Sensual Shaman

THE GODDESS SCROLLS - Sacred Erotic Tales

2012-02-10T10:04:00.000-08:00

I was deeply honored to write the forward THE GODDESS SCROLLS - Sacred Erotic Tales by Rev. Goddess Charmaine a collection of spiritual erotica. On sending this forward to Rev. Goddess to review, I received a call from both Rev. Goddess and her mother. Her mother was weeping on the phone, thanking me for honoring her daughter's path through these words and touching her heart. The feminine on the planet is healing. Our relationships to our birth mothers and the divine mother is healing. On hearing Rev. Goddess's mother weeping, I wept. Her mother explained she didn't understand all the concepts I spoke about in the forward or what a yoni was(Sanskrit term for vulva), but that there was a power and beauty in the words that she felt in the presence of her daughter and her daughter's work. Rev. Goddess later told me that her own daughter Archa and her daughter's husband Doug had been reading the book and it had brought them closer as a newly wed couple and was reinvigorating their romantic partnership as newlyweds. Rev. Goddess has been a friend, confident and inspiration to me over the years. Her path and work have informed my own path. I am deeply grateful to have her in my life and consider her a true friend and colleague. THE GODDESS SCROLLS -Sacred Erotic Tales will be on pre-order on Valentine's Day.

"I read Reverend Goddess Charmaine’s first book The Sensuous Mystic – Uniting Sex and Spirit as I was just stepping onto my path as a Sensual Shaman and Sexual Priestess. Being a recent initiate as a Sexual Priestess, I knew the power and obligation of what lay before me. The split between sex and spirit is was one of the darkest and deepest wounds on the planet and only one who’s energy can battle the darkest most powerful shadows on a personal and public level takes on this epic feat. One must be called to this path with a fervor and ferocity that champions the most intense human psychological labyrinths and deepest core wounds. There is no space to be wishy-washy about this work. Those called to it are in a life-long stand for the unity and healing of a sexually empowered planet.

Reverend Goddess Charmaine has dedicated her life as a Sensuous Mystic and Interfaith Minister to healing the split between sex and spirit within our holy bodies and on our sacred planet Earth. She has held one intention since the time I know her - to have her yoni in the sky. Translation – to reawaken God/dess Consciousness on planet Earth and celebrate the connection to the holy body and sensual spirit. Reverend Goddess Charmaine is a pillar to the modern Western Tantra movement and is one of the sensual transformers who paved the pathways for this powerful global awakening.

On first meeting Rev. Goddess Charmaine, there was no doubt in my mind – I was in the presence of a fully realized Goddess. She towered in leopard print stiletto heels and a hip-hugging black pantsuit with an ass you could set a teacup on. Her long braids and almond eyes radiated a Cleopatra like energy. She was truly what I envisioned as a walking embodiment of the Goddess. Upon meeting her, one feels in the presence of someone both holy and accessible at the same time. Rev. Goddess holds a strong mother energy that loves and nurtures the collective, a powerful presence and connection to Source that ministers to her community compassionately and effortlessly and a strong connection to her roots in “the hood” that will throw back a bottle of red wine and dance on top of the bar at the disco – yes, in the same leopard print stilettos - all from the same authentic and sacred cord of being an embodiment of Goddess.

Being present in her workshops as both a participant and a co-facilitator Reverend Goddess Charmaine’s connection to Eros feels limitless. In witnessing her powerful presence facilitate erotic trance dances, guide individuals through healing self-pleasuring rituals or minister at clothing optional church services, I see her always connected to the infinite sensual life-force of Goddess.

Her erotic fiction over the years has continued to inspire an ocean of devotees who seek her same connection to universal orgasmic inspiration. This collection of work has truly been a sacrament and life-long devotion to the path of the Goddess and the quest of uniting sex and spirit. Each sacred erotica story was crafted during a Tantric rite and completed during a full moon. You are reading a mystics journey through mystery school and sacred initiations. On reading her erotic stories, one is easily transported to a time where the wounded masculine and feminine energies within our collective unconscious have healed and birthed a new race of humans that remember the holy body and sensual spiritual as a sacred gift that was born of the cosmic act of one-ness with Source.

This book of channeled erotic transmissions is written in the same style as it was received from Source, in erotic bursts, in panting self-pleasuring visions, in seeds and sutras created in Tantric pujas with consorts and kindred souls. Several times while reading the book to write this forward I was swept into such ecstasy through the transmission of the erotic prayer, I would find myself in a state of energetic orgasm, only to come back to the story and realize that two hours had passed and I had only skimmed the first page.

In your hands you hold a Sacred Sexual Bible. May the connection to sex and spirit awaken and unfold in YOU and all of the beloveds you with whom you choose to share this sacred text."

Infinite Sensual Blessings & Erotic Awakenings,

Isis Phoenix ~ Sensual Shaman"

For more information about Rev. Goddess Charmaine visit www.sensuousmystic.com

A Crush(ing) Journey

2012-01-30T19:11:00.000-08:00

A Crush(ing) Journey

A crush… you remember the kind – In middle school when you’d moved beyond boys and girls having cooties, or in high school, where you scrawled the name of your obsession countless times in your spiral bound notebook perhaps hyphenating the name of your beloved with your own. By adult standards, sheer silliness. I remember middle school, perhaps it’s because my heart was so open or perhaps I just had an infinity for life, but when my best friend at the time asked me who I had a crush on, my reply was - the entire seventh grade. What was there not to love? Everyone had something beautiful about them, attractive even in the awkward preteen years where hormones were raging. When hormones rage there’s very little discernment. I see it at Tantra pujas, all of a sudden the fat guy across the room who’s balding looks pretty good when you’re eye gazing with him and seeing into the very depths of his soul… heavy set and balding seem to give way to something bigger, deeper, more vast, the universal place that is loveable in all humans, the ecstasy of one-ness, our connection to Source.

Taking people into this state often in session work and facilitating groups has become common place. Yes, I see the divine in you. No I don’t want to be your girlfriend/move-in/leave my husband for you. Well, every once in a while something throws a curve ball and the universe cracks me wide open to a place of love that feels just like those days of having a crush on the entire seventh grade. Dzieci. Dzieci an experimental theatre ensemble, a shamanic tribe of artists, my Beloveds. Dzieci, my crush. Dzieci… I rolled the sound around in my mouth and even now feel the faint flutterings in my belly and I instantly feel like I’m twelve years old again.

While I suppose based on my preteen history, it’s not uncommon for me to have a crush on an entire class of people, it hasn’t happened in a while. I recall the vast memories of awakening that have been this large in my system – beginning my work with Suzanne d’Corsey the Celtic Priestess I apprenticed with for five years, attending my first Daka/Dakini Conference in Sedona and meeting my tribe and awakening to my calling to build a Holy Body temple on the Earth, and the first time I saw Dzieci’s production of Makbet and witnessing a form of what could be when theatre and the sacred are woven together in support of group transformation. Now it’s official. I have a crush, a crush on an entire group of artists who are deeply committed to their own process of transformation and to transforming the world.

Dzieci had been in my dreamscapes for weeks, see the previous blog post below this one. There was an awakening opening up in me once again, just when I was getting all cozy and comfortable in my life and feeling like I knew my shit and where I was going. Just when I was feeling like the fat cat, everything changed. Now I’m making my plans around Dzieci. I ran out before Naked Church this Sunday so I could play with Dzieci for an hour and fifteen minutes before sprinting back in a cab home to greet people for service, and oh trust me I thought of canceling Service all together – thank Source Rev. Goddess holds me accountable every month to be there, as I had already moved Service once already to attend Dzieci’s Maraton.

When you have a crush, things become unreasonable. You become super human. You go places you would never go, your wardrobe changes, you’re dressing up more, paying attention to details, plucking hairs you normally let grow wild. It’s in you, like the universe has a hyper witnessing state of existence where all eyes are on you and you must look your best.

Another thing about a crush, you normally know where they are and structure your plans around being with them. Well, being a shaman and having my psychic perceptions open amplify that ten times more. I know what the group is feeling because they’re so intimately linked. I know each time I am getting an email from them before it arrives because I can feel it being composed. Last night I semi-slept, semi tossed and turned with my stomach doing side stretches and back-flips with nervous crush energy. I’m consumed with a feeling of flying and vomiting at the same time, like being on a rollercoaster and feeling the jump in the stomach as you tip over the fulcrum of the first climb and whoosh down, screaming, arms above your head, stomach in your heart. Yeah – that whoosh-stomach-heart-screaming thing has been happening twenty to thirty times a day for a week and a half right now and quite frankly my body is exhausted from the joy ride.

I remember the Zingo Roller Coaster at Bells Amusement Park in Tulsa, Oklahoma. I was in the third grade and was cleared through height specifications to take my first run on the Zingo. I was feeling queasy towards the end of the ride after all the excitement and just as the coaster pulled in to finish the ride, the operator overshot the stopping point and took us around again. Nearing the end of the second run it happened, I turned my head sideways and vomited over the railing and probably on everyone behind me and below. Even in the third grade this moment was profound - I had waited my entire eight year old life to ride on the Zingo, and then got to go round twice!... and then puked. The agony of ecstasy.

Last night was a bit of a tipping point. I writhed in bed all night with infinite energy. My soul was dying to stay up, write, study, vision fueled by all the energy and awakenings my soul was going through and the agonizing crush energy that kept sputtering through my nervous system, but my body was helplessly beyond exhaustion from being on the Zingo for an entire week and a half going round and round. I’d lost and found myself several times in the deep Shamanic process of the past week and a half, riding off adrenaline, feeling like I would lose my lunch a few times, getting off and climbing back on. Even in the space of deep exhaustion, however, there was a childlike excitement of gratitude. Even in my body’s state of passionate exhaustion, I would rather ride the Zingo and puke than never take the ride at all.

Great paper written on Dzieci http://www.dziecitheatre.org/dzfiles/boss.pdf

Dzieci

Dzieci's Maraton

2012-01-23T09:41:00.000-08:00

DZIECI'S MARATON

Dzieci had mixed in with my dreamtime and meditation for weeks.

The week before Maraton was the most powerful. Each night as a slept, I was greeted by a sacred coven beckoning me to play, cry, dance, sing, heal. Upon meeting Matt Mitler and the Dzieci tribe outside of their repertory performances of Makbet and Fool’s Mass my body and soul shook. I had stepped into their dream and them into mine. Matt sat with each person who came in simply being with her/him before collecting donations for the weekend. I knelt, gazed and embraced Matt and offered my donation. My body shook with a gentle tremor as I felt the largeness of the space and the intensity of the journey that was to follow.

For years I’ve been disenchanted with theatre having acted professionally. I found my experience of the world of professional theatre deeply dehumanizing. If someone tells me they’re an actor of course I’m excited for them, but there’s also a place in my soul that stings with the pain I know caused by a life devoted to the craft in a professional context.

I remember the audition that turned me, I was waiting at one cattle call for a New York audition for Lysistrata. There were 200 women there to read ~ beautiful women, resumes in hand, immaculately dressed to sell themselves. We were waiting in line like horses being inspected to be purchased, having our teeth checked, inspecting our hooves, go for a trot around the room. I remember waiting, looking up and down the hall when something shifted in me. There was nothing sacred here. My soul made a decision that day to leave theatre. I threw out my headshots and buried my resume in the deep dark files of my computer. I went on a quest to discover my own voice and what it had to say. I wrote and performed poetry, I created a One- Woman Show with the support of Carlo Altomare & Orietta Crispin at the Theatre Lab. I co-created a and traveled with a spoken word play with New Street Poets. I created performance pieces around my relationship to orgasmic energy in the elements, but there was still a piece of my soul that felt like it was missing. That I had surrendered the day I trashed my headshots.

Years later and well on my spiritual path, I met and facilitated a few healing sessions for a fellow shaman. She mentioned she had participated in Dzieci’s Para-Theatrical Workshop Maraton and that it had changed her life. I felt a deep soul resonance with this woman and took her recommendation and filed it back in my mental rolodex to pull out again when I was ready to meet them. A few years later, I received an email from Ripley Grier Studios, having rented space from them for a naked yoga class a few years back. They mentioned they were hosting Dzieci’s Makbet. The card I had filed back in my brain flipped open and I decided to go check out the ritual performance. Witnessing Dzieci’s Makbet and the ecstatic and organic and deeply ceremonialized process of the play unlocked places in me that I had been longing to find in the theatre but didn’t know how to create. Dzieci had found the sacred and were weaving it into everything they did. As an audience member, when you see their work, you are not simply a witness. You are on the journey with them, invited into the tribe and embraced as community. After this production, I signed up for their newsletter and went on their website several times just to keep up with what they were offering. When I saw their repertory production of Fool’s Mass and was greeted with an equally profound response, I signed up for Maraton.

Maraton is a 24-hour journey into the very depths of your soul. My relationship with the theatre had been very fractured and wounded. I went in with the simple intention – to heal and realign myself with my highest purpose in relationship to theatre and performance. Maraton beings at 7am on a Saturday and ends at 7am on a Sunday. During that time, you are taken through a journey, sometimes silent, mostly non-verbal, into the very depths of your being. There’s no hiding. You meet yourself including the parts you don’t want to meet over and over, again and again. The company members and participants of Maraton create a matrix of energy. Each person in the room is a piece, a wisdom holder, part of the universal constellation. Who’s in the room is meant to be in the room. There’s a piece and place for everyone. After we sign in, we are silent. In silence, the deep impulse of movement, connection and creation unfolds. The process works with perhaps a loose form and is mostly created through transmission. There may be a plan and the plan may also instantly transform. During a particularly powerful physical exercise one participant received a painful injury to his eye. The group transformed and simply was with the participant who was injured. We sang to him, held space for him. He was rocked and cradled and a deep container of intimacy and compassion were created among the other participants. We all healed in this moment. The journey for those 24 hours is pure soul transformation. I saw how many places I had hidden in myself. I felt every archetype in my system awaken including some I hated, and in those places of hate and rejection a tremendous place of love and acceptance was allowed to open. By no coincidence, Maraton took place in the Dark of the moon, a time mostly easily accessible to dance in the shadowland of the soul. I soared in my strong suits and fell flat on my face in my personal places of disempowerment and in both of these extreme spaces magic and healing unfolded within the full spectrum. Walking dazed into the rising sun the next morning, I went home and wept and laughed spontaneously for the next 24 hours when I was caught with the recollection of a gaze into someone eyes, a song of awakening, a dance through the body's very limits of exhaustion and a return into the portal we all come from and to which we all ultimately return.

Dear perspective participant - You have to be ready. You have to want this with your whole soul. You will want to quit. You will want to fall back asleep. But you will want more to awaken to the eternal magic of the universe and your highest potential that is present within this powerful matrix. You find Dzieci when you are ready to find them. May you hear the call when ‘dzieci’ is ready to awaken in you.

'Dzieci' is Polish for 'Children'

http://dziecitheatre.org/

Divine Mother of 2012

2012-01-07T15:03:00.000-08:00

My first two guest teaching opportunities of 2012 at Bija Yoga and Yoga Sole have been prenatal focused and I can't help but think the universe is giving me a spiritual nudge in some way ;)

Here is a guest blog that I wanted to share with you that has a beautiful Divine Feminine core and that celebrates the universal mother energy within us all. It was written by a colleague and friend, Lloyd. I hope you enjoy it as much as I did!

Wishing all a very Happy and Love-Filled New Year!

