🌿 A Personal Message from Ya’Acov & Susannah 🌿
Dear friends,
As we prepare to enter the sacred field of this year’s Long Dance, we want to share something personal with you — a reflection on why this ceremony continues to be the most powerful piece of work we offer each year. Whether you’re joining us in person, holding the prayer from afar, or feeling called to support the not-for-profit and powerful fund-raising nature of this ceremony, from where we stand, you are warmly welcome.
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from ya'acov
As the Long Dance approaches, I find myself feeling the same mix of humility, gratitude, and awe that I’ve felt every single year we’ve done this. The ceremony is as alive and surprising as ever. It keeps teaching me, humbling me, healing me. And reminding me why I’m here.
The Long Dance strips away the fluff. There’s no performance. No escape. Just the beat, the earth, the fast, and the prayer — danced, spoken, cried, sweated, and offered through the body. It’s a space where I get to remember myself not through ideas, but through direct experience. Where I can lay down my burdens and ask, again, what is truly mine to carry. And how to carry it well.
side by side
Susannah and I have the deep privilege of holding and leading this ceremony side by side. That in itself is part of the medicine. We’ve been through so much together — as partners in life, in love, in grief, and in this work. We don’t pretend to be perfect. But what we do bring is real — a partnership that has been forged through honest fire, laughter, and a fierce mutual respect. We bring that into the circle, and it helps create a field where truth can be felt, embodied and danced.
A few years ago, Manari Ushigua, a Sápara elder from the Ecuadorian Amazon, (who has attended the Long dance for many years and who sadly cannot join us this year) was clearly moved by the ceremony. Afterward, he told us:
“For my people, when we face great challenges, we go into the jungle for 20 days. We fast, we pray, we listen. That’s how we do our work. What you’ve created here in three days — it has the same effect. It’s real. It's effective. It works.”
Those words landed in us like a blessing and a responsibility. Because we need this kind of medicine now. Personally. Collectively. Spiritually.
the power of peace
Our world is in the thick of what looks to us like a great turning — and the Long Dance is one way we resource and align ourselves to meet it with strength, creativity, love, and with the kind of rooted clarity that only comes from direct experience.
The ceremony is big enough to hold our diverse experiences and points of view. In Movement Medicine, we learn to recognise benevolence and the desire to make a difference in each other. We uphold that sense of benevolence even when we have different ways of acting in the world. We encourage everyone to play their part as they are called to do, in making change now and being part of a better world for those who will come next.
In the field we hold, people having diverse perspectives is not a failure. It is part of what makes a healthy community. In the dance and in this ceremony, the space is big enough to hold our human complexity without dogma or insisting on idealogical alignment. We call this the power of peace because it takes great discipline and personal power to acknowledge difference and yet unify in shared intention and commitment for peace. That is what this ceremony stands for and it is one of its deepest prayers.
a ceremony for you
And here’s something I want to say clearly: this not-for-profit ceremony only exists because of the people like you who show up or support from afar — with their bodies, with their prayers, and yes, with their generosity.
Each year, we raise funds through the Long Dance to support causes close to our hearts — from our Indigenous partners in the Amazon to local land protectors, and a whole host of extraordinary projects. If you’re not dancing with us physically this year, but you still want to be part of the field, you can support the fundraising.
You can donate. You can share. You can send your prayers through the network. You can fast in solidarity if you feel called.
Your presence — in whatever form it takes — makes a difference.
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👉Support the Long Dance Fundraiser👈
Every donation is part of the prayer
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from susannah
Every year, I feel the call of the Long Dance in my bones — not as a duty, but as a sacred privilege. There’s something about the combination of physical intensity, deep listening, and collective devotion that never fails to strip off my defences and shake me awake into the prayer bowl of love which is this Long Dance.
For me, the Long Dance is a reflection of love committed in action. It's a place to pray, to let go, to transmute, through the sweat, tears and laughter of our dance. But not only this, we ground those prayers in the action of fundraising, for the Fundacion Pachamama and all the other charities which dancers chose to support with their fund-raising efforts. This is part of what is so healing; we do not just dance for ourselves and each other, but for the world and for the charity we each are supporting.
During the ceremony, I get to witness people come home to themselves — sometimes in the most unexpected, tender, or powerful ways. I get to watch strangers become kin. I see grief transmute into prayer, and exhaustion become surrender, and surrender become renewal.
Alongside the masculine, there is a feminine intelligence at work in this ceremony. The Earth herself speaks through it. This ceremony is both a tending and feeding of the earth, right here on this carefully tended wild Dartmoor meadow, zinging with crystals and with life. I also experience the tender and powerful holding of the earth itself. We receive so much from the earth. I feel her every time I place my bare feet on the ground and dance alongside you.
I’m especially moved by how each person brings their own flavour, their own medicine, and somehow, in this collective weave, a greater song emerges. A song of what it means to be human — beautifully imperfect, wildly resilient, and capable of so much more love and healing than we think.
So whether you’re dancing with us in the tent, holding the prayer from afar, or offering what you can toward the fundraising: thank you. This ceremony is alive because of you. Because of all of us.
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💛Contribute to the Fundraising💛
Support Indigenous partners, land protectors & community wellbeing
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At the time of writing, there are less than 10 places left for this year's Long Dance. if you feel the call, click here.
For the Love of Life,
Ya’Acov & Susannah
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