Other Foundational Elements: The Power of a Sacred Circle

As you prepare to embark on this life-changing path, I encourage you to create a sacred circle of women to go on this journey with you. Since nearly everything you will be doing in the months ahead flies in the face of conventional wisdom, it will be essential to not go it alone.

In the nine months ahead, I’ll be encouraging you to prioritize your pleasure and accomplish more by doing less, while most of those around you will have their nose to the grindstone. I’ll be reminding you to expect the best rather than fear the worst, while others speak to you about the inevitability of Murphy’s Law. And I will be guiding you to tap into ancient wisdom in a world that’s literally wired for innovation. Trust me when I tell you it’s not easy to go it alone.

There’s another important reason to take other women along on this journey. Someone once wrote, “no experience is complete until it has been witnessed by a sister.” This is true both in the highs and the lows. When the magic begins to unfold in your life, you will want to be witnessed and share your joy. And by witnessing you, another woman will have more evidence that magic is possible in her own life.

Having another woman witness your grief is also essential so you feel supported and seen. Going into the darkness to acknowledge and release that which does not serve us is never easy. But the process is gentler with another woman by your side.

What if you have been betrayed by women in the past, and have wounds in the sisterhood that are still in need of healing? I encourage you to trust the process. Once you set an intention to be witnessed, the right women will show up in your life.

If you can find even one other woman to go along on this journey, she can be a source of support when you wonder whether this new divine feminine path is lunacy. She’ll be someone you can share your victories with and celebrate her successes in turn. And when you hit the inevitable bumps in the road – and you will! – you can witness the magic in her life and keep the faith.

Ideally of course, you will have an entire sacred circle of women in your life as I do. My group of divine sisters started out as a spiritual book club in 2008. There were five of us, and we began by reading A New Earth by Eckhart Tolle. We would gather every Friday afternoon and sometimes go see our authors when they came to town. I remember going to see Byron Katie, who remain to this day one of my most important spiritual guides, and Neale Donald Walsch, author of Conversations with God. It took nine years before the group morphed into the sacred circle that it is today, with dozens of women all around the world.

You could start out small as well. Consider meeting with a group of women under the full moon to talk about the practices in this blog.  Gather virtually on Zoom once a week to share your brags, gratitudes and desires. Or you could simply create a WhatsApp group where you witness one another virtually.

I encourage you to see these gatherings as an appointment with the divine. Instead of squeezing your women’s circles into an already packed schedule, be intentional about your time together and use it as a respite from the busyness of everyday life. I promise that every minute you devote to communing with the divine in human form will pay off in an abundant flow of synchronicities that more than make up for the time you invested.

The feminine has been repressed for millennia, but she is rising now and much more powerful than any of us every imagined. Let’s celebrate that by gathering together in sacred sisterhood, and lifting each other even higher.

In closing out this series of posts in Conception, I leave you with an excerpt from Lisa Lister’s book Witch: Untamed, Unleashed, Unapologetic. This call to action has served as my inspiration for all the women’s gatherings I have hosted over the years. Trust the wisdom in these words, and know that when you gather the women, magic happens.

Gather the Women

Don’t wait for someone else to do it. Gather the women yourself.

I began by gathering women together for SHE ceremonies in my front room. We met on the dark moon, set up a sacred space, and all placed items on the altar to be charged.

We let go of outside perceptions through breath work, and smudged and cleansed ourselves and the space. We called in the elements and opened the circle. We moved our bodies in a SHE Flow Yoga practice (non-linear movement that nourishes the feminine body), drank ceremonial cacao sacrament and allowed what needed to be felt to be felt. We created art, entered into radical rest with yoga nidra, and then shared stories, listened deeply and witnessed each other.

When our time together came to an end, we thanked each other with the biggest love and gratitude, closed the circle and shared food together to ground ourselves back in this world.

Some call this a red tent, some call it a coven and some call it a moon temple. I call it women gathering – and we need to do more of it, because when women gather, magic happens and revolutions start. They’ve separated us, disconnected us from ourselves and each other because they know that it’s when we gather together and share, that we are truly powerful.

Call back your power, call back our power. Do the same, do it differently, but DO gather. Women, please gather.

Other Foundational Elements: Rituals

My temple is my body

My world around me my altar

My words are spells

Every thought an intention

My action rituals

To manifest all that will be

I am sacred

I am divine

Ara

Did you grow up participating in religious rituals? Christmas, Yom Kippur, Ramadan, Samskaras? The list could go on and on. All of the world’s major religions are replete with ritual. Yet if we have decided to leave institutionalized religion, we often are left with no ritual at all in our lives.

During your Rebirth Journey, you will be guided to engage in sacred rituals every month, and preferably every week or possibly even every day. Rituals are how we connect with the divine and bring miracles and magic into our lives.

Many of the rituals you will be learning actually inspired the religious rituals that we collectively celebrate throughout the world. Sadly, though, they have almost uniformly been stripped of any connection with the divine feminine, and we have all long forgotten any connection these rituals may have had with Mother Earth.