Love,

ISIS

Over the holidays I stumbled upon a four-year-long discussion of an article on Naked Yoga blogged on the Internet in 2007 (http://www.fitsugar.com/Naked-Yoga-Photos-113570). The author dismissed it as “too racy” for her. She asked her readers whether they would try such a thing. The almost one hundred responses over four years were fascinating.
First, the responses were universally – and often virulently – negative. They were also made by people who, like the author, had never experienced nude yoga in a group. Cries of disgust gushed: screaming capitals, barking multiple exclamation points, long strings of drawn out “EEEEWWWW” and “YUCK!!!!!”

The article and the responses, at least the early ones, were rife with sexual innuendo. Naked yoga is all about sex – especially gay sex – practiced by perverts and leads to sexual abuse and dangerous things. Yoga is pure and spiritual and shouldn’t be sullied with something so base as nudity. Adoration of and pleasure in the human body has no place in yoga. We must hide ourselves (in form-fitting, expensive clothing) so as not to distract others. Especially men, who couldn’t possibly do yoga for any other reason than as a substitute for pornography.

The theme of Downward-facing Dog recurred (sometimes with nauseating detail), and all from people who practice yoga clothed, never nude. Maybe I learned wrong, but isn’t your gaze supposed to be turned toward your center in Down Dog? In my experience with crowded classes, even clothed participants shift politely to avoid face-ass proximity.

So what we have here is a pretext contrived to mask personal phobia. Where does the absurd aversion we as a species have to our own flesh come from? Children are not born with it. Other societies live in comfort with nudity. This phenomenon must come from our culture.

It isn’t hard to see what anchors our exaggerated disgust for ourselves – our ancient sky religion. And Christianity doesn’t hold the monopoly. The Islamic world, if anything, exceeds us in body hatred. (This would be a tempting place to digress about the parallel development of animal husbandry, slavery and marriage as a contract between two men to buy a daughter. And about fear of all things feminine. I know the fear of rape and the drive to attract a mate affect women in ways they don’t affect men, but we men also suffer the consequences. I’m hurt when a woman behaves in such a way as to indicate she thinks me dangerous or shallow.)

I found myself wondering about why grown adults feel obligated to display disgust for all things pelvic? And fear the imagined judgment of others? And neurotically resort to buying expensive, sexy clothing to both hide and entice at the same time.

As often happens in life, insight came through a small child. During breaks from my laptop, I did a few asanas, Downward-facing Dog among them. My almost-two-year-old grandson, running about diaper-free, attempted an imitation to the delight of my wife and three adult daughters. He had no qualms about pointing his bare bottom up in the air. None of us found it disgusting in the least. But at some point, that child with his cute little butt in the air will become the image that disgusts so many self-admitted devotees to yoga. He will not only become disgusting to others, he will develop an arresting self-consciousness and desperately cover himself. When does that happen? At ten? Fifteen? Certainly before adulthood.

When do we stop being the Child? When do we stop seeing the Child?

Long before I entered the practice of medicine, I was a massage therapist. One client changed my outlook forever. He was an old man, brought in by his elderly wife. I’d say they were in their eighties. He had a slow, shuffling gate, fixed gaze, and expressionless face which I took for early Parkinsonism. Most strikingly, his body was covered with lesions of at least five distinct kinds. He hadn’t been washed properly in days, maybe weeks.

I was apprenticing in the practice of a kindly old Norwegian therapist, Connie Haldorson. She was getting on in years and needed someone to help. I did most of the massage while she sat at the feet of her clients doing reflexology. Connie was also an herbalist.

She had prepared special lotion just for this man. (I wish I had paid more attention, but I remember it had comfrey and aloe vera in it.) I massaged the goo into his tough, leathery skin from head to toe and rubbed it off with a rough towel. Several towels, actually. Dead layers of skin and crusty lesions came off in scoops. What emerged was pink, new, clean skin – still tough, but softer. When he got off the table, he felt renewed. Most importantly, he no longer felt filthy and disgusting. We dressed him in clean clothes. He came out of the room to greet his wife with a little hop and a “Come on, Ma! Let’s go dancin’!” I had to excuse myself to weep.

I have never looked at a person the same way since. Underneath all that disgusts us – the hair, the fat, the sweat, the filth – lies that child, that cute little kid with his bottom in the air.

Herbs can do wonders in knowledgeable hands. But the miracle that day was due to nothing more than Connie’s motherly compassion for a child. An eighty-year-old child. (Excuse me. Did I just modify the most powerful force in the universe – motherly love – with the words “nothing more than?”)

If naked yoga means anything to me, it means motherly love – that compassionate protection of the child in each of us. It means seeing each other the way mothers view children. And wouldn’t that be a nice change from seeing people as objects of lust or disgust.

Goldenrod - Summer's Last Sun

2011-11-22T13:37:00.000-08:00

Green Witch's Herbal Wisdom

Goldenrod – Summer’s Last Sun

Goldenrod is the last burst of sun in the summer, as summer turns to fall and leaves fall from tress and nature begins her slow retreat inward.

Goldenrod – Botanical name Solidago – sol meaning sun - is quite appropriately named. We see her by the roadsides and often think of her as a common weed. Some who suffer from allergies mistake her as a culprit, but that’s her companion ragweed. She’s insect, not wind pollinated like ragweed who brings so much suffering to those with allergies and hayfever.

This summer I made a tincture of goldenrod’s flowering tops after listening to herbalist Rosemary Gladstar speak at the Northeastern Women’s Herbal Conference about goldenrod being a remedy for SAD (seasonal affective disorder). My original intention for the tincture was to support a friend’s daughter who was living in Scotland and was struggling with Seasonal Affective Disorder during her the long dark rainy days in Edinburgh.

Today, I decanted the tincture I had made in vodka and sat with goldenrod while she spoke to me and told me about her healing properties. The tincture came out yellow and had a sunny sweet taste to it, true to her name.

I mused back on my journey in the hills of Vermont, harvesting this beautiful yellow weed. I was lucky enough to find an entire field of nothing but goldenrod. In this field, I noticed a surprisingly large percentage of the plants had a bulbous mass in the stem where it looked like the plant had swallowed something, sort of like a snake after eating a mouse or rabbit – bulging grotesquely at the sides of what would normally be a svelt and slender body. Goldenrod, I discovered, after dissecting this bulbous mass on her stem and doing my own research, was often host to many beneficial insects including wasps that lay eggs in her stem, giving them the bulbous, goiter-like appearance. The wasps then feed on some of the more harmful insects like mites that may be a nuisance to the plant. Smart plant ;) No wonder goldenrod makes space for them!

In speaking with goldenrod this afternoon as I decanted her, she was very chatty and was thrilled she was being put to use as most people don’t know about all her powerful healing properties. Goldenrod enjoys being used as an infusion or tincture. She’s a blood cleaner and circulatory enhancer. Goldenrod infusions and tinctures support the kidneys in flushing toxins from the body and tonify and support the natural balance and function of a healthy bladder. A bit obvious, but I remember this by her yellow flowers that are the color of urine when I haven’t been drinking enough water. She balances the bladder bringing on urination if there is trouble urinating and balancing excessive urination by holding the blueprint for a healthy bladder. She can also be taken when there is an infection in the bladder or kidneys to help clear and realign our natural flow and healthy inner watery balance.

Goldenrod’s flowers make a beautiful natural dye and you can use her dried flowers and foliage in sachets in your linen closets and dresser drawers to keep clothes smelling fresh. You can also smoke her dried herb to give a deep rushing opening to the heart and lungs – think flinging open shutters on a dank dusty attic and welcoming in warmth and sun light. In her fresh state she makes a wonderful bouquet to brighten any heart and home.

UPDATE one month later....

As an herbalist there's always that incredulous part of me that asks "Does this really work? Really??" Over the holidays, like many, I sank into a depression, the long dark days, the over extended holiday schedule, the absence of daylight and the mugginess in New York without the invigorating cold behind it. Goldenrod kept calling to me form the corner of my apartment and I kept waving my hands at her and saying I didn't need her I'd get to her later. Finally after a few days of moping lethargy I finally picked her up and took a dropper full. Is this really going to work, I thought unscrewing the cap to the tincture. I put a dropper full of tincture on my tongue and swallowed and it was literally like taking a mouth full of sunshine into my body. My entire demeanor head to toe changed. I thanked Goldenrod, mostly for her patience and not telling me I told you so after she had been calling to me for two weeks.

As we come up on the holidays and darker days, call on goldenrod as an ally. She's so excited to be here with you. Can't find goldenrod in your health food store? Drop me a line - sensualshaman@gmail.com I have a few extra tinctures available for $11 each.

Green Witch Blessings!

Path of the Green Witch

2011-11-17T11:39:00.000-08:00

Smoking sweet grass filled the air as a line of women walked in procession adorned in flowing skirts and ribboned crowns. We processed in order of age, Susun Weed, the elder and High Priestess of our group led us in chant, as our bare feet meditated on each step through the forest, connecting us deeper into the Earth Mother’s embrace. I, at the back of the line of women, the youngest, Susun at the front, the eldest - we bookended between us generations of mothers and daughters holding a space for a whole healed planet and the wisdom of nature to unfold within each of us. This was the culmination of a seven month herbal apprenticeship, an experience that in its rewards, hardship and transformation are one of two of the most life-changing and soul-inspiring journeys of my life – (the other being my five year apprenticeship with a Celtic Priestess.) We walked deeper into the forest to Hecate’s crossroad’s, a trident road that forked into three directions. Susun asked us to choose wisely and decisively which path we would walk and in making that decision to not look back.

We chose the left path, the path of feminine initiation, which led us to the sacred mesa. We walked up the granite nature made stone steps, to the mossy bank where the altar of Artemis resided. Susun whispered into our ears as we passed the gateway onto the mesa “From woman you are born. Into this circle you are born again through this group of women.” She sealed each invocation with a kiss - each of us passing through the gateway. Susun called the sacred corners and elements and looked to me being the youngest to call the above and future generations as she called the ancestry and the ancient ones . We when connected to the sacred center and called in our individual wisdom and power to connect with the power and wisdom of the group, initiating a beautiful matrix of connection among, nature, ourselves, each other.

We then met in the direction of the Sun as Susun initiated us as Green Witches on the path of the Wise Woman. When our inner voice guided us, we each rose and stepped forward into the direction of the Sun, where we made our commitment to the path of the green witch.

The Green Witch is one who communicates directly with the plants, and one who knows and remembers how to speak directly to nature. She is one who slows down enough to hear the voices of the plants and to remember their songs and to entrain to their energetic imprints for healing of herself, her family, her community. The Green Witch is a Wise Woman who knows healing in her whole body because she is entrained to the healing energy of the Earth, elements and nature. She shares information freely and lives in the Earth’s natural state of abundance. The Green Witch is in a stand for the Earth, as the Earth stands for her.

As we spoke our commitment to the group, Susun painted our right big toenail green reminding us now every step we take is that of a Green Witch. We closed dancing Widdershins around the altar of Artemis and singing the song of women as we released the elements, the center, the above and below. As we came, so we returned, through the forest, processing, a line of witches, barefoot, ribbons in our hair, one green toenail, to reconnect the wisdom of the plants to the world once again.

Angry Mama Grizzly

2011-11-03T08:55:00.000-07:00

Last night, my Fall Sensual Shaman Immersion group completed the Animal Spirit Immersion where we met and entrained to our animal spirit energy and explored its place in nature. On being guided to the under world, my native American roots took over and I found myself in nature around a sacred grotto that I had visited several times in real life. I was wearing tan buckskin and wore a quiver and held a bow. I had long plaited hair in braids and a tan muscular woman’s body. I dove through the watery grotto until I came to a secret cave where I surfaced. Pulling myself out of the water, I rested on the ledge of the cave peering back and my reflection. I washed my hair and plaited braids in the water feeling eyes watching me from a dark recess within the cave. I stood and walked toward the eyes and asked my power animal to reveal itself to me. Ferocious jaws and a roaring mouth and fierce eyes came into focus as a female grizzly bear stepped out of the darkness three inches away from my face. That can’t be right, I thought. I journey with spiders, snakes, lions, horses. A grizzly???

“This will be interesting,” I thought. I asked again and the grizzly roared. I entrained myself to her and welcomed her into my body, my spine and her spine aligning. Our ancient brains merged and I awakened to a deep animal knowing within. Within the Immersion group our animal clan awakened and moved through space together which included an eel, wolf, leopard, two eagles, mama grizzly and homo habilis. In meditation, mama grizzly spoke to me – “Take ownership of your ferocious protective mother energy.” I moved through the animal kingdom pondering her medicine. Grizzly’s destroy anything that portents to threaten her cubs. I realized that with all my new age-y non-violent communication training and Earth mama compassion, I found myself at times apologizing for ferocious feelings of protection for those I loved. The New Age-y Rainbow clan 'love your brother and sister' way of being, can sometimes program even the useful inner fight out of even the compassionate warrior.

Seeing dear friends and loved ones in disastrous relationships, or self-inflicted pain cycles, I had trained myself to stand aside and support where they were, which often reinforced and enabled these pain cycles to continue, when a deeper inner roar was actually present that my soul desired to express. I found myself this past week listening and watching as a close friend of mine agonized over a former lover become emotionally available to her again and again. I also watched while another friend of mine newly exploring polyamory at her husband’s persistent demands, struggle with her husband’s tantrums when she found someone she wanted to connect with on an intimate level. I remember during both of these conversations, an inner savage protectiveness rose up in me. “Hurt my friend again and you’re lunch,” I thought silently. Then I would smooth out these inner brutal impulses with reprogrammed thinking of “honor where my friend and her relationships and lovers and that pain as necessary teaching experiences. Support and love are medicine.” Mama grizzly wants to destroy those that threatens her family but she also wants to slap her cubs upside the head and say “What are hell are you doing? Why are you tolerating a situation that supports less than your most magnificent, radiant self-expression?” To my tribe, you may get slapped upside the head this week. Know that it’s my deepest expression of love. Today, mama grizzly says “I love you and I have no apologies.”

Deeply Inspiring Naturism Video

2011-09-22T11:55:00.000-07:00

Below is a link to a deeply inspiring short film on Naturism. Please enjoy!

http://blogs.reuters.com/photo/2011/09/19/naturism-these-images-contain-nudity/

Naked Yoga Speaks

2011-09-15T17:09:00.000-07:00

Below is the winning essay of the Naked Yoga - Share Your Story Contest. I was deeply moved and inspired by the poetry, openness and philosophy of Lloyd. Please enjoy.

Norse and Slovak DNA directed the construction of my body 60 years ago after the union of my father’s seed with my mother’s ready egg. That early body suffered involuntary circumcision, a diet of processed and preserved foods, and obligatory church on Sunday dressed in the most uncomfortable clothing available. To compensate I spent a lot of time outdoors, at least until TV became popular enough to replace fun.

With the Sixties came new and interesting ideas from the East, yoga among them. My puberty dawned with the Age of Aquarius and my budding sexuality neatly parallels my education in yoga. Both began with a book.

Neither sex nor yoga should be learned from a book, but that was all we had. In my world depictions of sex and nudity were harshly censored. Today a young person can find pictures of naked people and sex acts. In 1965, we couldn’t. Sex education used no realistic illustrations, let alone that most powerful of all learning tools: the hands-on demonstration.

The anxiety I felt during Mr. Boydston’s 7^th grade health class description of the process is still vivid. “The male inserts the penis into the female vagina. He performs a rocking motion until ejaculation occurs.” Insert tab A into slot B? Rocking motion? My god! I’ve been doing it wrong! What if I can’t get it right when I have to do this for real with my wife? What if she laughs at me?

