ABOUT HMS
Get to know Hadiya Movement - the mission and its founder.
SHANI OJUKWU MANTENSO
Movement Specialist, Founder
Dr. OM as she's known, Shani holds a Ph.D. in Performance Studies from New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts, is both a certified yoga teacher and personal trainer, and vied for the 1992 Summer Olympics as an elite gymnast. While living in New York City in the early 2000s, Dr. Ojukwu Mantenso taught gymnastics and ballet at the Vanderbilt YMCA, apprenticed with premier modern dance choreographers Elizabeth Streb, Peter Pucci, and Bill T. Jones, and worked as a professional fitness model in Body By Jake infomercials and David Kirsch workout videos. She has also taught dance abroad, namely Cuba, Brazil, and as visiting faculty of West Afrikan dance at the Victorian School of the Arts conservatory in Melbourne, Australia on a four-month work visa in 2000.
MOVEMENT HEALER
Shani is a consummate movement specialist who provides instruction with compassion, rigor, professionalism, and joy. Having supported her body through cancer by “training her temple” from Stage 3 to Stage 1 in six weeks with vigorous exercise, strict veganism, and a focused yoga and meditation practice, she kicked cancer’s ass in 2012. From her own experience as well as that of the hundreds of students and clients with whom she has worked over the twenty-five years of teaching, Shani knows that a supported body is an effective one that can meet the greatest of life’s challenges. Whether through yoga, fitness, or dance, let her help you help yourself bring Spirit hOMe to the body with Hadiya Movement Systems.
WHY HADIYA MOVEMENT?
Get moving anytime, anywhere
Hadiya Movement Systems - is a trauma-sensitive, LGBTQ-friendly, Afrikan-centered online movement studio whose primary objective is to support the unification and liberation of mind, body, and spirit. For
all ages and skill levels, we provide expert guidance in uniquely curated varieties of yoga, dance, fitness, and tumbling. We feature exclusively virtual offerings that are both live and pre-recorded within contexts of one-to-one private lessons, small-group cohort sessions, and regularly scheduled open classes. Whether your objective is to relieve pain or restore health, to improve fitness or increase basic functionality, and/or calm the mind and spark the soul so that peace and power may abide therein, there is a Hadiya Movement “System” just for you. Jambo!
