Navaratri and the goddess extraordenaire

" Oh my god I have legs and feet" I proclaimed as I tightly gripped the foam block between my thighs, while teaching about the power of the pelvic floor in Tadasana in class. I had been putting that block between my legs for about 8 years as part of the starting days of learning Tadasana in the Teachers Training, but had never really felt its effect. No wonder this exercise goes down so well, its incredible how much energy surges through the legs and feet when you really focus on them. Of course I had felt this before, but the brain has a way of going on automatic and forgetting what things feel like when you first did them. It makes an assumption based on past experiences and then projects that into the future as reality. In yoga this notion of past reflection and future projection is called the wheel of Dharma. When we live in a reality based in what we know and remember we are caught like a hamster on a wheel. but if we can learn to embrace each moment as a complete adventure then we can get off the wheel and play in the dance of our own making.

Last week I decided to dance. Not dance in the literal sense, but rather as a way to find out more about myself as a woman and how to be more true to myself. I used the beautiful Navaratri ritual as my framework and discovered many wonderful and new things about myself and the women I share my world with.
Navaratri is a celebration of the Goddess in the form of Durga. It marks the occasion of her defeat of the great Buffalo demon and as such represents the triumph of good over evil. Durga is also the great mother and can also be worshiped as Kali, Lakshmi and Saraswati to name a few. Navaratri is celebrated over 10 days and 9 nights and usually starts around the new moon in September/October.

For me this celebration was especially significant as I had just recently done an amazing workshop called " The path of love" which had helped me to release a great deal of shock around my mothers early death and also enabled me to establish strong boundaries around myself. I had been using Durga as my personalized deity ( Ishta devata) since completing the workshop, so was excited to honor her during my own Navaratri celebration. But I didn't actually know it was Navaratri until I began my practice on the new moon. I had my period that day and had welcomed it with a short practice which included offerings of flowers, some simple mantras and more relaxed asanas, but something in me went a bit overboard and I found myself doing things I would only do if I was in a more ritualistic frame of mind. I had a sense that something was up and so mid practice Google'd " Hindu holidays" and there it was first on the list, Navaratri starts today. I had to chuckle to myself about woman's intuition and came up with an idea for a nine day ritual at that exact moment. Each day I would pick flowers for the goddess and then place a photo on the altar adorned with prayers and mantras. It sounds simple in its inception but ultimately it led me to discover some simple yet profound truths about myself.

The first day I welcomed Durga in the form of the great goddess, I honored her blood, her sex, her beauty and her wild tigress. I danced and howled and sat with the image of a red flower in my heart. I felt her slicing away the demons that had kept me from loving myself. I also saw her as the great mother conquering all the pain of the world. Durga was a solo woman and had all the power of the shining ones within her. It is said that what enabled her to slay her opponent was, not the piercing blade of her sword, but the shakti in her foot. Apparently as she touched the demon with her foot he was so overwhelmed by her shakti that he dropped his guard and was defeated.

During Navaratri Durga is worshiped for the first 3 days. On the 2nd day I went for a morning walk and discovered that all the new leaves on the trees are red before they turn green. Everywhere I looked I saw Mother nature in her red garments. My altar that day was splashed with every red flower imaginable and my words and prayers were " I know why the goddess is dressed in red! the flush of new leaves, the red of her blood, the red of her sunset skies and rose red dawns, the color of her tongue, the rush of her soft red heart, the red of her earth"
On the 3rd day I saw myself as Durga the protector and felt the power of pure consciousness within me. I held my hands in front of me in the Mudra of protection and allowed myself to imagine an infinite sky with infinite possibilities. She was the seed planted in the soil and there was nothing to do but to grow towards the sunlight.


And the sun goddess that met her was Lakshmi in brilliant yellows and golds. Everywhere I walked that next morning I saw sunshine. Trees had especially littered the ground with yellow blossoms just for the occasion. It felt perfect to change the altar around and place a huge silver picture of Lakshmi in the center. While the stock market was in turmoil I was seeing the world showered with more abundance and beauty then ever before. As Lakshmi I offered my prayers as the devoted mother and wife. As the one who sits on the lotus and knows exactly how to burn her internal fires, when to act and when to wait. I prayed for her lotus perfume to heal and pacify the world.
On the second day I honored Lakshmi as the goddess who rains showers of flowers on all the creatures, people, plants and animals of the earth. She was radiant and full of love for family and friends and on her final day I welcomed her as Kamala, the goddess of desire. As Kamala she is that which unfolds things as they are meant to be. Desire is really just the longing we have inside of us to return home. Kamala is also the lotus which knows its muddy origins and enjoys the journey towards the light.
Every day my altar was becoming more and more full, but I have to admit that the focus and work required to really embody the goddess every morning began to take its toll on me physically, mentally and emotionally. I began to feel deep emotions surfacing, as if I'd stirred up an old dead volcano. I was conjuring the goddess alright and she decided to burn up all the things I was still attached to. Instead of feeling vibrant and radiant like Lakshmi I was glued to my bed with all over body aches. I felt like I had gone swimming for too long and was wringing out towels of tears. But Saraswati was calling me with her pure white feathers, her melodious tones and wise wise words, so I braved a short walk up the street for some white flowers and made this my prayer" Jai Saraswati Ma, the beautiful creature artist, who shines her light of inspiration through her flowing vibrations of song, dance and speech, art and wisdom. May your words be on my lips and may I hear you as my teacher within. may your love be my faith to conquer my fears".