It wasn’t until I saw my first explicit sex film in 1970 that I realized that sex would be fun and easy. And wouldn’t it have saved us all a lot of angst and bother if Mr. Boydston could have just shown us a clip in the first place?

My first book on yoga was fascinating but had no illustrations. It emphasized breathing and meditation rather than asanas. When I chanced upon a magnificent book by B. K. S. Iyengar, richly illustrated with actual photos of the yogi himself, I finally had something tangible to imitate. The breathing and meditation would come later, but a picture of an asana is worth a thousand OMs.

In college – at a Catholic university no less – I took my first yoga class the same year I advanced from sexual observer to participant. The teacher wove breathing and meditation into the asanas and the parts became whole. The teacher explained that yoga should be done in a sacred, calm place (we met in the chapel). She recommended wearing comfortable, loose clothing but then said, “Of course, it is best to wear nothing at all.” To this day I regret withholding the obvious question: “Then why aren’t we wearing nothing at all?”

Indeed, why do we wear clothes? For protection and decoration, to be sure, but why modesty? Is the body evil? Is self-disgust virtuous? Why do we hide for shame and punish people for the heinous crime of being seen naked? Why is there even a word for naked as a special condition? Why should activities naturally done naked require a special moniker? There are “nudists” but no “clothists”. There is “skinny dipping” but no “swimsuit dipping.” Why do we say “naked yoga” but not “clothed yoga?” It should go without saying that yoga is done naked unless otherwise modified.

Naked yoga has helped me in some measure to repair the damage that society’s body shame inflicted. I now not only feel completely normal when naked, I feel that way in the company of others. I now regularly enjoy mixed nude recreation such as the sauna, hot tubbing, skinny dipping, clothing-optional beaches and nudist parks. When everybody has their clothes off, it’s like nobody does.

But naked yoga offers more than mere recreation. The inward focus of yoga opens awareness. The constant chatter of the external world, mostly through the eye and ear gates, crowds out input from the nose, the tongue, the skin and the internal organs. That smothering of the senses is made worse when we truss our bodies up, preventing normal contact with air, sun and water. The wash of sensory feedback is necessary for our grounding, our orientation in the physical world. Indeed, a sense of self could not be possible apart from the framework of the environment, the non-self.

So naked yoga is the optimal way to enhance sensory feedback. It strengthens self-awareness and enriches the experience of social nude recreation. With the practice of naked yoga I’ve resolved over recent years to spend a little time out of doors naked every day. Others have joined me, one by one.

On an evening nude swim in a beautiful but public lake where nudity is technically unlawful, one of my fellow spirits noted that even if we told our colleagues what we do, they still wouldn’t believe it. We are exceptional – healthier, brighter, stronger, more beautiful – because we make decisions and act where others won’t. Courage defines us.

We are of the new old religion, the religion of Olympus. We are demigods, human children of divine origin. Not disembodied spirits; we are flesh, blood and bone that give rise to a brain that supports the soul, fanned by the spirit – the prana – of life-giving oxygen. Our cosmology is inverted, bottom upwards. The spirit arises from the soul, produced by the brain as an inseparable part of the body. Naked yoga links all three in perfect harmony. Naked yoga is the spade with which we dig ourselves free from the mud, wash ourselves, stretch our limbs and revel in our beauty.

But it takes courage. Just because you’re a god, doesn’t mean you don’t have to work at it.

~ Lloyd

Woman's Body ~ Nature's Body

2011-08-06T16:33:00.000-07:00

Woman’s Body ~ Nature’s Body

Paradise. Absolute Paradise. Those were the only words when thinking back on my day at Rock Lodge that were adequate to describe my experience and all to brief visit to this magical sanctuary. “Packing light?” my husband joked with me as I put my sarong, towel and hat in my canvas beach bag. Conspicuously missing a swimsuit, I smiled. I had been wanting to visit Rock Lodge all summer – a naturist paradise. Beautiful lake, scenic hiking trails, wildlife and nature in abundance and the option to be absolutely clothing free. I had offered to teach a yoga class at 11:30am that day and after a few wrong turns on my adventure there, I arrived just in time for the class. I was joy-filled to see wonderful yogis in the class as old as 70 and as young as 7 each celebrating their body and the spirit of yoga sans clothes. In my yoga practice thus far, naked yoga had been about consciously removing clothes, the identities behind them, finding a new deeper layer of freedom that isn’t generally available in the rushed metropolis of New York life. Now I was faced with a group of people who already had that layer of freedom. There was no disrobing ceremony. These powerful group were already uncompartmentalized, in celebration of their body, loved yoga and wore whatever clothes at Rock Lodge that felt appropriate in the present moment. Sitting, meditating, Om-ing with this community, I thought – heaven is truly here on earth. This is what a world looks like without violence.

Talking over a potluck supper that evening with my host Sandy, he mentioned of one young woman – 18 years old, a budding opera singer and regular at Rock Lodge since she was 11. ‘She will never have an eating disorder’ Sandy said very frankly to me over our potluck. ‘When one grows up with body love and acceptance in all shapes and sizes and sees their parents embrace that, one never feels the need to alter who they are.’ I knew exactly what he spoke of. I envied this young woman who had been in paradise at 11 while I grew up struggling with body issues from pre-teen to adolescence. I stared at this young woman at all the women at Rock Lodge and was overwhelmed to tears with gratitude that a place like this existed on the planet. I recalled instantly, like moving through a memory box of pictures, the snapshots of shame I had felt in body from a young age – my rejection of wearing shorts in middle school because of my perceived ugly legs, walking out of a room backwards after making love with a college sweetheart so he couldn’t see my ass and thighs that I thought were unsightly, feeling the self-judgement and loathing of my body the first time I was naked in public as the young French boy I was dating stripped encouraged me to join he and his friends in the skyclad hottub as I tried to hide myself and my shame under the darkening night.

Now during my paradise day trip to Rock Lodge, after swimming across the lake twice, I pulled myself up onto a dock in the middle of the lake and sprawled flat on my stomach ass and thighs completely exposed to the sun, the elements, the community with not a twinge of shame in my body. No thought of hiding, concealing, judging what my body should and shouldn’t look like. Here was the quite ecstasy of one-nesss. I hiked. I swam. I talked with old and new friends. I bared myself to the world. I marveled at a young Israeli mother and her seven year old daughter who practiced side crow pose on the swim deck naked as a… crow ;) Accompanied with her mother, an accomplished yogi practicing next to her, I saw what my body would have been like if I had the muscle memory to both be in side crow and to be naked publicly free of shame at seven years old and wondered what my life would have looked like if that support had come from my mother and if I had grown up with a mother who loved her body instead of loathed it. I wondered for sometime what our world would look like if mothers taught and modeled for their daughters that their bodies were both sacred and shame free. It would be in blood. It wouldn’t be something we would have to search for, starve ourselves for, we would simply be in it, naked in nature, in side crow, in love of our bodies.

I recently re-read Eve Ensler’s The Good Body. Eve has created a world wide campaign to stop violence against women since 1998 with her play The Vagina Monologues. On her journeys interviewing women across the world for her later play, The Good Body, Eve conceded that when so many women were so dissatisfied with how they looked, they had very little time or energy left for the war in Iraq. Eve was one of these women, on a masochistic self loathing journey to banish the belly she acquired recently brought on by her aging body. Consumed with her own judgment and self-hate, Eve toured the world interviewing women about their relationship to their bodies. Among the women she interviewed across the planet 95% of women said if they could change one thing they would lose weight. For 13 years Eve has been bringing awareness with her V-Day campaign to stop violence against women, but what her most recent findings revealed after her revolutionary play The Vagina Monologues is that as much as women want sexual empowerment and self-love, what we really want even more is to be skinny, to shrink, to disappear. Her astonishing play focuses not on men being the abusers of women, but on women being our own abusers and targets of self inflicted violence creating our own self-hate and spreading that curse among our sisters and our children.

In moving through the Metropolitan Museum of Art a few years ago, I spent sometime among the exquisite statues of Greek and Roman Goddess that show beautiful full figured woman, round, curves, softness and deep, powerful, unabashed femininity. I remember exactly what I was wearing that day, a long blue skirt that flowed like water and a brown and white cowl neck sleeveless shirt and sandals. The skirt was very long and I had picked up end of it and tucked it in the waistband to allow me more freedom to walk through the museum. As I was staring at a particularly beautiful statue, two women approached me and tapped me on the shoulder. “Are you one of them?” they asked me pointing at the statue. I had no idea what the women were referring to and I stood looking at them befuddled. “You look like them. You look like the statue. Are you Greek or Roman?” It took a second to sink in – these two women thought my body looked like the body of a Greek Goddess. I smiled and looked back at the statue “Maybe I am,” I said, with a twinkle in m eye.

Goddess knows it’s taken me years to come to love my body and to understand that my soul chose this body or my Earth walk. Even with a regular practice of yoga, self-pleasuring and conscious nudity, having grown up with both a childhood and a world that holds such a small idea of what beauty is, I find myself from time to time pulled down the vicious cycle of self criticism, until a moment happens on my yoga mat, or at Rock Lodge or in the Met that reminds me –hey – I’m a fucking Goddess.

To my sisters – the curse stops here. We have the option to step into our beautiful bodies and our Goddess-hood and teach this to our daughters. We are this next generation.

We are the ones we’ve been waiting for.

In love with our Holy Bodies and the Our Earth’s Body –

Isis Phoenix

WIN a FREE Session! Asana Exposed - The Book

2011-08-06T07:35:00.000-07:00

ASANA EXPOSED - A Book illustrating the Transformative Practice of Naked Yoga.

Submit your story and WIN a FREE Session

After years of witnessing miracles in the practice of naked yoga, spirit has called me to create a medium that can reach more people. This medium is YOUR story. I am partnering with Mike Cinquino to create a photographic essay of the experience of naked yoga over the years coupled with stories of individuals whose lives have been trasformed through this practice. If this practice has touched, moved or inspired your life, we want to hear YOUR story. The most moving story will receive a free private yoga session with me and will be published in the September newsletter and on the Sensual Shaman blog. You are welcome to remain anonymous in your share :)

Below are some writing prompts if you feel inspired to share your story.

Tell me the story of your body.

Why did your soul choose this body?

What is yoga to you?

How has yoga transformed your life and your relationship to your body?

What is the biggest lesson you’ve learned from your body over the years?

How has naked yoga transformed your life?

What has become available to you in the naked yoga practice that was not available to you before?

Please share your story by September 5th to be considered for the FREE private session :) Email your stories to sensualshaman@gmail.com

Ladybug Magick

2011-07-11T12:35:00.000-07:00

“Honey come quick!” Mark called out from the bedroom. Jarred out of the email I was composing by the sound of my mate’s urgency, I took a deep breath and slid out of the club chair and moved m laptop to the side. My husband was prone to these kinds of bursts of excitement when something spectacular was outside our New York window that would be missed if a moment went by. I hastily made my way from where I was working to the window in the bedroom where he was prone to these exclamations

“Look!” Mark exclaimed in a hushed whisper as if something might be frightened away if he said it too loud. He pointed towards the upper part of the window. Thinking he was gesturing towards something outside I peered out, seeing only building fronts and the neighbor’s rooftop garden. “No, not out there. Look up. Up there,” Mark said pointing to the top of the window frame. I cast my gaze up and took in what had sparked this enthusiasm. It took my a few moments to calibrate what I was seeing, given they were so grossly misplaced in the reality of a midtown Manhattan apartment. Ladybugs. Two of them. Mr. and Mrs. the size of a plastic thumbtack tops, walking along the inside frame of our seventh story bedroom window. I stood for a few moments in utter disbelief – “How did they get here?” I wondered out loud. We live in the middle of New York City on the seventh floor of a thirteen-story building. The only bugs I’ve known in these parts were cockroaches and bedbugs. Amazed we sat for a few moments simply watching them, quiet, enthralled – a ladybug meditation. Something so small and beautiful and simple had stopped two Manhattanites in their tracks.

I grew up with Lady bugs in Oklahoma, in soft meadow fields, on the playground of my elementary school, atop shiny green leaves in my mother’s rose garden. I always associated them with good luck and beauty. I had never learned from any particular source that this small beetle held the energies of luck and beauty but on some level they simple were that – fortune, aesthetics. I was always impressed by the lady bugs’ bold color choice of a bright red shell with dark black polka dots – lady bugs were always in fashion - a birth mark of the Goddess, the bindis of Mother Earth.

After a standing for at least five minutes transfixed with this couple’s quizzical choice for a temporary home, Mark and I let them be, keeping the window cracked incase this was just a pit stop place for them. Shortly after, I went to my computer and goggled ladybug spirit. As a shaman, often when an animal appears in your life unexpectedly, it’s a calling card from nature, a teacher with a message, a communicator from Source. Machelle Small Wright, founder of Perelandra, a co-creative science and garden center calls insects ‘nature’s messengers.’ Humorously she goes on to say, “Well nature could send a flock of galloping trees but nature didn’t think the humans would respond very well, so nature sends insects.” Insects. Small. Unobtrusive. Messengers. Today nature sent ladybugs.

I follow threads through the Internet and learn that ladybugs sense their environment and vibrations through their feet – tiny little sensors that let them know the intimate nature of their surroundings. They feed on aphids and mites and pests and plant destroying insects keeping balance and order within an environment. I looked up lady bug spirit – Here’s what I found: “Lady bug = wish fulfilled. The appearance of a Ladybug heralds a time of luck and  protection in which our wishes begin to be fulfilled.  Fall and spring are the most abundance times for a person with a Ladybug totem. Higher goals and new heights are possible with a Ladybug totem. Worries begin to dissipate. New happiness comes about. Their presence signals a time of shielding from our own aggravations and pests.   Its coloring, red and black, is a warning to predators and we need to give that same clear warning to our enemies - Stay back! I'm dangerous if attacked!  Ladybug is never the aggressor, but it will defend. Ladybug also cautions not to try to hard or go to fast to fulfill our dreams.   Let things flow at their natural pace.   in the due course of time, our wishes will all come true. Ladybugs with their bright red shells and black spots carry the magik of rebirth. Red and black are the colors of thoughts and manifestation. Often Ladybug will appear to us when we have an opportunity to succeed, grow, and start something new. All of the beetle family transforms from larvae to adult, showing us we too can transform our lives. Ladybugs can consume large quantities of aphids and other harmful bugs, which eat and destroy plants. So as summer begins to fade into fall watch for Ladybug to fly into your life. Let Ladybug consume your unwanted fears and encourage new adventures.”

I liked the spirit medicine piece of pacing oneself. For two years now I’ve struggled with being in New York City as I longed for green mountains and small town life. Ladybug reminded me that all this is coming as my beloved and I search for our new home and shows us patience and everything in its right timing.

A few days later, having forgotten a visit from a pair of these lovely creatures, I was in the bedroom rummaging. The weather had become quite cloudy that day and the temperature had dropped. I went over to adjust the air conditioner. As I reached down to turn the knob to off I recoiled immediately. There was one of the ladybug pair right atop the vibrating AC radiator knob holding on for dear life… or really enjoying it depending on her mood. I scooped her up onto one finger. ‘So that’s what happened to you,’ I told her as I took her out to the plant on my front desk. I left her there to wander through the green. The next day as Mark went to do the laundry I heard him call from the back room “Isis, come quick!” I arrived to see the second ladybug working its way through the folds of the laundry bag. I scooped number two up and placed him on the plant by my desk hoping in that ecosystem he would find something to eat and his mate. Unclear on the proper care and feeding of ladybugs I hoped they would find something there that could satiate them or they would communicate to me what they needed.

