It is both infinitely hard and so simple to step one day into the broken parts of ourselves and decide to love, honor and heal them.

If you have a story to tell and the silence has stretched so long… perhaps give yourself a safe space – and share the story with yourself.

That’s how it began for me.

Sending my love and gratitude,
Jaime

I think you might be here in San Diego … you might enjoy one of the Friday night salons at shaktirising.org

Namaste,

Steve

Our silence has chains stronger than any prison. I’m glad to see us all giving voice.

Part 1: W.O.M.B. Grandmother’s Gathering

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xst4uL9wY7s

Part 2: W.O.M.B. Grandmother’s Gathering

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9xgytVNqU8U

very inspiring!
<3 Isabell

Thank you for this. (I found it linked from Devon Whites Linkedin page.)

Media! Well first kill your television. ha hah!!

I teach yoga, am a birth partner and a leadership teacher to jr.high girls. In all of these arenas I come into contact with the pain that we hold as women.

Our pain is as old as our DNA can remember; witch burning our healer-sisters, stoning our foremother geniuses.

The movie Agora (http://movies.nytimes.com/2010/05/28/movies/28agora.html) is a very graphic example of this in which Hypatia, a woman philosopher in 4th c. Egypt, comes face to face with the intolerance of a woman as genius. I met a woman in the movie theater bathroom afterwards whos parents had named her Hypatia, which brought home that we are the direct descendants of this pain.

It is not so long ago in this country where a womans life-path was to serve only, the 1970s being the beginning of the feminist movement (when I was born.) We are still very much at the forefront of this relatively new movement.

And in other countries right now stoning women still occurs.

So yes, we have pain, collective, ancient, personal.

What you and so many others are doing is crucial to our healing!! The dialogue is crucial!

What I do with my students, my mothers giving birth, is ask that we are gentle with ourselves. That we love ourselves as we go into the pain to feel it, and breathe into it, release it. Thich Nhat Hanh’s book True Love goes into this process in detail, http://www.shambhala.com/html/catalog/items/isbn/978-1-59030-404-4.cfm .

Ive even heard that to go into a yoga pose without imagining ourselves in it first, and then placing ourselves in that imagined pose, is a violence to ourselves. I use this technique for women who find that yoga makes them cry (brings up their “pain body” as Ekhardt Tolle calls it.) I call it intention then action yoga. : )

Im holding in my heart a world where my jr. high girls feel safe to be their true selves. Who know who they are are are celebrated for loving themselves and walking their true path.

I would love to connect with you more with the work you do!

Thank you sister,
isabell fearnsby
(mother, artist, art and leadership teacher, yoga teacher, birth partner)

Take care
Ariel