The Somatic Dance Institute is advancing the study and practice of somatic dance as a sacred, decolonial, and liberatory force. We integrate Buddhist somatics, ritual movement, and embodied justice to reclaim the body as a site of personal and collective transformation.
Rooted in ancient traditions and informed by contemporary trauma research, our work restores somatic dance to its rightful place—not as a performance or Westernized wellness trend, but as an ancestral technology of healing, resistance, and reconnection to the sacred.Â
 Our Core CommitmentsÂ
The revolution begins in the body—but it’s sustained by practices rooted in truth, integrity, and ancestral wisdom.
Here’s how we hold the ground:
01
Decolonial Frameworks
We honor somatic dance as an ancient, cross-cultural language, not a modern innovation. Our work actively resists appropriation and restores these practices to their communal, spiritual, and justice-centered origins.
02
Collective Liberation
Our model transcends individual self-help. We equip leaders to facilitate embodied healing that addresses systemic oppression, inherited trauma, and cultural disconnection—moving from personal release to collective repair.
03Â
Emotional Intelligence Through the Body
We teach bottom-up emotional processing grounded in the body’s innate wisdom. Our students learn to move with the full range of emotion—grief, rage, shame, numbness, longing, joy, and more without bypassing, analyzing, or shutting down. We don’t seek control over emotion; we seek
04Â
Spiritual Lineage & Embodied Practice
Drawing from Buddhist traditions and mystical embodiment lineages, we offer a path of transformation where movement becomes prayer and the body becomes a vessel of awakening.
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Interdisciplinary & Rigorous Training
We merge clinical insight, somatic psychology, trauma theory, and artistic practice into a comprehensive and holistic pedagogy. Our graduates are prepared to lead with both heart and intellectual integrity.
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Revolutionary Leadership
We cultivate embodied leaders who disrupt norms, hold space for truth, and steward radical healing across communities. It's a movement for embodied liberation, led by those who live it.
Through rigorous training and soul-rooted pedagogy, we prepare a new generation of facilitators and cultural leaders to guide with clarity, integrity, and real-world impact.
Meet the Founder, Sah D’Simone Â
Sah D’Simone didn’t learn somatics from a book.
He was trained by silence in Himalayan monasteries where he sat for weeks, and by trance—on dance floors across Southeast Asia.
Healing didn’t come from theory, but from trembling, weeping, sweating, breathing, an intimacy with the body so deep it dissolved the need for words.
Before founding the Somatic Dance Institute, Sah spent over a decade immersed in Buddhist meditation, frontline humanitarian service, and global movement rituals. He cared for orphans in Indonesia. Brought hope to formerly enslaved individuals in India. Taught recovering addicts in Nepal. Offered spiritual care at Cedars-Sinai Hospital. Empowered unhoused youth in Los Angeles.
His pedagogy wasn’t born in comfort, it was born in survival. Forged at the crossroads of contemplative rigor, embodied liberation, and direct service to suffering.
A spiritual teacher of global reach, Sah has impacted millions through bestselling books, viral transmissions, and radical trainings. He’s spoken at the DAVOS World Economic Forum, Columbia University, Google, the United Nations, and received the City of Los Angeles CARE Award. His film Touching the Ungrieved Grief won Best Experimental Film at the Cannes World Film Festival. He also hosted the groundbreaking British television series Big Celebrity Detox.
But Sah doesn’t belong to institutions.
He belongs in the lineage of the wounded healer.
The ones who weren’t trained in classrooms, but in crisis.
Who turned trauma into truth.Â
Pain into presence.Â
Sah is not just the founder of the Somatic Dance Institute. He moves with the method. And lets it move through him. What defines him isn’t the accolades.
It’s the awakening: The people who come undone in his presence, and finally feel free. Through this devotion, he’s built a global fellowship of clinical psychologists, ritualists, shamans, and somatic pioneers, birthing a faculty unlike anything else in the field of embodied transformation.
The Somatic Dance Institute was born from Sah’s lived story, standing for an embodied, experiential path that transcends anything books or theories could ever offer.
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