BlissDance Training – Level 1: Personal & Practitioner Mastery 1

What is BlissDance?

BlissDance is a profound Tantric Movement Practice of Awakening: awakening in us our universal desire for Truth, Presence, Love, Connection, Beauty, Freedom, and Pleasure!

BlissDance, like Tantra, supports the powerful integration of all seeming polarities such as the sacred, profane and the sexual; the light and the shadow; and the masculine and the feminine.

One of the first principles of BlissDance, as a Tantric movement practice, is Presence – being present in the here and now, in our bodies, in our senses. Another is the connection between our desire, our sexuality and our hearts. As this happens, we get to experience and confront some of the unconscious patterns keeping us from being intimate with life, for example:

BODY ARMOURING:

We hold our bodies rigid in an attempt to protect ourselves from feeling too much

– or feeling what we have been suppressing.

Sometimes it’s laughter or ecstasy, sometimes sadness, fear or anger.

All these states are welcome in BlissDance.

HABITUAL ASSOCIATIONS:

Over a lifetime of suppressions, we have built up meaning through associations.

When someone touches us, what does it mean?

When we enjoy or dislike the touch, what fears come up?

Do they relate to past experiences or future projections?

In BlissDance, these subconscious processes become conscious.

In embodied awareness lies liberation

One of the keys of BlissDance is its invitation to break out of our habits and stuck ways.

We enact some of the dramas of everyday life – like having to put down a healthy boundary

– but dance this drama in a conscious way, as a celebration of the body, and as an act of liberation.

In experiencing it consciously, something gives way, more space is created, and we celebrate our expansion.

Something opens up; I taste only sacredness

The moment softens, our hearts soften, and our bodies melt. We get to feel everything intimately.

We welcome what is, we no longer resist, and in that we can meet the beloved

- in the dance and in the moment.

In the first place, the beloved is our very own being.

Then we can meet him/her in the other, the group, our lives, and in existence.

In BlissDance we get to practice embodying

our Awakening, and our Desire

To live our lives as blissful sovereign beings able to manifest our deepest desires, we must first get out of our busy minds and feel and move everything from the past too painful to process at the time of it happening - and so was put away to feel for later. We need to de-armour ourselves physically, emotionally, socially and spiritually.

BlissDance supports soul reclamation, helping us to heal:

↠ Trauma

↠ Cultural and religious conditioning

↠ Unconscious patterns and habits of focus

↠ Self-limiting beliefs, identifications and narrow filters that no longer serve us

Most patriarchal religions shame the body and sexuality. We need to reclaim our beautiful bliss bodies and sacred sexuality. So much contemporary spiritual teaching is conceptual, which keeps us in our busy monkey minds.

Other spiritual traditions encourage disembodied transcendence, which is a kind of spiritual bypassing or dissociation. Very few integrate and balance polarity / duality into a total and direct embodiment practice.

BlissDance is both embodied and transcendent, masculine and feminine, dark and light, and critically, engages the shadow aspects of our sexuality and unconscious, bringing all into the loving light of compassionate consciousness and blissful integration.

How to use movement and music transformationally and holistically, for personal and collective healing and growth
How to progress dancers from the sympathetic into the parasympathetic nervous system - where all rest, relaxation, restoration and healing happens
How to develop a coherent and congruent dance journey. Every class / workshop / retreat is a unique journey into the interior and exterior landscapes of existence. For the journey to be meaningful, it needs a clean and clear intention and vision, set by the facilitator. This intention becomes the themed invitation of the journey
BlissDance is a practice of deep intimacy, connection and awakening - you will learn how to support dancers to de-armour on a physical, emotional and spiritual level by creating immaculate safe, sacred space

How to work with all the layers of the body, from the most physical to the most etheric
How to take dancers into altered states of consciousness, both transcendent and regressive
How to bring dancers back out of altered states of consciousness, and ground them in the still, quiet centre of their beings
How to support dancers to develop their capacity for self-awareness and intimate connection with self, others and life
How to balance and integrate the therapies and learnings from the different movement practices and dance journeys into your own life, and the lives of your dancers
The role of music, and how to select the best music for a particular practice and outcome

Our BlissDance Level 1 Foundation Training has been thoughtfully and carefully designed to meet you where you are + guide you on this journey.

As soon as you join us, you’ll receive an email with all the pertinent details: links, login information, downloads, and more.

Each month, you’ll receive a pdf and audio download of the month’s theoretical module, together with associated video links and assignments, as well as recordings after the 2 x 2-hour live teaching sessions held on Zoom.

There are 2 teaching classes each month, 1 masterclass each semester + 1 study hall each semester.

We will have ongoing discussions where you can post your contemplations around the homework assignments and receive feedback and reflections from the facilitators in our private Mighty Network group.

