The man who gets people dancing

The man who gets people dancing — Tómas on ecstatic dance, couples and why Iceland changes everything

Tómas Oddur Eriksson has a particular way of describing the moment he loves most in his work. It happens about fifteen minutes into a session. Someone who arrived reluctant, arms folded, standing slightly apart, wearing the expression of a person who has been gently coerced into attending, suddenly stops thinking. Their shoulders drop. Their feet find the beat. And then, almost without deciding to, they start to move.

Tómas holds a Master’s in Dance Movement Psychotherapy and has spent over a decade leading ecstatic dance and movement sessions across Iceland, India, the UK, Spain, Sweden and the United States. He is a movement guide, a mindfulness teacher and, by his own description, a joy-bringer. At the Wooom couples retreat in Iceland he leads the ecstatic dance sessions, and he is very used to people arriving convinced they are the wrong kind of person for this.

“I’ve never, in over ten years, met someone who couldn’t do it. I’ve met hundreds of people who thought they couldn’t. They were all wrong.”

So what actually is ecstatic dance?

For anyone unfamiliar, ecstatic dance is free movement to music, with no choreography, no instruction once the music begins, and no right or wrong way to do it. Participants move however they choose, as vigorously or as gently as they wish, alone or with others, in ways that might look like dance or might look like nothing recognisable at all.

The ‘ecstatic’ aspect refers to a state of full absorption, the feeling of being so present in your body and in the music that the ordinary thinking mind steps aside. Athletes call it flow. In ecstatic dance, it tends to arrive through movement rather than effort.

Tómas is quick to address what he calls the two biggest misconceptions.

“People assume it’s either very spiritual, incense, chanting, that kind of thing, or that it’s basically a rave. It’s neither. It’s a space where you have genuine permission to move freely, without performing for anyone, without needing anything external to get you there. No alcohol. No substances. Just the music and whatever your body wants to do with it.”

The practice has ancient roots, ecstatic movement and rhythmic dance appear in cultures across the world, from ancient Greek Dionysian rites to shamanic traditions, and was formalised in its modern Western form by Gabrielle Roth in the 1970s through her 5Rhythms practice. Research on conscious dance, which includes ecstatic dance, has found that regular practitioners report significantly higher levels of mindfulness and life satisfaction, with the vast majority describing experiences of psychological flow and feeling more present in their body during sessions.

What happens when couples do it together

This is where Tómas becomes particularly animated. He has a quiet passion for working with couples specifically, and has watched enough of them move together to have formed some clear views on what happens, and why.

“When couples come in together, something interesting happens. They usually start by moving quite separately, finding their own rhythm, their own thing. And then, without any instruction from me, they begin to notice each other. Not in the way they look at each other across a dinner table. Differently. There’s something about watching your partner move freely, on their own terms, that re-introduces you to them.”

He pauses, then adds with a grin:

“And there is quite a lot of laughter. Which I think people do not expect. The freedom to move however you want produces some genuinely ridiculous moments. And there is something really bonding about being ridiculous together. Proper laughter, the kind that gets away from you,  that is its own form of intimacy.”

The research supports what Tómas observes. Studies on movement synchrony have found that couples who move to the same music, matching rhythm and pace naturally, show increased emotional attunement, signalling partnership and closeness in ways that are difficult to manufacture through other means. A 2025 study in the American Journal of Dance Therapy found that partner dancing enhanced the therapeutic process for couples, reflecting their relational dynamics in ways that conversation alone often could not reach.

Tómas frames it more simply.

“The body remembers things the mind forgets. You might have stopped really touching each other, stopped being playful together, stopped being a little wild together. Ecstatic dance gives all of that somewhere to go. And it reminds the body of what it already knows about this person.”

The question he is always asked

Before every session, without fail, someone finds Tómas and quietly confesses that they are not really a dancer. He has heard this so many times that he has developed a standard response.

“I tell them: good. Trained dancers often have the hardest time in ecstatic dance, because they’ve spent years learning that there is a right way to move. Their body has been taught to perform rather than to feel. The person who has never danced has nothing to unlearn. They just arrive in their body as it is and start from there.”

He trained across four continents, studied dance movement psychotherapy at postgraduate level and has spent over a decade in this work. And the thing he returns to, consistently, is the simplicity of what is actually being asked.

“All you need is a willingness to move. Not talent. Not confidence. Not a particular kind of body or a particular level of fitness. Just a small amount of willingness. The rest takes care of itself. The body knows what to do. It always has. We just spend most of our adult lives being asked to override it.”

Why Iceland makes it different

Tómas has led movement sessions in a lot of extraordinary places. But he talks about Iceland with a particular warmth. It is not just where he is from. It is, he believes, a landscape that does something to people before the dance even begins.

“The scale of it. The silence. Standing in that landscape you feel small in the best possible way. The things that usually make us self-conscious, the worry about how we look, the need to perform for other people, those feelings require a certain belief that the world is watching and judging. Iceland quietly dismantles that. The mountains are not watching. The volcanic plains are not judging. They have been here for millions of years and they genuinely do not care about your dance moves.”

He laughs.

“By the time we get to the dance session at the Wooom retreat, most people are already halfway there. The landscape has done some of the work. Kleif Farm is in the middle of the mountains, no neighbours, complete privacy. The hot springs. The silence at night. All of that prepares people to arrive in their bodies in a way that is much harder in a city studio.”

On dancing sober

The Wooom retreat is alcohol free, and Tómas has something direct to say about why this matters for the dance specifically.

“A lot of people have only ever danced with a drink in their hand. The drink provides a kind of permission, it gives you a reason not to care what you look like. I understand it. But here is what I have seen after years of running sober dance spaces: the freedom that alcohol promises, ecstatic dance actually delivers. And the difference is that this freedom is genuinely yours. It came from inside you. It does not disappear when the music stops. It does not come with a headache the next morning.”

He thinks about this for a moment, then says something that, in his own words, he has never quite articulated this way before.

“People often leave an ecstatic dance session asking themselves: where has this been? Why don’t I do this more often? That is the real gift of it. Not some profound transformation. Just the memory that this is possible. That your body can feel this free. That you and your partner can be this playful together. That joy, real, uncomplicated, unmedicated joy, is still very much available. You just have to show up and let the music do the rest.”