Annual DUPA Retreat 2025

Dancing in the Sacred Manuscript of Nature

with Jilani Cordelia Prescott

April 21-29 2025

Yarrawarra Retreat Centre, Corindi, NSW

3 days Dance Deepening and Leadership Training, and 5 days Retreat.

Yarrawarra is an indigenously owned retreat centre in a stunning location near the beach. Nearest airport is Coffs Harbour. We will also enjoy cultural activities.

All welcome! No experience required.

For registrations and enquiries contact the Registrar: Sabira Jane +61 499 652 804

sabirajane@gmail.com

Early bird by 21 March!

21 December 2024 2-5 pm

Jilani and Salik warmly welcome you to join us for our celebration of the return of the Light this year at Om Yoga Works.

Gather together with like-minded friends in a heart warming celebration at the Celtic festival of the Winter Solstice.

Using chant and movement, with the Dances of Universal Peace, we invite you to open your hearts to the light and to each other.

The Winter Solstice can be a time to look back and reflect, but also to look ahead, to dream into the coming year, and to rejoice in the light returning. We will feel into and explore the nourishment and regeneration of this time of fertile darkness, and we will rejoice in the rebirth and returning of the light. We will work with simple sacred chants and movements, beautiful live music, powerful breath practices, and sharing; and the power of ritual and ceremony.

Everything will be clearly guided and held. All are welcome, whether you are new friends or old.

If you’d like to join us for a shared meal afterwards, please bring a contribution of something delicious to share. Read more about the Dances of Universal Peace at www.dancesofuniversalpeace.org

The Khankah of the Heart is a vision of a Sufi community, a Khankah, based not in a building of bricks and mortar, but in the relationships between the deep and loving hearts of its members. All fervent seekers are welcome to join, whether new to this or having been walking the path for many years.  The core of this community will be the practices and teachings of Murshid Sufi Ahmed Murad Chisti (Samuel Lewis) and the Sufi and Dance lineages that he birthed.  Dances of Universal Peace will be central to our group practice.  In our experience and understanding, the Dances of Universal Peace are rooted in the whole of S.A.M.’s teachings and practices including the Walks and that they will flourish more fully, firmly attached to their roots from which they can not be separated. 

Last year Jilani Cordelia Prescott & Shamsia Sandra Sunfire initiated our gathering together with a shared purpose. The Khankah of the Heart is envisioned to meet in different places at different times with different people guiding us through retreats.  We are living in the UK but retreats here will welcome those from other countries and future retreats could also be held in other countries.  This particular retreat will be 16th-19th January 2025, from supper on Thursday to after lunch on Sunday, at the Oblate Retreat Centre, Crewe, UK. Further details are on the attached flyer.  The retreat will happen just after the Urs of Samuel Lewis, the anniversary of his death, of when he returned to the Source from which he came.  There is a hope to expand this to a week long annual retreat, with other online and in person gatherings keeping us in touch in between.  The retreats are envisioned to serve and nourish the Sufi community and friends, wherever we may call home, returning to our home in the heart, our Khankah of the Heart, where we can gather to “eat, dance and pray” together.  

We are guided by our teachers.

“One who has learned friendship has learned religion; the one who has learned friendship has attained spiritual knowledge. The one who has learned friendship need learn very little else; morals in Persian is friendship” (Hazrat Inayat Khan)

“…real meetings are mergings; they change the parties involved leaving them more fully themselves.” (Murshid SAM)

We follow in their footsteps, walking with them. 

As Mentors and Dance Leaders we strongly feel that in order for the  transmission of the Dances of Universal Peace to be healthy and complete, we need to provide opportunities for Dance Leaders and potential Dance Leaders, to deeply experience SAM’s Dances & Walks, teachings and practices. This can provide strong roots for DUP to grow and bloom anew, setting new seeds for future growth in our young people.

We are applying for grants to start an ongoing bursary fund to enable us to support those encountering financial difficulties to be able to join us.  This will be available to all including those who will in future serve and support our communities, the young people.  We recognise that these are challenging times and that financial challenges are becoming more widespread and that a bursary fund will help our community to be more supportive and inclusive. If you are experiencing abundance and feel inspired to support our bursary fund, please contact us.

We are grateful for the grant we received from Dances of Universal Peace International for this retreat. If bursary help would be necessary for you to be able to join us, please get in touch.

We are committed to exploring sustainable ways to continue to gather as a Sufi Community, financially and based on caring for the Earth’s limited resources.  This venture has been unfolding in our hearts and our lives each and every time we meet, we nurture and pray for its past, present and future. 

A non-residential retreat with Murshid Allaudin Ottinger

‘Spirituality is not necessarily intellectuality, nor orthodoxy, nor asceticism… If there can be a definition of spirituality, it is the tuning of the heart.’ (Hazrat Inayat Khan)

At this time when humanity is faced by growing challenges and divisions, this retreat invites you to the sacred work of tuning the heart – aligning with harmony and inner peace. Together, we seek to awaken a deeper connection that can raise us above the distinctions and differences that divide, fostering unity and healing within ourselves and the world.

This retreat will run from Friday morning until Sunday afternoon, and our journey towards heart awakening together will include a delightful and powerful mixture of Sufi teachings, Dances of Universal Peace, breathing practices, chants, walking meditations, and of course, Zikr.

Murshid Allaudin Ottinger originates from Kansas City, Missouri. He is an internationally renowned leader of the Dances of Universal Peace and has facilitated camps and retreats around the world since 1979. With great thanks to his teachers, Allaudin continues to travel the world and share the Universal Sufi message of spiritual liberty. As a senior Dance mentor and teacher in the Sufi Ruhaniat Order “…his exceptional musicianship, creativity and spontaneity are the seeds of ecstatic experiences…”. And as a consummate musician, Allaudin has recorded several albums of Sufi music, jazz, and poetry over many years, and brings to all he does a great quality of heart.

Cost: £240 – includes 3 lunches and 2 suppers, with delicious vegan food cooked on the premises.

Gluten free options available. A small number of discounted places are available on request.

For further information, or to make a booking, contact Robert Salik Orange:

robertorange19@gmail.com or 07870 213884