Constellations Journal and composers of a hundred melodies and dances known and loved throughout the world.

Muiz Brinkerhoff

Formally initiated onto the path of universalist Sufism, within the Sufi Ruhaniat International, in 1975, in San Francisco, California, Muiz was trained by his two initiators in a variety of Sufi subjects including spiritual dance and walk, concentration, breath and sound practice, increasing and maintaining spiritual magnetism, and spiritual transmission and attunement.

He was formally certified in 1979, by the head of the order, as a Leader of the Dances of Universal Peace (DUP), and raised to the post of teacher in 1996. More
He has been mentoring Dance Leaders informally since the late 1980s, and formally since being asked in 2002, to join the Mentor Teachers Guild, a collaborative training effort of the International Network for the Dances of Universal Peace (INDUP), and the Sufi Ruhaniat International, the particular Sufi order he represents when he teaches.

For the past 31 years he has shared this work of body-centered, spiritual transformation and heart-awakening in classes, workshops, camps, and retreats in California, around the US, and since 2003 around the UK (at Sacred Arts, at year-end retreats at Springhead and BonHays Farm, plus a variety of annual evening, day long, and extended weekends in West Yorkshire, Preston, and Machynlleth in Wales), as well as working one-on-one with his formal and informal Sufi students and Dance leadership mentees in the US and the UK.

Having worked for many years to balance and integrate both the masculine and feminine, Power and Beauty, aspects of his being, and to clear a backlog of shadow issues, he often uses a cooperative, power-sharing, sacred circle leadership model, with a deep respect and honoring of Divine Mother in all Her forms.

For whatever it may be worth, he also holds the unique distinction of almost certainly being the first openly gay man to be confirmed as a teacher within any formal Sufi Order.

Muiz’ Sufi and DUP work is informed and deepened by a wide variety of interests and talents from other areas of his life: including 10 years of his own psychological and psychic healing and integration using the personal, inner growth work developed by Elizabeth Kübler-Ross, and the 3-Selves/Huna system taught by Rev. Frida Waterhouse; 7 years working with Both Sides Now, a gay, bisexual, lesbian, transgender social, educational and community outreach organization on the island of Maui, Hawai’i; 4 years of very active HIV/AIDS education, prevention, counseling and support work, plus co-founding and working with the Maui AIDS Foundation, during the mid 1980s; a year of studying, dancing and performing Hawai’ian Hula; co-facilitating 2 groups of court-mandated men for Maui’s Alternatives to Violence domestic violence prevention program; offering counseling, and DUP mentoring during 5 annual DUP Leader Training Camps at Lama Foundation in New Mexico USA; 3+ years directing a biweekly men’s group; co-producing several weekend men’s retreats

Last but not least, a zany and irreverent sense of humor combined with a very active belief in never taking himself too seriously.

James Burgess

burgess James has taught at Unicorn Camps since their inception in 1988. His background is in Sufism and he has a role in Eastern Europe’s developing studies of the work of Hazrat Inayat Khan. He was appointed as the Sufi Representative for the Baltic States in 2000 and has permission to lead the practice of zikr, a dynamic form of meditation that repeats devotional Arabic phrases to reach sublime states. More
More recently he has devoted most of his effort to promote awareness of the 7 Words System, a life management technique with wide applications for personal and spiritual development, for which a lot of material can be found on the 7 Words website.

He has composed many dances and wazifa walks to support the DUP and Sufi teachings. If you have a pdf facility, a full list is available to download from his personal website James Burgess.com.

Rasullah Clarke

test Rasullah has been teaching the dances since 1987 and has created many new dances especially from the Hindu and Celtic spiritual traditions. She follows Druidry, an earth based spirituality centred round celebrating nature and the seasonal festivals, as her spiritual practice. On the camp she will be offering some insights into Druidry and its application as a personal path as well as sharing some of the dances that celebrate this. In the mornings she will lead the Dance of Life ( see Voice Camp for more info) and she will also be helping Nickomo teach his Harmonic Temple chants.

Nickomo Clarke

test Nickomo is a composer, choir-leader and musician. He has played for Dances of Universal Peace and Circle Dances for over 15 years, and will be supporting both at the camp. He will also be offering sessions of the ‘Harmonic Temple’ - acappella vocal harmony based on spiritual texts.

Tone Wrench

test Tony is a singer and multi-instrumentalist who has been playing music to accompany Circle Dances since the eighties. He is charismatic, inspiring and visionary, and manages to form a band of excellent musicians out of all-comers, with their recorders, tubas, guitars and drums! If you would like to play in the band you are welcome to attend the daily rehearsal sessions. It really is great fun!

