Our story

THe beginning of Chakradance

Chakradance was founded in London in 1998 by Sydney-born Natalie Southgate, who combined her training and expertise in dance, in psychology, and in chakra healing, to create this new fusion of ancient wisdoms.

In September 1998 her first Chakradance workshop was held in the Amadeus Centre in London. Ten people attended the first class. Chakradance’s inclusiveness was immediately displayed in the wide range of backgrounds and life-stages of those first participants. They ranged from a seventeen-year-old man to an eighty-year-old woman. Chakradance was definitely for all ages.

At the beginning, Chakradance was designed as a weekly drop-in course. But as Natalie began to hone in on the optimal class structure, she discovered that if a person joined the class for one of the higher chakras, then it was not as powerful as it was for those who had journeyed the lower chakras first. So, she ultimately offered Chakradance as a complete nine-week cycle….an intro class, then a weekly journey up through the 7 major chakras, before concluding with an ‘integration’ class.

Natalie Southgate Doing Chakradance On The Beach (3)

Experimenting and studying

For two years in London Natalie experimented with different exercises, different music, and carefully studied their effects. Then it was time to travel. Natalie and her husband Paul travelled for three months in India. Her desire was to delve deeper in the land where the ancient wisdom of chakras was born.

They moved back to Sydney, Australia, in 2001. Natalie continued to synthesise all the elements of Chakradance, fine-tuning the classes and spending thousands of hours sourcing and mixing the ‘right’ music. Later, she would meet and start working with the amazing musician Dale Nougher, with whom Natalie now co-creates all Chakradance music.

In November 2004 Natalie was invited by Deepak Chopra to California to lead classes of Chakradance during his weeklong seminar called “Seduction of Spirit”.

Each Chakradance class had around fifty participants. One man in his sixties didn’t know what a chakra was before the class, but he shared afterwards the joy he experienced in the dance, saying that he came to know what chakras were because he could feel them. Then he described the visual images that rose within him during the dance. Natalie smiled, for this man encountered what so many have experienced. We call it the homecoming. When someone discovers the power and energy that reside within him or her it is like coming home.

About Chakradance Chakra healing

A deeper relationship with the chakras

Natalie Southgate From Chakradance (1)

Natalie had always been drawn to the power of chakras through her work as a trained healer. By 1998 she was also studying Jungian psychology at London’s Society for Analytical Psychology and Healing. She continued to let her interest guide her and in the process she rediscovered her joy in dance (she had studied and practiced dance throughout her childhood). This led her to connect now to alternative and shamanic dance. Ultimately, she headed to Paris from London to take a course in spontaneous dance therapy.

All the elements of Natalie’s homecoming were starting to coalesce – the study of the chakras, the interconnections between mind, body and spirit, energy healing, Jungian psychology, and the various effects of music and dance.

Then, one night she turned off the light in her living room. Music filled the darkness and her movements started to guide her into the inner power ignited within her chakras. She began to notice certain music carried a unique resonance with different chakra centres. Free flowing movements born in spontaneity brought her home into her inner dance of her true self.

This experience led Natalie into the realisation that a person can find another way to enter a deeper relationship with the chakras. She had already begun co-teaching a beginners’ healing workshop on the chakras, but she felt she had discovered a method to experience what can’t be taught, and this experience could be felt by anyone.

What is Chakradance?

CHakradance across the world

Today, Chakradance is welcomed as a wonderfully healing dance practice wherever it goes. Chakradance-at-home classes are available through Sounds True, whose founder Tami Simon also interviewed Natalie for one of her “insights at the edge” podcasts in 2016. Hay House have signed Natalie as an author. And Chakradance classes are now led by over 400 fully-trained and accredited facilitators in over 40 countries worldwide.

So, as Natalie says, “we continue to develop new workshops, support our facilitators, create new chakra-resonant music, and run more trainings. We are expanding rapidly now through Europe and Asia, across the United States, Canada, South America, Africa – wherever the work leads us. If we have learned one thing, it is this: wherever Chakradance goes, it will feel like coming home.”

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Natalie Southgate From Chakradance (19)
Testimonial Deepak Chopra

Fascinating insights into the effect of movement on the chakras... and a wonderful experience

DR DEEPAK CHOPRA, THE CHOPRA CENTER
Testimonial Tami Simon

Thank you so much, Natalie, for the great gift of Chakradance

TAMI SIMON, SOUNDS TRUE
Testimonial Brenda Birno

This experience has been so incredibly profound and transformational. Words cannot express the depth of my gratitude

Brenda Birno
Testimonial Maureen Nowicki

This has been a uniquely divine experience that has definitely shifted me in unexpected ways.

Maureen Nowicki
Testimonial Angela Lawson

Chakradance has truly reignited my joy in life.

Angela Lawson
Testimonial Anthea Slade

Chakradance has been one of the most powerful, profound and life changing experiences of my life.

Anthea Slade
Testimonial Joyce Hynes

Chakradance has changed my spiritual DNA.

Joyce Hynes
Testimonial Lynette Mcfadden

Natalie, I cannot even begin to express my immense gratitude for what you have created, and the huge changes it has brought into my life.

Lynette McFadden
Testimonial Stephanie Graham

Chakradance is the best gift of self-care and self-love that I have ever given myself.

Stephanie Graham
Natalie Southgate Thrive Global Cover
Natalie Southgate Medium Cover
Natalie Southgate (forbes As Feature In Graphic) 3
Natalie Southgate Entrepreneur Cover 3