Weeks later, having long forgotten about the ladybugs, I was sitting at my desk completing office work which included making copies from a printer that I keep on the floor. After copying what I had intended, I stood up and there was ladybug, right in front of the paper tray. She was slightly more orange today and was completely still. I bent down to encourage her to crawl on my finger but she did not move. I gave her a little nudge with the pad of my finger. No response. My heart suddenly felt heavy. I simply knelt for a moment feeling the passage of time. I slid her little orange and black spotted body delicately onto my index finger and held her there simply contemplating her bizarre existence in our New York City lives. After a few moments, I took her fragile dry body to the altar and placed her on the silk scarf that had an image of a garden on it resting her right next to the lotus altar candle. “You’ll be happy here,” I told her gingerly setting her on the silk cloth in what would now be her final resting place. A quiet silence moved through my body, a soft beat of reflection and gratitude. “Thank you,” I whispered, leaning my head over her body, my nose a few inches from her orange back. “Thank you for finding us and sharing your gifts.” I took in a deep inhale and moved slowly back into my New Yorker life, the body of a ladybug resting on my altar and her spirit resting in my heart.

Naked Yoga Makes News

2011-07-07T15:09:00.001-07:00

Naked Yoga continues to make news. I took some time today to speak with Rachael Rettner of My Health News Daily about the benefits and the trend of naked yoga.

http://www.myhealthnewsdaily.com/naked-yoga-new-trend-1675/

Conversations with the Goddess

2011-06-30T07:24:00.000-07:00

CONVERSATIONS WITH THE GODDESS

by Dorothy Atalla

I had the wonderful gift recently of reading Conversations with the Goddess by Dorothy Atalla. This beautiful book is a ray from the beacon of new light that is coming onto the planet. As the patriarchy rebalances and we move into the world and paradigm of partnership, Dorothy Atalla’s book recovers the lost voice and wisdom of the Goddess that has long been silenced on our planet. From her initiations at Petra, into opening to receive the transmission of the Goddess, Dorothy’s experience and humble teaching helps to awaken the readers journey through universal, feminine and human consciousness to reconnect us to a divine wisdom that exists in every living thing. Dorothy’s book takes the mostly forgotten wisdom of the ancients and moves it forward into our present and future of human and planetary evolution made accessible to every person who is blessed with reading this wonderful book.

Free Round Table Tele-Discussion with Dorothy Atalla -

"How Does the Divine Feminie Manifest in your Life Today?"

Guests Isis Phoenix, Michele Geyer, Suzanna McCarthy, Rev Misa Hopkins.

For a Recording of the call click on the link below

http://InstantTeleseminar.com/?eventid=21375930

For more information about Conversations with the Goddess

Click Here: http://www.conversationswiththegoddess.net/

Scarlet Poppy

2011-06-28T09:20:00.000-07:00

I began this post around Memorial Day. It is said that there was a time when the language of plants, animals, crystals and humans spoke together effortlessly. This is a tribute to the reemergence of that time. May we awake once again to our interconnectedness with all life and all that is.

Scarlet Poppy

Papaver rhoeas Papaveracae – the Scarlet Poppy, a variable flowering plant with large vivid red four petaled flowers and a black center. Annual. Germinates in disturbed soil. When broken it bleeds a white latex liquid. Flowers in late spring and if climate and warmth permit – in the beginning of autumn. The simple leaves are lobed, alternate or whorled. The flowers have petioles and are not sheathed.

Papaver rhoeas ~ Before our meals at the Wise Woman Center in Woodstock, NY where I am an apprenticing herbalist, we stand and sing. We sing of Scarlet Poppies. The scarlet poppy is a symbol of menstruation. In older times and sometimes still today, to ensure a good harvest, women were sent into the fields to bleed before the seeds were sewn. Rich fertile menstrual blood, one of the most nutrient rich resources available on the planet, was offered to our beloved mother. This nourishment from women nourished the community and the planet. Blood was life.

Today on Memorial Day weekend however, I discover a new meaning for the scarlet poppy. It is Sunday and right before Holy Body Service, I am inspired to look up the meaning of the day and remember those fallen, remember those from my own ancestry, remember the women who supported the families and the men who fought and fell on any sides, all sides. Today I remember. In my remembrance, I find the scarlet poppy.

In Flanders Fields and Other Poems a 1919 collection of poems by John McCrae, I find the scarlet poppy again.

In Flanders Fields

In Flanders fields, the poppies blow

Between the crosses, row on row,

That mark our place; and in the sky

The larks, still bravely singing, fly

Scarce heard amid the guns below...

We are the Dead. Short days ago

We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,

Loved, and were loved, and now we lie

In Flanders fields...

Take up our quarrel with the foe:

To you from failing hands, we throw

The torch; be yours to hold it high.

If ye break faith with us who die

We shall not sleep, though poppies grow

In Flanders fields....

McCrae was a Canadian soldier, physician and surgeon who’s Flandes Fields poem brought international attention to the scarlet poppy as a symbol for all fallen soldiers, a symbol of blood on the fields, a symbol of loss and grief and stained Earth. Here the poppy was not a symbol of nourishment and agricultural fertility, but of one of remembrance and Death and the restlessness of the dead should the battle not continue in honor and faith of those fallen. After John McCrae published “In Flanders Fields,” the poppy continued to evolve into a symbol of remembrance of fallen soldiers. In 1918, Mona Michael’s inspired by McCrae’s poem wrote in her pledge to keep the faith of the fallen wrote

“Oh! you who sleep in Flanders Fields,

Sleep sweet – to rise anew!

We caught the torch you threw

And holding high, we keep the Faith

With All who died.”

Mona Michaels went on to introduce the practice of wearing poppies as a symbol of remembrance of those who did not return to celebrate the end of war. Her dedication to this practice spread internationally and the scarlet poppy became recognized not just as a symbol of remembrance but of a time when the world would return to piece after the ‘war to end all wars.’ Ironic, the poppy grows in disturbed soil–the soil of battle.

Pinned to our heart centers, the scarlet poppy holds our fallen loved ones in hand and heart as we move through with faith and remembrance the loss of loved ones during gruesome battles. Mona later went on to use the scarlet poppy as a symbol to raise funds and benefit servicemen in need.

Today I take some time to speak with the plants – to offer my voice as their voice. The Scarlet Poppy Speaks ~

“I would like to welcome a time where the blood of man is replaced by the blood of women and when senseless deforesting is replaced by conscious agriculture and where we truly nourish our communities. I am a symbol of blood and the bleeding of humans and that symbol can cause remembrance and nourishment and my next phase is to be remembered as the flower in the hills where community holds the planet and each other and their blood streams run together in nourishment and wholeness. As a flower, I fold and blossom and grow and hold the beauty of sex in its whole-est form, open, visible and alive. Use me to enliven your sexuality and to remember that which can be used for nourishment and benefit for the entire world.”

Scarlet Poppy on YouTube by Isis Phoenix

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e32NJFFOXcc

May we together hold the vision to return to a time where we are in communication with the plants, the animals, the crystals, the planet, each other. May we listen, really listen and hear what Pacha Mama – beloved mother is saying to us. May we open the doors and gateways of communication and listen once again to the voices of all that is. Open your ears, open the gateways – awake, awake.

Holy Body Worship ~ Why 'Clothing Optional'

2011-06-15T18:27:00.000-07:00

Holy Body Worship is a clothing optional worship service led by Rev. Goddess Charmaine and Isis Phoenix each month. Having recently abbreviated our name to 'Naked Church' we are taking this time to redefine that this continues to be a 'clothing optional' event.

Holy Body Worship is an Interfaith spiritual service that celebrates the intimacy and uniqueness of the body and soul relationship through honoring and acknowledging the body as a temple and recognizing it as the vessel our soul chose for incarnation. The option of being naked or skyclad during Service is used to further the expression of reverence and celebration of our body soul relationship to Source. Our bodies are miracles, beauty, complex ecosystems, walking art - each unique, holy and a piece of God/Goddess/Source. The ‘clothing optional’ is simply that – optional. You are never required to be nude during service. It is a matter of choice and truth in the present moment based on how your body feels and wishes to express itself. In service, we view nudity as a form of transparency and intimacy. We bare our soul’s and the places that have been hiding our living inauthentically and bring ourselves back to authenticity, transparency and one-ness. If we feel guarded when we remove our clothes it’s not a form of celebration and we’ve actually moved our relationship to body/soul/source out union or one-ness and into fragmentation and inauthenticity. However, if you have felt guarded your entire life, perhaps this is the moment to experience your union and one-ness through exploring nudity, through moving through fear and embracing yourself ‘holy’ and completely in this moment. In Holy Body Worship, we choose to be nude or to celebrate with others who are nude to explore a deeper level of intimacy with our bodies, our souls, each other, the divine. To remove that which keeps us separate – and to bring us back into right relationship with body, soul, Source. Whole-y Body Worship celebrates and takes a stand for the right to choose to worship your body naked or clothed or in any state of disrobe that feels appropriate to you in the present moment and also acknowledges that that decision may change from moment to moment. We invite you to ask yourself what makes you feel powerful, holy, wild, sensual, free, and totally you and to celebrate your body soul union from that place.

Among Ducks, Geese and Crane

2011-06-10T19:04:00.000-07:00

Among Ducks, Geese and Crane

The mallards were sleeping when I arrived armed with half a bag of wheat bread for them and an oatstraw infusion for myself to help combat the heat as temperatures rose towards the upper nineties mingling with New York City pollution creating both a sweltering and suffocating day. I squatted in a shady spot below a tree and simply watched. A green headed mallard opened one eye in my direction and floated about a foot away from me towards his mate. Four adult Canadain geese and another group of Mallards roosted on the other side of the pond about thirty feet away. The babies were missing this morning. After sitting in silence for about ten minutes, I pulled out my oatstraw infusion took a large swallow to rehydrate and then pulled out my bag of bread. A mallard twitched its tail as if suddenly sensing the food human relationship. I removed a piece and inconspicuously began to crumble it and slid it down the rocks towards the mallard couple closest to me. The male mallard stood watch as if to say ‘Honey you go first,’ while the female had her share. Seeing her eat well and recognizing there was abundance available, the male finally joined in. Two other male mallards caught on that there was a free food frenzy going down on the west bank and began paddling their way over, only to have the male of the mallard couple chase them off with some angry quacks and bill jabs into their sides. The mallard couple feasted happily for a few minutes until their ecstasy of being fed overtook them and their sounds of rapturous eating rose into cacophonous quacks alerting the other ducks and then the geese to the free buffet. After a moment two other adult Canadian geese appeared followed by four preteen grayish goslings. All the winged life made a hasty run/swim across the muddy pond in my direction. Inspired by the family unit of the geese and their quadruplets, I doted most of the bread on the young goslings and some on the parents – hey being parents is hard work – especially goose parents in Central Park in New York City. The preteens crawled up the rocks enthusiastic enough to walk on my legs and eat out of my hand and then snatch the bread all together. I laughed and snapped some candid photos of the youngster, astonished at their boldness. The parents of these young awkward preteens were fierce and did not take their parenting lightly. They wanted only the best for their children and worked very much in scarcity consciousness – ‘come too close to my children or their food and you’ll leave minus a few feathers’ sort of consciousness. Mama goose was a fierce force. During my previous visits, after I fed my feathered friends all of my offerings, mother goose would walk right up to me, hiss at me in a warning as if to say “Bring more next time and off with you now!” It was awe-inspiring to witness this power couple in the park. During some choice duck and geese feedings, if mallards swam too close to the young geese, a goose parent would chase them not just to run them off but actually to latch onto the offending mallard’s tail and pull out their hind feathers. I saw on several occasions this remarkable event where a daring mallard began taking more then his fair share of the bread and a goose parent lunged for him, it’s beak clamping onto the mallard’s tail and pulled back a full bill full of plumage. Later I would see little tufted balls of duck feathers floating away with the current and puddling up on the banks of the pond.

Today as the heat bore down, both geese and ducks were overly enthusiastic to not have to work very hard for the lunch. The sun bore down hard and I put aside the bread and leaned against the tree to sip oatsraw infusion I’d brought with me. As the ducks and geese pecked at a few crumbs left, a sudden stillness seemed to settle on the pond. A hush came over the wildlife and everything seemed to pause, a white kite cut the air and descended slowly, black pencil legs with large and delicate branch like feet unfolded effortlessly and descended on the mud patch in the middle of the pond. The white kite-like bird landed without a ripple in the water and stood perfectly still with a soft statuesque presence. The crane had arrived. Her long neck lengthened for a moment as she surveyed her surroundings and the other inhabitants of the pond. After taking in her new landscape, her neck slowly returned to a large S curve as she gently lowered her long sharp orange beak to lightly fluff her plumage. A duck gave an uncomfortable low quack and shuffled aside, as if among a peasants gathering royalty had just entered the room and made itself known. Hopeful for engagement, I tossed some of the wheat crust with a pitchers throw towards the crane who was standing in the very middle of the pond on a mud bank. The crust landed a few feet away. The crane stood statuesque with a sense of regalness permeating her being. Deigning not to even flick her head in the arching movement of the crust nor where it landed, a few low squatting ducks waddled over to take up the scraps. I tried again and the crane merely turned its head as if to magnify the beauty of its profile and to let me know that something so beautiful would never stoop for mere crumbs. She was majestic. Passerbys stopped in their tracks to pause at her beauty. Slowly, the impulse for movement rippling down her neck and spine and finally towards her feet, she began to stride across the mud island picking up her branch like feet and placing them down with such lightness that the water beneath them showed not a ripple. The hierarchy was clear. Ducks, Geese, … Crane. I watcher her coronation walk until she disappeared through the tunnel of a stone bridge, off to impress the other wild-life and urban life near-by. After a few breathless moments where time and my body simply stood still from witnessing such beauty, I came back to a baby goose nibbling on my sandal. I snapped back, laughed and gave the ganders the rest of my offerings and stood to brush myself off.

Witnessing the inner intelligence and workings in nature brought a silent wisdom into my body. The chivalry of a mallard fending for it’s mate, the geese raising their family with ferociously aggressive survival instincts, and the crane, a glimpse of wildlife royalty. A deep satisfying quiet settled over my being understanding in this moment that at times I was all of these birds in all of these relationships, a chivalrous partner, a ferocious and protective mother, a Queen. Deep and present I gather my belongings and left the park, a little more wise and a tad more integrated than when I entered it.

Shepherd's Purse

2011-05-27T06:39:00.000-07:00

Yesterday, New York yoga teacher and doula Lisa Kazmer and I met in Central Park on a mission - to harvest and make our own medicine. After beginning my studies at the Wise Woman Center, I am becoming increasingly aware of everyday healing herbs and foods that are in my home environment right here in New York City. I operated for years under the assumption that I I had to leave New York City to exist closer and more authentically with nature, but more and more I find that I have quite astonishingly overlooked what exists right in front of me surrounded by this city of stone. How appropriate that the herb we are harvesting just happens to grow in sidewalk cracks and in rocky terrain as if shouting -"Hey, look at me, I'm like you - an urban survivor and thriver!" As I took my oatmeal in Central park yesterday morning, there Shepherd's Purse was peeking up through large rocks and as I walked through the meadows she popped her head up in clusters and at various moments her white flowering tops and heart shaped seed pouches standing tall and proud on their slender stems.

