When I was nine my dad was assigned a diplomatic mission to represent Bulgaria in Malta. I was lucky to live on this notorious Templar knight island for four years, to learn about its mysterious history and to marvel one of the oldest Megaliths in the world. I have a vivid memory of visiting these amazing temples, which hold the oldest effigies of the Mother Goddess on Earth.

I would go to these round statues and hug them and run around them. I have no idea why I was so drawn to the fat and shapeless figures. I was glued to them and always asked my parents to take me back to the temple so I could touch them. It must have been the energy, or the natural magnetism that made me revisit them again and again at such a young age.

Later in life, when I got deep into my directing career I dedicated an entire show, deciphering the gnostic gospel of Mary Magdalene through movement, image and text. It was about resurrecting the sacred archetype of the divine feminine, which I had encountered during those visits to the megaliths in Malta. I was fascinated with the roles of every female as a lover, a mother, a queen and a wise woman. All these aspects of the sacred feminine which were as old as time were deeply embedded into every cells of a woman’s body, helping her identify with the receiver, the warrior and the mystic within. Being a woman and mother is getting in tune and alert to the world around.

The mother for me reaches further and encompasses so much more than just birthing and nurturing children, ideas, projects – whatever you are the creator of, encompassing inner strength and wisdom, ingenuity and artfulness and sacred care-taking.  And this is the phase when we are at our most intrinsically connected to the great Earth Mother, Gaia.

When we start putting faith in this archetype, and using her gifts, we can see that her strength is in her nurturing presence, not in control.  Putting this archetype in context and embodying it through our actions we become part of the natural cycles of nature, and learn when to foster growth and when to resist and allow separation and freedom.

When this archetype is able to emerge freely and strongly, we are inspired to spend time nurturing our own bodies, minds and spirits, not as a luxurious treat, but as necessity. Then we awaken that multidimensional mother within. She makes things happen. She uses her intuition and awareness to guide her decisions, and guard and protect herself, her family, and her interests, even as she’s able to call upon her Divine Feminine to elevate and transcend those personal interests and cultivate relationships that serve everyone’s highest good.

A woman’s capacity to nurture and her longing to merge with the Beloved are hardwired into her “bodymind”. For some reason our culture has taken our essential nature and created a hook: telling us that we need something or someone outside ourselves to complete us—to be whole. So, we often mistake our longing for the Beloved for that someone or something in the material world, which leads to attachment, pain, and heartache. Instead we must remember that our longing is for the Beloved within us. The Sacred Feminine embodied within us is the essence of wholeness; and the more we honor our sovereignty, the more we have to offer the world.

Yoga refers to this state as Adi Shakti, and it calls for nurturing ourselves and others as we go with the flow of life cultivating our virtues and knowing our value as care-takers, as healers, and intuitive agents for conscious change.

Women’s Health Yoga Routine: Goddess-like

This Yoga Women’s Health sequence blends essential poses, breathing and mudra practices to maintain women’s health with an emphasis on regulating hormones and stimulating optimal function of all systems and glands. The creative class design swirls like a Sufi dancer to awaken intuition and a kinetic recall of the divine feminine.