Barbara Morgan

test Barbara will lead sessions in Family Constellations, which is a therapeutic method developed by Bert Hellinger and practiced by psychologists, psychiatrists psychotherapists and alternative practitioners. Its objective is to release profound tensions within and between people. Those tensions may lie in a personal or professional context. Barbara has a we lath of experience in leading these groups, and is central within the network as editor of its leading journal.

Daren Messenger

test Daren Messenger leads DUP, has a particularly deep connection to Sufism, the Aramaic Lords Prayer and Buddhist mindfulness and concentration practices. He is a Registered Existential Psychotherapist with special interest in Cognitive Therapy using eastern teachings, and is researching mindfulness at the University of Wales Psychology Dept.

Glenda and Trevor

Glenda and Trevor are both certified teachers of the Dances of Universal Peace who, for the past 10 years, have committed their lives fully to organising and facilitating their own dance days & retreats and responding to requests to take the Dances to other groups, new areas and venues.

Glenda is a Dance Mentor and she and Trevor have been involved in supporting Dance Leaders in training at home and abroad since 2001. They will be organising and facilitating sessions to encourage, nurture and support the 'Next Generation Teachers' of the Dances. For a more detailed biography, please visit their website: www.dancingspirit.co.uk

Ros Briagha

We are very fortunate this year to be able to invite Ros as one of our Development Group teachers. Her experience is quite unique in the realm of Earth Mysteries, having taught for over 25 years and been the central axis of the renown Oak Dragon Camps, which is widely and justifiably acknowledged as the mother of many - even most - of the camps that exist today.
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She was a stalwart of the Greenham Peace Camp movement and during the early '80s learned practices of wicca, earth magic, feminine lore and story telling. Living in Wales, she has organised covens, groups and meetings focusing astrology, dowsing, natural healing and ritual. Her tours de force are contemporary full-size stone circles that are to be found in various sacred places in South West Wales.

Sarah Godwin and Dave Boldick

test Sarah and David will be offering group sessions where you can receive Ilahinoor and also learn and practise giving to each other. It is generally experienced as very nurturing and grounding, as we enter deeply into the body in the presence of Love. Ilahinoor is a powerful and ancient evolutionary energy field which has its roots in ancient Egypt and a strong resonance with the Sufi tradition. Embodying, balancing and unifying, it is an easily accessible energy which can be given by touch or intent, facilitating our awakening into multi-dimensional consciousness.
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Sarah has explored many forms of dance, movement, sound, touch and energy work alongside being a mother, with a growing fascination with embodiment. Through Ilahinoor, she has experienced a profound transformation of consciousness. David has practised healing for many years, mainly through Craniosacral Therapy and Reiki. He now teaches healing through touch, intent and allowing, in the UK and Spain. His lifelong involvement with brass bands has combined with his work to keep his feet on the ground while flying with the angels. For both Sarah and David, encountering Ilahinoor has felt like coming home.

Nesta Burgess

Nesta Nesta has been trained to advanced levels in yoga, which she will lead as a daily session for all who are interested. Her backgound includes Ayangara and Ashtanga, yet mainly her experience is within the Shivananda tradition. Her teaching experience has until now been limited to her own country, Lithuania, where she has led regular adult groups and at summer camps week long courses for children.

Nesta is also trained to lead Chinese and Japanese Tea Ceremony and South American mate drinking rituals, and is the programme manager of the Unicorn Centre in Vilnius, based at Arbatos Magija, the primary location for tea training in Lithuania.

Dominique Sakoilsky

sakoilsky Dom is a certified practitioner in 7 Words and will be facilitating a Personal Develoment Group entitled "Relationship in 7 Words". There will be 3 sessions looking at how the 7 Words Life Managemnet Technique can help illuminate relationship issues and find ways to work with them.
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For some time, she has been using this technique to deepen her work on her Bristol courses helping parents find joy in their birthing experiences. She also has long term experience with Relate, helping to sponsor deeper authentic communication in couples, work she truly loves to do!

"Relationship work is fun, dynamic, challanging and growthful! How we do our most intimate relationships (or not!) really shows up our blindspots, or less healed parts of ourselves. Finding a keyword to work with, and linking areas of unconscious behaviour with old stories we have about ourselves can reverse the errors of perception that lead to psychological suffering."

Rosa James

Rosa has been teaching Circle Dance since the early 1980's, and still runs a regular group in S.Shropshire. She has led these dances at many camps over the years - especially at Camps, and loves to dance under the skies, feet on the Earth, to live music.