I called Lisa, who is co-creator of our earlier herbal product for women's reproductive health 'yoni steams' with me and told her to meet me in the park that afternoon as we were on a mission. I gathered all the info I could on Shepard's Purse, printed it off and took two canvas bags, two harvesting scissors and a snack for us. We meet at 59th and 6th Ave in front of the horse carriages with the grassy musky manure aroma of NY carriages greeting us as we entered the park. We walked to the gazebo and sat on the rocks and read aloud to each other the printed information I had gathered on Shepherd's Purse. One piece off the internet had a photo of Shepherd's purse. I asked Lisa based on the photo to find the plant. She pointed to a few similar looking things from the photo. This was actually a trick exercise. The photo was actually wrong - meaning 1. you can't trust everything on the internet and 2. sight is on of the worst ways to identify herbs and leads to often harvesting the wrong and potentially plant. We then moved to the correct variation of Shepherd's Purse, greeted her and talked about sustainable harvesting, asking the plants permission and only taking what we need. Shepherd's purse (Capsella bursa-pastoris - Brassicaceae family) is an anti-hemorrhaging herb that regulates blood flow in the body. About to be on the heaviest day of my moon flow, it was an appropriate time to harvest ;) Shepherd's Purse stops excessive bleeding in the body by constricting the blood vessels with its atstringent quality. It's a wonderful herb to lighten excessively heavy menstrual flows and post-partum hemorrhaging as well as bleeding from all parts of the body including stomach, lungs, uterus and kidneys. Shepherd's purse has also been taken internally to treat cases of blood in urine and bleeding ulcers. Shepherd's purse was most likely brought over from Europe as it's actually not indigenous to our continent. It is an herb that was used during the Great War when amputations took place right on the battlefield and they needed to stop a new amputee form bleeding out.

Lisa and I harvested Shepherd's Purse from three different places in the park only taking what we need. Shepherd's purse is obviously not an herb we will take regularly and would only be used under very specific conditions. The jar we made into a tincture will last us the rest of our lives. Lisa commented to me after our harvesting trip she felt incredibly grounded. That is the power of The Mother - sharing with us indefinitely her energy and wisdom and deep powerful presence. As we deepen opening to Her knowing we are able to share with others her power. Urban medicine making is teaching me patience.

In New York one thing is for sure - we want everything right away - our food, our entertainment, our business. Herbal medicine takes time. Shepherd's Purse will steep in Vodka for 6 weeks before she is ready to be medicine. While six weeks doesn't seem long for a life-time worth of medicine, in our electronic tweet-ing, facebook-ing world - it's an eternity which is why alopathic medicine was birthed in the west. Natural healing took too long. But even in New York there are times where a deep penetrating sense of grounding can take us over and pull us into The Mother's embrace. Thank you Pacha Mama for your gifts, your healing, your wisdom." Lisa shared this Paulo Coehlo quote with me yesterday and it feels good to share it with you here - "God placed 'Her' pharmacy in the woods and fields so that everyone could enjoy good health."

Please stay tuned as we continue to grow our Urban Herbals Business.

Nude New York Interview with WFUV's Cityscape

2011-04-23T08:09:00.000-07:00

I had a great time doing this interview with George Bodarky on what has inspired my own naked yoga practice and the naked yoga movement in New York City.

You can download or listen to a free podcast of our interview below :)

http://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/wfuvs-cityscape/id168241302

Enjoy!

Traumatized Wings

2011-03-26T13:25:00.000-07:00

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

Yoni Steams

2011-03-10T13:42:00.000-08:00

Yoni Steam Ritual

Yoni is a traditional Sanskrit term for a woman's vulva. The term itself acknowledges and honors that yonis were a symbol of the Great Goddess and that in their presence rests the force of Shakti, the pure essence of the divine feminine. Yoni Steams are an ancient wise woman traditional treatment using a unique blend of organic and consciously harvested herbs that are steeped in hot water creating an herbal infusion. After brewing, the steaming herbs are transferred to a bowl and placed in a toilet where the woman receiving the steam sits as the medicinal herb steam rises and opens and lubricates the yoni. The herb steam has gentle healing, cleansing and stimulating properties supporting a healthy pelvic floor and reproductive system. The steam increases blood flow to the yoni and helps discharge clots and energy blocks by relaxing the muscular and deep tissue layers of the pelvis and naturally balancing yeast and bacteria. Yoni steams help lubricate the pelvic floor and encourage a natural healthy wetness that cleans, clears and rebalances.

The Ritual ~ Add half the jar of your yoni steam herbs to the muslin bag that was wrapped around the jar. Place the bag in a pot of water that has cooled just below boiling. Steep the herbs in the muslin bag for 15 minutes, covered, on the lowest flame setting. Pour the herb infusion that has been created into a large bowl that can rest in the toilet. Test the steam for heat sensitivity before sitting directly on the toilet. Disrobe from the waist down and drape your lower body with a large towel or blanket to keep in the steam and your body warm. Steam for 15-20 minutes. The sensation should feel pleasant, opening and relaxing as the pelvic floor is nourished by the healing steam bath. After the steam cools, as an additional part of the ritual, you are welcome to pour the herb infusion in a warm bath and bathe to continue nourishing the body or add hot water to the bowl of herbs and steam longer. Be sure to keep the body warm afterwards and allow time for quiet meditative reflection or rest. Give used herbs back to the earth in your compost, garden, or any green patch that calls to you.

Benefits, side effects and Contraindications

A Yoni Steam treatment serves as an internal cleansing of the uterus assisting in the release of incompletely flushed debris and fluids. It introduces warmth and softens and nourishes internal membranes. Yoni steams are ideal if you have endometriosis, dark blood at beginning or end of the menstrual cycle, ovarian cysts, irregular periods, painful periods, uterine fibroids, prolapsed uterus, pelvic trauma, vaginal dryness or decreased libido.

It is not advised to steam during your menstrual flow, if you are pregnant, have a uterine infection, vaginal sores or blisters.

Yoni Steams are lovingly crafted by hand for you J

Long Live the Queen

2011-02-28T14:23:00.000-08:00

LONG LIVE THE QUEEN

She fell today. A six foot monarch and mistress of the theatre. She was a Queen. Few people hold Queen energy and own it as palpably as Alicia did. She was over six feet tall, blonde with a high soprano belt who grew into her beauty as she grew into her twenties. We were in high school and college together moving through the same theatre programs, same plays, playing opposite of each other on stage. In Kiss Me Kate she played Kate and I played the sister she hated Bianca. In Macbeth, I played Lady Macbeth and she played Duncan the King I coerced my husband into killing. Let me be clear. Alicia and I were not friends onstage or off. We both held Queen energy and of course there can only ever be ONE Queen. But today, as I hear of her death the breath is sucked out of me and I am astonished. The Queen had fallen.

Alicia had a heart transplant in high school. I don’t remember the details of her heath condition but I remember her saying to me at one point there was nothing short of a sweet justice once everyone realized she was not just complaining or making things up about her health, she really was sick. A Queen’s response. She bore a long battle scar down the center of her heart –that in the early days after the surgery she would try to conceal but after a few years she soon outgrew concealing and wore her scar shamelessly. If people stared who cared. She knew who she was. She was a warrior, a priestess, a survivor. She was a Queen. I saw her Queen because I hold the archetype of a Queen and we are not easy people to get along with, especially among other Queens. We are a bit dramatic and at times melancholic. We are better than others but our shadow side really says this "Betterness" is "Lonliness" and Queenly/Lonely keeps others at an arms length to avoid rejection. We are magnificent to witness onstage and cool as cucumber to converse with but don’t cross us or its off with your head.

Alicia was regal and statuesque with a touch of awkwardness and humor mixed in the pot. She had a flare for the dramatic in her own life, which mirrored mine. Today a Queen has fallen. Today my head is bowed and I stand in silence with a deep, deep respect of who she was during her life. She was the first of my peers who I grew up with in Tulsa to pass. We had participated in numerous plays and theatre classes together. Theatre being the oldest form of ritual, we cocreated magic and transformation among ourselves, our cast, our audiences. When one of us falls it affects us all. I bow my head to you today Alicia. I honor you. I honor your magnificence.

Long Live the Queen!

Summon the Beautiful Darkness Teleconference

2011-01-21T14:20:00.000-08:00

Dear Ones,

It was a great pleasure of mine to spend this past Thursday evening on the phone with Beloved friend and my first Goddess mentor Suzanne d'Corsey. Suzanne weaved her magic through spells and mysteries of the ancient craft and traditions of Scottish and Celtic lore and gave some wonderful insights into the Dark Goddess of Scotland the Caillleach - Queen of Winter. Here is 45 minutes of our hour long call. Enjoy!

http://download5.freeconferencepro.com/rec/1281754474-20110121004509-1.wav

Floracopeia Essential Oils - The People's Medicine

2010-12-20T14:57:00.001-08:00

This is a very generous offering from David Crow - Founder of Floracopeia Essential Oils. Their oils are a huge cornerstone in the healing I've done in my own life and the healing work that I offer clients. Herbal medicine is "the people's medicine" - natural plant based medicine from the Earth as we return to her and align ourselves with her medicine. Enjoy :)

Free Audio Download: Dharma of Essential Oils and The Flowering of Spiritual Culture

Oshun ~ An Orgasmic Water Invocation

2010-10-02T15:23:00.000-07:00

On Tuesday a storm swept through New York, the night thunderstorms raged and thrashed, the water Goddess roared her wrath and then lay still - thick in her humid sexual afterglow... This piece was inspired by that night.

Isis Phoenix on Theatre & Tantra

2010-08-28T13:35:00.000-07:00

I had a delightful time watching this 2003 video of my final theatre performance in Tulsa, before I moved to New York City and the interview that followed in 2007 with my friend Steve Otero, the manager of Sexy Spirits.

Reclaiming Natural Ecstasy

2010-08-19T08:53:00.000-07:00

Dear Ones,

I am just back from a glorious week in the green mountains of Vermont celebrating a late Lughnasadh - the ancient first harvest festival with the Celtic Witch Priestess who initiated me onto my path and her new apprentice who is already in the throws of this life changing ancient transformative magic that is permeating the season. Vermont continues to be a place that inspires magic, transformation and access to open portals of wisdom from the proximity of the land and the way the community must live in relationship to it. I spent my days stacking fire wood, hanging a bat house, perusing the local markets and fairs and cooking good wholesome food all the while reminded of the depth and magic of simple Earth-based living and the beauty of human existence when it falls into right relationship with the planet. My body aches this morning from the hard manual labor of the past week and I smile with a deep pleasure at the sensual wholeness of the return to the land. A conversation that spun out of this time was the "turn on" of human existence when we reach this integrated relationship. When we are simple doing what we are here to do and living the way we are here to live. My dear friend the Celtic Witch Priestess spoke of her new apprentice's new amazement at her own limitless and expanded sexual energy and how it now colored every part of her life. I laughed, remembering my own initiations unfolding to the natural state of being sexually functional, always turned on - reclaiming the ancient brain and animal body of our existence and plugging into the Earth's perpetual state of orgasm - how truly exuberant existence becomes.

A meditation - When in your life do you experienced true wholeness and interconnectedness? Where is desire and passion currently running through your life? Are you following it freely or resisting it? What would shift in your life if you consciously plugged into this energy all the time?

In Natural Ecstasy,
ISIS

Death of the Maiden: Transitioning from Maiden, to Priestess-Mother-Wife

2010-07-17T14:30:00.000-07:00

Death of the Maiden: Transitioning from Maiden, to Priestess-Mother-Wife

Beloveds,

There has been space since my last post where transformation, archetype shifts and life-changes have rocked my core. Most I speak to have undergone or are undergoing transformation in their lives as our consciousness continue to climb the ladder of ascension and the old world and old ways continue to fall away.

Both full moon and new moons in June and July were met with eclipses symbolizing a time of climactic fulcrums, new beginnings, transformation and renovation. My own journey lead to the marriage to my Beloved of four years on June 26th. During the transition before marriage, the Priestess I previously apprenticed with and four Goddesses Sisters escorted me through the gateway of transformation with the powerful ceremony - Death of the Maiden. A ritual unlike any I have ever experienced, I am reminded of ancient times where group rites of passage for both men and women were held in sacred community rituals and not ushered through bars in drunken stupors like many are today.

I chose a black dress for the occasion - symbolizing this death transition from Maiden to Priestess Mother Wife. My Goddess sisters, draped in flaming colored sarongs, escorted me to a sacred grotto in the back hills of Vermont where streams converged into pools and fairies and nymphs danced freely amidst us celebrating our coming. I waded into the excruciatingly cold water and called the maiden to me, feeling all she was, all the days she served me, her flirtation, her playfulness, her eternal youth - We embraced each other singing a soft swan song as she stroked my cheek and said our final good-byes. My Priestess sisters encircled me, walking me to the waters edge and veiled in black, I began my descent. I sucked in air, hit by the cold water stream and descended into the frigid underworld as the black dress billowed around my waist. In a final breath, I submerged myself completely - deep silence in the freezing underwater and in the gateway of transition - She left me. The black dress rose up over my head and fell from my body to the bottom of the grotto's swimming hole, and I watched her go, this delightful archetype and season of woman that is part of every woman's life. I paused for a second/an eternity in the magic of the in-between - and then crashed through the surface - gasping for air - new life re-born of the mother's womb - this archetype awakening in me - naked, powerful, I rose from the waters - reborn.

Gender Imbalance In Balance

2010-05-09T19:38:00.000-07:00

The gender paradigm can often rouse passionate responses and heated dialogues from almost anyone who has actively explored masculine and feminine roles in our society. Today, on Mother’s Day, I pause to look back at the presence of the feminine in my life and reflect on how grateful I am to be such a privileged woman in the west who has had a myriad of powerful female teachers, mentors and leaders who have influenced my own spiritual maturity as a woman.

In the arch of my spiritual journey, the roles of masculine and feminine energy have influenced the core of my spiritual evolution because they exist at the very heart of our culture and the heart of our evolution as a species.

I’ve had my fare share of heady and aggressive conversations about the feminist movement, the monotheistic male center of patriarchal religion, the concept of Goddess and the place of the uprising divine feminine. As a fierce representation of the uprising feminine, I fought hard in my college years to let the voice of the feminine be heard and to quench my own insatiable thirst for mainstream information in reference to the sacred feminine and presence of Goddess Worship in the barren lands of Midwest America. My formal teachings of the Divine Feminine came behind closed doors and under a covenant of secrecy from the town witch, and while what she was teaching me may have cast me as a heretic in the Bible belt, today, it rolls off my tongue and passes through conversations between my friends, clients and community as quickly and easily as someone might discuss the weather.

In my flag-waving feminist days, however, I declared myself a female refugee of the patriarchy and quite often entered into relationship with men where I both dominated and resented their position as man and masculinized my position as woman in an effort to climb out of the years of patriarchal oppression and absence of choice. I martyred myself and my poor unsuspecting boyfriends at the time who fell helplessly in love with a women claiming her Goddesshood and owning her wrath of centuries of oppression and abuse. The early uprising feminist spiritual movement was laced with Martyrdom and rightly so after centuries of silence and oppression. In my individual uprising of ushering in the proclamation of the Goddess, I worked directly in the wound of the feminine, answering calls at Domestic Violence Intervention Services trying to put myself in a path of creating change and healing the world. I directed the Vagina Monologues, raised money to stop violence against women, took back the night. I became self-identified with what David Deida refers to as ‘Stage Two Feminine’ where the feminine embodies her inner warrior and challenges the masculine to meet her on that plane of existence. She has become empowered, liberated and demands equality and at times superiority on every level. She works under the solar influence of the masculine, not resting or nesting or nurturing but constantly creating, fighting the activist’s fight and coping with adrenal burnout from over-embodying dominant solar energy.