Before Kali was irrevocably called to the lightning-fast path Tantra, she was a top brand strategist in Johannesburg, Dubai, London, and Cape Town. Upon shattering her left knee (her body’s feminine support structure) while horse riding, she realised she needed a radical change. From promoting unconsciousness through marketing global alcohol brands, she transitioned – not without some considerable challenges – to promoting embodied consciousness through non-dual movement, body de-armouring, and meditation. She turned to teachers at the cutting edge of non-duality to heal the extreme polarities that had played throughout her life; amongst whom were Isaac Shapiro, Sw. Rahasya, Andrew Barnes, and Shakti Malan, the founder of BlissDance and Shakti Shiva Academy.

To rehabilitate her knee, Kali trained in Biodanza (completing the 18 months Personal Development course) with Marcelo Toro - the grandson of the dance movement’s founder - and then deepened her conscious dance training with Shakti Malan, who had developed BlissDance, a Tantric Movement Practice of Awakening.

Over the past 10 years, she has held weekly BlissDance classes in Cape Town for 3 years, together with closed groups, workshops and retreats throughout Southern Africa, the UK, and the Netherlands.

The key differentiator of BlissDance is its lineage, steeped as it is in Totality Tantra and the invitation to constantly stalk our shadows and bring them lovingly into the light of healing, together with the substantial gifts they deliver to individuals and the collective. BlissDance also has the capacity to de-armour the body-mind while ensuring the development of clear discernment and setting of healthy boundaries from moment to moment. BlissDance invites us to meditate consciously on what we really, really want, and develops our capacity for authentic intimacy with Self and with life as the Beloved.

Kali became renowned for the depth to which she could invite dancers to drop within a safe, sacred container - and for her superb music curation, which in turn organically led to her being invited to deejay at private events and festivals.

Together with Shakti Shiva Academy, Kali is delighted to announce the launch of a substantial 3-year BlissDance Teacher Training Certification: the exciting manifestation of Shakti’s dream to bring this exquisite movement practice to the world!

VALENTINA LEO (a.k.a. MrsLove) is the Mother of the School of Fascinating Wonderment. She’s a devoted student, a mystic, a lover & a fool. Spiritual maverick, teacher of Erotic Wisdom and an Explorer of the Tantric Realms for over 20 years. Valentina is a Dakini ~ holder of the freedom lineage from the Tantric school of Fascinating Wonderment (Vismayo) ~ that spontaneously births female teachers of the pathless Path.

Andrew Barnes

MASTERCLASS 03

"Raising Your Vibration"

Live Class: 14 February 2024

Andrew Barnes is an internationally acclaimed Tantric sex, relationship, and orgasm coach, sexologist, speaker, master bodyworker, and author of Heart of the Flower and Relationship Tantra. Andrew is the developer of Tantric Body De-armouring, and over the last several years he has been running courses worldwide in this ever-popular modality.

He supports people to become more aware of the unconscious beliefs and behaviours of relationships, sexuality, and social disempowerment, how this can affect our ability to love without fear, and lower the vibrational frequency of the body. He shows how we can use our sexual energy as a spiritual platform for creating bliss states for healing, raising consciousness, and creating abundance/prosperity

Be held in an Ecstatic Intuitive Dance container to purify stagnant energy that’s been blocking the free flow of your creative life force energy. Embody breath, sound and movement practices that will cultivate ecstatic energy flow in your body/mind and support you to open energy pathways and expand higher consciousness.

Move beyond the confines of your egoic self and tap into your higher evolutionary creative potential. Be supported to experience your relationships, love, creativity, vocation and sexuality in new and inspirational ways.

Evolution is created through raising vibration and increasing vitality. The essential ingredients are breath practices, joyousness, dance, play, togetherness, authenticity, nutrition, ceremony, sensuality, sexuality, living in the now, music, and exploring wisdom pragmatically.

"Embodying the elements ..the images of this weekend past are blowing through me still, the Ecstasy of the elements dancing through me, such awesomeness. Thank you Kali Satyagraha Widd for creating that space and allowing it to happen so easily and gracefully. There aren't actually words to describe being seized and danced by the earth...there are sounds...like a primal growl and sensations of being pulsated within the earth's heartbeat . Beautiful location too. I swear, I sense I took flight in that valley, and I don't think I've landed since. Bring on the next one...

I am so ready."

~ Michelle Turner, BlissDance Weekend Intensive, Kwa-Zulu Natal, South Africa

"There’s a magical, almost mystical marriage that emerges during our sexual awakening journey work, or any inner journey work for that matter – when blended with Kali’s specialised modality of dance and movement, known as BlissDance.

Having witnessed my own powerful shifts in BlissDance, I have over the years referred many clients to Kali’s BlissDance practice, knowing well her measured and tender facilitation brings profound insights, providing a rare portal for deepening into our own journey towards greater self-knowledge, love and mastery."

