This website offers articles, free study information, video footage, photo galleries, links and more on the subjects of Belly Dance, womanhood, self development, the creative process and the Feminine. Please browse through to see what has been uploaded.

My intention for this website is to put out there the notion that; every woman is beautiful, every woman is powerful, and within her innate beauty and power lives her joy. By finding her own joy she finds her true place in the world, and her power to create positive change.

A community serving women
Within this intention is a call out to women of same mind and spirit to create a community that exchanges ideas and helps empower each other. The power of people communicating never ceases to amaze me; something beautiful happens. We process information. We process ourselves, and in doing so we know we are not alone. We meet kindred spirits, and grow and learn and become better people. Get a bunch of women together and get them talking about something they are passionate about, and a moment of beauty takes place. Truth is found. Voices are heard. Hearts are opened. Minds stimulated. And light bulbs go on! I love that moment when a light bulb goes on. It’s a moment the Japanese call “satori”, and alcoholics call “a moment of clarity”. I’m sure you’ve got your own name for it. The moment a penny drops, the moment of illumination. My wish for this website is that it infuses the women of the world with an abundance of such moments, because one such moment can change a life forever.

East meets West
Coming from a Middle Eastern family and growing up in both the East and the West, I see how the majority of women in the West suffer from an excruciating disconnection to the Feminine. This website is largely dedicated to bringing back the balance, to awakening women to this fact and how it affects their lives, and hence the lives of their loved ones, on absolutely every level. A powerful awakener of a woman’s Feminine spirit is Belly Dance (also known as Orientale Dance). It is the grass-roots dance of Middle Eastern women, and as a teacher and performer I have found Belly Dance to be a valid antidote to the systematic degradation of the Feminine that seems to be so ingrained in the West that it is part of the air we breathe.

Ancient alchemy for today's women
Being a mind/body/spirit practice with its roots in ancient wisdom, Belly Dance opens a woman up on every level. Belly Dancing is a profound experience as well as a joyous one. It can put a woman on the road back to her true self, her innate feminine beauty, her birth-right to feel joy, and her divine essence. Belly Dancing can be a ritual of passage from child to adult, from girl to woman; a ritual long lost in the West. Over the years of teaching this dance, I have noticed the sometimes subtle yet always powerful changes this dance creates in the girls and women who engage in it, in a way that is uniquely Feminine. After years of indulging in this ancient practice myself, I can also speak of the transformative inner and outer journey that Belly Dance provokes from a first-hand experience.

Why are women so important?
Why is the Feminine so important? What’s the big fuss, we’re all OK! Are we? Helen Caldicott, Australian paediatrician, named by the Smithsonian Institute as one of the most influential women in the world said “I believe that women have the fate of the Earth in the palm of their hands. Some 53 per cent of us are women and we really are pretty wimpish. We don’t step up to the plate — and it’s time we took over. I think men have had their turn and we’re in a profound mess.”

We are the mothers of Mother Earth
Mother Earth, the greatest Feminine of all and the home of the human race is in our hands, yes, us women! We are carers, nurtures and intrinsicaly creative beings. On a mass scale, we affect the world because its future is in the hands of our children. By function of motherhood, the world is directly affected by how we treat ourselves, our children, and our communities.

Women on masse underestimate their importance. We belittle the necessity of creating our joy, fostering our innate sense of power, appreciating our beauty, and working on our emotional intelligence and our connection to our Feminine spirit. Why? Because the majority of women are raised by a family, a school, a community and a world that belittles womanhood and everything Feminine. In the West we live in an especially misogynous culture. Just turn on the TV, listen to the radio, or flick through a magazine. Women’s bodies, women’s life stages, motherhood and nurturing children, breastfeeding, natural expressions of emotion such as sadness, anxiety and anger, and everything that makes up a natural life cycle of any woman is open to public scorn that ultimately leads to private humiliation.

If the women of the world stopped hating their bodies, our world would be a very different place. My intention for this site is that it creates a palpable positive change in the way women treat themselves, and experience joy in their lives.

Support www.ShemiranIbrahim.com
This website is my work. It takes up whatever time I have left over after nurturing my son, running the household, supporting my husband and teaching and performing Belly Dance. If you find this site enriches your life, please support me to keep writing and expanding it in three main ways:

• Subscribe to receive the free newsletter. Click here for free e-newsletter.
• Spread the word. Click here to tell a friend.
• Donate – no donation is too small and anything you give is appreciated. Click here for ways to donate.

Enrich your life through Belly Dance
On this website you will also find details of my professional performing and weekly Belly Dance classes in sunny Sydney, Australia. I also facilitate self development workshops that integrate Belly Dance and the empowerment of the Feminine spirit, based in practical methods to help you reconnect to your Feminine self and find your true place in the world. For Belly Dance classes and workshops go to Belly Dance Classes.

You will find that Belly Dance largely features in this site for its deep alchemical effects on women and their experience of womanhood. From Belly Dancing we learn a way to dance - but we also learn a way to carry ourselves through life with an open heart and our beauty spilling out of us.

My intention for my writing is not necessarily to give you answers, but to put you in touch with the mystery of your own heart, of the Feminine, and start a coversation with it - a conversation that will last a lifetime.

If Belly Dance is taught and learned with love and wisdom, I have witnessed how it can unfold a flower in the heart, and light a fire in the belly. So pack your bags, and let's start a journey!

With love
Shemiran Ibrahim