Inanna in the Armenian Dance of the Reed by Laura Shannon

Painting by Arna Baartz

Even as a young girl, I admired the older girls and women in my life—my sister, my mother, my grandmothers and aunts—and instinctively felt there was something special about being a woman, which I was proud to be part of and eager to grow into. At the same time I was keenly aware that my blossoming femininity made me a target, and my childhood was punctuated by frightening encounters in which I found myself in danger because I was female.

In our time, we are able to speak openly about our experiences of sexual threat, assault, or abuse, and to see how tragically frequent they are for so many young women and girls in our society. In the United States of the 1970s, however, I felt completely and utterly alone. These unwanted encounters left me with a terrible sense of shame, which I internalised and translated into deep feelings of powerlessness, inadequacy and worthlessness. My early years as a young woman were marked by descent: depression, despair, chronic health problems, and an overall sense of being lost, not fitting in. There was nobody to show me healthy self-love and self-care, nobody to teach me how to safely grow up as a woman in a woman-hating world.

The intensity of my descent brought me into contact with various sources of support. Sylvia Brinton Perera’s book, Descent to the Goddess, gave me great inspiration and comfort early on.1 I was astonished to see my lonely journey of depression and exile reflected in a myth of female initiatory descent and return dating back more than 4,000 years. The figure enacting this archetypal cycle, the Goddess Inanna, was the central female deity of her era2, but this was the first I had heard of her.

The hymns to Inanna, written ca. 2300 BCE by the priestess-poet Enheduanna and beautifully translated by Betty De Shong Meador, revealed that Inanna’s gifts include not only the acceptance, but the celebration of female sexuality as a precious treasure, worthy of protection.3 Inanna embodied, in Meador’s words, ‘what so many women long for, a spirituality grounded in the reflection of a divine woman, offering a full sense of foundation and legitimacy as females.’4 I hoped it was not too late for me to learn this too.

My quest to reconsecrate my wounded femininity led me to the healing power of dance. I trained in both dance movement therapy and Sacred Dance, and began to research traditional women’s circle dances of the Balkans. That was more than thirty years ago. Since then, my personal ascent has been mediated through movement, both solo and shared, which has accompanied an epic journey of inner work throughout my entire adult life.

An excerpt from a longer paper detailing the healing power of this dance in Inanna's Ascent.

Laura Shannon has researched and taught traditional circle dances for more than thirty years, and is considered to be one of the ‘grandmothers’ of the worldwide Sacred / Circle Dance movement. Through extensive research in Balkan villages and wide teaching experience, Laura has pioneered a new understanding of traditional women's dances as active tools for spiritual development. Originally trained in Intercultural Studies and Dance Movement Therapy, Laura is currently pursuing an M.A. in Myth, Cosmology and the Sacred at Canterbury Christ Church University in England. She gives workshops, trainings and performances in more than twenty countries, and her numerous articles on dance have been published in many languages. She is founding director of the Athena Institute for Womens' Dance and Culture and a regular contributor to Feminism and Religion. In between her travels, Laura resides in Canterbury, Findhorn and Greece. www.laurashannon.net

1Perera 1981.


2Meador 2009: 133.


3I was amazed to learn in Meador’s book that Enheduanna was the earliest known poet to be recorded by name, though I had not learned about her in my studies of history and literature.


4Meador 2000: 9.