I didn't go to Yemaya Festival this weekend to reconnect with my feminine side, I went to a bush doof, as usual, to dance. But the universe had other plans for me.
Adorned with feminine colours, designs, shapes and symbols, Yemaya was representative of the mother goddess of the ocean, the divine feminine. I like to look at the divine feminine at its core aspect - Yin.
Yin is feminine, water, earth, soft, night, dark, shadow, passive, receiving, yielding, gentle, slow, consuming, cold.
In contrast, I am a rather yang person. I am very upbeat, extroverted, bright, bubbly and energetic. I like to control, and I am stubborn and unmoving, unlike the soft, accepting and allowing qualities of the feminine.
But this weekend at Yemaya has changed how I use feminine energy in my life, and it all happened in an extraordinary didgeridoo healing session.
At 7pm on the Saturday night, our group was pretty high and we were in the process of figuring out what we all wanted to do (A mighty task while on LSD). I tried to dance at my usual favourite place at a bush doof, the main stage, with high energy psychedelic trance booming from the speakers. But after a few minutes by myself, I wanted to go back to my friends.
My best friend declared that she would be attending a didge healing session at 8pm. I'd never participated in the healing spaces at a bush doof before, and was keen to try it out.
We entered the space a bit early to settle in before the healing. It was a large dome-like space, with pink silk sheets drooped from the middle of a ceiling, where a crystal chandelier hung like the crown jewel. I had seen a vagina sculpture in crystal healing space a bit earlier, and noted again the vagina-reminiscent decor.
To tell you the truth, this vagina stuff was quite confronting for me, even as a female (I wonder how my male friends took all of this in). It wasn't until later that I realized that our culture shames female genitalia, and this is why it was so confronting to see a vagina sculpture blatantly staring me in the face.
Despite this, the warm pink sheets and the mood-lit space were highly inviting. There were people snuggled amongst blankets and pillow, with my friend smack bang in the middle. Feeling like a deer caught in headlights, thanks to the overemphasizing effects of lysergic acid, I went straight over and sat with her.
There was a kind of open-mic thing going on, and a young dreadlocked woman named Megan came to sit up at the mic to share her poetry. I immediately thought that this was an amazingly brave thing to do, to open yourself up to a bunch of strangers and trust they would pay you respect. (And that they did, which is a wonderful thing about bush doofs.) Megan, with a strong spoken word and conviction, proceeded to read us multiple poems that are all beautifully blended in my memory, exposing her life with themes of womanhood, children, love, heartbreak, and the body. One that touched me in particular was about fat on the body. I have always hated my stomach fat, wishing it wasn't there, and at the end of the poem she encouraged us, with her soft, kind voice, to touch that problem part of our bodies, and tell it we love it. Light giggles echoed as the room filled with love for our bodies. And when I gently held my stomach and told it I loved it, unlike the other times I have tried, this time I actually meant it.
Megan had set the scene for the healing with her poetry, uniting the room with laughter and love. There was a sense of solidarity within the space as the didgeridoo healing man began to set up. We lay down with our heads on pillows, and a beautiful stranger covered my friend and I with a blanket. The healing ceremony started with a light drumming beat to ground the energies. And as I closed my eyes, the the man said "Let yourself fall into the earth"...
My breath flowing out let me fall deeper and deeper. I was restless at first, trying to relax to the abrasive sounds of the healing didge, which were unlike the more melodic sounds we usually hear from Aboriginal educators who come to schools and cultural centres. I kept opening my eyes to make sure I was still in the room, and my friends were still there. My closed eye visuals were confusing and full of colour. But after a while, I was deep within myself. Deeper than I had ever been before. My breathing was so slow, and with every breath, I felt my body let go of tension. And after the bodily tension was gone, my breathing was penetrating my very inner layer. My whole being was opened by my breath, my inner self expanding and expanding. I was seeing and feeling places so deep within my self that I was sure would take YEARS to access without the help of the LSD (which I like to think of as a spiritual lubricant). My breath finally reached a tiny red tent like structure right at the middle of my being. I was sure this was me, hiding away in there. By now, I had forgotten I was even on LSD, or that I was at yemaya festival, or that there was time. I was now in the deepest meditative state I had ever experienced.
