Only worship can do justice to the blessing of The Dance.
The Tantric Dance of Feminine Power ® is not derived from previous yogas, but has arisen directly from Woman’s bodyknowing, fresh for today’s needs.
Join us in this rich, heart and body-felt discussion between Vajra Ma, the originator of this Yogini practice, and Halo Seronko, accomplished Odissi dancer, who has studied the practice.
Aired for Navaratri, October 2024
About The Tantric Dance of Feminine Power®
The Womb-Sourced Yoga of Feminine Wisdom™
The Tantric Dance of Feminine Power® is a devotional subtle body
practice originated by Vajra Ma, taught since 1992. It is a keenly focused, self-referred moving meditation that circulates the life force throughout the nadis (subtle energy channels of the body) and weaves the energies of the Womb, Heart and Third Eye. It is a spontaneous practice that is experienced only by direct, subtle communion with the innate intelligence and powers of the body. Spontaneity manifests a precision and profundity of experience that far surpasses that of technique, especially when rooted in subtle energetic awareness and devotional intention.
“Don't miss this wonderful opportunity to study The Tantric Dance of Feminine Power with Vajra Ma! I know a lot of women have deeply benefited from this very sacred work. This is a true Yogini opportunity to work with the subtle body and feminine power."
~ Laura Amazzone, yogini, teacher and author of
Goddess Durga and Sacred Female Power
When we approach the body with reverence, the body illuminates the Love that created it. Add to that the creative power of the womb with the visionary power of the third eye, and you have a warm, rich dive into female embodiment: The Tantric Dance of Feminine Power®
The Tantric Dance of Feminine Power (hereafter The Dance) incorporates elements that the male-dominated traditions of yoga do not include. First and foremost the Womb. The Womb changes everything! The other components are detailed further below and work together synergistically for a spherical unfolding of wisdom and bliss. These include: Serpentine Wave Pattern, Receptivity, Pleasure, Spontaneity, Frequency, Absorption.
This practice is not neo-tantra. It has no affinity with neo-tantra’s focus on relationship intimacy and sexual techniques, although it can have a wonderfully beneficial effect on same. The Tantric Dance of Feminine Power is a devotional practice danced for the benefit of self and all beings. It is approached in utter surrender, humility and reverence. Its affinity is with the inner source of tantric mysticism, the female wisdom that shaped the original, authentic practices of Tantra.
The Tantric Dance of Feminine Power is “dance” in the sense of the dance of cosmic energies. The Dance moves fluidly--just as woman’s spherical consciousness does--across divisions between dance, movement, meditation and yoga. Between stillness and motion. Between bhakti, deity, jnana and hatha yoga. It is yoga, dance, prayer, worship, a healing modality, a moving meditation that revolves around the essence of still meditation. It embraces the yoga of emotion. It manifests magical workings, shamanic journeying, karmic unfoldings, animal powers, the opening of the Heart, healing transmissions and spiritual empowerments. The highest wisdom teachings can come through The Dance. It has revealed itself as an authentic Tantric practice in alignment with the great Yoginis of yore.
In 2003, while I was meditating at my altar to the Goddess Kali-Ma, She whispered in my heart,
"This is the Yoga of Shakti."
She imprinted into my heart the realization that this practice which had come through me goes beyond its foundational components. It includes its living matrix of powers, phenomena and transmissions.
Kali Ma impressed upon me that it is this full matrix of manifested powers, phenomena and transmissions that defines The Tantric Dance of Feminine Power as The Yoga of Shakti.
Three factors were necessary for this: The grace of the Divine Mother Herself; a channel to receive and convey Her transmissions; the participation and experiences of the many women who have received and explored these transmissions.
All reverence to you, Divine Mother! All gratitude to the many women who have participated and co-generated the emergence of this womb-sourced yoga!
So what are these components that lead to this living matrix of powers, phenomena and transmissions? First let’s ask how might a woman’s way of meditating differ from the current male dominated traditions?
