SEVEN RILA LAKES (BULGARIA) - Over 1,500 pilgrims gathered on Wednesday high in Bulgaria's Rila mountains to mark their "spiritual" new year with a collective meditative dance they believe connects them to cosmic rhythms and beats the blues.
Members of an international religious movement called the Universal White Brotherhood perform ritual dance on the top of the Rila Mountain on August 19, 2015
Their "paneurhythmy" dance-like ritual, banned during communism, is performed in large concentric circles creating a striking and surreal image on the high-altitude plain in south-western Bulgaria.
The white-clad dancers are followers of the so-called Universal White Brotherhood -- an esoteric spiritual school combining Christianity and Indian mysticism founded by Bulgarian theologian Peter Deunov in 1897.
It emphasises brotherly love, healthy habits, positive thinking and living in harmony with nature, and its followers address each other as "brother" and "sister."
Deunov -- also known as Master Beinsa Douno -- developed paneurhythmy and started taking his followers camping to the Rila mountains in the 1930s as he believed that positive cosmic energy was at its strongest here around August 19.
The practice is at odds with the Christian Orthodox Church, which has dismissed it as a sect, but hundreds of pilgrims still flock every summer.
They greet the sunrise with prayers and meditation before hiking up to nearby plateaux to practise paneurhythmy.
They also take turns cooking for the whole camp and attend lectures on the teachings of Deunov.
"It is so very very special that so many people are joining in and doing the same thing," Randi Coray, a music therapist from Switzerland, told AFP.
She has been coming to Rila for several years now and said she felt "good, marvellous" doing paneurhythmy among so many other people.
"It is for the body and it is for the soul," the woman grinned under her wide-brimmed white hat.
The movement does not keep track of its numbers but is believed to have tens of thousands of followers -- the majority of them in France, Belgium and Switzerland but also as far as Canada, Mexico, Iceland and the Democratic Republic of Congo.
A medical reasearch study published in 2013 suggested that regular practice of the paneurhythmy movements improves balance and physical endurance while lowering aggression, boosting optimism and battling depression.