Today the split is mending and we are moving into an age of partnership, a time where the energies of God/Goddess are uniting within us and outside of us. The third stage of the feminine is the stage of partnership, a stage of inner God/Goddess Harmony, within and without. It is also a stage where we consciously embrace and celebrate our born gender identity knowing we can shift among all stages interchangeably. The feminine, becomes all aspects of the feminine AND masculine but rests in the love and balance of wholeness of her feminine body and archetype by choice of nature’s script and soul purpose. The masculine rests fully in his role as male after actively embracing his feminine and moving through his stages of masculine maturity and evolution.

The masculine/feminine relationship thrives from the inside returning to the oneness and balance it evolved out of from Source – God/Goddess consciousness. Many of us New Agers who have ridden out our own liberation from gender roles bemoan gender identification and the masculine feminine gender paradigm citing ‘people are people,’ but to know each energy separately is to know it as part of the whole as well. Just as on a Shamanic level the elements make up our world – Earth, Wind, Water, Fire, Ether, so do the masculine and feminine dance make up our universe and these very primary energies are at the core foundation of our creative archetypes. To disassociate from them, we must know them fully balanced both within and without and also be able to re-release them back to the cosmic void which often results in returning to them, acknowledging them, playing in these roles and stages of the masculine and feminine interchangeably and consciously and then releasing them to that cosmic source void of the universe once again.

Today, on mother’s day, I pause to look back at the presence of the feminine in my life. I look at the promises I made to myself in the arch of my feminine journey as woman. Promises about never getting married or having children and today I find myself on my way to marriage and for the first time in my life, hearing the future whispers of family life within me, which had always been previously met with silence or wounded protests. Today I find myself celebrating my role as woman, as matriarch, standing next to a partner who embodies all aspects of the divine masculine and acknowledges his feminine core. Today I stand and acknowledge the ushering in the age of partnership and holding a vibration of wholeness as we move towards healing ourselves, healing our partners, healing our planet.

Our Warriors

2010-04-27T18:14:00.000-07:00

There was a time, an ancient time, when our men came home from battle and were cleansed through the temples of Priestesses before returning home to their families and into society. These sexual priestesses lay with warriors healing, transforming and washing clean the wounds of war and the energetic and psychological traumas from it. I spoke to Marine Colonel today after our yoga session who reminded me, one never stops being a Warrior even after the battle is done. I could see that based on the professionalism he addressed to me through our first email correspondence: his punctual nature, his early confirmation of our appointment, his discipline and training of his body. He was a man who had trained, transformed and disciplined himself and served his country, his community and himself with meticulous attention and self-respect. My meeting with this warrior today had reminded me of this essay I wrote back at Christmas that I never posted. It also reminded me of our alienation of our soldiers, our warriors, our veterans. How are we honoring these men and woman who have served our country and how are we as a society assisting them into reintegration? Please enjoy my previous essay.

Love & Blessings,

ISIS

Serviceman’s Discount in May (includes current servicemen and veterans, policemen, firemen, EMSA and Hazmat – 20% off any drop-in session. Id required. Thank you for your service.

Giving Voice to your Journey: Submit your story of service. One person and their story in May will be selected to receive a free Sensual Shamanic Bodywork Session.

December 28th, 2009

I was standing online at Newark Liberty Airport. It was just after Christmas, Sunday, December 27^th and after the attempted terror attack on America just two days earlier, I had excepted long lines and heightened security measures, but the Goddess was good to me and there were no lines to stand in as I checked into my flight. I removed my shoes and shuffled sock footed up to the plastic tubs and x-ray machine, when I first saw him. A hardened looking black man under a thermal shirt, aged, late forties a bit of grit around the edges of his aura like he had seen things most of us hadn’t. He’ll get screened, I thought, instantly slipping into our countries default racial profiling. Until I saw his hat, “Retired Army – Still Serving.” Right, Scratch that. My thoughts raced back to the Oliver Stone film Platoon, I had seen for the first time on Christmas Eve, just a few days before and began to reopen my inner soul-stirring contemplation about the current embodiment of the Warrior archetype in our culture.

Before boarding my flight, I had attempted to change my seat assignment several times to avoid being in the much loathed ‘center seat’ read – no arm rests and claustrophobia the entire trip. I eventually resigned to take it, after no other seat options presented themselves. On making my way to my begrudged center seat, even more annoyingly near the back of the plane, I saw the army man who had gone through security before me, was in the window seat next to my designated spot. In this moment of recognition, I felt the unmistakable zing from the universe when a moment of synchronicity unfolds before me, preparing my soul to learn, experience, and transform. I stored my bag and hunkered down in my middle seat unsure of what to say to the man next to me of whom I was prepared for divine teachings to pour through. Rather than speak to soon, we had several hours of intimate contact in a plane together ahead of us, I closed my eyes and tuned into my veteran seatmate’s energy field. It had been places, that much was clear. I felt his spirit – even, calm, but very powerful – the presence of a warrior archetype.

“You can use this arm rest if you like,” I heard the voice next to me say. I opened my eyes and saw a gentle glow coming from the eyes of a man who had served our country, not only a warrior, but also a gentleman. “Thanks” I said, “if you’re not careful I may use your shoulder as a pillow too.” He laughed and I detected the hint of an island dialect in his voice. “You’re in the army?” I asked. “Retired, for a few years now, I train recruits” he said. “How long did you serve?” “Over twenty years, I enlisted in my thirties after I moved here from Aruba.” Older than I thought. “I just watched the film Platoon.”

“Great movie,” he said. “Probably the most real depiction of what it’s like inside our world.”

Over the next few hours of flying, I detained this former sergeant from getting any shut-eye, quzzing him from my civilian groupie stand-point on the Warrior archetype, ethics of combat, idolization and ostracization of warriors, and the Hollywood-ization of war and afterwards began to draw a more defined picture of the Warrior archetype.

In the film Platoon set in the Viet-Cong, young and seasoned soldiers most soul-crushing combat occurs not battling against the Viet-Cong Guerrillas and North Vietnamese, but fighting within their own platoon and among their own friends, teachers and fellow soldiers. Charlie Sheen’s character Chris Taylor, speaks in the end of the film of his war initiations the shadow and light aspects of the warrior archetype split between two men and then merged into one, as Taylor finally departs from Vietnam, becoming a son born of these two fathers.

The Warrior is a complex archetype both idolized and dehumanized. The seasoned warrior knows death intimately, has merged with it, become one with it, and with acts that most of us will never experience nor even conceive in our lifetimes. Much like Arujna in the Bhavad Gita, the archer stuck in the limbo of soul splitting conflict when his dharma leads him into battle against his kinsmen, cousins, teachers and Beloved friends, surrendering to the dharma of the Warrior can summon an almost dehumanizing grace to a higher order void of an imposed inner moral compass.

In most great war epics, Platoon, being no exception, men move through physical, psychological, emotional and spiritual initiations to embody the warrior archetype, some initiations taking men into expanded awareness and a deep state of empathy and compassion for humanity and some moving men towards the shadow side of the Warrior archetype into a state of barbarianism. In the journey of Warrior Initiations and those that hold the Warrior Code of energy in their DNA, we can see how the Warrior Archetype power can be yielded grounded in spiritual laws and highest order or how it consume men who misuse and lust after ‘power-over’ verses power-within.

The young warrior spirit protects; an activist fighting for a cause, usually fed on transformative anger and the life force of testosterone with the mission that his life force will save and protect from an anchor of loyalty and devotion. The young warrior assumes he is working for the greater good and the loyalty and devotion of his spirit from his inner calling has led him to battle. The seasoned warrior spirit, or sage warrior surrenders to the battle because it is his dharma. He has been initiated into the ways of war and knows himself capable of any act, but the warrior sage uses his act with discernment rather than the ‘good moral compass’ of the young warrior. Like General Elias, he practices peacekeeping and uses combat with discernment but can also kick-ass when called upon.

The young or green warrior spirit is the one who thinks he can never perform a certain act, having separated himself from those he battles moving him out of the oneness of war, the oneness of being capable of any act. At this point the warrior is not in full service to the spirit of the warrior because he is still fighting the inner war. The sage warrior has conquered the inner war, read Yoda in Star Wars, where the calm of a oneness with death has settled into the body knowing intimately the dance of destruction and rebirth. With that removal the natural order of the warrior has been destroyed.

“I’ve held back a lot of tears but have learned ‘never say never’” the retired veteran said solemnly on our flight. I felt the presence of the sage warrior in his energy field, the calm strength I had tuned into earlier. Until we know ourselves capable of any act beyond right and wrong, can we truly own compassion and the grace of the Warrior as upheld by the Warrior’s Code.

“I love the military” he told me which from a civilian stand point I take as startling admission. “I walk with pride and it has carried over into how I am as a human being. Many young recruits who go through never apply their training to daily life. It has taught me so much, punctuality, respect, living by the Golden Rule – treating others how you want to be treated. But being a soldier I will never back down when summoned to fight. I am a soldier. I will always fight.” There was such truth in his words. This was his dharma. “I have to live by a military base now, even though I’m retired. It’s where I feel the most at home. It’s my life.” If one is born with the dharma of a warrior, one will always find a war and will always serve the cause as part of one’s universal duty. The warrior spirit has surrendered fully to its role for the sake of a higher order, part of the spirit is peace-keeping and order and part of the spirit is combat and transformation through destruction.

The army veteran I sat next to on my flight took his hat off for me to examine more closely. Battle Ready – Still Serving, was embroidered on the side of it. “That’s the nickname I had in Basic Training. It’s been with me ever since.”

What initations (life experiences) in your life have made you a warrior? What power are you serving and fighting for? What is your warrior’s code of ethics? Where are you seduced by power in your life and where are you serving power for the highest order? When do you back down from fighting from a place of weakness verses a place of strength?

Exercises to strengthen the inner warrior: Warrior Yoga Poses, Martial Arts, Kapalabhati Pranayama and Breath of Fire.

Dr. Shannon French, a professor of the US Naval Academy has written an amazing essay on the Warrior’s Code. Follow the link below: http://www.usafa.edu/isme/JSCOPE02/French02.html

Iceland Turns Frigid ~ When did pro-feminism become anti-sex?

2010-03-30T12:32:00.000-07:00

I read an article this morning by Julie Bindel from the UK’s Guaridian reporting that Iceland has passed a law that will result in all of the strip clubs in their country being shut down citing that no business be allowed to profit off the nudity of its employees. In my early college feminists days, I would have waved my high toting feminist flag while wearing my hair back and up in what my boyfriend of the time referred to as my angry scarf. I would have pounded the pavement with my other angry feminists sisters and fellow women’s studies majors in hi-laced combat boots or Earth mama Birkenstocks celebrating this moment as a movement on behalf of the rights of women. But this morning, eight years later, I cringed. The article and law reeked of outdated second wave feminism ideology suppressing an equally powerful uprising force, women’s sexual freedom and empowerment in all its shapes and forms. I also cringe at this article today, knowing that the more liberated, whole and healed I become as a woman, the more I celebrate my sexuality, nudity and the exchange of energy for my work which includes at times both nudity and sexuality, for money.

I make my profession, fulfill my dharma and live out my soul’s purpose on this Earth through unfolding both men and women to the beauty of their bodies, their sexuality, their wholeness. I am one of those people who Iceland’s feminist prime-minister Johanna Sigurdardottir’s ban would have affected in an anti-feminist AND anti-sex way. Today I reflect for a moment on how grateful I am to live in the country where I live, how grateful I am that women are in positions of power and that feminists have paved the way for me like Johanna Sigurdardottir to be the empowered woman I am today. I also stop to ask questions such as “Is it so hard to fathom that a woman might, Goddess forbid, be empowered by her sexuality enough to want to strip?” Is it so preposterous to think that sexual surrogates might actually be called to do what they do because it’s healing for both them and their clients?

To this, I address the Sex Industry Entry Point for Women:

There are three avenues a woman enters the sex industry, by force, by circumstance and by choice and ultimately it would be useful to have laws and systems taken into account for all of these entry points into the industry. The trafficking and exploitation of women and children in the sex industry is a rape of our planet and our humanity and effective laws are absolutely necessary to support healing and transforming both the women who have been exploited and the men who are doing the exploiting. But what does a whole healed woman look like? Could she look like a stripper? At this point Johanna Sigurdardottir’s administration has not taken into account women’s’ entry point into the sex industry where intention and empowered choice become a catalyst for healing and transformation.

I propose to Iceland’s administration a quite miraculous model Eve Ensler has moved forth onto the planet – using her Award Winning women positive and sex positive play The Vagina Monologues to raise awareness and benefit causes that promote ending violence against women. Couldn’t this massive, lucrative, mostly male run and female employed industry be better served if a portion of the proceeds went in fact to rehabilitate persons who had experienced their time in the sex industry through circumstance or force rather than by pro-active conscious choice and also create more structured laws in place to unionize dancers rights?

In responses to the new law recently passed where no business can profit off the nudity of its employees, Miriam of feministing.com responds: “A feminist victory, in my opinion, would be a highly regulated industry that made sure dancer's rights were protected. One where workers were paid good wages, were able to unionize, had full benefits, were able to set boundaries with customers and have those boundaries protected. One that ensured that these immigrant women were not being brought to Iceland against their will.”

I think we all know from past experience that beyond stripping, the oldest profession will always be that, the oldest profession and will eventually push these communities underground which endanger most of all the women workers and not the men who have been doing the exploiting. By alienating our men from having the opportunity to rise up and support women and their sexual empowerment, we have created an even deeper and oppressive shadow by creating separation and isolation rather than mutually beneficial activism.

I personally extend an invitation to Johanna Sigurdardottir and Kolbrún Halldórsdóttir who first proposed this ban, to attend any Naked Yoga class, Clothing Optional Holy Body Interfaith Worship Services, or Sensual Shaman Session free of charge to witness what whole, healed sexual people look like in a consciously nude, celebratory and symbiotic environment. Johanna and Kolbrún, I await your response.

Guardian UK writer Julie Bindel guardian.co.uk writes:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/2010/mar/25/iceland-most-feminist-country

Miriam of Feministing.org

http://www.feministing.com/archives/020546.html

Sexually Transmitted Spirits

2010-03-05T12:04:00.001-08:00

This is an amazing article about Sexually Transmitted Spirits. I encouraged everyone to read about it and if any of this resonates with you, to seek out a soul retrieval and shamanic cleansing ceremony. I have encountered a handful of clients in my practice who have greatly benefitted from soul clearings from loose spirits or exorcisms. Exorcism is a loaded word and I, like many of us, can't help but flash back to the 1973 Linda Blaire movie. I'm afraid most exorcisms are not so dramatic as Hollywood would have us believe they are and seldom occur with a 'bad, evil or demonic' spirits but mostly just a lost spirit who needs a host because it cannot find its way home. That said, spiritual possession can be incredibly disorienting and confusing for the individual and may involve energy draining, identity confusion and acting out of a place that seems uncharacteristic of normal behavior.

In my own life, I had a similar experience this past year where an egg from my egg donation procedure in 2004 was fertilized in another woman's body in 2009 and the spirit of the baby tried to incarnate in my body because I shared its biological blueprint. What did that mean exactly? Phantom pregnancy. My body began to mirror the systems of a pregnant woman and I began making decisions from a place in my being including the attached spirit. My symptoms began with acting over motherly and taking precautions not to engage in vigorous or stressful activity. I also began actively seeking out pregnant women to converse with and began to distance myself from my friends who did not have children or families and began seeking out new groups of friends who did. Thanks to the support of a few close healing friends, I was able to successfully release any contracts I had with this being and guide its spirit to its birth mother who was creating a home for it on Earth. Egg donation is a dicey business. Still exploratory at best and lets just say in 2004 when I signed up to donate some of my eggs to help me pay for yoga school, the last thing I was concerned with was years later being possessed by a spirit baby.

