She Who Bows – and Stands

Reflections from the Path
By Hari Sakti

Soul Flow was never something I set out to build with a fixed plan. It arrived like many true things do; from necessity, from longing, and from silence turned into a song. It was born from my lived experience: being a woman navigating a deeply traditional, male-led spiritual world, trying not to lose my voice in the process.

For many years, I’ve immersed myself in a spiritual institution shaped by Indian culture, rich in wisdom but also held together by hierarchy, structure, and inherited roles. I came from a different world. And while I keep bowing with respect to the tradition, I’ve often found myself shrinking in order to belong.

In many spiritual circles, women are praised as divine – but only when they stay within certain frames. We are told we are Śakti, and yet asked to remain quiet. We’re encouraged to serve, but not to lead. To be soft, but not visible. To support, but not to speak. We are offered inclusion, but not always influence.

Over time, this subtle silencing doesn’t just live in the systems around us, it begins to settle in our own voices. In how we speak, how we move, how we show up. We start to shape-shift just to stay in the room. Our sense of worth, our vision of what we’re capable of, quietly begins to align with the roles we’ve learned to play.

But one thing the path teaches, if we walk it sincerely, is that truth finds a way. The feminine is soft, yes. But it is also fierce. It is quiet, yes. But never voiceless.

The Strength of Sakti

In yogic philosophy, śakti is not merely an energetic concept, it is the very current of life itself. The pulse of creation, the womb of form, and the movement behind stillness. And yet, even in traditions where Śakti is spoken of with reverence, the real, lived voices of women are often kept just outside the temple gates. Not by brute force, but through softer mechanisms; unspoken expectations, inherited structures, and quiet erasures.

There are many subtle ways women are asked to stay small, especially in male-led spiritual spaces:

The Expectation of Sweetness

Women are often praised for being graceful, agreeable, surrendered. But the moment she speaks with clarity, sets a boundary, or brings the fire of prajñā (discernment) – she may suddenly be called emotional, difficult, or not “humble enough.” The Devi Māhātmya speaks of Durgā slaying the demon Mahishāsura with ferocity. But when a woman channels that same strength in real life, she may be told to quiet down. What is divine in scripture becomes “too much” in a woman.

Token Inclusion

Many women are welcomed as singers, decorators, or assistants – but not as guides, teachers, or philosophical voices. We may be placed beside the main speaker, but rarely given the mic. Our devotion is welcomed, but our insight is not always trusted. And so the feminine presence becomes symbolic – visible, but not vocal. Sacred, but not sovereign.

Spiritual Gaslighting

When a woman brings up a real concern – imbalance, exclusion, misuse of power – she is often told it’s her ahaṅkāra (ego), or that she needs to surrender more. Her discomfort is spiritualised, her truth dismissed as a test or karma. But one must ask: are men told the same when they express frustration? Rarely. This is not vairāgya (detachment). It is quiet silencing dressed in sacred robes.

Silence as Ideal

Silence is a revered limb of the yogic path – mauna has its place. But too often, this ideal becomes a convenient curtain. In many gatherings, men speak, and women listen. When women write, share, or teach, it’s sometimes framed as a distraction from “real transmission.” But the Ṛg Veda itself holds hymns written by ṛṣikās – female seers whose divine speech, vāṇī, became scripture. Sacred sound knows no gender.

Invisible Labour, Visible Credit

Women hold spiritual communities together. They organise, communicate, clean, nourish, support. But when the praise is given, it often goes to the visible leader – almost always male. Her work remains behind the curtain, like Lakṣmī, always present but rarely acknowledged. This is not just emotional labour; it’s soul work without recognition.

Dismissal of Lived Wisdom

Many women carry a wisdom that doesn’t come only from śāstra, but from life; from loss, birth, grief, healing, silence. Yet such knowledge is often seen as “less spiritual” than book study. As if the soul must be cited to be valid. But in truth, the ātman speaks just as clearly through tears and touch as through text and recitation. The heart is a sacred śālā (school) of its own.

Over-quoting the Masculine

In teachings, the saints we hear about are overwhelmingly male. The teachers, the realized, the renounced – all men. Even when women are present, their stories are told in passing. When the lineage speaks only in a male voice, the feminine becomes an echo. Not because she wasn’t there – but because she wasn’t named.

These patterns are rarely spoken. And they are not always intentional. But they are real.

And over time, they shape how we as women show up. They shape what we allow ourselves to say. They teach us, quietly, persistently, that our voices are welcome only when they are sweet, soft, and sanctioned. But Śakti is not just sweet. She is storm and stillness, wisdom and will. She is the voice behind the veil, waiting to be heard again.

Between Two Worlds

As a Western woman walking the Bhakti path in India, I have often stood between respect and resistance. I cherish the depth of our lineage and I love the śāstra. But I also carry svadharma – my own path, shaped by the roads I’ve walked.

I arrived in this path not untouched by the world. Like many women, I came carrying stories; of loss, longing, and healing. I had already lived. And from that lived experience, I found wisdom; not only in theory or high ideal, but in practice.

When the systems within the traditions I still love no longer made space for all of me – for the fullness of my being offered in service – I silently stepped away. In my own space I released the narratives that asked me to shrink in order to belong. I let go of the repeated idea that I needed the masculine structure in order to be whole, accepted, or protected. I released the more masculine reactions within me that I realised to be responses to the male-led narratives that give no space for the feminine to rise, only to conform. And I stopped explaining my path to those who were never willing to see it.

And then, something softened.

I returned to nature. To solitude. To silence. I listened to the waves, to the wind, to the birds before sunrise. And without effort, I remembered who I was – my feminine self not as a role, but as a natural rhythm of my being. Not needing permission to speak. Not needing to shrink to belong.
And from that remembering, Soul Flow was born.

Bhakti as Feminine Embodiment

In Soul Flow, devotion flows through every expression: the body, the breath, the voice, the tears. It flows through softness, stillness, slowness. Through story. Through song.

Bhakti is not just about surrender – it is about courageous love. It is not only bowing, but it is standing, too. To serve without silencing and to offer truth without needing to perform it.

What Soul Flow Offers in Return

This space is my response to a world that so often asks us to shrink.

Soul Flow is for anyone who has ever felt unseen, unheard, or through inherited roles asked to be less than they are. For anyone who doesn’t fit into the stereotypes but rather feels called to break them in silent example. Here, we stand whole, with nothing to hide and nothing to prove.

A space to speak truth.

To remember that Śakti speaks in all of us – and when she does, the world listens.

From my heart to yours,
Hari Śakti