Take Easter, for example. It’s called a moveable feast because it is celebrated on a different day each year, but always in March or April. Why is that? Because Christian church leaders decided the resurrection of Jesus would be celebrated on the Sunday following the first full moon of the Spring Equinox.

Yes, you read that right. The Christian church considered the full moon and the spring equinox when setting a date for its highest Holy Day. Yet if you were to ask a church father today about marking the full moon or the Spring Equinox, they might label you a witch.

What’s more, the word Easter was inspired by Eostre, the Saxon/Germanic goddess of spring and fertility. Known as the fertility goddess, Eostre was associated with blooming plants and the birth of babies in the animal world. That’s how the rabbit or bunny, one of the most fertile animals, became associated with Easter.

My reason for bringing up major religions yet again is because I want to assure you that this journey is not meant to turn you against the religious practices you were raised with and might still participate in even today. Rather my aim is to show you that the practices you will be learning are in perfect alignment with what you may have practiced in patriarchal structures.

So while we will not be celebrating religious holidays during the Rebirth Journey, you will be engaging in some of the practices that inspired them. In many cases, they are age-old practices that were forgotten after the church literally put a cross on the ritual sites and adopted the practices as their own. At the same time, the original rituals that inspired them were labeled “pagan” and forgotten by most.

You will learn the importance of marking the seasons, and not only the spring equinox but also the fall equinox and the summer and winter solstice. Moon rituals also are a big part of the journey and will help you establish a monthly rhythm for your intention setting.

Above all, the Rebirth Journey is meant to shine a spotlight on the importance of ritual in living an intentional life. We do create our reality, whether we want to or not. Do you want to do it consciously out of a place of faith and co-creation with the divine? Or do you want to sleep walk through life, often creating detrimental circumstances and challenges unconsciously?

Of course, I already know the answer to that question. If you did not want to consciously co-create your life with the divine, you would not be reading this blog.

How do you connect with the divine through ritual? Share in the comments below.

Other Foundational Elements: Aligning Your Words and Thoughts with Your Desires

My temple is my body

My world around me my altar

My words are spells

Every thought an intention

My action rituals

To manifest all that will be

I am sacred

I am divine

Ara

The affirmation I posted in the first “Foundational Elements” blog reminds us that our words are spells and our thoughts are intentions. If you stop and notice what you are speaking and thinking, it will give you insight into exactly what you are creating in your life – for better and for worse. Do you say things like, “I can’t afford it” or “I’m broke”? Chances are your finances reflect just that. Do you find yourself thinking “nothing ever works out for me” or “I’m so unlucky”? Those are your intentions – even if you are setting them unconsciously. This is not meant to shame or blame you, only to make you aware.

I know from first-hand experience how words and thoughts can be used to our detriment because I spent years fretting about my finances. My fear around money was so great that I would literally plan for failure. I would look at how much money my husband and I had in the bank and then calculate how long we could live on our savings if we lost all our clients. I went even further with my catastrophic thinking and imagined how we would manage if all we could find was minimum wage jobs to replace the income we lost. It sounds crazy now, but I had no conscious awareness of what I was doing and simply went along with the ill-advised strategy of hoping for the best, but planning for the worst.

Fortunately, once I began learning some of these practices outlined in this blog,  I realized the consequences of that negative mindset. As I changed the way I looked at our finances, our finances changed, and over time we were able to pay off our bills and even become completely debt free. Once my consciousness shifted to an abundance mindset, I never worried about money again and my bank account has reflected my new way of thinking ever since. The same can be true for you.

While you may not have money worries, it can be easy to fall into the same trap I did in some other area of your life. That’s why this blog post is aimed at raising awareness about the power we have to create our own reality. When you think about affirmations, positive phrases may come to mind. But when you criticize yourself or project a negative outcome, that is an affirmation too and it can be just as powerful.

Once again, we can look to many of the great wisdom texts and see that these truths have been taught through the ages. Some of my favorite writings on this topic come from authors of the 20th century, such as Florence Scovel Shinn and Louise Hay. There’s also Neville Goddard, a popular author and speaker on New Thought until his death in 1972.

Goddard recommends thinking about the fulfillment of your desires just before falling asleep. He points out that thoughts become feelings, which in turn put our subconscious to work creating our reality. In his book, Feeling is the Secret, he writes:

“Call your desires into being by imagining and feeling your wish fulfilled. As the end is accepted, you become totally indifferent as to possible failure, for acceptance of the end wills the means to that end. When you emerge from the moment of prayer, it is as though you were shown the happy and successful end of a play although you were not shown how that end was achieved.”

In other words, our only task is to focus on what we desire, and let the universe handle the rest. We don’t have to know how or when or where.

