Toni Bergins

Toni Bergins is the creator of JourneyDance, a guided free-form movement practice she has been teaching for close to thirty years. While studying for a master's in education at New York University in the early 1990s, she went on a personal retreat at Kripalu, and an unstructured dance session there changed the direction of her life. She went on to study many kinds of movement alongside psychodrama, theatre and voice work, and wove them into the practice she began sharing in classes.

A JourneyDance session moves through phases, from slow grounding work on the floor to playful partner dancing, expressive passages led by music and a closing period of stillness, with no mirrors and no steps to learn. The aim is to inhabit the body with less self-judgement and to let emotion move freely. Bergins has trained well over a thousand facilitators who now lead classes in many countries. With Joy Lynn Okoye she leads The Remedy, a weekly online circle combining dance, yoga, meditation and writing, and she teaches retreats at Kripalu and abroad. She is the author of the book Embody and also writes and records her own songs.