The people.
Dance Temple was born from a love of dancing within a safe and intentional space. Each member of the collective has received training in some form of dance facilitation. Together we hold a strong intention to honour movement and dance as an essential and powerful expression of self and connection to others.
Naomi Jason
A visionary, community leader and mentor, Naomi is the founder of Dance Temple on Salt Spring Island and the Imaginelle Mystery School for Embodied Transformation. She is a dance artist, movement facilitator, dj/music curator, qigong therapist, council facilitator and land steward. Dedicated to cultural resiliency and empowering embodied community leaders, Naomi’s work combines the creative process, embodied rites of passage and the authentic exploration of self through collective and individual mythos.
Cat/Akinah Love
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Dance has always been her way of finding reliable truth. Body-based movement inspires realness and she is so grateful for the rich learning of self-awareness and connection it brings! Akinah is a bodyworker (craniosacral, Hawaiian lomilomi, and abdominal massage) based on Salt Spring Island and has been in the Dance Temple collective for around 6 years. She has studied SomaSource and dance-focused rites of passage with Melissa Michaels and has been immersed in dance in Brazil, Africa, the Middle East and North America. Cat’s music is often a mix of sultry, world music intended to create a dreamy emotional landscape.
Sarah Etherington
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Lila Spencer
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A dance activator, temple keeper, community builder and sound weaver, Lila loves to provide spaces for inspiration, connection and remembrance. As a Kundalini Dance Facilitator, Ecstatic Dance Facilitator/DJ, Breath Wave Facilitator and Sonic Alchemist she loves to uplift, inspire and hold space for transformation through deep journeys of breath, sound and movement. In her classes, she brings a nurturing and playful spirit to engage and inspire others to connect with their own joy, passion and authentic selves. She weaves in ceremony into all her offerings as her devotion to the divine and desire to create safe and sacred spaces for self-healing and presence. Lila is based on Salt Spring Island though spends multiple months each year travelling and sharing dance journeys both locally and globally. She feels blessed every day to be able to share this path of ecstatic embodiment that has had such a transformational impact on her life.
Shauna Devlin
Facilitator, lover of dance and Mama Bear. Shauna has facilitated dance since 2006. A Certified 5Rhythms® teacher (2011), founder & Executive Director of the not-for profit Dance Your Ability. Shauna has studied Yoga Outreach CoreTraining™ “Trauma Informed Practice” (2014), Zumba (2009), continuing studies with Dance Of Oneness®, and is a Conscious Dance DJ/Facilitator. Shauna holds a BA in Latin American Studies/Spanish, with Direct Studies on the Merengue Dance (1996), spent many years of her youth dancing in the discotheques of the Dominican Republic and playing on the snow as a Level II Ski Instructor & snowboarder. Known for facilitating conscious dance for people of all abilities, Shauna deeply believes that everyone has the right to know and experience connection & freedom, no matter their circumstances, and she knows it is her mission to make this a reality to as many people as possible. “All humans respond to beat, and all souls respond to love.” Shauna calls Salt Spring Island, BC home, the unceded territory of the Coast Salish First Nations.