Friends of Love— Our enormously warm-hearted friend of Love and Rumi has left the apparent earth plane where we live. Coleman Barks.

All the beautiful social media postings of Rumi poems from friends, like:
“Your mouth closes here
and immediately opens
with a shout of Joy there.”
-Rumi

or

“On the day I die, when I’m being

carried toward the grave don’t weep.

Don’t say ‘He’s gone! He’s gone!’

Death has nothing to do with going away..”

-Rumi

or the one I thought of:

It’s the old rule that drunks have to argue and get into fights.

The lover is just as bad: he falls into a hole.

But down in that hole he finds something shining,

worth more than any amount of money or power.

Last night the moon came dropping its clothes in the street.

I took it as a sign to start singing,

falling up into the bowl of sky.

The bowl breaks. Everywhere is falling everywhere.

Nothing else to do.

Here’s the new rule: break the wineglass,

and fall toward the Glassblower’s breath.

-Rumi

I have danced many of these poems with the deep-hearted and often funny readings of Coleman Barks and his sonorous southern voice, in many iterations of The Rumi Concerts. The last two were at the Washington National Cathedral, with Coleman, myself, Glen Velez, Omar Faruk Tekbilek, and Dawn Avery, and at the Lensic Center for Performing Arts in Santa Fe, New Mexico, with Coleman, myself, Eugene Friesen, Glen Velez, and Zena Carlota.

I had the fun honor to work with Coleman for many decades. I called him “Buckwheat”, and he called me ‘”Swanee,” short for Swan Lake or the Swanee River or any number of iterations.

While he was working on the well-known book, The Essential Rumi, he used to leave me what he called, “the Rumi of the Day,” on my answering machine. We would discuss it over the phone as we were often cooking dinner in different places across the country. Sharing recipes or jokes. There are many stories. Perhaps I’ll write them in a while. We performed all over the place, with the best musicians, including of course David Darling, Glen Velez, Eugene Friesen, Reza Darakshani, Jai Uttal, Geoffrey Gordon, Yungchen Lhamo, Gordy Ryan, Dawn Avery, Omar Faruk Tekbilek, Shabda Owens, and others. We performed a bunch of times with Robert Bly. Many places.

I can say that everyone who met Coleman felt he was their own friend. And I’m pretty sure that was true. He had that way about him. Call it southern or heartfelt. It was certainly in his voice. He was pretty funny and easy going in a way, but then he was extremely well read and knowledgeable in ways you would not always expect. He knew everyone, and everyone knew him. And if they didn’t, they would!

Besides his amazing readings with Lisa Starr, poet and partner, and a few of their appearances with the musical group, Coldplay, he began to slow down. So I began going to visit when I was en route to anywhere on the east coast. One time we all, Coleman, Lisa, and myself, with musicians, did a jewel of an evening in the University Chapel in Athens, Georgia, introduced by Alan Flurry, friend and writer par excellence, where Coleman taught for many years.

I have been a lucky Storydancer to work with Coleman Barks. And I have left out so many names of those who love him and knew him, and for this I apologize. Everyone has so many stories. Let’s write them all. The poet who brought Rumi in its American vernacular, who knew the meters of the best of English Literature and Poetry and applied the teachings to the meters we grew up with, and the wine of love that has been shared beyond belief.

May it continue, that the world of beings remember this Love now in these times, and forever more.

Below is what I wrote after talking with his wonderful family, just after he passed, as I was shockingly on my way to a performance in Delhi , India, in a large out-patient clinic (OPC) for dying cancer patients.

with love to all,
Zuleikha

Thoughts of Coleman from the Storydancer
~upon hearing the news of his passing
USA Feb.23 Night

He flew the coop!
He broke the glass,
He did his job
It will outlast his life
Amazing Grace,

In fact
he opened doors of heart
for all to see.

Not perfect in the sense
some would have liked, yet
all the renderings in fact
took flight,
and made their ways into the hearts
of common-sense man and woman,
not one apart.

Born the same day as Shakespeare,
given the poet’s task
to “set the verse of Rumi free
here in the West'” by the great bard, Robert Bly,
and so in renderings of time
and verse in meters we know
and feel,
he did just that.

And thirsty we were
for verse of heart that
opened us up to what
set us apart,
and Coleman with his southern swagger, accent beauty,
with help from his beloved Sri Lankan Bawa,
opened the door.

