Perhaps this was the biggest realisation. Seeing how a practice I had adored and relied on for years, who had been my closest friend for so long, now seemed more like that not-so-pleasant neighbour that keeps bothering you, and that you have to deal with, just to get your sense of peace and quiet to enjoy your life.
I’m not having it, I thought. I refuse to let something that’s been so wonderful for years, so wonderful in fact, that I made it not just part of my morning routine, it was (is) my passion, my lifestyle, my career. And so I thought, «now is a very bad time for me to realise that this is not what I want to be doing with my life.
And I guess this is where I started digging a little deeper. Looking a little further. Asking myself what is really going on here?
Well, it us true what they say; Ask and you will receive.
Not long after I started my quest to fall recklessly in love with yoga again, I stumbled upon a book that has been nothing less than life-changing for me. If you're a yogini, a female yoga teacher, if you’re a woman, or if you’re simply practicing and/or teaching yoga with/to women, I can highly recommend this book. It is a game-changer.
A few chapters into Yoni Shakti, I thought to myself that «no wonder I haven’t felt good about my practice for a while. I am, and have been for a long time, practicing the wrong kind of yoga». I have been committed to a promise I made to myself a few years ago; that I will always seek out, learn and be open to become a softer, caring and loving person; as a daughter, a friend, as a sister and a lover. And of course in my relationship to myself. But then I began to realize, that over the years, I have also been practicing a form of yoga that in many ways went against all of this.
My practice was until this stage very physical; mostly Yang-based. In other words, it was definitely masculine practice. It was more than anything about dedication, discipline, consistency, and, as much as I hate to admit it, also about performance.
The next following months led my on a journey into the feminine that exists within the yoga world. I started diving deeper into the beautiful world of softer styles of yoga; yin and restorative yoga, Shakti-yoga, slow-flow and yoga Nidra. I spent days researching the history of women in yoga, reading about practicing in tune with our menstrual cycles, and how we can use yoga to empower ourselves as women; as mothers, daughters, sisters, friends and lovers. And as practitioners of the yogic traditions.
Perhaps for the first time, I was giving myself full permission to practice and flow with the natural rhythms of my own cycle.
«it is not necessary to have a womb to practice ‘womb yoga’, in all phases of womens lives, it is the presence of womb space energies, the energies of «Yonisthana Chakra», which has a capacity to provide deep intuitive wisdom, and to reconnect us with the earthed and watery energies of creativity, fluidity, nurture and fertility that are characteristic of this energy centre.» (Uma Dinsmore-Tuli, Yoni Shakti)
From the wisdom born from connecting to our wombs follows a naturally arising global green consciousness rooted in a sustainable and respectful honoring of the natural cycles and energies of the earth, the womb that nurtures all life in our wor. So it is through this wisdom, this spiritual awareness that is literally encoded in the cycles of the female body, that we can access the deep healing that our planet urgently calls for now. We are in deep need of exactly such yoga.