Kashanté and RAKS SHAKTI School of YOGA, DANCE and HEALING have been offering services in
South Australia to help clients help themselves to understand and improve health on all levels
and in many ways since 1982.
Kashanté, Director of RAKS SHAKTI School of YOGA, DANCE and HEALING, and
WISE WOMEN WELLBEING, mother, yoga therapist and teacher, yogic lifestyle counsellor, reader and healer, environmental activist and professional Belly Dancer, has been offering fun, healthy, varied and professional training in Yoga and various fun forms of Dance, most particularly Egyptian Belly Dance, Hula, Bollywood, Folk/Circle Dance, with a bit of Latin American. Develop all aspects of the self through healing, energizing, invigorating and yet relaxing group and private tuition at any level, to suit individual capacities.
Kashanté also runs courses, workshops and retreats on all aspects of her teachings.
Kashanté is a Oneness Blessing (Deeksha) Giver, qualified Auset Egyptian and Angel Miracle Practitioner and Teacher, using Auset Egyptian Divination, Angel, Ascended Master and other Oracle Cards, Runes, the Hindu Tattwa divination system of Swami Anandakapila Saraswati, Goddess Tarot and HazelMoon's Hawaiian Tarot, of which she is the South Australian distributor, and Reiki healer.
Kashanté, mostly practices in the South of Adelaide, Fleurieu Peninsula but also offers country and interstate workshops. She has performed in Egypt and Australia.
Kashanté's formal YOGA training started when, in February, 1980, in order to become as healthy as possible and to alleviate stress symptoms, she began attending classes with Iris Clutterham, who founded the Clutterham School of Yoga in the 1950s, which became the S.A. Yoga Teachers' Institute, and later was renamed the Yoga Teachers Institute of South Australia*. (Kashanté later became aware that some of her childhood and teen practices were 'yogic', or could be considered ‘yoga’). Iris conducted classes and teacher training from the 1950s, facilitating trips to India and visits by international yoga exponents. The Institute’s service to the Adelaide Yoga Community has been immense, and it was the only wholly South Australian Yoga teacher training organization until 2004.
*Sadly the YTISA was recently closed.
During her first year's training, Kashanté attended four classes a week, with various exponents, including Iris, and she was soon being asked to teach. She instructed for the Adelaide School of Yoga in the city of Adelaide itself and relief taught for Iris, who became her central teacher, mentor and major yoga influence in her life. Connecting strongly with Iris’ heart centred, humble and authentic teaching, she quickly became deeply involved with the Institute and other organizations of the yoga community in South Australia, eastern states and even international bodies (e.g. she travelled to India for a yoga tour with the well known and respected UK Yoga For Health Foundation in 1983).
Her extensive and privileged training and study has seen her complete teacher and therapeutic training through the Yoga Teachers Institute of South Australia (YTISA), (formerly the South Australian Yoga Teachers Institute) in the form of :
* Dr. Swami Gitananda Giri’s 52 lesson (Step by Step) course (with Swami's express permission) (1987) and
* Dr. Savitri Devi’s (N.Z.) yoga teaching and therapy course (1999).
She mentored student teachers doing that course from 1997 to 2004.
She was a YTISA member from mid 1981 and a Committee member for 20 years up to 2005.
From 1993 to 1997 she mentored and trained student teachers in the then SAIYT's Yoga Course and has facilitated many workshops for the Institute and other yoga, dance, government, private, corporate and educational bodies over the years.
She completed the International * Yoga For Health Foundation’s Remedial Teacher Training in 1988 and is a Life Member and former State representative of that organization.
In about 1990 she was initiated in the * ‘TM’ style of meditation.
Although she has had a long association with the Satyananda organization, she has not taken up their formal studies, even though she was asked by the Yoga Therapy Network to become a Satyananda Teacher in the 1990s, before their comprehensive training as a formal course was initiated. She has close association with many of its teachers, and has attended numerous teacher get-togethers, workshops, classes and retreats with them and was name initiated by their current lineage holder, Swami Niranjananda Saraswati, in 1999. Kamini is the name given to her by him. She holds particular regard for Swami Samnyasananda Saraswati and recommends those seeking yogic research and statistics to check out his site and links – www.yogalinks.net/research/research.html.
During this time she was initated by Shibendu Lahiri into the Kriya Yoga first level practices of the Kriya Yoga of Lahiri Mahasay and Mahamuni Babaji.
Kashanté’s more recent studies have brought her to the door of Swami Anandakapila Saraswati (literally), whose amazing Tantric courses have rounded out, extended and expanded her knowledge and experience. Her previous studies have meant that these courses contain many familiar elements and overlaps that came together over the courses’ duration. The information relating to correspondences, and the Kriya practices themselves, are most exciting to her, and the practical preparatory exercises are readily applicable to class situations. She has so far completed Swamiji’s two year Om Kara Kriya magnum opus; Tattwas: The Five Elements of Creation; and Sound Mind-Sound Body: Mantra and Nada Yoga. Anyone wishing to develop their understanding of their inner world and to explore true personal and spiritual development with a genuine modern master is urged to look into Swami Anandakapila Saraswati’s (Jonn Mumford’s) work and offerings (www. jonnmumfordconsult.com).
The privilege of receiving Swami’s instruction and distillation of many years’ study, work and experience, is not underrated and Kashanté sees Swami Anandakapila Saraswati as her current guru.