If you prefer a modern take on Goddard’s teachings, you can read “Wishes Fulfilled, Mastering the Art of Manifesting,” by Wayne Dyer. In this 2012 book, Dyer sums up the steps to wishes fulfilled as follows: 1) Use your imagination just before going to sleep; 2) Think from the end; 3) Feel as if it has already happened. Dyer writes:

“That which you feel yourself to be you are, and you are given that which you are. So assume the feeling that would be yours were you already in possession of your wish, and your wish must be realized.”

Some powerful female writers were spreading the same message during Goddard’s time. One of my favorites is Catherine Ponder who wrote a dozen books including the “Dynamic Laws of Prosperity.” She also recognized these truths that we will return to again and again during our nine-month journey together.

As we go through the Rebirth Journey together, you will learn tools and rituals for tapping into your desires so you can set intentions and supercharge them with your thoughts and your words. To help get you started, I will share an easy and effective tool now. Start noticing how often you are in fear of things not working out. Then try replacing that thought with this question instead:

“What if everything turns out even better than I imagine?”

Can you look back on times in your life when you were fearful about something that never actually happened? Now that you are learning the essential elements required for a rebirth, experiment with pivoting when you find yourself having fearful thoughts. If your mind dwells on a bad outcome, use that as a prompt to pivot and ask yourself the question: “And what if it turns out better than I imagine?”

While I will be the first to acknowledge that we do not always get exactly what we want, I am a firm believer that in many cases, the universe will give us something even better.

Have you ever wanted a man, a job, a house or something else that you now know was not in your best interest? By focusing on what you desire but leaving room for an outcome that is even better than you imagine, you are setting aside your small ways and making space for the universe to use its big ways to work its magic.

Can you think of a time in your life when everything turned out even better than you imagined? Share your story in the comments below.

Other Foundational Elements: Connection with Nature

In the last post, we focused on practices for tapping into the body’s wisdom. A related concept is our connection with nature. Think about how a woman’s body and its cycles mirror the natural world. The moon cycle is around 28 days and so is our menstrual cycle. Seeds are planted in the darkness just as the egg and sperm are fertilized in the dark womb. And we really are made of the very same substance that makes up the stars.

While animals and plants are seamlessly connected with the natural world, humans living in an industrialized world typically need to be intentional in order to connect. That’s why as part of the Rebirth Journey, we will be looking to Mother Nature as our guide to living our best life.

Consider, for example, how farmers leave their fields fallow in the winter so that they can plant in the spring and receive a harvest in the fall. To thrive, you too should consider following seasonal patterns. In the blogs that follow, you will be learning rituals to honor each season and the gifts that it brings. You also will be reminded to allow yourself to lie fallow sometimes and occasionally take a step back from day to day activities.

As you learn more about the moon, you will discover how you can use the lunar cycles to be intentional in manifesting your desires. Every month, when the sun and the moon are perfectly aligned and she is blocked from our view, she is dark and also new. This is a powerful time to plant the seeds of your intentions in the dark fertile void. Two weeks later, when she has moved all the way to the other side of the sun, she is full. This is a time for expressing gratitude for what has manifested but also a good time to let go of what doesn’t serve you. Hopefully, when the next moon cycle begins two weeks after that, many of your monthly desires will have come to fruition.

Yet nature also teaches us that desires may not always be fulfilled on our time line. When you plant a seed in the earth, do you dig it up in frustration a few days later and try to eat it, believing it will never grow any bigger? Of course not. When we look to the natural world, we realize that there are seasons for reaping and there are seasons for sowing, and they are rarely one and the same. Nature can teach us patience and faith that what is unseen can blossom into things we can actually see and taste and touch.

The moon’s daily movements also give us insight into the rhythms that can allow us to thrive. Notice how she changes shape every day. She is not always shining bright, and neither should we. She is dynamic, moving across the sky throughout the evening hours. Sometimes she rises earlier and other times later. If we follow her pace, rather than trying to emulate the constant solar power of the sun, we will find that we can accomplish more by doing less.

Think too about the ebb and flow that the moon generates in our oceans, and use this as a guide for pacing your own self. The tides are powerfully affected by the moon with waves cresting and subsiding, washing in and receding out. If we stop and consider that we are made of 55% water, perhaps we can consider allowing more ebb and flow into our own life.

Even going outside to gaze at the moon, or anything in nature for that matter, can be the perfect way to create more flow. When you are caught up in thought and looking to connect with your body and the divine, go outdoors. Put your bare feet in the grass and soak up the antioxidants it provides in the form of negative ions. This practice of earthing has tangible health benefits such as reducing inflammation, improving blood flow, and enhancing sleep. But perhaps even more importantly, it will connect you with your source.

When we get to the third month of the Rebirth Journey, we will explore our connection with nature more fully through the Wild Woman archetype. She is wild and free. She is bold and courageous. She has a warrior spirit. We want to embrace this part of ourselves to counter the “sugar and spice and everything nice” messages we have received as women. Our Wild Woman will help us connect with nature where we find balance and clarity as well as freedom and power.

