After teaching a beautiful yoga session this winter, my student inquired about the rather large collection of feathers I kept on my altar that ranged from peacock to hawk to seagull. Each feather had been gifted to me or found while in nature and over the years had become integrated into my Shamanic healing ceremonies. He asked quietly how I would feel about receiving some more. Knowing my yoga student was also a hunter, I questioned where and how he would get them and what would be come of the bird whose feathers would end up on my altar? He said warmly he ate everything he hunted and that the birds’ life would not be for sport. Satisfied, I accepted, feeling the circle of life move through the room and right relationship resonate throughout our conversation. I would be grateful to give the feathers and wings of these birds another life beyond their own.
A few weeks later my yoga student brought a large bag of newspaper wrapped wings to me. Giddy and excited to experience the power of a new healing tool, I rummaged through the bag and pulled out the first newspaper wrapped bundle. Much to my surprise, upon opening the bundle with joyful eagerness, I closed it just as quickly with wide-eyed horror. The energy emanating from the wings was so intense I had to look away directly after opening it because they nothing short of knocked my energetic socks off. I was almost blinded by the power of what I was holding. It became too much for my nervous system to process and after the first look I put the wrapped wings up in the top of my closet promising myself I would set aside special time later to properly attend to them.
Weeks passed. Each time I got dressed the bag holding the wings loomed over me. I had asked for this and now that I had them I wasn’t sure what to do with them. Finally, on a cold Saturday ready to finally move into spring-cleaning and avoid this ridiculous energetic procrastination, I took them down and set them on my bed. I opened the first wrapped newspaper bundle that held partridge wings. There was a loud moan and flapping that swept over my heart. I realized that the bird’s spirit had not fully left the wing. When its life was taken, the quickness of its death confused the bird’s spirit and had somehow become trapped in the wing. What I had experienced before when I looked at the wings briefly a few weeks ago was a bird’s soul in severe distress. The bird that had become food had not transitioned back to source. Instead a piece of its soul had become trapped in the part of its body it uses for escape. I energetically merged with the wing and let if move through and out of me until the flapping moan subsided and there was simply peace and presence left. I realized that trauma had actually locked the bird into its wing making it unable to move forward fully into its next life.
All afternoon, I sat with this experience and pondered the bird’s wing as a metaphor for our own lives. Places where as humans we have become stuck, traumatized and are holding incompletion in any area of our life is a place where our wings have become detached and our soul’s evolution has stopped. Any place where we have experienced loss of power, rejection of another or ourselves or compartmentalization is a place where we have become stuck and our soul has stopped its process of growth.
Much like the experience with the wings, I invite you to explore areas of your life where loss of power, resentment, grudges and incompletion is present for you and to visit that experience fully. What do you need to complete? What would support you fully in moving forward? What opportunities of forgiveness would support you in opening your wings to their fullest extent? How can your wings grow and stretch even further across the planet and support our communities and our world to its return to balance and right relationship?
Teachings come every day in new ways. Thank you to my yoga student who brought me the wings that helped open my eyes and my wings to new horizons.
Much Love!
Isis Phoenix
