Lucia Horan

Lucia Horan was born at Esalen in Big Sur in 1976 and grew up inside its community, qualifying in Esalen massage as a teenager and later as a teacher of Hatha and Ashtanga yoga. Her main work comes from many years of study with Gabrielle Roth, who created the 5Rhythms dance practice, and she has led 5Rhythms classes since 1998. Since 2005 she has also followed the Theravada insight meditation path, learning chiefly from Robert Hall, and she has completed a Buddhist teacher training in the Western lineage associated with Noah Levine and Jack Kornfield. Her essay on movement and insight appears in the anthology Dancing with Dharma, edited by Harrison Blum.

In her classes the five rhythms of Flowing, Staccato, Chaos, Lyrical and Stillness are paired with periods of seated meditation, and she often frames the dance around the Buddhist heart qualities of kindness, compassion, joy and equanimity. She describes herself as a fellow practitioner rather than a master. Now based in Wellington, New Zealand, with her husband and fellow 5Rhythms teacher Douglas Drummond, she runs local class series there and travels to lead weekend workshops and week-long retreats in the United States, Europe and at Esalen. Filmed sessions of her Heartbeat series are sold online, and she mentors dancers and newer 5Rhythms teachers.