By Sara Fay and Esther Sophia
During the first quarantine this year, Esther Sophia was in the Dominican Republic, and Sara Fay was in New York City. We were finally in the same time zone again, and we spent a lot of time on the phone sharing our difficulties and internal processes: how we were dealing with the pandemic, isolation, the uncertainty of the times, and loss of community and collaborative arts practices. We had lost work, projects, and our dreams and expectations for the future were in limbo. We offered each other a safe haven and helpful, supportive insights, reminding each other about what we know to be true inside of us.
This empty space brought all the personal challenges to the surface.
To us, it has become very clear that healing doesn’t happen linearly; it happens in cycles. We revisit wounds, and by shining some light on them, holding them with love, and giving them expression, we set ourselves free to live an empowered life. Sometimes it takes a few circles to not feel the trigger points as intensely, but by feeling into and exploring those triggers, we uncover a map to our personal hidden treasure. But that’s for another discussion!
Being dear friends and collaborators since 2014, we have created many dramatic theater pieces in collaboration with The Box Collective, an international, female-led ensemble of creatives. All of our projects have been about healing in the greater sense, exploring women archetypes, visiting wounds of the feminine, bringing them into the light, and restoring their power.
Now, we had the call to facilitate this work in a new form, and from this, “Embracing Cycles” was born: a course that offers initiations and healing to women in the form of circle wisdom.
We were ready to share the wisdom and knowledge we had gathered over the years. Now was the time to hold space for other women to explore, uncover, and come into deep contact with themselves and each other. We wanted to offer women in this time of global pause something of light and healing.
We were very inspired by the work of Kaariina Saarinen, Mayra Stark, Layla Centorrino, and Laurel Kitten’s wisdom of the “Five Gates of Womanhood.” Using this as a base structure, we crafted our course, allowing all our shapers, training, and experience to flow into and be inspired by these gates. We wanted women who enter and share this space to feel safe and seen. Each session includes movement medicine, meditation, and a ritual initiation that women are invited to walk through.
It was very special to have Grandmother Kaariina join us for our last session as a guest speaker and facilitator for “The Death Gate”. Grandmother Kaariina’s experience, sharp intuition, kind heart, and humor brought so much healing to the space. We giggled as we cried and let our old stories be buried by the earth. With our deepest and warmest heart, we thank you.
Sara-Fay and Esther-Sophia are offering their next eight week embracing cycles “Initiation Circle – live your authentic life” will be starting with the First New Moon in 2021 on Sunday, January the 24th.
Find us via www.panaceapath.com
http://www.estherartner.comhttp://www.thebox-collective.comhttps://www.pieceofyourself.com