Dancing Toward the Divine: How American Women Are Reclaiming Power Through Shakti Traditions

Women in the U.S. are embracing Shakti-inspired dance to heal body-image wounds, reconnect with femininity, and access embodied spirituality. Through temple dance traditions and blended modern styles, teachers like Halo Seronko and Tenley Wallace guide students toward confidence, emotional release, and renewed vitality. This growing movement reclaims ancient feminine wisdom through movement, community, and empowered self-expression.

Halo Seronko spent much of her adolescence wrestling with body image struggles and an eating disorder. Now approaching 40, she reflects on those years as part of a larger pattern many women recognize — growing up in a world that teaches them to view their bodies with suspicion rather than reverence. But Seronko says something shifted when she finally allowed herself to move.

With no formal training, she began dancing anywhere she could — at clubs, festivals, Burning Man, and eventually in belly dance and fire-dancing classes. That exploration led her to a discovery that would transform her life: the world of Indian temple dance, rooted in centuries-old traditions where movement served as a conduit to the divine.

As Seronko describes it, dancing awakened something deep within her — a life force she identifies as Shakti, the Hindu embodiment of divine feminine energy. Often depicted as the dynamic counterpart to Shiva, Shakti represents vitality, creativity, and the elemental power that animates the universe. In Tantric philosophy, this force lies dormant as Kundalini energy at the base of the spine and can be stirred through movement.

For a growing number of women in the West, this idea resonates strongly. Many, like Seronko, are seeking a spiritual experience centered not in stillness or austerity, but in embodiment.

Traditional religious systems, Seronko argues, have historically prioritized masculine approaches to spirituality — contemplation, solitude, and intellectual discipline — while minimizing the relational, expressive qualities associated with femininity. Dance, however, offers another path. In India, she learned about the rich lineage of women who honored the divine through movement: Devadasis who served in temples, Maharis who carried ancient dance traditions, Yoginis and Dakinis who embodied liberated spiritual energy.

Seronko brought these inspirations back to California in 2015 when she founded Shakti Temple Arts, a school focused on dance, yoga, and embodied spirituality. Her students, diverse in age and background, often arrive with similar desires — to reconnect with their bodies, find confidence, and explore the feminine power they’ve felt pressured to hide.

California native Tenley Wallace shares a similar calling. A longtime dancer and founder of Temple Tribal Fusion, Wallace teaches a hybrid style that blends Indian classical movement with flamenco, belly dance, and other traditions. She also emphasizes what she calls the “herstory” behind feminine spiritual practices, helping women understand the deeper symbolism encoded in temple dance.

Historically, temple dancers weren’t mere performers, Wallace says. They transmitted myths, sacred geometry, and spiritual teachings through posture, mudras, and rhythmic movement — an embodied language accessible even in communities without literacy. To her students, learning these stories often brings a sense of remembering rather than discovering.

Wallace now teaches both online and in Oregon, performs at festivals, and leads retreats in India. Her approach to yoga focuses on what she sees as the unique energetic landscape of women, particularly the power centers of the belly and pelvis — regions she says are rarely emphasized in mainstream Western yoga.

One of her students, Oregon-based holistic nutritionist Wendee Daniels, didn’t start dancing until her 50s. Though choreography challenged her at first, the movements felt intuitively right. Whether she was learning hip-hop, dancing in heels, or exploring temple traditions, Daniels found that certain motions — hip circles, shimmies, fluid curves — awakened something natural within her.

When she reaches what she calls the “no-thought place” during dance, Daniels feels Shakti moving freely, stirring emotions and releasing energy that leaves her bright and energized long after class. That aliveness, she says, is inseparable from her work helping women build nourishing, embodied lifestyles.

For Daniels, Shakti is less an abstract spiritual idea and more a lived experience — a current of vitality that flows when women allow themselves to feel, move, connect, and let go.

“When Shakti flows,” she says, “we shine brighter. We lift the people around us. We help create solutions, community, harmony. It’s like a small spark that can light up the world.”

Together, women like Seronko, Wallace, and Daniels represent a growing movement in the West — one that seeks empowerment not by rejecting tradition, but by reclaiming an ancient one. Through dance, they are rediscovering a spiritual lineage that honors the feminine, celebrates the body, and reminds them of the power they carry within.

Credit MSN news