Chakra: Solar Plexus located just above your navel
Sanskrit Word: Manipura
Color: Vibrant yellow
Sound: RAM (pronounced R-UH-M)
Gemstone: Citrine
Release Technique: Swamping and Burning Ritual
Creation tool: Moon and Seasonal Rituals
Mantras: I am powerful. I am divinity unleashed.
Feminine archetype: Wild Woman
“There’s a Wild Woman inside of you and she wants to chortle out loud, run naked through the forest, and dance with the wolves.
Our rebirth journey is divinely designed to help us reconnect with our feminine essence and the practices that have long been overshadowed by masculine ways. But it’s important to remember that our feminine essence is multidimensional. It’s not just sugar and spice and everything nice as society has taught us. It also is wild and free and at one with nature. It is full of the emotional highs and lows that life can bring. It is embodied and not always grounded in the logic that resides in our heads.
This month I will be inviting you to embrace your wild woman, the part of you that longs to be uninhibited and unencumbered by societal expectations. She is the part of you that is free to follow her passions, play like a child, and dance like no one is looking. She feels at home among the trees and the birds and the flowers. She is intimately connected with the moon and her ever-changing cycles.
If you have kept this part of yourself in a cage, know that you are not alone. We all have some fears of the havoc our wild woman could wreak if she is allowed to run free. And for so long, women have been taught to stay in their proverbial place, which has historically been in a neat and tidy home. But the wild woman is not to be feared but rather revered as she has much to teach us about how to fully embrace life.
No one captures the spirit of the wild woman better than Clarissa Pinkola Estés, author of the global best-seller: Women Who Run with the Wolves: Myths and Stories of the Wild Woman Archetype. As we journey through this month, take time to read this classic book and look for hidden aspects of yourself in the stories she tells. As you get to know the wild woman archetype, you will see that she is a part of you that longs to be acknowledged. As Pinkola Estés
explains:
“Wolves and women have much in common. Both share a wild spirit. Women and Wolves are instinctual creatures, able to sense the unseen. They are loyal, protective of their packs and of their pups. They are wild and beautiful. Both have been hunted and captured. Even in captivity, one can see in the eyes of a Woman, or a Wolf, the longing to run free, and the determination that should the opportunity arise, Whoosh, they will be gone…..”
Of course, for most of us, societal bonds are so strong that the opportunity rarely arises to run free. We do what women have been taught to do for millennia. We serve others. We aim to please. We nurture. We sacrifice. None of these are bad in and of themselves, but so often we do these things at our own expense. We get lost in others and caught in a loop that I call sacrifice and servitude.
While the specific societal messages given to women have changed a bit through the generations, much remains the same. Our mothers teach us to do what they did, and so many of us continue the same pattern with our own children.In Glennon Doyle’s bestseller Untamed, she theorizes that it is around the age of 10 that we are taught how to contain ourselves, and most of us s tay in that cage our entire lives.
“Ten is when the world sat me down, told me to be quiet, and pointed toward my cages. These are the feelings you are allowed to express. This is how a woman should act. This is the body you must strive for. These are the things you will believe. These are the people you can love. Those are the people you should fear. This is the kind of life you are supposed to want. Make yourself fit. You’ll be uncomfortable at first, but don’t worry – eventually you’ll forget you’re caged. Soon this will just feel like life.”
Clearly Doyle, Pinkola Estés and the creators of the ancient myths and legends about the wild woman know something that many modern-day women have forgotten or perhaps never been taught – there is a part of us that desires to be unleashed and free. While the wild woman may have become an endangered species in our wired world, she is not yet extinct. She lives inside of you waiting to be released from her cage.
Our practices this month are designed to help you connect with this wild and free part of you. Our release technique is swamping – uninhibited, feral and designed to help you release emotions that can block what you desire from making its way into your life. We also will explore the element of fire to transmute and transcend. Our manifestation rituals are related to the moon, one of the most powerful symbols of our connection with the divine, and the seasons, which allow us to tap into the many dimensions of Mother Nature. You will learn how to set intentions at each new moon and also at the spring equinox, summer solstice, fall equinox and winter solstice. Both the moon and seasonal rituals give our lives a beautiful rhythm that allows us to begin anew throughout the year, not just on January 1.
So get ready to speak to the trees, dance with the flowers, fall in love with the sunsets, meditate with the water and worship under the moon at night. Your wild woman awaits.
Sacred Circle Retreats 