The Divine Dance of Shiva and Shakti

It was my first meet up of the Divine Dance of Shiva and Shakti group. I knew about this tantric concept from audio books, podcasts, books, pdfs, and have evoked and practiced it to some extent with lovers, but my understanding was very shallow. Now I know it and feel it in a much deeper way.

In the tantric tradition, the universe itself is danced into creation by the combining of masculine and feminine energies sharing love and power, complimenting each others strengths and compensating for weaknesses. For an individual to be healthy these energies must be balanced within oneself and within one’s relationships.

There are many sacred practices that work towards the balancing of this sacred mythical union. Unlike most western myths, this one isn’t just an abstract story or painting, it’s an experiential way of being. The techniques and methods by which to cultivate these sacred energies can be trained.

The facilitator had the group of about 40 strangers, approximately half women, half men, do some warming up body work to get energy flowing. Then she gave a presentation on the history, origins, concepts, and applications of an array of spiritual tools to reach higher consciousness through self love and relationships.

She stated that her background was in activism and community organizing and I was stoked because she approached this spiritual work as a warrior goddess and hoped to empower the group to liberate themselves from and resist the negativity and programming of the system. Further, she emphasized the need to clear our chakras and to elevate our consciousness in preparation for the coming shift of ages.

She then organized us into a dance where all of the men created an outer circle and all of the women created an inner circle facing the men. She instructed the women to evoke their erotic goddess power to love, heal, nurture, seduce, be wild and primal. The women were to build this energy through their dance and give full presence and attention to the man they were facing. The men were instructed to not engage their genital sexual energy but rather to take the building heat and energy produced through the transfer of feminine energy and draw it up through their charka system and apply it to their highest self-transcending purpose. The exercise was intended to give women a safe space to really cultivate their sensual energies and apply them to help heal and empower the men to get beyond their base sexual desire and their selfish egos and apply divine energy towards positive transpersonal transformation.

At first there was a lot of awkwardness and tension, but the teacher did an amazing job to help people understand this was not to lead to coupling, or even being turned on. The men were profoundly moved by the level of presence and energy and all seemed to be entranced and enchanted not with the individual but with the channeling of pure interdimensional energy.

There was no touching, just dancing and deep breathing and eye contact. The key for this to work so well was that every minute or so the teacher clapped and women rotated to the next man. There were people of all ages, religious traditions, and levels of experience with this kind of stuff. At first there was unease but the collectivity of love, trust, and abandonment of ego and selfhood led to a melting away of fear. A deep sense of unity was established and the level of healing that started to occur brought me to tears. Just seeing the beauty and innocence of this and thinking of all the toxic violent unconscious nights I’ve spent at bars at shows where some level of dancing is occurring but with so little consciousness. I love the mosh pit as a form of pure visceral release, but the fact that there is nothing but that, and no evolution towards something bigger really hurt me.

I was making the sacred connection with each woman who opened her heart and gave of herself and the universe with such authenticity and abandon, it was better than a lot of sex I’ve had, it felt like making love to the cosmos, experiencing the goddess and being a god. Not just symbolically but experientially. It was a real felt experience, the presence of surging flowing warm energy filling my body. I was able to work with it and direct it through my body, through my mind, my visions, my intentions. And the fact that everyone was in tune, doing the same created a vortex of divine energy.

It was so awesome to see the depth and richness grow and to see the men and women with reservation slowly let go. It was a multilayered journey that started with a building up of fiery animalistic seductive energy, then moved towards a totally healing nurturing compassionate gentle energy. The teacher kept people engaged, focused, and directed in their dancing and intention. By just saying a word, she was able to change the character of the entire room’s energy.

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At the heights of the dance, with the women who were most fully expressing their energy, each breath I took in as our eyes were locked was like taking a hit of a potent drug that sent psychedelic shockwaves through my entire being. Getting higher and higher in waves of ecstatic breath, as I danced I felt what one woman described as the sculpting of auras. She said, at first she was just dancing, in her self, dancing with movements she self-consciously created but as the dance evolved, she began to move in currents and patterns that were totally beyond her conscious control. She began to sculpt the male aura in a loving and healing way.

Everyone was deeply moved. After closing the dance the group did a series of chakra clearing exercises based on ancient Egyptian martial arts. It was basically a series of strike type formations where by each strike is designed to break through and throw out blockages in our energy systems.

We closed the evening with a discussion of how we felt and what we experienced, I was very pleased as the conversation moved in the direction of confronting patriarchy and studying not only sacred traditional ways to restore balance, but also studying the modern discourse of eco-feminism.