That day Saraswati's wisdom reminded me that I had worked for 8 sold months teaching and sharing Yoga and my body needed a rest. Saraswati told me to have massages, adjustments, acupuncture and therapy sessions and to take herbs. I spent all of Saraswati's 3 days deep in self study trying to listen to what my body heart and mind needed and it worked. I stopped moving and rested. I think as women we are just great at giving and listening to others. We know when we are needed and we love to open our hearts, but we often neglect the one who needs us most,and sometimes we don't even know what we need anymore.

To close my celebrations 12 women joined me in my altar room on the last night of Navaratri. It was an amazing feeling when we all sat down and even more amazing when the women shared what they felt represented them in their power. They claimed their lineage, their hearts, their commitment to truth, their power as mother and healer, their softness, their fairy nature, their ability to manifest and the opportunity to live in the now. Then all these qualities were placed as symbols in the center of the circle and adorned with red, gold and white flowers. We chanted a Mantra to honor the goddess in all her forms and then practiced a sequence of Mudras ( hand gestures) to set a strong intention for ourselves. Then we sat around and ate dessert and caught up with each other, which was great fun.

I purposefully left the altar and the room in a tumbled mess that night so I could come in in the morning and slowly sweep away the world we had created. It was time to move on from the last ten days of celebration, revelation and ritual. Time to take the wisdom of the goddesses and live it in life. Its been a few days and already Navaratri has sunk into the well worn grooves of my instinctual brain and who knows where I will be at and what I will be needing to experience the next time this celebration comes around, but I know now, that the goddess is in me and every women and have nothing but gratitude and awe for all that she inspires.

Yoga as a Path of Love

If I had known 7 years ago what yoga was really about I probably would have packed up my yoga mat and headed for the hills. But like anything in life no one can tell you what your in for, no one can prepare you for the ride of your life and no one can really explain what the true meaning of Yoga is.

I had heard in lectures that Yoga meant union. Union of body, mind and spirit. And I understood that breath was the link from one to the other. What I didn't know at that time was that Yoga is a multifaceted jewel which carries within it the seeds to true freedom. There was no perfect way to get there, no set path and there was a great deal of trial and error along the way.

I had always sat happily at the feet of my teachers, drinking in their words and letting it inspire my practice. My teachers often told me to practice self inquiry, the practice of Jnana Yoga. I was encouraged to hear their words but then to let those words formulate and emerge as a truth I had discovered for myself. I had thought I was pretty good at that and prided myself in only speaking from my own experiences, but actually on reflection it was easier to take their word as gospel. Why take risks when they had tread the path so carefully before me and anyway I was way too busy teaching Yoga to take the time to look deeply within.

But then I hit a wall in my practice, my nervous system began to fail me and I began to question what Yoga really was. Instead of feeling open and liberated by my practice I flat lined. In recent studies on athletes they found that when they over trained without adequate rest their performance plateaued, and then began to decline. Fatigue set in and with it poor performance levels and a decreased ability to recover. If the athlete continued to over train, the result was total mental, physical and emotional exhaustion. At that point the athletes lost their desire to play their sport, their self esteem lowered and they isolated themselves emotionally, while experiencing heightened anxiety and mood swings. I was also the victim of this syndrome. After nearly 15 years of daily practice my body, mind and spirit needed a rest.

It was with great reluctance that I stopped my strong daily pranayama, meditation and asana practice. When ever I tried even the simplest of yogic practices bells and whistles went off in the nerves in my spine and I felt like a frightened rabbit. Luckily I had a strong, stable and patient partner to anchor me down, A wonderful yoga teacher to share with me the tools and techniques to get grounded and a child to remind me that it was important to stay positive and to play.

The other thing I had was my teaching. I found that by teaching Yoga, I was able to practice Karma yoga, the yoga of selfless service. It was pretty weird teaching without physically practicing it myself, but it helped me to stay connected to the essence of yoga as I had to draw from my own more challenging experiences and find a way to share that Yoga is a practice of learning about the self. Sometimes the body burns out, but as long as we are questing to meet our selves, its Yoga.

