When we are expressing our full selves, these two aspects intertwine in a devotional erotic dance – each honouring the other, and each enhanced by the other’s presence.
Yet...
Most of us spend our whole lives only cultivating one aspect — the masculine — and severely undervaluing our feminine nature.
Thousands of years of cultural programming have taught us that our feminine qualities are less valuable. In a million different ways, since the day we were born, we have been told that the traits that come so naturally to us as women (like sensitivity, intuition, nurturance, sensuality, wildness, and emotional expressiveness) are not as ‘valuable’ or ‘desirable’ as masculine traits like ambition, efficiency and assertiveness.
This has left many women feeling numb to their feminine nature – unsure of what it is or how to express it, uncomfortable with their sexuality, and with an ever-growing feeling that something is out of balance and unfulfilled in their heart, their body and their life.
Shiva Shakti Dance
is about opening your body to explore, integrate and express both these aspects of yourself.
This unique embodiment practice uses movement to calm your mind and get back into your body, so you can drop into deeper levels of pleasure and presence, and unravel decades of social programming, baggage, and suffering.
Essentially, it helps you come home to your true self – fully embodied, awake, sensual, and deeply connected to your own wisdom, beauty and power.
Who is this
type of dance for?
Shiva Shakti Dance is for ALL women, of ALL shapes, sizes, ages, cultural backgrounds, religious beliefs, and sexual orientations.
No dance experience is needed (in fact, many women have never danced before they arrive at the studio).
You can wear whatever you’d normally wear to a dance or yoga class. (Some women eventually prefer to dance in sensual clothing, but tights and a T-shirt are totally fine too!)
And rest assured: though we will be awakening our sexual energy and dancing it through our bodies, you do not have to get naked, or do anything you don’t want to.
Also, you don’t need to be in an intimate relationship to benefit immensely from the practice. (Though many women have been known to magnetise their life partners shortly after connecting with this practice... I met my own husband two weeks after I first started teaching!)
All that is required is the courage to show up and the willingness to transform your life –
even if there’s a butterfly or ten squirming in your belly. (Nervous jitters are practically a prerequisite!)
Women come to
Shiva Shakti Dance
for many reasons:
To reinvigorate their relationship, and reawaken sexual attraction with their partner.
To relieve stress, get out of their heads and finally relax into themselves.
To reconnect with their body (after illness, an eating disorder, a breakup, or perhaps just years of estrangement from their physical self).
To rediscover their desires, sensuality and sexual self after becoming a mum.
To feel juiced up, vital and feminine as they cross the threshold into menopause.
To become deeply intimate with themselves while they’re single, so they can feel full and whole (and attract an equally open partner).
To experience a radically embodied approach to spirituality and tantric philosophy in a non-dogmatic, clean and safe environment.
To discover how devotional dance can transform spirituality, sexuality and relationships.
And, of course, some women come to simply learn how to feel epic love and pleasure moving through their body – whether for themselves, their partners, or just the sheer joy of it.
WHAT IS
Shiva Shakti Dance like?
The short answer:
transformational
The long answer?
This unique style of dance is a synthesis of more than ten years of study and practice in traditional yoga, meditation, left and right hand tantra, frontier science, as well as elements from a diverse range of dance traditions – from belly dance to Sufi whirling, Indian temple dance to Eastern trance dances, Japanese Butoh to ecstatic dance and many (many!) in between.
By fusing ancient spiritual philosophy with modern science and a keen awareness of the everyday stresses on the modern woman, Shiva Shakti Dance can transform many different parts of your life, including:
Your relationship with your intimate partner.
It can be very confusing when the passion you used to feel for your partner seems to fizzle out — or worse when you start feeling energetically repulsed by the person you know you love. Shiva Shakti Dance can help you understand and restore the sexual polarity, freshness, and curiosity that allows you to rekindle that attraction, reignite the torch of sexual passion, and evolve your relationship to a new level.
Your relationship with your body.
Hunched shoulders, stiff neck, tight hips... So many women feel a sense of separation between themselves and their body. Devotional dance teaches you how to be completely anchored in the present moment – connected to your physical being from head to toe, relaxed in your body, and free from the shackles of your mind’s endless chatter.
Your relationship with sexuality and pleasure.
Many women believe that their lack of fulfilment in the bedroom is something that they just have to accept; that they’re simply not wired for pleasure. That’s a straight out lie — pleasure is the birthright of every woman. By learning how to sensitise, cultivate and circulate sexual energy through your body, every woman can awaken to the natural waves of pleasure and love pulsing through her.
