Blindfolded – A Whirling Journey with Anna Ruya Ayyildiz & Simone Salvatici

Whirling workshop with live music and gongbath to finish!

To whirl is to step into mystery, to loosen the mind from its straight lines and awaken the spirals that live in the body.

In this gathering, master whirler Anna Ruya Ayyildiz invites you to explore whirling as a gateway between movement and stillness. With years of devotion to Sufi and somatic practices, Anna guides participants to enter the dance not as performance, but as prayer — a way of sensing balance where opposites meet, and of finding your inner compass through embodied turning.

Holding the ground of sound is Simone Salvatici, a multi-instrumentalist and sound artist whose work bridges acoustic and electronic worlds. Live synthesiser drones and harmonic textures will accompany your journey, creating a field in which movement expands, sensations deepen, and time dissolves. To close, Simone will offer a gong bath, inviting the body to soften into silence and integration.

No prior experience is needed. Whirling is not about perfecting a technique — it is about participation, about allowing radiance to move through you, and about returning to the body as a homecoming.

As the seasons turn and the threads of descent are stirring, we invite you to spiral inward:

—to reclaim the energy you have given out into the world,

—to feel desire and truth alive in your body,

—to bow to what is passing and what is arriving,

—to stand in the mystery rather than the certainty.

In this circle, there is no destination. Only the journey itself.

A remembering that balance is born not of control, but of surrender.

“The universe is the Beloved, the lover the veiled.

The Beloved is alive, and the lover is dead.” – Rumi

Please wear something comfortable, something to compliment the movement if you desire. Please bring socks and a scarf or blindfold.