Shakti Smith
RSMT/E, RYT, APP, LMT

Movement and Dance:

Shakti is a Dynamic Embodiment Therapist and Registered Somatic Movement Therapist and Educator, Creator of Inner Body Dancing, and has been teaching Movement since 1992. Her somatic sessions and classes are supported by her movement research in the embodied disciplines of Contact Improvisation, Authentic Movement, Dance Meditations, and Body Mind Centering.

For 9 years she was on the faculty at Movement Research in Manhattan; and in addition has taught contact improvisation and authentic movement at Earthdance, Dance New England, the Boston Living Center for AIDS/HIV, Shambhala Yoga and Dance, The University of Vermont, as well as to individuals privately. From 1995 to 2013 she taught these movement disciplines intensively, guiding many into the complex expressive, embodied, athletic, connective and psycho spiritual world of Contact Improvisation. She also facilitated many weekly in the expressive, healing, and mystical movement form Authentic Movement. Her BA studies at The University of Vermont and Burlington College were focused on Religion and Transpersonal Psychology with a thesis focus on Authentic Movement and Expressive Arts Therapy.

In 1997 she trained for an intensive year in Authentic Movement with the Circus of Human Experience in Somerville, MA. For ten years she met quarterly with a group of women to do Authentic Movement for 3-4 days each time; and for twenty years guided others in the practice of this form, often in day and weekend long workshops doing Authentic Movement immersed in Nature.

From 2000-2002 she lived in a little cabin in the woods at the artistic community Earthdance, actively teaching as well as leading (developing programming and community) in her role of Manager/Assistant Director.

For many years she has guided people of all ages in weekly classes, weekend workshops, and weeklong experiences of Movement.

Yoga: 

Shakti’s first memory of doing Yoga is of doing Bakasana (crow pose) in a meadow with her class and teacher Sam Whiteside in nursery school in Vermont, in the early 70’s.  She later practiced yoga, initially with her father (Kripalu and Integral Satchidananda traditions), when she was a teen, and lived and worked at Yogananda’s Self Realization Fellowship Ashram in Assisi, Italy in 1994. She has been teaching since the late 90s.

Her teachers include Rodney Yee, Jai Uttal, Mark Whitwell, Genny Kapuler, Alan Finger, and Eileen Muir. Along with an emphasis on alignment, Shakti’s classes are imbued with a softness and embodied intelligence that comes from her Bodywork practice and her teaching/research in Somatic Movement Education and Therapy. Shakti has also taught Yoga at Shambhala Yoga and Dance in Brooklyn, Northampton Hospital (for women veterans of foreign wars), The Muscular Therapy Institute in Cambridge, and at Earthdance Retreat Center. Shakti is a Registered Yoga teacher, having done 200 hour Iyengar Training and 300 hour Ishta Training. Her yoga research and final paper, in advanced training, were on how physical and spirtual health can be improved by integrating embodied awareness of the endocrine and chakra systems into practice of yoga and meditation.

Vibrational/Energywork, Sound Healing and Bodywork:

Shakti has been studying Bodywork and Energy Healing since 1990, is on the faculty at the Swedish Institute College of Health Sciences in Manhattan where she teaches Polarity Therapy (Energetic oriented Bodywork) and Thai Yoga Massage. She has been professionally licensed and nationaly certified in Massage since 1998. She is also a Registered Polarity Therapist and Reiki Practitioner, and certified advanced Thai Yoga Bodywork practitioner—with training at the Center for Kinesthetic Education in NYC, The Muscular Therapy Institute in Cambridge, Massachusetts, The Swedish Institute and SomaPsyche Institutes in New York City, The Shamanic Reiki Institute, and The Lotus Palm School of Thai Yoga Massage in Montreal.

She has also taught Massage and Movement at the Muscular Therapy Institute in Cambridge, Massachusetts for CEU credits, Reiki and Self Care Skills at the NYC Boys Club, Thai Yoga Bodywork at Dance New England and Shambhala Yoga and Dance.

She has given well over ten thousand Sessions. She first felt and did a healing session with the chakras when she lived at the Findhorn Community in Scotland in 1989. Her Energy Healing teachers since then, include Tim Yandow of the Barbara Brennan School of Healing, Fabien Maman (the founding father of vibrational sound healing), Linda Gnat-Mullin for Reiki, Llyn Roberts for Shamanic Reiki, Suren Sresthra and Kathy Hammer for Himalayan Bowl Sound Healing, and Ellen Krueger for Polarity. Shakti is a Reiki Master and Teacher, and continues her Polarity and Shamanic Reiki studies and research.

Shakti has experience working with populations with AIDS/HIV, Cancer, and Parkinson’s Disease.
She has also worked with pregnant women since 1997; and delights in introducing children to Bodywork and Energywork.

Meditation/Self-Realization:

For over 25 years she has studied Buddhist, Hindu and other Self Realization practices with teachers in Europe, India, and the USA. She has retreated inside for periods of silence lasting 7-10 days. This silence, and the grace, growth, and learning that have come with it, has been her greatest teacher.

Her teachers and guides include Osho (Meditation, Dance Meditation), Saleem Berryman (Self Enquirey, Psycho emotional healing), Ganga-Ji (Self Enquirey in the lineage of Ramana Maharshi), Eli Jaxon Bear (Self Enquirey,The Enneagram), Dunya (Movement and Meditation), Maitreya Ishwara (Self Realization) and Amma (Love, Compassion). She continues her meditation practice and studies locally with Alan Finger of Ishta Yoga.