The effects don’t stop there, of course. Transformation in any one of these areas spills out into the rest of your life – to your work, your family, your friendships, your creativity, everything. This practice transforms the way you show up and feel in each moment, which means that your life, as a whole, becomes more vibrant, delightful and fulfilling.
"I’ll have what she’s having!"
Something that speaks volumes to the shift that our Shiva Shakti Dancers experience is this: we’ve had multiple women book into our courses and workshops because they SAW another woman moving so radiantly and sensually, that they simply had to ask her what on earth she’d been doing to be feeling so free.
Like a light that’s suddenly been flicked on high beam, the transformation in our women is remarkable, illuminating, and undeniable to all around them.
Hi! I’m Holly Wodetzki
the founder of Shiva Shakti Dance.
I started dancing not so long ago, in 2011. Prior to that, I’d done a tiny bit of salsa dancing, when some friends roped me into it. But other than that? You’d be hard pressed finding me do anything more than an awkward ‘head bop’ when a catchy tune came on... I was not a ‘dancer’.
I was also very disconnected from my femininity, with little appreciation for my body, for rest, for sensuality, or for pleasure. I was ‘in my head’ all the time, and life was very go-go-go.
The game-changer for me was when my then-partner suggested that since I was craving flow and fullness in my life, why not experiment with replacing my rigorous daily yoga practice with dancing, but still keep the same level of inner awareness?
Intrigued by this idea, I committed to dancing for 60 minutes per day, every day, for one year — rain, hail, shine, grumpy, stressed, menstrual... no matter what, I would dance the dance of whatever I was feeling. Eyes closed, iPod on shuffle, the dance would unfold — sometimes clunky, sometimes almost still, sometimes dynamic and emotional.
I experienced powerful shifts almost immediately, I felt alive in my senses like never before. I was struck by the profound beauty all around me. And I found myself staying in the present moment so much more easily. On top of that, worries didn’t plague me in the same way, stress ceased to consume me, and I began to tap into the deep pleasure and joy within me that I hadn’t even realised was there. An inner power had awoken in me and began to flow through my life. I was being danced by a force of love greater than I’d ever comprehended.
... And I felt a growing ‘knowing’ in my heart that I needed to find a way to share this profound practice with other women, so they too could experience this divine transformation — especially around the idea of awakening spiritually through embracing the most repressed, numbed out, misused, taboo part of ourselves...our sexuality.
This practice is transformative — and on a grand scale.
We all know the story of women throughout history – repressed, shamed, degraded, abused, burnt and pitched against each other... particularly in relation to our sexuality and wilder feminine nature.
Now, in OUR lifetime (at least in the west) we are able to reclaim the incredible blessing of being born a woman. We’re able to stand – strong, safe and sacred – as our true, whole selves.
Shiva Shakti Dance was born from a calling in my heart to create a path for women to awaken to the power, beauty and wisdom of Shakti by connecting deeply with their sexuality...
This change is possible.
About Holly
Founder, Teacher & Creative Director of Shiva Shakti Dance.
Holly Wodetzki thought she was destined for a life of science and academia… certainly not dance. As a passionate yogi, she enjoyed the rigours of disciplined training and esoteric philosophy for more than a decade. It wasn’t until 2011, in the privacy of her lounge room, that she discovered the wild-hearted transformative power of dance and the embrace of Shakti.
Sensing that she’d discovered the calling which would change her life, Holly threw herself into exploring as many forms of dance and eastern mysticism as possible. Her main teacher is Guruji Raj Kumar Baswar of the Bhairavanand Tantric lineage. She is endlessly grateful for initiation in Shaivism through the Nityananda lineage, teacher training and ongoing inspiration from Michaela Boehm, the wisdom and meditation practices imparted by Sahajananda of Hridaya Yoga, Monika Nataraj’s inspiring mystical approach to dance and teacher training, and the sweetness of devotion transmitted by Guruji Saroj Dehury through Odissi dance. The synthesis of all these disciplines is Shiva Shakti Dance, which Holly founded and began teaching in 2012.
Now a full-time dance facilitator, writer, and sought-after speaker, Holly’s mission is to light a path for women to awaken their feminine & masculine essence through connecting deeply with their sexuality. She loves painting, performance art, studying neuroscience, gardening, dogs, foraging for mushrooms, playing with her daughter and dancing with and for her husband.
Meet the rest of the
Shiva Shakti Dance team…
You can expect the following from all the women in our team:
- The highest level of training and integrity. All Shiva Shakti Dance facilitators have undergone extensive training (minimum 12 months intensively, plus 500+ hours of personal practice) and personal transformation through embodiment practices, spiritual philosophy and facilitation. They walk their talk!
