Behind the scenes the Shamanic Yoga Institute faculty has been busy building. We are working on creating new sites and offerings for our ayllu and crafting new streams for mentorship. Over the course of the next few months, we have a group of medicine teachers will be entering into mentorship in order to prepare them to take the role of lead facilitators for mastery, medicine wheels and yoga teacher trainings.
We are so excited to platform these courageous women as they step into their power and share their medicine on a wider scope with the world.
SYI Updates
First Annual Shamanic Yoga Retreat
The forecast called for a cosmic river of rain. Cloaked in copious amounts of garbage bags and Gortex, we crossed the Salish Sea to Camp Fircom on our trusty vessel the Apodaca. Our group walked the adolescent play grounds of Christine and Nikki and Mieke and sat in circle with a collective of mesa carriers. The medicine work activated quickly, mesas and hearts were cleared. We held ceremony at the edge of the tumultuous waters, calling for the removal of our distortions. We ended commitments and made new vows. And on our final night together, created flags that represented our relationship to power and danced to the songs that filled us with vitality. We cannot wait to go back next year!
Mentorship with Christine
We cast our circle last month, charting a new course forward to sail over the ocean of samsara in service to our people. In turn, we names the land and waters of our birth and residence and humbly opened ourselves to be infinitely teachable to these localities of power and Spirit. We crafted a mixed-media piece, and moved its message into the body and into poetry. Allowing, allowing, allowing Shakti to permeate our work.
Mentorship Art, Larissa Parker
Mentorship Art, Laurie MacDonald
October Blog
“I love each season for its unique beauty but I have a kinship with Autumn. I can feel the descent into the dark from the radiance of summer deep in my heart and rather than being terrified, I feel at home here. I imagine that it is the magic of Persephone returning to her love woven into my bones; where the divine feminine meets the divine masculine and she goes into the dark of the womb, into the void itself to do what she does very best, magic.
Persephone’s legend is complex and the versions are many. I like to think it is a tale of a maiden awakening to her sensuality and power, her mother searching for her in grief like any mother would but also how the crone may mourn the juiciness of youth. The part I choose not to acknowledge is the role Hades has in tricking her, abusing her, assaulting her. I want to stop telling these stories so that women are helpless, vulnerable, and weak and men are perpetrators, dominators, and violent.
In fact, in my meditations and journeys, the gatekeeper of the Uhupacha or underworld Huascar, is one of my closest allies. In life Huscar Inca is most known for the Incan Civil War when he and his half-brother battled over Cuzco and the Incan Empire. In the end he lost, and shortly thereafter the Incan civilization was decimated by Spanish Conquest and disease. In life it is said Huascar was the keeper of the medicine teachings and when he died, he took those teachings to the underworld.”
https://shamanicyoga.ca/2021/10/27/the-descent/
Come Practice in Studio with Us!
Karma Yoga Classes: Sundays 5:30 – 6:30 pm
Bhakti Yoga with Christine: Thursdays 9:30 – 10:45 am
Bhakti Yoga with Rochelle: Fridays 9:30 – 10:45 am
@ Shala Yoga, Squamish
To stay in the loop, visit:
https://shamanicyoga.ca/events/
UPCOMING OFFERINGS WITH SYI
Mentorship Art, Ashley Dodd
calls space her body and emptiness her home,
who has neither name nor colour nor family nor form,
who, meditating on Herself,
is both Source and Sound,
is the goddess who shall mount and ride this horse.