The story behind the practice
Mandala Dance grew out of a long search through traditions, framed by two root lineages: Buddhist practice and the Sufi tradition with its dance, poetry and song. The account below follows what Maya herself tells in an interview published in 2019.
- Years on the path
In that interview Maya speaks of fifteen years on the spiritual journey and of meeting the masters with whom her soul has a strong connection. Her main lineage comes from Buddhism — Dzogchen is her root teaching — and she also studied in the Sufi tradition, where dance, poetry and song lead back to the divine.
- Many ways of dancing
Because she loves dance, she explored modern and contemporary dance, contact improvisation, African dance, a little belly dance, tango and flamenco. Sufism gave her ecstatic experience, but its dance has one shape — the whirling. She wanted the praying quality of that dance together with many forms of expression.
- The female lineage
In tantra workshops Maya saw how different women and men are: different natures, different ways to heal and to feel the body. She began to search for the female lineage — a temple dance, a way to move so that the body feels sacred, like a temple. In the dances she knew, she could not find it at that time.
- The inner voice
She turned to meditation and asked how to find the wisdom for women and how a woman’s body works from inside. Maya says: “my intuition, my inner voice, said: you need to dance, you need to search through the dance.”
- About a year of practice
Every morning she listened to the energy and the body and danced, giving attention to how the energy moves her instead of controlling it. The memory of the temple dance began to open — not all at once, but over about a year of practice — together with the way to transmit it to women.
- The first women
When she first gave the practice to women, they had a strong experience: inspiration, healing, a long journey back to their nature. Maya then taught classes five times a week for more than a year, watching how women received and understood it.
- Levels and books
For many people it was too much and too strong at once, so she created further practices and levels and began to teach more slowly. The method is documented in the books “Mandala Dance” (2017) and “Mandala Dance. 2nd level”; today it is passed on by certified facilitators in 60+ cities across 12 countries.
“…how to move inside my body and feel sacred inside, like a temple.”
Maya Mandala, in an interviewMaya tells this story in an interview with Mayuri. Read the full article.