It was about now that the didgeridoo sounds "clicked" into my body. I had started letting go of control and trusting, and my deep breathing had allowed the sound to enter my being and start healing me. But to heal, you first need to get the dirt out. I started seeing all this dark stuff being scraped out of the particles that I consisted of. I was far more than a 3-dimensional matrix, a vast rainbow pixellated like structure that was woven into the space around me and beyond. The didge sounds were like rakes on my being. It kept raking and raking the soul crap into a pile, until a climax was reached and the sounds gently brought us back down, releasing it all, and bringing us back for another round. I surrendered to the sounds which were now making my body arch and twitch, and my breathing got faster as the energy rushed through me and whirlpooled out, taking all the stagnant stuff with it. My gut even churned as if the didge was cleaning out my physical body! I had never experienced healing like this before. When doing more gentle, subtle healing in my old psychic development class, we were told that stuff would come up for us as it was released, but this was like everything was released through me at once. It was super intensive, and there was no denying that it was real.
All of this was uncomfortable at first, I had never experienced anything like this before, nor trusted anything to come so far into my being. I hadn't even seen this much of me before! My body is so much more than anything I could have ever dreamed of. On the very inside, it is as big as the sky, and all of this is contained deep deep deep inside the very center of me. But I never looked! We're always too scared to look, afraid of who we are and afraid of what we might discover. But by letting go and relaxing everything, I was able to peek in, and eventually, let the healing right into me at a deep soul level. I could feel the transformation happening. The didgeridoo reached right into my soul and pulled out chunks of darkness like they were thorns embedded deep into the skin. Now that I had gotten used to it, and I could literally see how beneficial this was for me, I could have stayed there for hours. But eventually I had to get up.
I got up way too fast, like when your alarm wrenches you out of a super deep sleep. I pulled myself out of the deepest parts of me, stood up, literally stumbled out of the healing space, disoriented, and was gasping from the intensity of the healing. It took me a while to be able to think clearly again but the most amazing thing I was feeling that I was VERY grounded. I was right into my body, I could feel every part of it and could feel my feet on the ground. This is a huge deal for me, as a double Aquarius who spends most of her time in her head and the sky. I was stomping my feet on the ground like it was the best feeling ever! And it was - I have NEVER felt to connected to my body, and the earth beneath it. Just, wow.
I was pretty spent and we all wanted to chill away from the intense energies of the party, so we all went back to our campsite. To my surprise, it was only 10pm. My estimate at this point was 3am or 4am. Long story short, I stayed up all night chatting with my dearest friends. I had a sleep, and in the morning, as I walked into the bush, the sun greeted me. I felt it all over my skin, bathing me in warmth. I walked, feeling all the movement in my legs and feeling the solid earth beneath my boots. I took my sweet time, gently stretching in the morning sunlight. So much peace filled me in all the places I had discovered the night before, in all the places that darkness had been removed from. I felt bigger, expansive, and deeply relaxed.
Later that day, I tried to sleep again. It didn't work, so I spent a good couple of hours just lying on my back in my tent, breathing deeply and stretching. I took my time that I never had before, and I stretched my body like I never had before, feeling every stretch as deep as it went, and observing how my body thanked me for it, for taking my time.
That's what I learnt at Yemaya. To take my time, like Yin, like the feminine, which is slow, and gentle, and soft. I learnt how to fully embrace myself, like a loving mother; embracing my body, my whole being, and embracing the chance to heal.
I learnt to yield, to be vulnerable, to let go, accept and receive. Like the vagina yields to the male, yield to the present moment; accept it, embrace it. Let yourself breathe, let yourself relax, and slow down.
Breathing IS acceptance! The deeper the breath, the deeper the acceptance. Slow down, breathe, and accept every part of yourself. Accepting is connecting... Slow down, breathe, and
connect to your body and
to the Earth.
Allow yourself to feel, and be vulnerable, even though it is scary...
Allow yourself to receive love and healing with grace, even though it is scary...
Allow yourself to let go of control, even though it is scary!
When you let go, when you become soft, when you embrace all that is Yin, the feminine, you literally open yourself up to possibilities, knowledge, love and peace.
You open yourself up to
YOU.
