(RNS) — In her early teens and early 20s, Halo Seronko struggled with an eating disorder and bodily insecurities.
“I’ve been a woman who’s overcome so many challenges just because I’m a woman, and I think all of us women can relate to the struggles of being a female in a masculine-driven world,” said Seronko, now 39. “This adversarial relationship to our bodies, the way that we are taught to essentially hate ourselves, and then we spend most of our lives recovering from that conditioning.”
But something — or someone, according to Seronko — pulled her to start moving her body. With no prior experience, Seronko started dancing at clubs and underground music festivals, at Burning Man, at Middle Eastern belly dance and in fire dancing classes. Eventually, she discovered Indian temple dance — the eight classical forms of movement that in ancient India allowed women to serve as intermediaries to the gods.
“It was a slow process, like I’d been frozen and I slowly started thawing, and I’d start dancing, and pretty soon I would just feel this aliveness in my body and these streams of energy and this deeper intelligence informing my movement,” said Seronko. “And that’s how I first met her.”
Halo Seronko danc …