There was a time when connecting with nature came easy to humans. We rose with the sun and rested when it was dark. We relied on Mother Earth for sustenance and guidance. But with the dawn of the industrial age, everything changed. We started relying on clocks and calendars to set our pace and forgot about seasonal patterns and natural flow. We embraced a go, go, go society that only gets faster as technology improves. Now we are connected to our devices even when we walk outside and look to the virtual world to meet all our needs.

Take time each day to disconnect from the material world and go back to your roots, literally. Walking mediations are great but so is breathing in the fresh air or gazing at a beautiful sunrise. Take a step back from the hustle culture and embrace slow living instead. You just may be surprised by the results.

How do you connect with nature? Share your thoughts in the comments below.

Other Foundational Elements: Embodied Wisdom

My temple is my body

My world around me my altar

My words are spells

Every thought an intention

My action rituals

To manifest all that will be

I am sacred

I am divine

Ara

This affirmation sums up the other foundational elements of the Rebirth Journey: embodied wisdom, connection to nature, the power of words and intentions, and sacred rituals that allow us to co-create with the divine. As we go along, you will see that these foundational elements and all of the guidance in this book align perfectly with teachings from the world’s wisdom traditions and most of the largest organized religions as well. Truth is truth no matter how it is packaged.

Let’s begin with the body and how it connects you with your divine wisdom. The Christian Bible says: “Do you not know that your bodies are temples of the Holy Spirit, who is in you, whom you have received from God?” In exploring that idea from the divine feminine perspective, I invite you to consider the two sides of this truth. Honoring your body as a temple of the divine and also looking to the body for divine guidance.

If you’ve never heard of embodied wisdom, it might sound confusing to imagine looking to the body for divine guidance. But if you can slow down long enough to listen to her, you will find truth there. How? Begin by pausing, quieting your mind and placing your hand on your heart and on your womb space (whether you still have a physical womb or not). This will allow you to drop from your head space and into your heart and womb space.

Why is that important? Because our heads are usually so cluttered with endless looping thoughts that it can be hard to access your truth from that space. We are so often caught up in repeating old stories of the hard years that only serve to keep us down.  Or when we are not stuck in the past, we are worried about the future. As Mark Twain wisely notes, “I have been through some terrible things in my life, some of which have actually happened.”

No doubt life is hard sometimes., but more often it is our own thoughts that make it so. We have a voice in our heads that relentlessly talks to our self about our self, and she is usually more cruel than any outside force. Reflect back on some of the thoughts that you have had about yourself lately. Can you see where that voice in your head can be meaner than any “mean girl” that you have ever encountered in real life? Consider giving that voice a name and then recognize her when she speaks.  That will be your cue to quiet her voice and sink into your body.

Then try and tap into what you feel when you drop in to embodied wisdom to look for answers and guidance. A tightness in the solar plexus? A rapid beating of the heart? Pain in your womb space? Or alternatively, do you feel a stirring in your yoni? A sense of anticipation and excitement? A peaceful feeling that transcends all understanding? These are all clues of the truth that you are seeking. Stop overthinking and when you need guidance of any kind, look to the body’s wisdom instead.

Knowing that our body is our temple, we also want to treat her as such. Dress her in the most beautiful garments. Bathe her in sacred waters. Lovingly caress her. Anoint her with oils. Nourish her with delicious food. Allow her to move, wild and free.

For years, my bathtub went unused as I jumped in the shower each day, racing to get on to the next thing. Now I often take time to soak in a bubble bath infused with essential oils and surrounded by candles. I play music that turns me on and move my body to the beat. I buy lotions that feel rich and luscious and rub them on my body. I take time to savor my food. All of these practices and others like them make it easier for me to turn into the embodied wisdom that lies within.

Also clear out negative energy every now and again using techniques that we will be exploring in the blogs to come. If we don’t move negative emotions through the body, they can get lodged there and manifest as pain, or even worse disease, which author Louise Hay wisely recognized as dis-ease. When we feel pain or fall ill, that is the body’s wisdom too. What is she trying to tell you? If you don’t listen, her voice will get louder. There will be more pain, more serious illness, and in some cases, even early death to free us from our torment. But by releasing our negative energy through embodied practices, we can honor her, access her wisdom and live longer healthier lives.

Then try and learn to love her. How often have we hated some part of our body? Our round belly? Our dimpled thighs? Our asymmetrical breasts? You can easily add your own grievances to this list. What if you wrote a love letter to the belly that has the ability to create and nurture life? Or honored those legs that allow you to move through the world? And if any part of your body is less than perfect in your eyes, look for the beauty and the grace of that and choose to love her fiercely instead. She, in turn, will love you back and gently guide you to your sacred truths.

Have you ever tapped into your body’s wisdom? Share your thoughts in the comments below.

