This week marks five years since the launch of Dazed Beauty! Over the next five days we will be celebrating this anniversary by bringing you big celebrity interviews, cultural deep dives into the weird and wonderful trends of today, and going back through the archives to resurface some of our favourite pieces.

To quote our co-founder Bunny Kinney in his original editor’s letter, Dazed Beauty is: “a space for us to document, deconstruct and experiment with beauty in all its forms, in every dimension, and tell the stories of the lived experience each one of us has in our own individual bodies as we navigate the world, both online and off.” We hope we’ve remained true to our promise and will continue to be challenging, anti-establishment, diverse and exciting. Thank you for being part of our journey.

Welcome to the Dazed Beauty Digital Spa, a space where you can come to escape the stresses of everyday life. In this section, we'll be hosting a series of interactive classes designed to make you feel calmer, happier and more at peace.

As a performance artist, dance psychotherapist and movement director Ekin Bernay knows first hand the healing qualities of movement and dance. Born and raised in Ankara, Turkey, Ekin has 20 years of dance experience as well as a master’s degree in Dance Movement Psychotherapy from the University of Roehampton, under her belt.

In her role as a dance psychotherapist, Ekin works with children with Autism and adults with severe and enduring mental health problems. “Dance Movement Psychotherapy meets us where we are, through the empathic creative process using body and movement. In my practice, I also use music regularly. Just like in other psychotherapy practices it's through the therapist-client relationship we can go deeper.”

In her class for Dazed Beauty, Ekin guides and encourages viewers to work on a new relationship with their reflection in the mirror. “These exercises fall between my performance work and my therapy work. It's about bringing a new awareness to the judgements we put on our image and to think about building self-awareness wherever we are at that point in time. There is also an element of remembering the body since we tend to detach from it because of the realities of our times.”

This article was originally published 24 May 2019.