It was at this point that I really began to read a lot of Yoga books. I became fascinated with Tantra and its facets of ritual, mantra, mudra and devotion. I read about a complex ritual called the Prana Pratistha. In this ritual you bring power and divine energy to a symbol through a ritualized sequence with breath, mantra, mudra and meditation. To me that meant that any inanimate object could be empowered to represent the divine. I was excited about the idea of honoring the beauty and magic in everything around me. I knew I had to find a way to learn this practice and somehow make it my own.

It wasn't long after discovering that there were more practices and methods to Yoga then asana, pranayama and meditation that I moved from New York City back to my hometown of Byron Bay, Australia. Byron Bay is a beautiful place , a beach town surrounded by a picturesque hinterland. I was in the perfect environment to find my way back to balance. Amidst the green hills and sparkling beaches my nervous system began its slow recovery and as each day passed I was able to return to a more well rounded yoga practice. I also had to rely on my own experiences and understandings to teach Yoga now as my teacher was back In NYC.

I would be lying if I said that being back in Byron brought me to the essence of Yoga. being Back in Byron actually turned up the volume for me on everything. Without the distractions of a big city life there was no way to jump outside myself and avoid my own stuff. I also was getting more balanced and couldn't use my nervous system imbalance as an excuse anymore. Now the heat was on me to really get to know myself and to get to the bottom of what freedom in Yoga was all about.

What appeared next was an unexpected complication in my personal relationship and a passionate longing in me to really know and understand the nature of energy. These two factors were like a fuel that fired me into the core of my own heart and I began to burn in ways I never thought I could burn. I dreamed up a fantastic story to explain why I was here and who I was and somehow I convinced everyone around me to believe in it too. In Yoga the word for illusion is Maya, but Maya also means to measure out, or to create distance between things so they are separate from each other. I began to distance myself from ordinary life for the sake of my yoga quest and immersed myself so deeply into the ritualized aspects of Tantric practice that I couldn't fully connect anymore to my grounded home life. I began to straddle two worlds, and I couldn't commit fully to either of them. I was standing on the earth but my head was in the clouds.

The experience of being both in my body and out of it was both a gift and a curse. On the one hand I was having amazing inner visions, which I expressed through poetry and creative writing. I would dream a whole ritual in my sleep and then wake up and practice it. I felt connected to my own menstrual cycle and the cycle of the moon. Everything had a magic to it and everything shone as a living vibration. I understood the meaning of Shiva and Shakti and the essence of Lila, the divine play of the universe. I also experienced a flowering of my intuition. At the same time, my personal relationship suffered greatly and I detached myself from my close friends and family. Sometimes I had a strong urge to get a cow and become a cave dweller. I wanted to live breathe and eat Yoga all day every day.


I headed to India to find out more about cave dwelling and instead landed in Goa, a haven for Yogis wanting an introduction to India that was safe and more western. I wasn't quite ready for the real India, instead I was taking baby steps into my dreams. It was like putting my toe in the water and not really being brave enough to swim. I was lucky though because I stayed with a fellow Yogi who was also a teacher. I attended daily classes with him and also did my own longer morning practice. It was in India that i began to understand that Yoga wasn't really about philosophy, or practice. India made me see that Yoga lived in the hearts of the people there. Everyone I met was a deity, a divine shining one, especially the women whose laughter and a warmth melted my heart. Every time I went to a market or to town I was just overwhelmed by how content everyone was with whatever life had given them. All of a sudden freedom meant contentment in and laughter at the unpredictability of life. The mornings were filled with the ordinary sounds of men clearing their throats and spitting out the excess, of blaring radios with Hindi music, of cows rummaging through rubbish while the evenings were alive with fire crackers and faraway doof doof music. I never made it to a big temple and never completed any complex Tantric rituals as I had hoped, but I discovered some really profound things about myself.

I discovered that I take myself wherever I go. I am difficult, fearful and controlling at times and also able to laugh and give in to the little things. I like living in a western country and really love the simple things in life like breathing in clean air, making music and having a family. I also realized that i like the struggles and dramas in life and that I am absolutely put on this earth to live them. I am not destined to be enlightened or to live in a cave, rather I am meant to live and love like any ordinary Joe.

Now I feel like I am beginning to finally step on the path of Yoga and to me that path is one of self love. In accepting more of who I am I have found my feet firmly planted on this earth. The clouds are great and will always float by and the visions will continue to come and bring their inspiration, but for now I am enjoying cooking creative dinners for my family, reading about the brain, learning Japanese and teaching Yoga.