“it’s not religious
not exactly,
it’s not this and
it’s not that’,
yes some did say,
and yet the people found it so
and felt reclaimed in ways of heart
through pen with love of a poet’s art.

Once, in one performance-
Oregon it was,
when I was dancing in the verse
I looked up and saw among the box seats
sitting there, Rumi and Shams.
“He is one for this parched place” they seemed to say, and so they must have had their way- how could this verse sweep many lands, setting heart’s afire?
“He’s poet and a PhD and speaks with Southern, so you’ll see-
they’ll listen and they’ll laugh and cry,”

And so it was.

For some it seems
“the King has died,”
yet actually the opened skies have swept a Gabriel of verse
and taken him without a hearse
into the heart of Love he loved.

And so it is
somehow like this
and all will say how well they knew the part
he opened in their hearts
and so it is and Love
still lives.

Feb. 24, 2026

Delhi, India

written in the car, going to perform for outpatient clinic cancer patients

after hearing this news—

Zuleikha

Storydancer in the Rumi Concert

© Zuleikha / Swan Lake Publishing LLC

​I traveled to Pune (pronounced Punay) to join CanSupport’s work—to go out with their Home Care Teams for several days

Soon after arrival, I led a rousing afternoon session with the Pune counselors from most of the teams. We explored the subject of self-care through my TAKE A MINUTE® resiliency practices, and how if you take some time for yourself, you can bring more good energy to your patients. Everyone felt the shift from tiredness into feeling great.

When I write about these things, I generally think that people who are reading would want to know the background of the story, and that takes time to write about. I don’t get to the part about why I am doing this, however, I will brave that and jump in.

When I teach people here about the work I have developed, TAKE A MINUTE® for Palliative Care, I often talk about the way we connect with patients and families. Inside of the calming movement practices are what I call ‘flavors of connection.’ And along with the practice itself, it is the ‘way’ we bring the practice to each person—the connection from my heart to the heart of a human being who is suffering, and with the inclusion of the family and all the people in the room. Sometimes there are children, sometimes elderly, sometimes friends or neighbors are visiting.

Early on, I remember walking into a very tiny house where an elderly woman was in bed with cancer, in the last part of her life. For some reason, on that day when I went with the team, all of her sisters and daughters and their daughters were around her bed. They were dressed in such beautiful colors and headscarves that I have never forgotten them. They were all were very sad. I was moved to sit on the bed, and with the patient did a gentle kind of movement. I looked around and invited everyone to join in. The whole room became so quiet and filled with a peaceful feeling. After that moment, all the women around the bedside were looking at each other and it seemed to me the atmosphere erupted into everyone at once asking about their weight! This has happened before, when the women especially feel more comfortable after the practice, they show their stomach. So around 10 of us jammed into a very tiny room, where I led a mini exercises program. The atmosphere in the tiny room quickly transformed from sadness into bubbling laughter. A kind of community of heart was formed. It happens over and over again, in different ways, with different patients and families. It makes one feel a shared part of humanity—a beautiful experience of heart connections. As it turns out, this type of care in the palliative setting is not a cure, but it does have healing properties. It is also a tool that can create a way for conversation and connection to happen.

In my life of movement and dance, and this work of service, I find myself referring to the nervous system as the lining of our body suit. And when the lining is crumpled and wrinkled inside, it is difficult to navigate through life. This is one reason people meditate, or practice yoga or tai chi, and other popular forms of mindfulness of the day. I like the example of doing the dishes—when the sponge or dishrag gets waterlogged, what do we do? We wring it out. These positive self-care interventions are what we need. Not once a day, or 3 times a week, but whenever needed. And specifically, the palliative resiliency practices bring calmness into the body, mind, and heart of our very being.

Here in Delhi, many of the counselors who are being trained to use this work refer to this as the ‘relaxation therapy’ inside of TAKE A MINUTE® for Palliative Care. And they are always assuring me that they do these practices themselves, sometimes with their families, and they feel better.

It is a moving experience, and an honor to go inside of someone’s life, and be touched by heart.

©Zuleikha, Feb. 1, 2026

One of The Storydancer Project’s long-term partnerships is the Hope Project, in Delhi, India located inside of the Nizamuddin Basti, a slum area near the commemorated tomb of the great Sufi Nizamuddin Auliya. The Hope Project support programs are located in very poor areas.

