I recently completed my 2025 ‘Coming Home, Yoga and Nature Immersion Retreat for Women’ on our land and the richness and depth of the journey that myself and the circle of brave women who chose to join me have travelled together has touched my heart deeply. From the start, I felt a ‘weaving’ energy with us and spider energy was indeed very present with us in the Roundhouse during our sharing spirals throughout the week. I felt each of us entering the space with our own unique thread, our individual essence, and that we each wove this thread into an invisible tapestry of heart-connection through the week. Each day I sensed the warp and weft of our collective tapestry being woven tighter, such that it increasingly felt like an invisible but very palpable ‘safety net’, which held us, stronger each day.
As the trust, respect and intimacy between us grew, the depths to which we were able to journey into ourselves also grew. As such, it wasn’t long until we began to knock on doors within us that we usually do everything to avoid. We entered our respective shadow-lands and an analogy was present with us of meeting and being present with our inner swamp. We learnt to navigate and explore this swamp, even find treasures and beauty within its muddy waters. We were assisted by a beautiful image of ‘Compassion’ from Ma Deva Padma’s wonderful ‘The Sacred She’ tarot card deck, which I highly recommend and use as an allied support in my women’s yoga offerings. In this card is a picture of an innocent young girl with a pink lotus flower in her hair (the lotus flower is a symbol of enlightenment, which, significantly, needs the mud at the bottom of a lake to blossom into the light, and pink is the colour of Hridaya, the sacred heart). In the image the girl is gently and lovingly hugging a huge crocodile. The crocodile represents our unconscious, our most ancient, reptilian, base parts. These parts are an essential part of who we are – our savage, wild, instinctive impulses of survivalism, beyond our thinking mind. The girl represents the truth and purity of who we are, in heart and soul.
Crocodiles and other reptiles like snakes (and dragons), can elicit a fear and aversion response in us. But this image of Compassion helped us to meet our inner swamp-monsters with acceptance, love and compassion and give them space to express themselves; during the week we each found the courage to ‘hug the crocodile’ in our own way, These parts of us, which we have locked behind closed doors, shamed, rejected, denied and avoided, hold the key to us coming home to our true selves, returning to wholeness and reclaiming our personal power. A lot of energy goes into supressing our innate, instinctive ways of being and, when we ignore or deny them, their power over us grows, leaking out in uncontrollable unconscious behavioural patterns that hurt ourselves and others. But when we find safe places in our lives that enable us to have courage to own these parts and meet them with presence and acceptance, that energy returns to us as personal power and we feel liberated to be as we truly are.
Through swimming courageously through our inner swamp and meeting its inhabitants, they can eventually become our friends and allies. We can learn to harness the ancient wisdom that they hold and our own acceptance of all of our parts creates a vibrational safety within us that others feel, such that they can find the courage to embrace their own inner crocodiles. The ripples from the reclaimed swamp spread wide!
From the outset of the week I felt we were held by the energy of a pink rose, the symbol of our sacred heart of unconditional love, the seat of our soul. To navigate our inner swamp requires connection with our heart. As one of the women said at the end of the week, ‘This is soul work that we’re doing’. And it’s true – we are infinitely more powerful and mysterious than conditioned society and life would have you believe. Once we connect with our soul and understand that the heart is the path, we can hug whatever beast is put before us!
I end this post with deep gratitude to the circle of women who taught me, touched my heart deeply, humbled me, challenged me and held me during this week, and to our allies in this work, the plants, whose essence and wisdom I felt coursing through me at times during the sharing circles, with an especially big shout out to the tough love of mugwort and the healing balm of the rose. And to Trev, my beloved, and our three mighty and mysterious furry beings who we are blessed to live with, Lucy, Frieda and Spider, who all played their parts in holding space for us. And, finally, to that most precious of portals into the ancient wisdom and power of our great Mother Earth on this land and my greatest current teacher of all, the water mine, to which our feet seemed to naturally take us on our last evening together for a spontaneous simple ceremony of offering gratitude to the land.
I end this retreat in even deeper awe and humble respect than ever for the mysteries of the divine feminine energy within us and without, and a strong resolve to continue this work with women, to continue to weave my unique thread into the healing of the sisterhood wound, to remember and reclaim all that we are in our female bodies, and to do my part to help bring energetic balance and harmony back to this precious planet. And, throughout, to honour and more fully understand the gifts and treasures of the masculine energy, within us and without, which holds and supports this work so impeccably. It is an honour to weave our hearts together in this way and may we all spiral upwards together, moving ever closer to living from the truth of all that we are.
frond yoga with Rebecca May 