The Essentials: Desire

The third essential in this Rebirth Journey is desire. In an earlier blog post, I explained that desire connects you with that which is greater than you. It is a divine guidance system that you can follow knowing it only sometimes will lead you to exactly what you want, and more often guides you to something even better. In using the word desire, I am talking about deep, soul-centered knowings, not whims or cravings that come and go. Your embodied, deep-seated desires can always be trusted.

Sometimes a woman has to dig deep to even find her desires. Years of serving everyone except herself can mean her longings and yearnings are buried, and her feminine magic is buried right along with them. Perhaps you rarely think about what you want because you’ve given up on your dreams. Maybe you think your desires are impossible to fulfill so it’s better not to think of them. After a while, it’s easy to forget you ever had desires.

In the blog posts that follow, you will be introduced to practices that will enable you to unearth your old desires and birth new ones. There’s nothing selfish about having desires and standing for them. It’s actually just the opposite. As you will discover for yourself, a turned on woman who is in her pleasure and following her desire is one of the most powerful forces for good in the universe.

Yet, a woman’s desires have been seen for centuries – millennia even – as one of the most dangerous forces in the universe. This is especially true of sexual desires , which have inspired the Madonna/whore typology. There’s the Virgin Mary, who according to Catholic teachings, gave birth to Jesus without ever having sex (of course, right?) and Mary Magdalene, who was clearly Jesus’ favorite and a 13th disciple of sorts but who is portrayed as nothing more than a prostitute. Imagine all the ways those Biblical stories still color women’s view of sexuality in the 21st century. You can either be a nice woman and good mother or a whore.  

You can go back even further, before Christianity, to see how female desire has been demonized. We all know Eve, whose desire for the forbidden apple and her ability to tempt Adam to partake of it too, led to their banishment from their God-given Garden of Eden. The message could not be more obvious. Women who follow their desires are frowned upon by God and by man, and will ultimately lose it all.

But have you heard of Lilith? Some ancient texts mention Adam’s first wife who proudly owned her lust and her power. According to lore, she refused to lie under Adam when they had sexual relations and instead demanded to be on top. That would never do in a patriarchal system, and so not only was Lilith banished from Adam’s life, but her apocryphal story has been largely erased from memory as well.

Stacy Rukeyser, who created the NetFlix hit Sex/Life, recently wrote about the power of desire in an article  entitled “The Revolutionary Act of (Female) Desire.”

“Martyrdom is the ideal. Sacrifice, part of the gig. Gratitude, the only allowable emotion. And yet, here I was giving voice to the secret truth that it is possible for a woman to be incredibly grateful for her many blessings, to adore her children, to love being a mom — and still want more. To yearn for something dreamy and steamy and romantic and titillating. Something that will take you away – or if you’re lucky back – to a time and a place and a person you once were. To dream of being a wife and mother and ravenous sex goddess, all at the same time. Turns out creating a show about a woman who admits she’s had sex and wants more of it – better sex – without making her the villain or punishing her for her appetite is itself a revolutionary act.”

If creating a show about desire is revolutionary, imagine how revolutionary it is to actually embody your own desires and stand for them. Yet that’s exactly what I am inviting you to do. Embrace your desires, see them as divine guidance, and supercharge them with your turn on. You will be amazed at the results.

What do you deeply desire? Share them in your comments below.

The Essentials: Turn On

You have to look no further than your own body to understand the connection between pleasure and the second essential element of the Rebirth Journey: Turn On. Our bodies are made for pleasure. Why? Because females have a clitoris with 8000 nerve endings, and it serves no other purpose than to bring us pleasure. In contrast, the multi-functional penis only has about half as many nerve endings. Yet, while most men are intimately familiar with their penis and its many advantages, some women would not even be able to find their clitoris, much less access its full pleasure potential.

Many women sleep walk through life never realizing the pleasure possibilities in their own bodies, while the world is busy making a profit off of their sexuality. Look at any advertisement for cosmetics, fashion or even men’s products. You’re likely to see a sultry model exuding turn on. There’s also an entire sector of the economy that is based on the exploitation of women’s sexual energy – think prostitution, strip clubs and now thousands upon thousands of internet porn sites. Society capitalizes on women’s bodies each and every day, largely to bring pleasure and make money for men.

Meanwhile those of us who actually own those bodies are fretting about our imperfections, flaws and inadequacies. How ironic that men have found a way to profit off of our bodies and find pleasure in them, while we are often busy demeaning ourselves and investing our hard-earned money paying men to improve them through surgical interventions, cosmetic enhancements, or the latest fad diet.

What if you could find a way to take pleasure in your own body and tap into the power of your sexuality? What would happen? You just might find that everything in your life is supercharged. You’ll be in a higher vibration that will naturally attract good things to you. And you’ll in intuitively learn when to dial up your turn on to attract what you want and dial it way down when you it is not safe to be the object of attention.

Napoleon Hill, author of the classic book, Think and Grow Rich, knew the power of turn on when he penned the chapter on Sexual Transmutation. Not surprisingly, most of that chapter – and the entire book in fact – was targeted toward men. But Napoleon himself pointed out that the teachings apply to women as well.