Spirit possession doesn't always happen from a procreative place, but because so much power and energy is held in fertility and the act of sexuality that it is one of the easiest times to transmit spirit possession from one person to another. High ecstasy, acts of violence, especially sexual violence can transfer spirits from one being to another or a person can open up to a loose spirit because it may seem to be an ideal host in the moment. Many victims of rape, sexual abuse and assault suffer from spirit possession because the body's energy system becomes compromised. There are helpful words of wisdom in this article.

I hope you find it useful and for those of you who this strongly resonates with, please seek out assistance from a shamanic practitioner.

In Love & Light,

ISIS

http://www.shamanictantra.com/media/Files/pdf/DoortoSoul.pdf

Sensual Shamanic Yoga

2010-02-26T08:53:00.001-08:00

Sensual Shamanic Yoga -

(image by Susan Seddon Boulet)

It was an intimate gathering this past Monday evening, the final class in Sensual Shamanic Yoga. Five of us gathered and held space for ourselves and the practice. I had been getting the hit for a week now to move deeper into animal spirit energy with the class. We began our class by heightening our five senses and moving deeper into scent, taste, skin sensation, sight without eyes and acute awareness to the subtle frequencies of sound.

We then journeyed to receive the animal that was most useful to merge with during the first part of class. Mother Spider appeared to me. We bowed and acknowledged each other and then merged into each other making the connection, linking our nervous systems. My legs spun inwards and energy surged up through my eight limbs and deep into the spindles of my belly. My hands were delicate but strong and four additional etheric legs spun out of my body giving me supreme balance held up by an octahedron of energy and many eyes. The animal body is confident and aware of the totality of her presence at all times. She never ceases to exist in any part of herself. There is never a removed sense of consciousness from any part of the body, she and the body have become one. Nature demands this unwavering presence for survival – to merge fully with the body, to align the body / spirit relationship with nature because the elements and the food chain demand existing in a constant state of oneness. The animal kingdom exists in constant meditation, fully in every present moment and hyper-aware of everything around it. It does not forget how to find food or build nests or migrate to warmer climates. It remembers; it opens to its truest state of being.

Shamanic Yoga Journey:

Getting in touch with the animal body ~

Tools, eye coverings, yoga mat, blanket

Lie down on your yoga mat in an area of your home you consider sacred and that allows for movement. Feel your body against the Earth. Begin to deepen your breath and settle into the body. Once you have settled begin to visualize yourself in place you feel to be sacred. This could be the room your are currently in, a place from your childhood, a place in nature or a magical place you’ve just created. Feel yourself in this new surrounding. Once you feel in a calm space in your new sacred surrounding, put out a call to your animal spirit, holding the intention that the animal spirit most appropriate for this embodiment journey will appear to you. Be open to receive whatever animal spirit shows up without judgment. Acknowledge each other with a bow and ask permission to merge with your animal spirit. When permission is granted feel yourself inside its body, its legs, its eyes, its heartbeat, its energy. Once the connection has been made, slowly begin to rise up off your reclining positioning on your yoga mat and move to your hands and knees maintaining the connection with you animal spirit. Begin to allow the freedom of movement and the merging of your energy inside the animal blueprint of energy to influence how you move.

If you have a yoga practice try two rounds of Sun Salutes in the energy of this animal to give your movement structure and be open to how the animal’s energy influences your yoga routine. After the Sun Salutes return to a gentle movement meditation on your mat in your animal body. Allow any new or intuited yoga poses of this animal spirit to rise up form within you and express themselves through movement and sound on your mat. When that feels complete, come to a resting pose and release the connection with your animal spirit. Ask your animal spirit if it has anymore information that is useful to share with you at this time. Acknowledge your animal spirit with a bow or other gesture of gratitude and journey back fully to your human body. Move through two rounds of Sun Salutes on your mat intending your human body and human energy. Close your practice with Savasana or seated meditation.

Earth My Body

2010-02-18T12:36:00.000-08:00

Earth My Body is a sensual movement meditation on the physical body as a microcosom to the Earth Body Macrocosom. The low phonations pitches in the music were channelled when directly connecting to the Earth Bodies internal moans. May we continue to expand our understanding and deepen our awareness and relationship with our holy bodies and Her holy body.

Click HERE

Earth My Body ~ A Sensual Movement Meditation

Love & Blessings,

ISIS

The Keening

2010-02-07T18:38:00.000-08:00

The Keening is a movement meditation on Grief; a journey from heartbreak to healing. It is only when we can fully sit in our grief, to embody and feel it completely that we can then move through it. Without conscious acknowledgement and embodiment, grief lurks in the collective shadow and clings to us mercilessly. A week after the Haiti Earthquake, I was attending a yoga class at the studio in midtown I frequent. I was on my menstrual cycle, usually a woman's most psychic, powerful and empathic time of the month. As such, I had been offering healing meditations to people of Haiti earlier that day. When we sat in the beginning of the yoga class, our hands in prayer pose to join in the sound of Om, my wrists began to experience pain they had never felt. The pain was so severe that tears began to stream down my face as we chanted. I felt the grief of Haiti in my wrists. The heightened empathy of my menstrual cycle plugged me into the collective pain body and global suffering from the Earthquake. A week after the quake, I felt our disjointed movement of aid, hands giving and hands unable to receive, the disjointed flow of energy as mothers reached for children, children for parents, long distance relatives for missing family. The flow of life form one hand, not reaching the other. A flood of grief moved through my body. I felt the desperation of the Haitian people, the grief of those trying to support a community in chaos and the grief of the Haitian people not being able to receive aid due to the unstable environment. I offer this short film as a meditation. To move through the places in the physical body where grief is being held and to move through the collective pain body where our ancient and collective grief is held. May we all experience universal healing.

The Keening

Wisdom from a Weather Witch

2010-01-31T15:41:00.001-08:00

“A little bit of salt just makes ice mad” my father said in the blizzard conditions of Tulsa over the Christmas holiday when he and my mother had been housebound for almost a week due to poor weather conditions and a city with not enough snow ploughs. My father is a weather witch, or more conventionally he runs an HVAC business but I've seen him in our backyard when I was young tracking electrical lines with dowsing rods and lets just say, being part Cherokee, his tribal roots and daily meditation practice often spurred moments of spiritual insight to move through him in the guise of weather metaphors.

So why were these same words echoing through my head this week during an Iyengar yoga class where I was strapped into Supta Virasana. This was the third excruciating Supta Virasana in three days. Why? Because I only do this a little bit. In fact, on general principle I tended towards ignoring the pose completely until my Iyengar yoga teacher decided he’d begin every class for a week with this pose. This was the third class of Supta Virasana in three days and my body was PISSED!

“A little bit of salt just makes ice mad,” my father’s voice echoed in my head again and I almost snorted trying to hold in my laughter. I saw clearly my child-like behavior around not wanting to eat my yogic brussell sprouts because they tasted bad. If I continued to just do this pose a little, it would always piss me off because I wasn’t getting to the core issue of what was underlying all this pain and anger in my knees. I would continue to avoid the pose all together like being permanently home-bound in an ice storm or I would do it half-hearted and just get pissed and slip on the ice anyway. This week my Iyengar teacher encouraged us to do this pose everyday with the support of sitting on a phone book until our sit bones could come to the floor. “It takes dedication to the practice,” he said. “Each day you do this pose, take a page out of the phone book.” Today I got my phone book. Thanks Dad.

Meditation:

What do you ignore routinely because it’s painful or uncomfortable even though it’s useful?

Imbolc Passion & Sensuous Magic

2010-01-28T13:18:00.000-08:00

Beloved Friends,

I just returned from a breath-taking trip to Vermont to visit with my dearest friend and first spiritual teacher, a Celtic Witch who resides in a small cape house surrounded by snow-capped mountains. During my days with her, I kept having a very strange feeling over-take my body. I was frequently in an altered state and my level of arousal was animal-like. All day I would feel a heat and tingling in my sacrum, womb-center and along the back of my neck, like being in a constant state of heightened peace-inducing passion. It wasn't until we moved into ritual together that I realized that it was the quickening I was feeling - the orgasmic life-force energy of the Earth was beginning to build as nature began to contemplate Spring. In the waves of Winters Magic she and I dove into the energies of the season and created a beautiful Imbolc ritual in the hayloft of her barn surround by melting snow and a deep silence. The magic of connecting with the season was instantaneous and I was reminded how infinite our true nature is when we simply open to it.

In the wheel of the year, this time is known as Imbolc. Imbolc is the mid point between the Winter Solstice and the Spring Equinox. The days are slowly growing longer and there is a quickening and magic present in the air. Brigit, the Celtic Goddess sacred to this holy time, is a young bride, maiden and keeper of the holy flame and sacred well who encourages us to cast off the fallen past year and look to the quickening and growing warmth within our own belly and sex center as the light continues her return.

Holy wells and sacred flames, the sacred symbols to Brigit are symbols of passion, sensuality and rebirth. Set aside a special time to connect with the energies of Imbolc and reflect on - What part of yourself is rebirthing? What is the fire in your belly igniting? If you surrendered fearlessly to your passion where would it lead you?

Wishing you Imbolc Blessings!
ISIS Phoenix

Balancing Dualities: Iyengar Erotica

2009-12-06T19:08:00.000-08:00

My body and my spiritual temperament have always been watery, mutable, sensual, earthy. I am a flow Goddess with water as my medicine. I wash away sharp edges and lubricate parched places in the soul. The Vinyasa Yoga practice, from the very beginning, came to me quickly and easily. My Piscean, naturally flexible, Kapha energy flowed in its element through the different asanas with ease and grace. Moving like a dolphin, cutting the water, leaping from one dive into another, my body surged through the yoga practice, swimming, twisting, balancing, bending, ebbing and flowing, a natural match. For months and then years, I practiced this practice, my body’s practice, until one day I was on my mat and realized I wasn’t feeling anything. Warrior poses felt no different than pigeon pose, Scorpion no different than Handstand. With all of this watery energy, I had lost the container of my body. My practice had no bones, no container, no foundation, it was just water sloshing about. This watery energy was also washing over into my orgasmic life affecting the overall quality of prana in my body. It was showing up in my orgasms, or lack there-of - unattainable, watered-down, wishy-washy. Getting into the poses didn’t mean anything to me, they were simply shapes my body was copying from memory or a visual reference. I felt nothing from the inside of the pose. I was, quite literally, flopping around in my practice like a fish. Water energy had overtaken my being and I was somehow lost in the element searching for some sort of sensation in my body and finding none.

Frustrated, I spent some time off the mat, began lifting weights, trying to fire up my bogged down energy. And then one day, as fate would have it, on a whim, I stumbled into a yoga studio in midtown and signed up for an Iyengar class. I’d had my beef with Iyengar in the past - pretentious, too masculine, drab practice. I reluctantly rolled out my mat, looking at the stodgy teacher student regalia, this was yoga for nerds class. The teachers were quite asexual with a practicality about the body that speaks more to mathematics than artistry. Like most classes, Iyengar has its own fashion statements and I’m afraid its fallen on hard times, as its probably about as cool as the pocket protector and horn-rimmed glasses of yoga. Students and teachers wear plain crew neck teachers and tight form fitting balloon-leg boxer briefs and I assume at some point in their lives were acquainted with Dungeons and Dragons. Lets just say, the Iyengar outfit will never make the shelf of Lululemon. But all those judgments were soon to be released and a new reality was to take shape in my body that day. The Iyengar practice is thorough, precise, articulate, intelligent, clean. Everything Vinyasa wasn’t. Iyengar teachers move through the body dissecting the anatomy and putting it back together in bite size ways for the body, mind and spirit to integrate. It is a wooden practice, a masculine practice, a disciplined practice that uses intelligence, repetition and discernment. It is also a bondage practice with rope walls, meticulously placed straps, and absurd suspension poses which, coincidently was the exact practice my body needed to rebalance itself. In this fate-guided yoga class that I walked in on, even in the first pose, something shifted in my practice. There was a core energy that became activated in my body. It was Earth and metal and air and fire. Standing in Tadasasna became one of the most orgasmic experiences of my life. I felt the entirety of the inner landscape of my body in a simple opening pose. While my feminine flow Goddess bemoaned this practice from a distance, once she entered in, a rapture unfolded in my body that it had not previously known. The structure and inner architecture of the practice created the container that my flowy, sensuous disposition had been missing. I spontaneously burst into light body orgasms in class, trembling, trying to conceal my ecstatic state. Something about the offerings of these asexual yoga teachers flooded my body with renewed passion and sought after ecstasy. My Yin Flow Goddess in her second wave feminist movement had on a subconscious level rejected the yang, her polarity, as inferior, most likely from the inner state of wounded feminine that all our creative flow Goddesses have suffered from the violence and oppression of the patriarchy. Lucky for me and my flow, we stumbled into just the right practice to balance the inner polarities and dualities of my watery Goddess nature with the architecture and form I had been missing. Dualities heighten our awareness and understanding of the universe both inner and outer. I’ve always been a naturally sensual and orgasmic person. There have also been times where my watery flow and sensual nature have also been thrown out of balance with an over excess of like energy. Here in the Iyengar yoga practice was the balance my body needed. My inner flow Goddess arrived even more powerfully complimented by her counterpart Purusha to Prakrati, masculine to feminine, form to formless, bondage to liberation. In the extremes of our polarities comes balance and liberation.

I began the Iyengar practice about two years ago to compliment my own flow practice and it has been a staple in my life ever since. When I drift away from it, I feel the side-effects not just in my physical body, but also in my creative projects, my relationships, my communication with people, even in my spirit. Things become sloppier, less focused. But when I maintain a balance of my Yin Flow Goddess with the discipline and intelligence of the masculine Iyengar practice, my creativity heightens and my inner Goddess roars forth with even more power and creative orgasmic energy. I have a tremendous amount of gratitude for the discipline and commitment it takes to teach an Iyengar practice, undergoing a minimum two year training and then mentoring for years with senior teachers. It is a true practice of discipline and one that assists me in bringing a greater source of integrity and awareness to my creative and my orgasmic life. And let this be known, I have a crush on everyone of my Iyengar teachers.

Reflections on the Dark Goddess

2009-12-01T19:24:00.000-08:00

Reflections on the Dark Goddess

This past Monday, while teaching the first part in a series of sensual yin yoga classes, the Dark Goddess reared her head and moved through my body and my being. She doesn’t come often, but when she does I brace myself and surrender fully to her fury. A perspective student had been calling incessantly all day from a blocked number, for which I have a no-tolerance, no-answer policy. The same person left me lengthy phone messages and followed up with inappropriate emails. I clued in later that this person had been harassing another practitioner several months ago and was asked to not attend workshops because of their stalkerazzi behavior. After incessant repeat calling from a blocked number, I eventually turned off my phone for the last hour up until the yoga class I was teaching that evening.

