My childhood memories of dance were tainted with the embarrassment of being laughed at for being clumsy or getting the choreography wrong. But the yearning remained and there was something I couldn’t quite identify about the confluence of the spiritual and the dancing body. In my late 20s when I entered Jungian analysis, the central figures in my first Sandplay were a buddha and a female dancer—I couldn’t decide which should be the ‘most’ central figurine.

Now as a much older woman I have been dancing in Padma’s classes and have been drawn to do the Individual Program, twice. There’s a magnetism both to the beauty and freedom of the dance, and to an inner knowing that it will reveal what is stuck in me (and thus hopefully clear it). The latter part, for me, can be a challenge for the ego.

In my first programme, dancing a red deity who chops off and holds her own head, my tendencies to live in the mind and too often in the past were certainly revealed. The Goddess propelled me out of a solid city house once lived in by my grandparents and aunts and into a mainly glass house among the trees on a mountain, truly in nature. It was quite a chaotic time, as I suddenly had to prepare a house for sale, rush it through auction, and move my established work, but there was a sense of being guided all the way and pushed by the dance into working with embodied feelings and intuitions rather than with my usual ostensibly safe place, the mind.

The trees and birds, nature herself, revealed another level of stuckness, so I dived into another round of the individual programme, with the urge to become more creative. I thought I wanted to write a book. Padma suggested Saraswati. I was a bit reluctant, as I had seen only the images of Saraswati looking very pretty playing a musical instrument. But I went with it when Padma said ’Saras’ means ‘flow’.

The idea of the book quickly receded as I met the rocks and logs jamming the flowing stream, usually at times when I didn’t really want to. Padma, in her inimitable way, picked up before each class exactly what needed to be worked with, and would introduce that, respectfully, kindly, in words at the beginning of the class, or just present it in movement, which might be either delightful or experienced as a mild shock!

It became a process of learning to feel and love my body in new ways, to meet intense instinctual forces of nature in myself, to meet Earth herself, and archetypal masculine forces as well as the more obviously flowing feminine ones. To move quickly back and forth between them. To find grumpy resistance and physical/emotional ecstasy, all in the same body, with the mind watching on from the sidelines instead of being allowed centre stage. Feeling clumsy became irrelevant, the heart opened and flow became a possibility. Touching spaces where dualistic mind disappears and there is only the spacious present moment, stillness and flow. The buddha and the dancer no longer vying for the centre!

I am profoundly grateful for the opportunity to have engaged in this work, and I would totally recommend this Individual Programme to anyone drawn to it. I have complete confidence that Padma will guide and give you what your heart desires and needs, in the way most suited to and safe for you.

-Helena McCallum, Psychologist, Awareness Space, Australia

Four years ago I came across one of Padma’s flyers and immediately felt impelled to join her classes. It turned out that I would be interstate for a few weeks but I was too impatient to wait. Instead, Padma offered me one on one tuition for that term. Although I initially felt overwhelmed and inadequate at the thought of exposing my lack of technical dance ability and little prior knowledge of the Hindu pantheon of archetypes, Padma immediately put me at ease. In the four years since, through weekly dance contemplation classes and occasional workshops, I regularly find myself in contemplative action, exploring a joyous inner universe, released from my everyday constraints of body and mind, fully engaged, free to immerse myself in whatever next unfolds, both in that moment of contemplation and in however it resonates through the whole of my life. 

-Megan Flynn, Strategic Analyst and Facilitator, Australia

I count myself incredibly fortunate to have come across Padma’s classes a few years ago and I have attended as many of them as I possibly could since. During covid lockdown we had to change from studio to zoom, which made no difference to the incredible quality of teaching and the inspiring opportunity to learn with others.

Padma is a living embodiment of a very ancient tradition of dance and a wonderfully gentle and encouraging teacher. No one is better able to help students of any age and level of prior dance experience (or none at all) to stop worrying about “making mistakes” and start experiencing the beautiful movements of a world we can only access through the body. Each new archetype we explore is like a new adventure or journey of discovery. At once hundreds, maybe thousands of years old and still fresh, relevant and modern.

This is life enhancing dance that connects us to known and unknown worlds of experience and feeling and Padma is a remarkable teacher who can put this beautiful way of dancing within reach for us, so that we can make those discoveries for ourselves. Padma is an innovative teacher, constantly adjusting to find ways that help support us in our practice. Each new course succeeds in being both challenging and surprising for those who have worked with Padma before and also entirely appropriate, welcoming and well designed for newcomers.

While we are always enjoined not to place expectations on our experience ahead of class, I always relish the opportunity to dive in and along the way find delight and a sense of liberation.

-Elizabeth Woods, Teacher and Mediator