- Empathy and inspiration. We know it can be scary to step outside your comfort zone, but we’re here for you every step of the way.
- And – most importantly of all – a total commitment to creating a safe space for you to explore and express yourself. All facilitators are trauma informed and will 100% respect and support you in upholding your personal boundaries.
Meet Ashleigh Edmunds
Shiva Shakti Dance Facilitator
Like many women, Ashleigh came to Shiva Shakti Dance with the intention of meeting the edges and fears she had surrounding sexuality and sensuality…
“‘Sexy’, ‘embodied’, ‘powerful’, ‘magnetic’… they were words I used to describe other women, but I would never have used them to describe myself.
I was stuck in that twilight zone of ‘Not a girl, not yet a woman’.
I kept wondering when I’d suddenly turn into the body confident, magnetic woman I longed to be. But with self-talk that bordered on abuse, so much shame around my body and womanhood, and a shit-load of general insecurity, that kind of ‘magical’ transformation seemed like nothing but a pipe dream.
My shift from suffering to self-love, from resistance to radical self-forgiveness, began when I first discovered Shiva Shakti Dance.
In many ways it has felt (and still continues to feel) like in this practice, I am meeting parts of myself for the first time. Every dance is an invitation to dive deeper, meet myself on new intimate levels, and transform the limiting beliefs that have been hiding and repeating in me for too long. Also, the newfound connection I have to my body these days is so intimate, so pleasurable and SO valued. It has — quite literally — changed my life.
Now – as I embody the blissful and expansive teachings of Shiva Shakti Dance, and feel the effects it has on my own life, and the inspiration my body is filled with – it is my absolute privilege and PLEASURE to support women in their own journey to realising their inner wisdom, power and natural rhythm.
The depth of this work – and the powerful transformation it offers – continually blow me away. No matter how much you do it, how much you have felt, or how many thresholds you have met, a whole new level of inner revelation and bliss is waiting ready to present itself when you dare to open just a little bit more.
Shiva Shakti Dance will leave your heart open, blissed out and begging for more.”
Ashleigh is also a qualified Dance Movement Therapist, disability support worker, Non-Linear Movement Method® teacher, Spiral Practitioner and many other great things that support women to flourish.
Meet FELICITY MERAKI
Shiva Shakti Dance Facilitator
Felicity is a shining example of an integrated modern woman, whose journey with dance allowed her to find fluidity with all the different roles, responsibilities and desires in her life.
"I am a passionate professional who has worked hard to create a very successful corporate career.
In 2016 I was lacking balance, feeling lost, wanting a meaningful intimate relationship, working hard, striving to achieve and constantly putting pressure on myself to do better, do more, make more, be more.
I knew that there had to be another way of being.
I found Shiva Shakti Dance and have never looked back. The transformational space offered to women through this work was so powerful that I knew by the second weekend workshop that I wanted to be a facilitator.
At the time I was travelling every week and working full-time interstate, so in the first year I did as many weekend workshops as possible. Then when based back in Brisbane I immersed myself in the practice doing back to back 6 week transformational courses over the next 3 years.
When my work asked me to return interstate, which I knew would mean giving up my weekly dose of Shiva Shakti Dance, I left my job and set up my own business to create balance in my life and continue my journey. In 2019 I delved into the intense training to become a facilitator.
I wear many hats - I am a corporate career woman, artist, poet, traveller, nature loving hippy, dancer, fairy-wing-wearing festival goer, entrepreneur, girlfriend, daughter, sister and aunt. Some of which seem to be polar opposites and for many years I struggled with this sense of contradiction within myself.
“How could I be a powerful corporate career woman and a wildly feminine, erotic woman who love to dance in the bush?"
The more I have danced and embraced my body over the years the more I have learnt to feel whole. I no longer see myself in parts. I see myself as a whole woman with so much offer in all the arenas in which I play.
I have learnt that I can immerse myself completely in many worlds and whilst there are certain parts that I choose to emphasise at different times, I am all of me and it all exists within me.
Shiva Shakti Dance has taught me this and I am honoured to be able to offer this work to other women, so that you too can explore and unite all parts of yourself to embrace your divine offering as a woman!"
Felicity is also a qualified Non-Linear Movement Method® teacher, Corporate Coach, Executive Project Manager and many other great things that empower women to love who they are and achieve what they desire.
Some might doubt that something as ‘simple’ as dance can change the world… But not us.
Every week, we witness the women in our classes returning to their natural state of being – overflowing with love, sensually awake, free to express themselves, and celebrating the immensity of life coursing through them…
There’s no question in our minds about the revolutionary power of Shiva Shakti Dance.