What are the Dances of Universal Peace?
The Dances of Universal Peace, sometimes called "Sufi dancing," are a form of interactive movement that is experienced in a circle of people. There is no difference between participants and spectators. Everyone can join in, whether or not you have prior dance experience. We learn together simple songs and chants that come from many different cultures and different spiritual traditions, and we learn simple movements. Together it creates a quality of blessing and joy deepening between people and within an individual, and a tangible atmosphere of peace. 

What are some examples of the sacred phrases and songs that you use?
There's a selection of 400 or 500 dances that have been developed over the last 30 years. We could take as an example "Om Sri Ram Jai Ram Jai Jai Ram," a mantra that comes from India, in Sanskrit, which is basically praising the name of God and calling in that presence of a clear and strong joyfulness of God's presence or Ram's presence amongst us. We have some chants where we say "Er-rahman, Er-rahim". These are two qualities of Allah from the Islamic tradition, sometimes called the sun of love and the moon of love, or divine compassion and divine mercy. We have a phrase "Shalom Aleichim" in Hebrew that means "Peace be with you." We have others from the Buddhist tradition, and we have chants in English that come from Celtic tradition, from Jewish tradition, and from Christian tradition, and so on. 

You have done these dances in India, South Africa, and other places, working with people who may come from backgrounds with a painful history between them, like dancing with Germans and Jews at concentration camps in Poland. How do the Dances bring about a change?
In most of the situations, there's been a will to come closer together, and that will is brought from the mind level into the heart level through the Dances. There's always a leap or barrier that people have to go through in order to experience that. For some people that barrier is passed very smoothly and gently, but for other people there may be more resistance. The Dances have a quality of harmonizing and bringing together different viewpoints in a way that gets through the mind stuff that separates us. I was very honored to be at a community outside of Jerusalem which was bringing together Palestinians from the West Bank and Israeli citizens. The organizers of that seminar told me that what I did with the Dances was a miracle. I hear that kind of response quite regularly. It's always moving. Sometimes it's more joyous, sometimes it's more deep, sometimes it appears that less is happening, as far as a tangible feeling of transformation, and sometimes it feels like there's a lot more, but there's always something happening. 

Some dances are circle dances and some dances are partner dances. The first time I danced, I was taken by the way the other dancers looked into my eyes.
We often use partner dances, but the partners keep changing. It is a great way for people to connect, meet other people, and have a meaningful and really enjoyable contact, a sense of knowing one another in a very short time. There is a kind of bond there that lasts. There can be a lot of depth and honesty there because we're not using words so much, too, and it's a real atmosphere of good-heartedness and joy and also safety. We are reflections of one another. In partner dances, we open our eyes to see the godliness, the beauty, the God or Goddess, in the other person. So if you're less comfortable about seeing that in yourself, then you'll be less comfortable about seeing it in the other and having that reflected back. But that's okay. We're encouraged to be present to our own self and to our own higher self in the Dance. The more present you are, the more you'll be able to receive. 

How do the Dances of Universal Peace fit in with the work of the Athens Yoga Center?
I see the Dances as a form of yoga. It's a form of union, integrating body, mind, spirit, and heart. I think people who are doing yoga will really enjoy this and find that it can benefit their practice. It will enliven your own sense of Atman, of the true self within the self. We hope people will choose to come to the workshop and share of themselves and bring their significant others and their friends. 

1.2 YOGAH CITTA VRITTI NIRODHAH
Yoga is the restraint of the modifications of the mind stuff.

Sri Swami Satchidananda, a living master of Yoga says about this Sutra " The astute student needs only this statement to attain union…." This sutra refers to an eastern psychology that today is in radical dialogue to our own ideas about mind structure and the definition of the self. For the Yoga practitioner, Self is pure consciousness (without object, idea, or structure) and the mind is an emergent or reflection of that consciousness. The mind is in constant movement and activity. It constructs deconstructs, stabilizes, motivates, differentiates, watches, interprets and comments. Patanjali calls these movements vritti's or whirlpools. The eight-stage path of Yoga was designed to still these whirlpools, making the mind a crystal clear pool through which the Self is visible and accessible to experience (literally Yoga means 'Union with').
Another way to picture this is to imagine that life is about the evolution of consciousness. Consciousness in its original state is latent. It seeks to know itself and creates a vehicle to do so. Consciousness awakens, and begins a journey developing a more and more sophisticated vehicle of awareness. The residue or byproduct of this process is what we call the world. Consciousness is constantly moving out of its latency and emerging into the world as energy. It evolves into space and form gaining more complex integration; gas, mineral, vegetable, animal until it reaches an organizational state that has the capability of full awareness, the human. At this point consciousness, which has evolved the 'vehicle of consciousness' the mind, becomes involute. Consciousness moves inward to find and experience it's true Self. 
When we reach the human state we are literally covered over with the residue our journey. We are embedded in our world. We have identities, bodies, philosophies, location, relationships and are even subject to the physical and biological laws of this contingent world that we have created. Patanjali's Sutras help of recognize this world as contingent and lead us to experience a truer state of Being.
The world is like dense scaffolding we have erected to help us build a home for consciousness. Our problem is that we choose to live or get lost in the scaffolding and forget to move into our home. "Still the mind" means move through the scaffolding of the mind and take your seat in your home, the True Self. 

Dr. Rich Panico is a Board Certified Psychiatrist at Northeast Georgia Center in Athens. He teaches Hatha Yoga at AYC.