At 7:30 pm, as usual, I locked the doors to the temple and nestled in with my students for a sensual yin yoga class in the buff. After creating safe space, moving through a disrobing ceremony and into some basic yin yoga poses there was a ring at the doorbell. There is a VERY clear policy on our website and in our welcome letter that states there is no late entry to class. Ring,ring, knock,knock. I slipped to the back of the room unlocked the door poked my head around and told the man on the other side of the door that class was closed and relocked the door. I opened my mouth to instruct the next sequence when I hear, ring,ring. RINGRINGRINGRINGRINGRINGRING. I drop the class down into child’s pose. Grab my clothes from the front of the room, dress, and go to the back. As I unlocked the door, I feel the hair on the back of my neck stand up and rush move through my body that I can only assume would be similar to the first time a person tries heroine. My animal self moves to the surface of my consciousness and I feel the Dark Goddess awaken from the void of my inner universe and activate in every cell of my body. I fling the door open and I can only equate what happened next to the raw instinct a mother lion feels when protecting her cubs and a predator feels when it slaughters its prey. The verbal and energetic attack I unleashed was beyond morality, right or wrong doing, something simply opened up in me and took over. I embodied the curse of the witch, the primal protection of a mother for her cubs, the feeling a predator gets when it tears that first still living piece of flesh from its supper.

The stalker student who disrupted my entire day was annoying, but when it came to jeopardizing my class and my students journey and their safety, students who are trusting me to hold safe space for them in what is already a vulnerable practice, the Dark Goddess rose.

In our lives, most of us only really ever catch glimpses of Dark Goddess energy. Her power and wrath are often misunderstood and subsequently have been repressed and feared for as long as we could give voice to what she was. A common misunderstanding is that she is cruelty or hate. She cannot survive in either cruelty or hate for those stem from unconsciousness and separation. She is a ferocious kind of love what Buddhists call fierce compassion. She is unpredictable, formidable, wild and unforgiving. She lives like nature, without anything as superficial as morality or common niceties. She is the elements in their fury, taking lives, destroying homes leaving her mark without grace or regret. We cannot begin to understand her, only respect and accept her for what she is. Her power is one so ancient that when she activates in our system, even in a conscious way, we often wish her away with the "I don't normally act like that, I don't know what came over me" syndrome talking away our power and animal instincts. But the destiny of the Dark Goddess is that she will always return. She lives in each of us and we catch only glimpses of her in our lives in moments of ruthless honesty, ferocious compassion, adrenaline infused protection and the summoning of the true revolutionary warrior spirit.

I invite you to ask yourself – How does the Dark Goddess show up in your life? What activates her? Have you surrendered to her fully? Is there fear that echoes in your system when her power is activated? Where is your judgment about this energy and where is the freedom in living in the energy consciously?

Jai Ganesha: The Power of Mantra

2009-11-30T13:43:00.000-08:00

The Power of Mantra: Jai Ganesha!

Like many this Thanksgiving, I found myself making the annual pilgrimage to visit my biological family. My second day home, I took my father to lunch after he received a transfusion from a new medical procedure he was participating in to assist with his degenerative rheumatoid arthritis. This new treatment involved infusing rat cells into his body so his immune system attacked the rat cells instead of his joints. This launched us into a conversation about animal totem medicine and the rat as a miraculous survivor-based animal and also a sacred vehicle of transport to Lord Ganesha the elephant headed deity.

Later that afternoon, my father and I worked together to assemble some advertising for his HVAC business that was recently hurting due to the temperate weather and the economy. As we were working on the advertisements, my father suddenly gasped and stood straight up and then crumpled over bracing himself on the wall. His leg had cramped up and a shooting pain had overtaken the entire left side of his body, a possible complication from the infusion. Shaking, he braced himself against a wall. I took his hand and began immediately chanting a Ganesh Mantra ‘Om Gum Ganapatayei Namaha.’ This is a mantra that my spirit defaults to in crisis situations. Chanting over and over aloud, holding my father’s hand, I walked him to his bed and chanted over him moving energy. I slowly repeated the chant inviting my father to repeat it too. After about twenty minutes of chanting, the pain released from his body and the ferocious energy that had previously crippled him moved through and was dissipated. I wrote that mantra down for him and he carried the mantra in his shirt pocket that evening while he taught an HVAC class at the trade school where he works part-time. Anytime pain crept up on him, he chanted the mantra and it subsided. Later that evening, a fellow teacher also approached him about hiring him for a large HVAC job that as a result would support his business that was really feeling the pinch form the economy. My father came home amazed and asked me more questions about Ganesh and I wrote down another mantra for him to try “Om Sri Ganeshaya Namaha”

Ganesh has recently become somewhat of a pop-icon in the yoga and new-age movement of the West, and why not? He is often depicted as red with a large, round belly, four arms and an unmistakable elephant head. He’s most commonly hailed as the remover of obstacles and Lord of Success. Who wouldn’t want a red-headed elephant God with a jolly belly removing their obstacles and helping them succeed? A few things about Ganesh: He resides in the root chakra, which is our spiritual center of survival, foundation, tribe, family, basic needs, which is why its useful to chant his mantra for just about anything from a travel blessings, to health, to abundance, to resolving conflict. When I travel, I chant to Ganesh. When the plane takes off and lands safely, Ganesh is my man. When I sprain my ankle, I chant to Ganesh for a speedy recovery. When I began a project, Ganesh’s name is on my lips. I carry totems to him in my house including at the front door, on every altar and even a mini alter in the bathroom, for which I’ve been repeatedly reprimanded by many Hindu students of mine who have visited my temple space. Worried that I may be offending Ganesh with this represenation of him, I chanted and meditated on the placement of this small altar. When I checked in with Ganesh about this I downloaded: "Those earnest and sincere in their worship will always be blessed." He also said that this particular statue and representation very much wanted to be in the bathroom and he felt honored in the way he was being presented in there celebrating the holy body and sensual spirit.

Jai Gnaesha! Jai Ganesha!

A Month of Gratitude

2009-11-30T09:35:00.001-08:00

A Month of Gratitude:
On Halloween night, I was walking past a Goddess topped fountain on 5th Ave and 58th St. by Central Park South when I decided to throw a few coins in and make a wish. One of my wishes was that I would always be conscious of and in a state of gratitude for the abundance in my life. This Tuesday, I was in midtown for a lunch and a yoga class before heading to the bank to deposit my 'material abundance' to pay my bills. Finishing my lunch, I left to head to the bank, but something told me to stop in a uesd bookstore right next to where I had lunch. As I walked in, there was a deck of Guardian Angel affirmation cards that for some reason I knew I had to purchase. I picked them up and walked over to the register, reached in my bag to pull out my wallet and realized it was not there. I didn't immediately go into panic as I had another bag to look into where I could have easily put it. Not in there either. My face went flush and hot as I immediatley went into a feeling of vertigo. Disorientation swept over me. How did this happen? What was in there? What credit cards to be cancelled? I excused myself from paying for the angel cards and went back next door to the Cafe. 'My wallet is long gone by now' I thought. All that work. I scanned the crowd at the Asian Bakery where I had just eaten. It was overwhelmingly busy. All was lost. I meekly walked up to one of the eight cahiers running different registers at lunch hour rush. 'Did someone turn in a wallet?' I asked. She looked at me blankely. 'Yeah, right,'I thought, 'in New York City?' 'Oh yes! What color?' she said. In disbelief I stared at her. 'Red, with colored circles,' I said. 'One moment.' She left the counter and went into the back. When she returned, she was holding a wallet. It was mine. I watched her bring it to me. There was no way the huge stack of cash I had was still in there. She placed it in my hands. 'This yours?' she smiled. 'Yes' I said barely audible. My heart beating deep in my chest. I unsnapped the top. Every green bill stacked neaty in its place to pay my November bills was still intact. I sputtered for a moment, tearing. 'Thanks,' I said quietly and walked out. Disoriented I walked next door, bought the angel cards, went to the bank and then came home. A myriad of scenarios raced through my mind that afternoon. When I returned home, I went immediately to meditate and tap into Source Wisdom. When asking about what the universe was trying to teach me about this experience, I heard in reply 'Isis, this is what you asked for. To be conscious of and in a state of gratitude for the abundance in your life.' I jolted out of my meditaiton with a hearty laugh.

Thank you, Thank you for these teachings, this gratitude and this abundance.

Let us celebrate with Gratitude this Month:
What are you grateful for, materially and spiritually? Are you grateful for your body? For all it does for you everyday? How do you express gratitude towards your body? Through self-pleasuring, through yoga, through consicous eating, through education through spiritual nourishment? What reltionships are you grateful for and how are you expressing your gratitude in them? When prayers are answered or intentions manifest, do you openly express thanks? I invite you to take a moment each morning before you begin your day to contemplate gratitude.

In Love and Gratitude for you!
ISIS Phoenix

A Love Letter to Naked Yoga & it's Community

2009-10-27T22:45:00.000-07:00

I’ve been perusing my computer today, moving through old photo shoots of when I first began Naked Yoga and dared to bare my asana on high-rise buildings, on Sandy-Hook Beach, on a third story roof in the meat-packing district, all in the name of freedom, celebration and love. As I sifted through over three years of old photos, I was shocked at my very visceral response to them. Some, quite literally took my breath away. I remember at one time, being afraid to look at the photos of me doing yoga naked, hiding them deep in the belly of the hard drive on my computer. But today, something made me look and when I did, I saw such unmistakable beauty present in this practice that I had been previously unavailable to fully witness.

Naked yoga has been one of the most beautiful and self-sustaining practices of my life. As a woman holding space for this practice, naked yoga, more than anything else, has assisted me in moving through the body-image bullshit that has accumulated throughout my life. This practice drops me into one-ness with my body, releasing the bully of the mind the and the judgment of the ego. The naked yoga practice has been a constant in my life for the past three and a half years, a flowering perennial that continues to bloom, sustain and resurrect itself each year. Of course when I brought my movement to NYC, I was sure I was the first to trail blaze this movement. But sadly, I’m reminded there is no original work, there were already a few naked yoga circles going in NYC. One was a men’s group Hot Nude Yoga in Chelsea caterings to primarily gay and bisexual men, another was in Brooklyn, male run and male attended but allowed women and then there was a group already led by a woman Britt McMurray who had taken over naked yoga classes from a woman named Wendy Tremaine. I collaborated with Britt for a short time until she left the practice entirely and shortly after that I birthed Phoenix Temple to hold ongoing classes for Naked Yoga.

Not only has this practice helped heal my own shame I’ve felt over my body, but it’s made me more at ease in the world. I find there are so many more layers I have to work through when I attend a clothed yoga class – not just layers of clothing but also of karma keeping me both separate from the experience, the group and the yoga.

This practice has been so dear to me and the press has been forth coming and also, surprisingly filled with grace. I am amazed at how this practice transforms lives. Over the past three and a half years, there has been a shocking lack of ill-intentioned people showing up in my Temple Space and to the practice. Most are earnest, nervous, with a desire and longing to continue to unravel their own societal shame conditioning, reaching for a moment of stillness and freedom in the galloping pace of New York City. Each time, I feel myself go into contraction around a pose in class; ‘ oh my god, my ass is in the air, and I think I have a hemorrhoid from this cleanse I’ve been doing’ I Breathe, Release and Surrenders. Ahhh. This practice has been my lifeblood. It is always expanding, changing, growing and I love it.

Gratitude and love to the community who has shown up to this practice, from those who have made up the core of our community, to those teaching it in other communities and those who have previously taught and have passed on the torch to the next generation, to the women who dare to come to class or dare to think about coming to class, to those who simply practice in their living rooms and to those who google naked yoga wanting to see naked chicks in exotic poses and who find this and are transformed, Thank you. Thank you for daring, for loving, for being.

ISIS Phoenix – Founder Naked Yoga NYC

www.nakedyoganyc.com

A Note on the Autumn Equinox

2009-09-22T07:24:00.000-07:00

Balancing of the Fall Equinox

The fall Equinox has arrived as we bid the last day of summer farewell. The lunar and solar energies are in the rare position of perfect balance where day and night, masculine and feminine, stand in equillibrium to one and other. Passing through Central Park yesterday, I noticed the first visual changes in nature's transformation as clumps of yellow leaves appreaed on a handful of trees. In Earth-based traditions, this was a time of second Harvest, moving to the fields for a second time to prepare ourselves for a journey into a colder season and transition into growing darkness.

It hearlds Persepohone's return to the under world, a time of introspection where our planet begins to move into dominance of darkness. This myth often characterizes Persephone as a helpless vrgin maiden held against her will by a dark God Hades as her mother pines for her return on Earth, letting the vast abundance of the earth go to seed while she searches and mourns for her abducted daughter. Before traditional Greek myth was reinterpreted with this victim consciousness, another perception on this transition was Persephone descending at will to persure her courtship and raputre in the dance of darkness, finding enlightenment and luminosity in a conscious descent into the under wrold where balance can occur within all things. Today we hover in a point of balance, where night and dark are at equillibrium, and our inner state, reflected by our outer is preparing for descent into the mystery teachings of the divine feminine. At this time of second Harvest, we are in essence, packing our bags, gathering our supplies for the descent. What resources do we need to gather for this journey into the underworld and dark half of the year? Where do our inner worlds and outer worlds require balancing in this moment in time? Who is awaiting us in this long descent? What part of ourselves are we preparing to cultivate in the dark belly of the Earth?

The mysteries are continuing to unfold as we move through a global healing of our sacred sexual energies on the planet. Pleasure, love, wholeness are becoming more accessible to us, and we must equally look at our own darkness in this dance of pleasure, rapture and love.

I look forward to sharing and celebrating in this Autumnal moment of balance with you!

Love & Blessings,
ISIS - Centerholder of Phoenix Temple

A Shaman's Perception on Earth's Essential Oils

2009-09-02T14:11:00.000-07:00

Essential oils are the immune system and life force energy of the plant. The aromatic structure triggers something deep within the ancient brain returning us to a state of healing and Earth connection on a cellular level. While there are many compounds in herbs and their natural occurring essential oils that heal, it is the aromatic essence of the plant that can deliver us to a level of healing on an emotional, spiritual and physical level.

Ancient medicine stories, speak of an Earth that provides a remedy for every ailment within Herself, much like natural function of the human body, able to protect itself from numerous illnesses and diseases throughout its lifetime. Our body is a mirror of the Earth body. The immune systems of the plant bodies on Earth, mirror the immune systems of the human body that exist on her, making human immune systems and plant immune systems quite compatible with each other. It’s nature’s way of protecting her children – within each sickness lies the cure. In tribal cultures, shamans and medicine women spoke and meditated with the Earth and its plant lives, asking for guidance around Her medicine. The plants responded and today grow countless plant remedies for medicine and healing.

Medicinal plants have been used for centuries for healing purposes, perhaps longer than even we know. There are accounts of use of herbal remedies and plant medicine as far back as Neolithic and Paleolithic times thru Egypt, Rome, Greece, a wisdom that was so readily available to us but which most of humanity has briefly forgotten due to our unconscious disconnection with the planet.

During many fear driven times on our Earth, those that could commune with Nature and receive plant wisdom were subjects of persecution - which led to punishment ranging from intuitive intolerance to punishment by death which was much seen during the time of witch trials. Our intuitive abilities naturally shut down during these times, going into disconnect from Earth wisdom and our natural connection to her healing energy and information. We are steadily recovering. In fact, during times of great oppression which is also the most likely time for pandemics to surface, natural and holistic medicine traditions have always spiraled back around. The wisdom may go to sleep for short periods of time, but is always reawakened when we are ready to receive it.

The link below is a beautiful audio recording of David Crowe's take on the Dharma or role of healing with essential oils. Welcome back this healing wisdom with me.

Free Audio Download: Dharma of Essential Oils and The Flowering of Spiritual Culture