Today I’m revealing another new room here inside my online home. This new room is dedicated to my Sacred Dance Parties. Here you will find everything you need to know about these events including my upcoming schedule, what others are saying, FAQ’s and lots of photos too!

To celebrate the reveal of this particular room I have the honour of sharing a write up about the first Sacred Dance Party held in Brisbane May 2014 by Tara Bliss, a dear friend of mine.  This piece is one of the incredible stories she has written for her soon to be published book and she has given me the green light to share it here with you all.

Enjoy!

Are you here to experience love, sex or desire?

Written by Tara Bliss

I have an amazing friend named Susana Frioni. She’s a deep living coach, an embodiment teacher, and she has actual magical powers. Whenever you’re in the presence of this dynamite, you feel compelled to bring forth more of the woman that you are. I’ve never met someone so grounded in their body; so keenly aware of themselves, then Susana.

And we’re all here tonight – all sixty or so of us, gathered in this yoga studio, after hours, in central Brisbane – to both bear witness to and take active part in her latest project: the first ever Love Sex Desire EMBODIED Sacred Dance Party.

She’s electric and spicy and sensual – the way she talks, carries herself, dances. She speaks with her shoulders, with her wrists. She wriggles words out of her with her body. She’s fiercely feminine and has a very, very special inner power that can easily tip between inspiring as all hell, and a little intimidating.

We’re all about to give these bodies of ours over to her for the next three hours, and I think I can speak for everyone in the room when I say – just quietly – that we’re all trembling in our boots just a little. There’s nothing like being in the presence of  a woman who shamelessly owns and projects her power to trigger your insecurities. And this woman – this dazzling creature that I get the privilege to call my friend – she means business.

With a long, revealing red dress on, her divinity demands attention from us – her students for the next short while. She gets it from us. She gets every last drop of it. We all gaze at her for direction and guidance, possibly because we’re like scared little sheep that need herding, but mostly, I think, we’re all just so entranced when she speaks. The woman knows how to hold space!

At first, we take our seat. Dozens of women sit perched on their yoga mats, eyes fixated on our very own red lady. There’s some housekeeping stuff to go over before we open our journals, and start there. There’s always deep, introspective work when Susana’s involved.

She asks us: What do you want to experience in your body tonight? Love, Sex or Desire.
I write: Desire.

She asks us: What could prevent you from feeling it?
I write: The stories in my mind of who I think I am. Beliefs that I cannot do this. Self-criticism and comparing myself to others in the room. Judging myself for the way I’m moving.

She asks us: What is your intention for tonight? Why are you here?
I write: To beam joy out from within me. To rust my body and LET IT ALL OUT. Freedom.

Finally, she asks us: What do you give yourself permission to do tonight?
I write: To completely let of of my inhibitions and be ecstatic!

And with that, I’m ready. We all are. The journalling has created space between each of us and our nerves and insecurities, and now we’re ready to shake ourselves free of it all completely. But not before a little more foreplay from Susana.

She asks us to stand, to ground ourselves, to connect to our inner energy field; to feel the height and width and depth of our bodies, all with closed eyes, all with open awareness. Suddenly, she pressed play on a track, and the beat is met with hoots and hollers from a few in the crowd, including me.

‘Don’t. Move,’ Susana says sternly, into her microphone. ‘Just feel. Don’t move a muscle. Receive the music. Is it coming up through your feet, is it in your hands, your heart, your head? Where are you feeling it?’

She stops the song after a minute or so, and changes the track, and asks us again. Our bodies fight the urge to release the floodgates of movement for another half a dozen sound bytes of electro, hip hop, rock, indie; each genre being felt in a different part of my body, with differing intensity, bringing me alive in a completely unique way.

 Never mind Sunday church, this thing going on right now, in this room, in our bodies, is all kinds of holy.

Awareness – laser sharp.
Presence – dialled up to HIGH.
Curiosity – CHECK!
Intense waves of self-love and acceptance? Oh God, yes!

After what feels like forever, Susana finally relinquishes the pause button and sets her Sacred Dance Party Playlist free. She cranks the volume, dims the lights, and away we go. Each song offers us an opportunity to explore every corner of our being with freshness and such irrational femininity that these words cannot do the experience justice.

We were swaying, uninhibited, to the beat of our own drum. We were bouncing around like energiser bunnies. We were fiercely connecting to each and every accent in the music as though it were coming from us, out of us. The sweat was pouring, and like wild lost little things, we danced on.

Following occasional prompts from Susana, we’d closed our eyes and move intuitively around the room dancing with whatever body we bumped up against in the blindness. At one stage, when she dropped a gnarly remix of Icona Pop, we engulfed her in a circle of bouncing, sweaty bodies, screaming the lyrics at the top of our lungs, to her, smothering her in our passion, in our earth-shaking gratitude, barely able to contain ourselves from leaping out of our own skins.

She was a sight to behold – a goddess laced in red, laughing, fist pumping, moving her body in every which way. I didn’t know whether to let out little yelps of joy, or to cry with joy.

Look – just look – what she had done to us.

She had evoked the spirits of women who just moments earlier had felt shackled by their own expectations. Now, we were like wild animals, and as we engulfed her in our circle, as if we are an ancient tribe worshipping a sacred diety, she looked glorious. 

Eventually, after more than two hours, the music slows, as do our heartbeats. We find the stillness, the volume lowers, the lights begin to glow a little brighter, and instead of wine, or vodka, or cocktails, we fill up our tanks with raspberries (Susana’s favourite!), raw chocolate and green tea.

As we all fall into messes of cuddles, we attempt to explain our experience in words to each other, but we fall short. Words fail, but we are forever changed.

Yep! That’s what these Sacred Dance Parties are all about.  Share this post with any woman you know who needs to be at one of these Sacred Dance Parties. Final tickets on sale now. Click here to get yours.