Over the past few years, The Storydancer Project has been working with the Hope Medical Mobile Health Units in the Trans-Yamuna areas, or the region referred to as “the areas across the Yamuna River,” one of the holy rivers of India, and home to more than eighteen million people. I traveled at the very beginning of this New Year, with Asha (top photo), Hope Project Social Worker and TSP Consultant for all of our programs with Hope Project.

Our first visit was to Zafarabad, one of the Trans-Yamuna areas, to meet Shahana (middle photo), Hope Project teacher of Cutting and Tailoring and TSP trained Facilitator. Shahana beautifully led the students in many of the exercises. These young women are very bright, able to speak English quite well, and interested in the benefits of these TAKE A MINUTE® exercises. She had really studied the training video we had provided, and had chosen some of the newer exercises. The students understood, and loved the experience. I led some other exercises as well. I really want to support the facilitators this year. I know, the students and their teachers want me to talk and teach, so I do, yet I wish to see our facilitators empowered to use the exercises themselves. To date, I can say these facilitator trainings are really working and better than I expected. I told them about the importance of practicing often, and that repetition of an exercise you know and like can be a good thing- it doesn’t always have to be something different.

After the visit to Zafarabad, we continued to Velcome, also in the Trans-Yamuna area. Following Asha, our program Consultant, through the narrow and often very dark gullies, we came to the classroom that is used for all the Hope Project support classes in Velcome. There, we met with TSP Facilitator, Omeira (bottom photo), who teaches both Cutting and Tailoring and Beauty Culture. I always like coming to Velcome. I don’t know why. People here are very poor, and often to outsiders, hidden away. I find the students bright and filled with enthusiasm and thoughtfulness. At the end of the session, led by Omeira and myself together, one student asked a question that gets asked of me in almost every area we visit inside the Hope Project partnership, “Is there any exercise for height growth?” When I first encountered this question, years ago, I was thrown into confusion. I had to learn that women and girls consider height a symbol for a good marriage. In this session, when I was asked the very same question from a shorter student, I was able to open a discussion about our families, our genes, and the way we grow up. At one point, I found myself speaking about how some people that I know in the US who are tall, wish they were shorter, and some people I know who are short, wish they were taller. One of the taller students in the present group raised her hand, and shyly told us all that she wished she wasn’t so tall. Everyone laughed together. There was a kind of recognition in the air, and an innate understanding that things are ‘as they are.’ This is something that can happen during the exercise sessions. An open atmosphere is present, and we feel, as they say here, that ‘our mind is fresh and we feel relaxed.’ When the mind feels fresh, and the body and heart feel relaxed, the discussion becomes charged with ideas that have been hidden, and become shared.
Joy is present once again.

—Zuleikha onsite in Delhi, India, January 4, 2026

thestorydancerproject.org

Santa Fe, NM — August 8 & 9, 2025 | New Mexico Actors Lab | 7:30 PM
Presented by The Storydancer Project | thestorydancerproject.org

“Take Time Out, Enter the Room of Your Heart.”

This August, LOVE IN THE MIDST: Hints from the Mystics for Times of Change premieres in Santa Fe—a bold, immersive performance that brings vivid life to the mystical poetry of Jelaluddin Rumi and Lalla, illuminated by the translations of Coleman Barks.

Through the artistry of a dynamic world-class ensemble, audiences are invited into a collaborative landscape of music, movement and spoken word.

Featuring:

* Zuleikha, internationally celebrated Storydancer and founder of The Storydancer Project

* Eugene Friesen, Grammy-winning cellist and sonic visionary

* Glen Velez, Grammy-winning master percussionist

* Benjy Wertheimer, Esraj virtuoso and composer

* Parisa Soultani, Rumi spoken word artist and filmmaker

Details
Friday, August 8 & Saturday, August 9, 2025,
7:30 PM (Doors open at 7:00 PM)
New Mexico Actors Lab, 1213 Parkway Drive, Santa Fe, NM 87507
Tickets: $45 + service fee via Eventbrite

Limited seating. Early arrival strongly recommended.

Proceeds benefit The Storydancer Project, supporting self-care and transformative programs in Navajo Nation, India, and underserved U.S. communities.

A Night to Remember
Whether you’re a longtime lover of mystic poetry or simply seeking renewal in a fast-moving world, LOVE IN THE MIDST is both balm and call-to-action—an invitation to attend to the heart.

Join us.

For more information, please visit:
zuleikha.com
eugenefriesenmusic.com
glenvelez.com
https://shantalamusic.com/benjy/
independent.academia.edu/ParisaSoultani
thestorydancerproject.org