“Wherever there was evidence available in connection with the lives of men and women of great achievement, it indicated most convincingly that they possessed highly developed sex natures. The emotion of sex is an ‘irresistible force’ against which there can be no such opposition as an ‘immovable body.’ When driven by this emotion, men become gifted with a super power for action. Understand this truth and you catch the significance of the statement that sex transmutation will lift one to the status of genius.“

Even though that was written in 1937, chances are you have never heard such a message in your lifetime. Napoleon Hill was broadcasting these truths in the midst of the Great Depression.  We are in our own kind of depression when we forget we are sexual and sensual beings. Napoleon continues:

“The emotion of sex contains the secret of creative ability. Destroy the sex glands, whether in man or beast, you have removed the major source of action. For proof of this, observe what happens to any animal after it has been castrated. A bull becomes as docile as a cow after it has been altered sexually. Sex alteration takes out of the male, whether man or beast, all the FIGHT that was in him. Sex alteration of the female has the same effect.“

Sadly, sex alteration of women is still happening today, almost 100 years after this book was published. In many parts of the world, women participate in the genital mutilation of their own daughters, having been brainwashed to believe it is a sacred ritual. Historically women’s sexuality has been repressed either through religious teachings or physical restraints such as chastity belts.

So what are some ways you can rekindle your own sexual energy if it has waned or even spark it for the first time? Begin with self-pleasure. Not surprisingly, the same religions that espouse practices like ascetism and hard work, also warn that self-pleasure is a sin. Can you see the connection? Anything that brings pleasure must be a no-no. But think about it. What could possibly be sinful about using your body as it was designed?

Turn on is an area where pleasure research can serve you. Explore the plethora of vibrators that have been designed for women’s bodies. Invest in beautiful lingerie that makes you feel sexy – even if you are the only one who sees it. Start following sexual revolutionaries like Layla Martin, Jaiya, and Pamela Madsen to learn new ways of reaching sexual heights. If you do all of this with a partner, all the better. But you can begin with sex for one since that’s available you anytime you want, no questions asked.

What are some ways that you get into your turn on? Share your ideas in the comments below.

The Essentials: Pleasure

Everyone knows that it takes an egg, a sperm and a uterus to conceive and nurture a new human being. Similarly, there are three foundational elements in the Rebirth Journey: Pleasure, Turn On, and Desire. As I explained in a previous blog post, I learned the importance of all three during my two years at the School of Womanly Arts (SWA). There are other practices that also will become second nature to you on this journey, and we will get to those later. But for now, we will begin by diving deeper into these fundamentals, beginning with pleasure.

In her first book, “Using the Power of Pleasure to Have Your Way in the World,” SWA founder Mama Gena refers to the “pleasure revolution.” Why a revolution? Because pleasure flies in the face of traditional patriarchal principles. If you’re like me, you were taught the value of hard work and sacrifice when you were growing up. The dominant societal messages urge us to go to school, study hard, make good grades, get a job and then keep working hard to succeed  – day after day, month after month, and often year after dreary year.

If you’re in corporate America, you most likely are subject to metrics that ensure you’re working hard. In this digital era, efficiency and accountability are the name of the game. Your productivity is no doubt being tracked, recorded and ranked, and so is your “inactivity time.” Often those metrics will be shared with others on your team, using peer pressure to ensure compliance. While this kind of productivity leads to many of the innovations and advancements that we all enjoy, it also leads to burnout, especially if you are on the feminine path.

Most of us have adhered to this type of go, go, go schedule throughout our lives, and the thought of doing otherwise is revolutionary. In fact, capitalistic societies in the Western world have thrived on what sociologist Max Weber labeled, The Protestant Work Ethic. Not surprisingly, this phenomenon has its roots in Christianity and Calvinism in particular.

The brief version of John Calvin’s 16th century teaching goes something like this. You are born with a pre-determined fate. God has decided in advance whether you’ll be going to heaven or hell when you die. So, what are good Christians to do to get reassurance about their fate? The answer is work hard, reinvest whatever is left over after you cover basic necessities, and don’t spend your money frivolously on anything pleasurable. In fact, if you succeed financially and practice ascetism – or denial of pleasure – then heaven is your destiny. But it turns out that’s a kind of hell on earth that many non-Calvinists perpetuate in the modern day.

While the doctrine of pre-destination and asceticism was abandoned long ago, something just as extreme has replaced it. Mindless consumption. We now work hard so that we can spend money on products that we think will make us happy, and that is a different kind of hell on earth. Whether it’s the latest fashion, makeup trend, or plastic surgery, the more we buy, the more we need. But we nearly always come up empty. And while asceticism might be a thing of the past, the Protestant work ethic is alive and well even among those who have never set foot in a church.

