Dancing Your Soul Awake
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Our guest speaker on this episode is the wonderful Katie Holland, award winning sacred dance therapist and creator of Awakened Belly Dance. She is a renowned professional dancer with a passion for self-empowerment and self-initiation through conscious movement.
She has supported thousands of people around the world with workshops, trainings and retreats, and she is also an inner dancer facilitator and trainer, a powerful energy whisperer and a PADI mermaid instructor.
Her aim is to enthuse, empower, cultivate and share this inspirational, magical energy with everyone she meets. She is also the creator of Shakti Pants Sacred Clothing and Jewellery as well as the founder and organiser of Sirius Retreats trainings and adventures. Katie believes that “all movement is divine when the heart is danced awake”.
DANCING YOUR SOUL AWAKE
We begin by discussing the spiritual aspects of belly dancing, and Katie shares her own story of her lifelong love affair with dance. Through teaching belly dance in her twenties, Katie began to witness transformations and connections in the women she taught – they spoke of greater confidence, improvements in periods, or increased self-esteem. Katie then noticed, after she had done her own spiritual work, that women were responding differently – they could see her in a different way than previously.
We talk about the power of Awakened Belly Dance, and Sally shares her experience of taking part in one of Katie’s workshops, which felt more sacred and intimate than she had expected. Katie talks about the difference between her belly dancing classes which focus on technique, and the Awakened Belly Dance which uses sacred geometry to awaken our spirit and inner energy.
Sibby talks about how women can often feel very negatively towards our bellies and how for some of us, the only time we revere our bellies is when we are pregnant. We discuss the impact of the media in how women’s bodies should look, and as Katie points out nothing is shared about ageing, stretch marks and other completely normal changes that take place for women on a physical level. Katie reminds us that the belly is where we not only digest food but also where we digest life, and if we repress our life purpose, all that repressed energy goes into the belly.
Sally talks about resetting your awareness to your belly through Katie’s work, and Katie points out how witnessing women of all shapes and sizes perform belly dancing together is so powerful, as we are seeing women feeling comfortable in their bodies. Katie describes the Awakened Belly Dancing process as a whole-body awareness, tapping into ancestral or collective fallout that we may need to release to find balance.
Katie discusses the many energy healing modalities she has trained in, including Reiki, Access Consciousness, Energetic Facelift and Sufi Whirling to name a few. She describes how her own near-death experiences as well as Kundalini awakenings have led her to be able to connect to other people’s bodies in a different way. She shares how her certain experiences in childhood, including psychic attack and experiences in a clairvoyant circle at a young age led her to close down that part of her life when she was older out of fear.
Katie talks about how shadow work is the key to everything, and it doesn’t have to be doom and gloom – it can be fun. She believes it’s an ongoing process and she has found herself sharing more and more of her personal story, because she has so many people coming to her with similar experiences. Sibby asks about Katie’s Kundalini experiences, and we learn that Kundalini can be misrepresented in the mainstream media. Kundalini is our life force that sits at the base of our spine in the form of snake. As we awaken it, the Kundalini rises. This is usually done slowly and in stages, with the ultimate goal being enlightenment. Katie talks about the chakra system and how it’s never really in balance. She talks about the importance of protecting your energetic boundaries in any spiritual pursuit, particularly if you are an empath.
Katie shares her own dramatic Kundalini Awakening and how it not only affected her physically and mentally in a dramatic way, but also gave her a clear message that she needed to create Awakened Belly Dance. She knew she had to listen to it but didn’t know how to go about it because it meant letting go of her dream job and completely changing her life. Katie undertook an 8-year journey of self- exploration and knowledge gathering as well as listening to her whispers of the soul, which led her to move to Bali. Upon creating her new dance form, she experienced another very dramatic Kundalini Awakening, after which she experienced downloads of specific elements of Awakened Belly Dance, including the name, logo and the final key parts of the equation.
Katie describes how not everyone experiences a Kundalini Awakening in such a violent way and she has learned to harness the electricity within her body through her work. She says that we are told that kundalini is something outside of us that we are trying to grasp, but in fact Kundalini is our life force – it is within us, and it is everything, including fears, lack of self-worth, ancestral ties etc. Katie is mindful of the misuse of the term in the media, and she can provide guidance to people who have questions or have had experiences they need help to understand. Katie talks about being multi-dimensional and not fearful of death – everything is fine, and we need to allow ourselves to escape this box of fear that we get trapped in.
Sibby discusses how more and more people are awakening their attention to all of their bodies, not just the physical. Kate agrees that our body is a tool for experiencing life, and that rather than the body carrying the soul, perhaps it is the soul carrying the body. We have all the wisdom we need, not outside of ourselves but within.
We talk to Katie about the magic of Blue Lotus, which can enhance your dreaming experiences. She has felt called by the Blue Lotus to Egypt to where she now lives, and she now conducts ceremonies. Through this, Katie has realised that everyone holds a part of the puzzle, and it is all about synergy. The Blue Lotus brings to you what you need. She now combines Blue Lotus with Awakened Belly Dance to enhance the experience for her clients and students. We all share some of our personal experiences on the astral plane, including how we may make soul contracts in the dreaming space, be vulnerable to psychic attacks as well as meeting power animals or familiar yet unfamiliar people from our waking lives.
You can find Katie on Instagram: @awakenedbellydance, Facebook: Katie Holland, or by visiting www.awbdance.com.