Woman’s Way of Meditating
Would not a yoga born of woman be holistic and encompassing as woman’s nature is, integrating left and right hemispheres of the brain? We need only look to the Goddess Saraswati who embodies both science and the arts to see this holism.
Would it not include the power of the Womb, a power not directly experienced by men (so why would they include it in their yoga)? Would women ignore their womb in experiencing and developing a form of yoga?
Would it not include both the sexual fire and the heart, interwoven as they are in woman’s spherical, full-bodied, full-hearted sensuality?
And would it not be as subtle and nuanced as Woman?
It seems to me a yoga born of woman would reflect woman’s totality of being. The Sanskrit word karuna illuminates this totality. Karuna is the mystical blend of celestial, erotic and mother love, of pleasure, sexuality and compassion.
A woman’s yoga would include the powers and attributes of the Universal Mother because woman, formed around the womb, is Her particular embodiment. Why should any of these aspects, so essential and enriching to human life be excluded from yoga? From any spiritual practice?
The Tantric Dance of Feminine Power aligns with our female energy system, our natural ability to think, feel and act holistically. It is multi-valent and multi-layered, like woman’s consciousness. It amplifies woman’s natural way of functioning instead of imposing meditative techniques which have been developed to suit the male body and energy system.
There is a difference!
In The Dance we enter into the internal experience of our innate female body wisdom. The female body is an exquisite calibrator of reality. We track the inner pathways of Shakti (Life Force) in our body, particularly the continuum from womb (power) to heart (compassion) to third eye (mystical vision). The practice is shamanic and tantric, internal, subtle and potent. It opens the heart and transmutes afflictive emotions. “Worship me as your innermost self” says the Goddess in the Tripura Rahasya Tantra. This is what we do in this practice.
Components of The Dance
Serpent Wave
Serpent has been specifically demonized in patriarchal religions for a reason. Kundalini, the raising of which brings enlightenment, literally means “Serpent Goddess”. The Goddess has been demonized, as has serpent, as has woman who in the Christian tradition listened to the serpent in the Garden. She listened because she had always listened to the Goddess. Forbidding to eat of the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge was forbidding woman to continue to receive the knowledge encoded in her body. Period. Full stop.
Serpent is the underlying wave pattern of The Dance. It is the underlying wave pattern of life! The Universe! The ocean, womb of biological life, undulates with waves and tides. Light and sound travel in wave patterns. Science has shown that as we undulate our spine, the heartbeat, brain waves and breath harmonize and stimulate various areas in the brain. When Kundalini has traveled through all the chakras, the individual has achieved ‘enlightenment’. Serpent is the great teacher. In Aramaic the words for serpent and Eve are cognates of each other.
Serpentine movements are natural exressions of bodily pleasure and receptivity. As we look at the various components of The Dance we may begin to see the awakening effect of Serpent Goddess’ movement in our body—her great gift of ‘carnal’ knowledge and life!
Receptivity
Receptivity is key to the women’s way of meditating. Our bodies are designed to receive; we are built around the vessel of the Womb. When we start The Dance we roll our consciousness down in to the Womb and wait upon the gathering of spanda (the tremoring vibration that underlies all of creation-- think OM). When the spanda has gathered through our consciouns receptivity we feel the impulse to move!
Movement is a natural way for women to meditate. While men may need to be still to learn to be vessels, we already are. It is not happenstance that the sacred dancers of the Divine Mother tradition in India—the Odissi, Bharatanatyam and Kathak dancers—are predominantly women.
In still meditation we might feel subtle inner vibrations but lose that awareness if we move. What makes The Dance so powerful is we cultivate subtle sensate awareness while moving, thus embodying the very nature of awareness--fluid consciousness continually evolving.
Pleasure is the Portal
The Dance is based in profound pleasure. Though trivialized, distorted and profaned in the modern world, in reality pleasure is a central mystery of authentic power and spiritual knowedge. It is inseparable from Shakti, the Cosmic Feminine Creative Force. Pleasure is a sacred gift from the Divine Mother.