What if you chose to replace productivity with pleasure every now and again? I’m not suggesting that you quit your job or spend your days eating bon bons. In fact, most of us still live in capitalistic societies that force us to conform in order to survive. But there are ways to weave pleasure into your everyday life, Once you prioritize your pleasure, you will find that you are happier, and usually more successful as well

Pleasure revolutionaries look for ways to make life easy and fun, understanding that this can be a different path to success. When you’re in a high vibration and co-creating with the divine, work is easier, the right people are naturally drawn to you, and you will find yourself inspired by new ideas. I’ve learned from experience that pleasure can bring more success and happiness than working hard.

Consider how you might adopt this approach in your own life. How could you make your job more pleasurable? Is it working from home? Taking your lunch hour to be outside? Or maybe finding another job altogether? Just as importantly ask yourself what you could do to make your life outside work more pleasurable. Maybe it’s taking a bath instead of a shower, setting a beautiful table instead of grabbing something on the go, making time to sit in nature instead of zoning out on your phone, or turning on your favorite song and dancing. You are only limited by your imagination, and most of the time, pleasure is free for the taking. Become a pleasure researcher and try something new. If it brings you pleasure, do it again. If not, move on to something else.

What is your pleasure? Share your favorite ideas in the comments below!

Conception

As we get ready to embark on this Rebirth Journey together, I’d like to share what led to its conception. Like so many things that happen on the feminine path, it was not part of a grand plan or strategy. It actually was conceived in 2020, a year when I thought my work with women had reached its natural end.

Although the same astrologer I mentioned in a previous post had told me I would one day be working on a global stage, I looked at what was happening that year and thought, no way. He is wrong. How could I possibly work with women around the world when we were all isolating because of COVID? Rather than trusting in his prediction, I mourned the end of the salons that I once hosted in my house and the retreats that I had been organizing.  But as it turns out, I was the one who was wrong.

In place of the in-person salons came daily Zoom meetings, which brought us together virtually and also made it possible to include women from around the world in our sacred circle. When I released what had come before, the universe rushed in to fill the void.

Inspired by Mama Gena’s “holy trinity,” we would share our “brags,” or the things that were going right in our lives in our Zoom calls. If we look hard enough, there is always something to brag about – even if it’s just that we are still putting one foot in front of the other. The second part of the “trinity” was our gratitudes, and we can always find something to be grateful for as well, no matter what is happening in our lives. And finally came our desires, which served as a guiding force during that tumultuous period in our lives.

We met every day for months in the early days of the pandemic, and always incorporated dance breaks into the calls. At a time when we could not leave the house, those calls became a lifeline and a connection to the sisterhood. Throughout this period, when the world stood still, I was able to teach on the divine feminine and guide women on how to embody it. Over time, the framework of this nine-month journey emerged.

The “holy trinity” made up of brags, gratitudes and desires, is one of many tools for well-being that I acquired during my years at the School of Womanly Arts (SWA). In future posts, I will be sharing more SWA tools with you as well as many others that I have acquired in the time since then. These are tools that you can reach for at any point in your Rebirth Journey, providing an essential foundation to keep you on solid ground. I also will be sharing tools that are associated with each of the chakras and the archetypes that we will explore on the divine feminine path.

What do I mean by the divine feminine? We know from ancient traditions that we all embody both masculine and feminine energies, no matter what our gender. The yin and the yang, similar to the sun and the moon. Solar energy is masculine and shining 24/7, ever powerful and strong. Feminine energy is more like the moon, waxing and waning, sometimes dark and sometimes light. The moon moves quickly and changes shape every single day

Solar masculine energy has fueled the creation of much of the material world we all enjoy. The capitalist system, technological innovations, modern conveniences are all examples of what the masculine makes possible, and I am in gratitude for it every single day. When I board a plane that flies through the air or drive my car on the web of super highways, I marvel over its ingenuity. When I use my state-of the-art devices that literally put the world at my fingertips, I give thanks for the hard workers who inspired these breakthroughs. And as the mother of two sons who are clearly fueled by this masculine energy, I am amazed over those who can go, go, go and feel energized to do even more.

Just to be clear, though, masculine energy is something that women embody too. After being confined to the home and tending to the family for millennia, women eagerly embraced masculine principles as soon as they were given the chance. Successful female executives, politicians and entrepreneurs all exude the masculine energy that permeates our industrialized world. In fact, women are responsible for many of the marvels that I outlined above. As our feminist sisters proclaimed during the women’s revolution movement of the 60s and 70s, we really can do anything a man can do.

But at what cost?  Have you been living in your solar masculine energy and feeling literally burned out? Are you working hard to make things happen and putting in long hours to accomplish everything on your to-do list? Are you succeeding in the patriarchy because you’ve learned to follow the rules, but feeling exhausted all the time? Since masculine principles have dominated for so long, most of us don’t even realize there is another way to live. But in this Rebirth Journey, you will be re-introduced to the divine feminine energy that also flows through each of us.