Yoga provides the foundation for all other modalities, especially the breath practices, which enhance energy and stamina and help everyone be better at everything! Kashanté specializes in getting people onto the path of yoga through practical, adaptable, authentic, integral yogic practices. Hatha Yoga is just the beginning on the path, but provides the essential foundation for further progress by ensuring strength, tone, cleansing, purification of body and nadis, (meridiens), balance between body and mind, emotions and spirit and generally ensuring, with dedicated, sensitive practice, the best basis for longevity and health to allow the practitioner optimum conditions for spiritual development, i.e. Yoga helps us be the best we can and looks after the body temple to allow us the best chance to achieve what we're here for! Yogic awareness can also help clarify what that is!
Kashanté is also a sought after exponent of the complimentary teachings and performing of
Middle Eastern Dance (Belly Dance), Hula, Circle and Bollywood Dance.
BELLY DANCE was taken up in early 1988 as a creative diversion following intense study of Dr.Swami Gitananda Giri’s course. Being a long term lover of dance, though without formal training, and having over the years noted her different way of dancing as compared to others in the hotels and clubs, it was a breath of fresh air to find the style of dance being taught in the studio, (in a smoke-free environment!) was natural to Kashanté, who suspects she’s danced like this in another or multiple lives!
She is indebted to the knowledge and expertise of Lassa Hawrysczkwicz, her foremost dance teacher. In addition her heartfelt thanks to Marjolein Douglas-Broers, Nayima Hassan, Raqia Hassan, and other beautiful dancers she admires like Suzanna Delveccio, Elenie Vlismas-Smith, Caroline, Keti, and many more.
Again, she was soon asked to teach this ancient art and has been doing so ever since (about 1989).
Her favoured style is Egyptian, which has many layers and genres.
She also loves BOLLYWOOD dance, and was teaching it many years ago, the first to do so in South Australia, before the explosion of interest in recent times. Her other dance love is HULA/Polynesian and she presents some Tongan, Tahitian, Hawaiian. Her love of dance sees her adding new repertoire all the time. Many are learned in their country of origin. She intends on visiting Hawaii again soon to work with one or two of the teachers she has had contact with previously. She hopes to invite others to complete a small group to study there in the not-too-distant future.
In respect to these dance forms Kashanté has natural inclination, but also thanks particularly: Bollywood movies! (favourite is ‘The Villain’); Renuka Narayana; Vinay Kumar; Naveen; and Mudra Trivedi for Indian style, and Asena, Tanika Smith, Kao Lo Lo, Renee, and Leilani Rivera-Bond for Polynesian style. She intends on travelling to India to associate with the first Belly Dance school there, run my Malik Meher.
Kashanté also participates in and teaches CIRCLE/FOLK DANCE, which is an excellent community dance form that pre-dates modern dance styles and fosters social inclusion and practices to balance body and brain. She often uses simple folk dances as warm ups and activation for left and right body and brain for other dance and dance fitness classes.
Kashanté started teaching dance fitness in May 2010 and finds it to be a melting pot of her other movement and health interests, incorporating Yogic, Bollywood and Belly Dance content to her classes.
Kashanté's DANCE FITNESS is a fun, professional, well planned and constructed fitness programme that incorporates Latin American, Bollywood, Belly Dance and other primal dance. The programme encourages fun movement, that impacts positively on general and aerobic health. People attend because it makes them feel good. Participants get fit as a side benefit of having fun.
Kashanté has always said that your fitness plan should be fun, expressive, varied, natural and suitable for individual capacities. Kashanté’s classes, incorporating complimentary authentic, integral Yoga, Dance and Fitness content, are carefully constructed and managed to provide safely and effectively for the needs of individuals and groups. They present interesting, unique and healthful complimentary practices, as single or combination subject sessions - e.g. yogic warmup and cool down, Bollywood and Belly Dance techniques within Dance Fitness sessions; Beginners Yoga, etc. Any combination of modalities can be organized in community and private classes. Kashanté's Dance Fitness is easily adaptable to the group or individual, allowing for raising or lowering intensity safely and effectively.
Yoga and Dance have been deemed to be the best ways to improve fitness and general health on all levels. As a combined discipline they cover all the bases of creating abundant, optimal health, providing - sensible warm-ups and cool down; creative connection with primal ways of expressing and moving; healthy increase in cardiovascular and related systems health; a social, community outlet and more. My 30+ years teaching experience in Yoga and various dance forms, including Belly Dance, Bollywood, Hula and other Polynesian, community and Circle Dance, provide a creative and authentic dance feel, including when combined with the fantastic life-affirming ZUMBA® routines.
I'm looking forward to passing on my knowledge to you.
I'm also available and qualified to teach young adults and private groups.
Kashanté’s school’s name reflects her influences and coming together of her training in Mid-Eastern and other Dance and Yoga – ‘Raks’ means to her to dance, celebrate and revere and ‘Shakti’ is the divine feminine, dynamic, creative force within us all.
[email protected] (subject weebly website enquiry)
I'm looking forward to passing on my knowledge to you.
I'm also available and qualified to teach young adults and private groups.
Kashanté’s school’s name reflects her influences and coming together of her training in Mid-Eastern and other Dance and Yoga – ‘Raks’ means to her to dance, celebrate and revere and ‘Shakti’ is the divine feminine, dynamic, creative force within us all.
[email protected] (subject weebly website enquiry)