In this practice, pleasure is the portal. Pleasure softens and opens the heart which is essential to spiritual awakening. When we are in pleasure we are not in control. Rather than directing the energy, we are receptive.
This pleasure is not necessarily sexual. Pleasure can be as simple as the awareness of the stretch of a muscle or the warm quickening of an emotion, the sensation of breath through our nostrils, the gentle undulation of the spine. All this is pleasure that when held with reverence opens us to experience the Love of the Mother.
We receive pleasure as the Goddess dancing in us in Her subtle form. All reverence to Her!
Spontaneity
The Tantric Dance of Feminine Power is not codified. Nor can it be. It is a spontaneous living yoga, never the same, always calibrating and recalibrating to be in attunement with one’s deepest heart feelings and body wisdom. It is formed exactly for and by our body-mind, in and for the present moment.
The Tantric Dance is a continual moving stream of asanas imbued with knowledge, pleasure and creative power; a flowing infinity of shapes, subtle sensations, deep feeling, emotion and movement. In The Dance our full-body, multivalent, spherical awareness unfurls naturally—like a flower.
We could also picture it as a river. A river does not think where it will go, it feels what is present--rocks, earth, soil, cliffs, valleys, plants and trees…and moves responsively. We dance the river of our devotion and desire. It flows through us until we become the very Ocean of Bliss.
Spontaneity is not general or vague, but rather a keen responsiveness. As mentioned earlier, spontaneity, when rooted in subtle energetic awareness and devotional intention, manifests a precision and profundity of experience that surpasses that of technique. Combined with receptivity it enables precise attunement to frequencies.
Frequency
The Dance is a dance of frequencies. We cultivate our capacity to embody ever higher frequencies and concentrations of power. Higher frequencies open the portal to dimensions beyond the density of 3D.
The practitioner learns how to absorb frequencies as they intensify, rather than dissipate them. This leads to an ever increasing capacity to sense, magnetize and hold or ‘ride’ frequencies. "Frequency" is no poetic expression but a concrete, tangible phenomenon.
Everything in the universe—every being, animal, plant and person, every thought, every impulse, emotion and desire—has a frequency, and every frequency contains information. We start with the frequency of devotion. We open our heart in reverence. This shields us from undesireable frequencies and invites only those of high vibration.
We contact and embody frequencies by way of our deep feeling. As we ride a frequency in a streaming flow of gestures and shapes we absorb its information, it becomes a part of us. The frequencies electrify the body and heal on physical, mental, emotional and spiritual levels. We experience direct knowing, spiritual understanding, creative inspiration.
We might embody the frequency of a particulat Goddess or aspect of Her, such as the serene ferocity of Durga piercing the heart of the demon; or the sweet nectar of Guanyin soothing our fears; or the healing heat of Sekhmet burning away disease.
We might embody the frequency of a power animal. Serpent, Feline, Bird, Dragon (winged serpent) and more.
We might embody frequencies that defy description or categorization, but we know them in a direct, wordless, deeply felt way. This is the Dance of Consciousness. The possibilities are endless.
The higher, more subtle the frequency we hold in our body, the more spiritual awareness and knowledge we receive. The deeper our devotion, the more wisdom we integrate.
We do not need to cognitively understand the knowledge that is transmitted. The Dance touches us at levels far beyond words. We may experience pure transmissions and awakenings of sensation, pleasure and energy. These might "download" and integrate into our body and psyche in minutes, hours, or days in the form of spiritual understanding, creative ideas, guidance, words, images, physical healing, emotional clearing, joy and a greater capacity to act with confidence and clarity in our daily life.
How do we raise the frequency in our body?...
Absorption
Absorption, or ‘holding the energy’, is key to raising frquencies in the body. When the energy intensifies there can be a tendency to dissipate it by jerky, shaking movements or by siphoning it off through the breath. Instead, we allow the energy to involute deeper into our body and we intend the energy to undulate in serpentine flow.