Intuition, connection with nature, and co-creation with the universe are all aspects of our divine feminine side. When you embrace this way of living, you can be in a receptive mode, and things will start coming to you. No longer will you have to force things to happen. You’ll learn that you can accomplish more by doing less. You’ll discover powers that you didn’t know you had. And your life will transform beyond what you can even imagine. All you have to do is go with the flow.

Sound too good to be true? In a way, it is. Feminine wisdom has been repressed for millennia as the masculine has overpowered and even destroyed it. In fact, the feminine arts have repeatedly been demonized, leaving little remembrance of goddess traditions or other practices that celebrate this divine feminine path. But thankfully, it was never fully lost.

Together, we can slowly but surely rediscover it in a process that feels like being born again. We can start over, learn a different way of living, and watch the magic unfold. And that’s what this blog is all about. With each post, you will be learning about the feminine wisdom that is already inside of you – a re-membering if you will. It’s a wisdom that can be shared within a sisterhood or a circle of women who trust one another and want to co-create.

As you embrace this new way of doing things, you don’t have to let go of your masculine side. Instead, it will serve as a beautiful container to channel your feminine energy. Think of the masculine as being like the banks of a river that contain the water and allow it to flow and gather momentum rather than spilling out with no direction. Together they create beautiful balance and harmony that is often lacking in our modern times.

So, keep reading this blog in the days ahead to begin learning the foundational practices and rituals that can help you resurrect and reclaim the feminine energy that is already inside of you. Then come along on this Rebirth Journey with me so I can guide you month after month, and week after week, until one day, you too can say: “The life I am living now looks completely different than the one I lived before, and it is beyond my wildest dreams.”

Rebirth: What to Expect

As you prepare to embark on your own rebirth journey here is what you can expect. In upcoming blog posts, you’ll learn more about the core ideas that will guide everything we do throughout the nine-month journey – pleasure, turn on and desire. You also will be introduced to the principles of the divine feminine path that include embodiment, intuition, connection with nature, and the cycle of death and rebirth.

Our nine-month journey will be guided by the chakra system – the seven energy centers that are inside our bodies and the eighth and ninth chakras that connect us with our soul and spirit. They run from the bottom of the spine all the way to the crown of our heads and beyond, and are an ancient roadmap to our body’s wisdom and power. Each chakra is associated with a color, and they are shining with their original light, they emit the colors of the rainbow. When they’re dulled by trauma and stuck emotions, they acquire a grayish hue aura.

That’s why each part of this journey, you’ll learn a different release process that will allow you to clear out the old and make room for the new. As we cleanse and activate each chakra, we will renew the rainbow of colors within us. You’ll also receive rituals designed to help you co-create what you desire with the universe. Month after month, you’ll follow this process of releasing and receiving and gradually grow and transform into a woman you might not recognize if you were to see her today. In our sacred circle, we call her the rainbow warrior

Along the way, you’ll also be learning about the feminine archetype associated with each chakra. Swiss psychiatrist Carl Jung coined the term archetype in 1919 to describe the innate knowledge that comes from all the lives throughout human history and both pre-dates and directs our conscious behavior. These archetypes are often reflected in art, mythology and even fairy tales, transcending time and offering insight into your multifaceted essence. While Jung had his own archetypal system that included the great mother, father, trickster and hero, his original framework has evolved to include a multitude of other archetypes.

We will follow a model that associates each chakra with an archetypal aspect of the divine feminine. I will also be providing a guide to crystals associated with that chakra as well as mantras and yoga poses that you can use to activate each energy center.

  • We will begin with the first chakra, also known as the root. Think of it as the part of you that is connected with those who came before you, your ancestors, and also your core beliefs. It is located at your tailbone near the pelvic floor. In archetypal terms this chakra is associated with the maiden.
  • Your second chakra is located in your womb space, the seat of creation. This chakra represents the mother archetype and encompasses your sexual center that makes new life possible. This is where your turn on is centered.
  • Next is your third chakra, centered in your solar plexus. That is where you will discover your power source. Traditionally this chakra is associated with the wild woman archetype in all her free, unencumbered glory.
  • Just above the solar plexus is the heart chakra, which is the dwelling space of the lover archetype, the nurturing and intuitive part of us. It is most closely associated with what we envision when we think of the feminine in traditional terms.
  • From there we move up to the throat chakra and the creatrix archetype. She knows the power of speaking things into existence through affirmations and mantras. How often have women been admonished to be seen and not heard? It is here that you will learn to unleash the power of your voice.
  • Ascending even further, we reach the third eye chakra. This is the wise woman archetype that represents the visionary in us who sees what’s possible. Often it takes a lifetime to reach this full level of wisdom.
  • And finally we arrive at the crown chakra, the high priestess and the connection between us and that which is greater than us. Ultimately that is where our true power lies.
  • While most chakra systems end at the seventh crown chakra, we will rise even further to the eighth and nine chakras allowing us to connect more fully with our soul and spirit. By communing even more deeply with the divine, we transcend all limitations.

So without further ado, let’s get started!