FOUNDER

Sarsha Hope is the visionary founder of the Somatic Dance International Teacher Training, a 300-hour program that trains leading-edge facilitators and DJs in the art of transformative movement. Seamlessly blending somatic facilitation, DJ skills, ritual, energetics, and ecosomatics through a trauma-informed lens, her unique methodology creates potent dance spaces for deep healing and liberation.

With over 25 years of experience, Sarsha is a 500-hour certified yoga teacher, Embodied Flow facilitator, and practitioner of somatic trauma therapy, somatic parts work, Theta Healing, massage, and Reiki. A dedicated tantrika, DJ, dance performer, mother, and yoga/meditation teacher, she weaves a lifetime of wisdom into her offerings—leading international trainings, retreats, and embodiment coaching.

Sarsha’s work is a living transmission of embodied transformation. From festival dance floors to intimate women’s retreats, she creates spaces where movement becomes medicine—an invitation to reconnect, release, and remember the divinity of the body’s wisdom.

DJ Teacher

Blase finds joy in bringing the freedom and expansion of the Somatic Dance space into his performances as a solo Artist and has been touring New Zealand for the summer festival season, playing at festivals such as NZ Spirit Festival, Splore, Earthbeat and Dimension festival. He has also made appearances around the globe playing traditional Ecstatic Dances in the UK and Portugal and is set to continue touring this summer in Europe.

Blase has a wide variety of knowledge that helps to deepen the potency of this dance training including his multiple years of music knowledge, 200 hour Embodied flow yoga training, a certificate in Integrated somatic trauma therapy and over 500+ hours in formal Somatic Dance space.

In this training Blase translates the artistry of his craft into practical lessons of music theory, understanding DJ software and fundamentals and the curation of an Ecstatic dance playlist.

Assistant

Marissa creates spaces for deep self-exploration through movement, weaving together yoga, dance, and somatic practices to connect mind, body, and soul. She believes in the transformative power of movement; where freedom, connection, and expression come alive on the dance floor.

A 500-hour certified yoga teacher, Marissa has trained in Somatic Dance Level 1, 2 & 3 with Sarsha Hope. Since 2023, she has been a DJ and facilitator for community dances in Queenstown, holding space for others to move, release, and express with full authenticity. In 2024, she assisted in Portugal and has since become a sought-after DJ on the New Zealand festival circuit.

Marissa’s mission is to create safe, expansive spaces where individuals can explore their full expression wild, free, and without restriction. She is passionate about supporting others on their embodiment journeys and guiding DJs in crafting powerful, heart-centered musical experiences.

Assistant

Sierra Espinal is a devotee to the soul of the earth and heart of humanity, raised by the Cascade mountains in the Pacific Northwest with Honduran roots and now a humble student of the wisdom that pulses through Aotearoa and beyond. A mythopoetic, ecologically centered yoga and somatics teacher with over 1000+ hours of yoga teacher training and a 300 hour certified somatic dance facilitator. 

She is the founder of Wild Earth // Rhythm and Ritual, and immersive eco-somatice dance experience that interweaves myth, storytelling, native wild plant medicines, and embodied movement to guide the soul home. Through her work, she creates sacred spaces where dance becomes a bridge between the body, the earth, and the unseen realms.

With a reverence for the body’s innate intelligence, Sierra invites others into a profound relationship with movement, nature, and the unseen forces that shape our existence. Her work is a call to remembrance—a return to the rhythms of the earth, the aliveness of the body, and the untamed wisdom and wilderness that lives within us all.