The Relationship Between Frequency and Shape
The shapes our body forms in the Dance are not symbols or representations, they are the bio-circuitry, the very embodiment of particular frequencies. They are constellations of cosmic energies. Body mudras embody cosmic consciousness.
Through subtle feeling and keen receptivity, the yogini discovers the original intelligent impulse that gave rise to various asanas. This is direct experience, direct knowledge.
The dancer experiences these shapes from the inside out. They form themselves. Deep feeling generates them. The shapes vibrate with the frequency and the attendant sensations and wordless layers of consciousness from which the frequency emerges. These shapes are self-creating, apart from any effort of self-expression. They are the language of the heart and flesh inseparably entwined in desire and its simultaneous satisfaction. It is the language of longing for the divine and the language of divine love that responds, to its own self.
“Worship me as your innermost self” says the Goddess in the Tripura Rihasya.
This is what we do in The Dance
The Dance Affects Our Whole Life
The various attributes that The Dance fosters transfer into all aspects of life — relationships, other movement modalities, healing skills, ritual and magical skills, intuition, our emotional and physical health. The Dance engages all the bodies—physical, mental, emotional and spiritual. We embrace emotions (not to be confused with sentimentality) and pleasure as intelligent carriers of knowledge and information.
The Tantric Dance of Feminine Power opens the Womb and the Heart and merges their energies, giving birth to wisdom within.
This practice offers an unusually rapid path of personal evolution. What you can learn in a single Dance experience might take weeks, months or even years of study without the Dance. It is understood in Tantra that what a woman might ascertain in a day, may take a man a year.
With this rapidity and depth comes great challenge. There are no short cuts. You must be ready to hold power and bear the responsibility that comes with it.
What happens in Class?
The practice is spontaneous and uncodified yet particular guidelines are given to allow our spherical awareness to unfold naturally, with spontaneous precision. There are pitfalls and tricks we play on ourself to avoid naked presence where the deepest treasures of self reside. The teacher helps us recognize and remove these obstacles.
Class includes invocation, wisdom teachings, guided movement explorations to cultivate awareness of subtle sensations, followed by The Dance itself; opportunities for witnessed Dance and verbal sharing.
Because it is a spontaneous practice, there is no technique, no "steps" to teach or practice. And yet it is a dance form. The dancer is guided to discover this form through her, or his, own direct experience. Feelings, emotional and physical, create the movement. Being present, moment to moment in a seamless interweaving of feeling and movement, present to our deepest longings for the Divine, opens us to higher frequencies and makes the Dance rapidly transformative.
We invoke the Goddess, for The Dance cannot be transmitted except through the Her living presence. Through The Dance women (and men) cultivate the capacity to embody the living presence of the Universal Mother in Her compassionate, wrathful and erotic powers. We embody more and more fully the creative essence of Goddess.
Class includes guidance in the crucial elements that make this moving meditation unique, including devotion, receptivity, refinement of movement and sensate awareness, and absorbing the energy. These elements are the simple but demanding requirements to raising the frequency that is held by the dancer. This intense moving yoga thus gives us access to spiritual knowledge encoded in the frequencies of our DNA.
In a loving and supportive environment you are guided through movement journeys that provide imagery, sound, breath and motion to sensitize and increase your awareness of subtle inner sensations. Fluid, serpentine movement through hips, belly and spine entrain our dream mind, womb and heart into harmonious wave patterns that awaken the body's intelligent connection with Spirit. Following these guided movement explorations we dance The Dance proper. This can be simultaneously each in our own space, or in witnessed format. Witnessing leads to an intensified experience of both dancer and witnesses. We learn through feeling each other’s Dance!
The teacher might give the dancer verbal feedback to assist her in refining her process. Most importantly, the teacher holds a space of resonance that amplifies each woman’s experience. That is, the Dance is taught primarily through transmission, the factor of resonance.
