This month I realised that three of my working worlds and friendships had collided beautifully.. that perhaps it was fate! I began to train as a birth educator, doula and therapist back in 2009 with an amazing wise woman called Olivia Seck and she taught me far more than how to be helpful at births. She taught me how to develop the deepest practice of being present in everyday life. She is still the best person at asking the hardest life questions, reminding me to trust in the mysteries and flow, supporting my work and my personal life and through genuine laughter, tears and reflection she can has always helped me open deeper into love. We have worked together and played together and our bond is truly precious to me. In all these years we had always talked about holidays but never managed to take one together. So when the chance came for us to go on a Wise Heart Wild Love women's retreat with my other superstar of a colleague Kalindi Jordan I was over the moon! I have been working with Kalindi for nearly four years now and it has been an absolute treat. She is an incredible mix of kind, playful, sensual and has a breadth of organic embodied self learning about the art of the energy system that makes her a master in her field. It's a delight to see her shine as she shares her gifts with women and runs a retreat with so much energy and lightness that you come away feeling truly yourself again.. she facilitates in a way that your true essence just flows out and is absolutely welcomed. The retreat content was delicious! A private house in Granada, Spain with Moroccan inspired decor, a yoga studio, dance hall, infinity pool and sauna which gave us the space to enjoy morning yoga, energetic practices to awaken our hearts and expand our sexual and creative aliveness, afternoons by the pool, loosing layers and inhibitions on all levels, afternoons spent in shamanic trance dance, cacao ceremony and movement medicine and evenings spent in beautiful rituals and joyful celebrations. Having this retreat, with the added bonus of Olivia there was simply fantastic. The cosmic cherry on the top was being invited to share my yoga nidra facilitation skills with the group one evening. I haven't been running my own rest circle sessions for sometime but I have been working closely with the wonderful author and leader in this field Karen Brody who is using Yoga nidra medicine in the most exquisite and heartfelt way to inspire the women of today to honour rest and rise up to action in a whole, authentic and rooted way. Karen's Daring to Rest movement is very close to my heart. So what a perfect treat that I was able to weave Karen's work into this magical retreat by offering her Daring to Rest Red Tent yoga nidra meditation to the women one night. My body came online as the words came through me like a transmission and I rocked like I do with oxytocin in a birth as I delivered the Rest Medicine on this wise heart wild love Spanish retreat. It reminded me of my Powernaps for Superwomen circles back in the day when I would drop into the words and my body would move and my mind moved out of the way and the Nidra would do me and I shared it's truth serum medicine! I smiled and cried as I realised that the three women who each play significant and beloved roles in my life were dovetailing in this magical retreat week. Like a constellation of stars, everything connected: Friendship, leadership, sustainability, the sacred, pleasure and play. And I realised that I bridge these different gifts and worlds.. birth, facilitation, sensuality and yoga nidra meditation.. I do all these things both personally and professionally. Sometimes I'm visible out front and sometimes I'm in the background supporting these women doing the admin and helping oil the cogs of business wheels. Just like yoga nidra moves awareness from point to point around the body and invites us to breath the left side of the body and then the right side of the body and feel opposite beliefs and ideas in deep states of aware sleep, I too move between roles professionally and personally.. Yin and Yang, sacred and mundane, being the backbone and structure and then offering the creativity and energy. I am a shape-shifter and a bridge working between worlds. Being on retreat was a gift.. sun and rest and play helps us all! And sitting in circle with wonderful women and reaching into the sacred with no outside distractions for a whole week is such an easy and pleasurable way to effortlessly drop the armour, bringing our essence to the forefront, nourish our inner light superpower to then come back out and meet the world with refreshed resourced resilience. This is what we need for these times. Inner strength and community and offering our unique essence and gifts into the collective weave. I am so grateful for these women in my life and the gifts they have shared with me and for all the ways they flow through me too as a woman, mother, sister, friend, lover, colleague. Coming home to the domestic grind after such pleasurable relaxation and play and the sights and smells and novelty of being overseas is always a challenge for a freedom loving woman like me. But as I embraced the sacred within the mundane, of food shopping, the school run and a pile of admin projects at my desk I realised magic is everywhere.. as I looked up at a scribble on a piece of paper on my pin board that I wrote two years ago and it says Kalindi, Olivia, Karen, yoga nidra, birth work, sacred sexuality, women circles, Jade eggs... And clearly it all came true in one week! Law of attraction and reflection. It works somehow.. One days I wrote these ideas down, and then something in time and space bent to orchestrate that I work and play with these three women and I am a doula, facilitator, administrator, yoga nidra teacher and counsellor in training and I sell Jade yoni eggs on the side! All of this happens alongside being a solo mum and doing the school run.. so rest and retreat is always so needed and welcomed! Below is a picture from the retreat.. and some of these beloved coworking-friends ... so much fun and I'm left with such sweet memories and gratitude.
From Work to Play.. From serious and deep, to downright silly... touching the sacred, the mundane and the simple joy.
Wise Heart Wise Love 2019, and co-working friendships with Kalindi Jordan, Olivia Seck plus Karen's book Daring to Rest.
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AuthorJolie sharing musings of a ROAR MOJO life as mum, friend, sister, lover and therapist. Archives
August 2019
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