SolYoga Trips Spotlight Q & A: Samantha Sweetwater

Q&A with Samantha Sweetwater

By Jackie Leavitt

Samantha Sweetwater started practicing yoga at age 5 at a Santa Fe monastery preschool, and started dancing at 13, soon choreographing pieces (“15-minute-long epics,” Sweetwater says) about peace and humanity’s spiritual states. Over 1,000 hours of yoga training later, the 39-year-old founder and director of Dancing Freedom (founded in 1992) sheds light into this “yoga of motion” and to its future.

JL: What inspired you to start Dancing Freedom?
SS: The desire to work with dance as a way to help people heal and to feel awakened and to develop community at the same time.

JL: To you, what are some differences between yoga and dancing?
SS: I don’t teach yoga and dance together, because I think they are distinct practices. But I think dance is a yoga – it’s a practice of consciousness and of community. When you dance, you’re in relationship with people in a much higher level of complexity. Doing yoga on a mat, you’re mostly by yourself, but when you dance, you are in relationship with yourself and others in a way that’s much more life-like.

JL: What has dancing taught you or helped you discover about yourself?
SS: It has taught me how to be alive. It’s taught me a lot about freedom, and about how the universe works. It’s taught me about truth, about nonviolence, about acceptance, and passion. It’s taught me how to relate with myself and others. It’s taught me a lot of humility, and a lot about beauty.

JL: Where would you like to see Dancing Freedom go in the future?
SS: My vision of Dancing Freedom is to have it in yoga studios and community centers all over the world. It’s already happening – we have it in Europe and Australia and in the U.S. We already have 85 teachers globally, and I see that doubling in the next year. I would like to see it as a dance space practice for developing leadership, developing conscious revolution, and community building.

For more information: dancingfreedom.com