~ Dr Paul Abramowitz (Medical Practitioner, Author, Sexologist, Musician)

“I have touched many places in BlissDance with you, becoming more of me, experiencing a fuller range of emotions, gold and shadow, and feeling safe and held to express them freely and through my body. How liberating and effective. Embodiment through BlissDance has shifted many things for me and brought me to closer intimacy with myself and others, and allowed some of my boundaries to shift, and to become more open and trusting. Your themes and choice of music have been spot-on and powerful, providing me with what I needed right then and there (without always knowing it). Your skill and holding Kali, and intuitive sense of theme and music, are magical.”

~ Kate

“I've been experiencing major shifts, so much so that my children remarked that I’m a different person to who I was before began the 8 weeks closed BlissDance group for women. What I learned in that sacred circle, the opening of my throat chakra to express myself for one, as well as so many things that continue evolving... but I especially learned compassion and unity and that has brought me right into the fullness of my being. I will always remember your words, when in doubt or despair, remember your truth. Thank you, Kali.”

~ Shihaam

Over a decade and a half ago, Shakti Malan - the founder of the Shakti Shiva Academy - created a dance methodology called BlissDance to support Lovers of Eros to embody their true awakened essence, as well as to create authentic, deeply intimate connections with their inner selves, one another, and the planet.

Shakti recognised how people today are very much conditioned to be in their heads: our bodies simply life-support systems for our busy minds! The masculine aspect of linear logic and valuing of action dominates at the expense of the sensed, multi-focused, felt, intuitive wisdom of the feminine

As a leading teacher of Totality Tantra, Shakti desired a simple and powerful way to redress this imbalance to wake people up, and transmit the Tantric teachings beyond intellectual concepts and theories, and directly into an embodied, intimate and authentic lived reality.

She also realized that the body is the unconscious made manifest. If we could de-armour our existential defences and use the body as a tool for consciousness, then we might begin to regain sovereignty, dissolving the unconscious layers of illusion, conditioning and trauma obscuring our true essence, and inhibiting our sexual life force energy and intimate relationships. Then, and only then, can we take radical responsibility for our lives, and playfully and pleasurably co-create with reality!

Music and movement are universal human languages, stretching back to the beginning of time, beyond the machinations of the mind, and thus perfectly suited to manifest Shakti’s dream.

Based on her training in Tantra, Biodanza, Meditation, Qigong, and Yoga, Shakti created BlissDance, a Tantric Movement Practice of Awakening, where we get to truly Embody our Desire.

Do you provide refunds?

Unless you cancel your registration timeously, the Shakti Shiva Academy does not offer a refund for any other reason.

During the first month of the course, that is up to and including 31 May 2023,

you can de-register from the course by writing an email to info@shaktishiva.academy

If you selected the monthly payment plan when registering, we will cancel your future payments,

however, please take note that no refunds will be provided.

If you selected to pay in full upfront when registering, we will refund 80% of your payment.

After 31 May 2023 you can no longer de-register from the course.

It took approximately 50 years for yoga to reach a global tipping point after migrating from the East?

Conscious Dance hasn’t reached its tipping point yet!

Kali – a top global brand & marketing strategist for 30 years – predicts when Conscious Dance tips in approximately 5 years from now, the movement will be exponentially larger than yoga. Yoga requires a certain level of strength and flexibility-building, which in turn requires regular class attendance and a particular innate athleticism - whereas anybody in a body can move!

Training in a Conscious Dance modality today is an opportunity to set yourself up as an in-demand teacher for the future – one who can hold classes and retreats anywhere in the world – from Bali to Costa Rica and from Ibiza to Cape Town. You can enjoy a richly rewarding path on every level, as your own mistress or master, and confidently know you’re contributing to the creation of a more grounded and blissful new world.

What you will learn

Investment in Yourself

SEMESTER 1

MODULE 1

An overview of the conscious dance landscape, and where BlissDance fits in

MODULE 2

A deeper dive into BlissDance, it's unique differentiation, benefits, and purpose

The First Weave: The Eros of Relating

SEMESTER 2

MODULE 4

The Second Weave: The Eros of Sexuality, Sensuality & Sensuousness

MODULE 6

The Fourth Weave: The Eros of Shamanism, Anthropomorphism and Multidimensionality

SEMESTER 3

MODULE 7

The Fifth Weave: The Eros of Trance: Regression & Transcendence, Death & Rebirth

MODULE 8

The Foundations of Fabulous Facilitation

MODULE 9

God is a DJ: The Importance of Music as Medicine

Facilitation Team

Kali Satyagraha Widd

~ The Dancing Dakini ~

Stephen Tredrea

~ Dances with Chaos ~

Masterclasses with Guest Teachers

What you get:

Intensives

Retreat in South Africa @ Bodhi Khaya:

7-Day BlissDance Intensive

Retreat in Spain/Europe:

7-Day BlissDance Intensive

Testimonials

The origin story of BlissDance

F . A . Q .