The Embodied Woman
A 9 Week Journey of Returning Home to Your Body, Home to Your Life coming in Spring 2019
Your thoughts, feelings and body sensations are like waves on the ocean, surface experiences of a vast and deep dimension of your being.
When you identify yourself as the surface, trying to change, modify, or control it, clinging and resisting, you easily feel small and stuck in endless loops.
Practice to pause and relax a little. Unclench from the surface labels and ride the energy that is freed up, deep into the pulse that creates all of this.
Rooted in the ocean, you access immense creativity and possibilities that you can bring with you into this wild dance of embodied life.
~ Chameli Ardagh
The Embodied Woman Retreat
Dear Sister. I'm so excited to take this Journey with you!
Come join me on a 9 week Immersion into your Body Temple.
This will be a joyful, blissful, luscious time together filled with soul food to nourish you at all levels of your being.
Over 9 weeks we'll flow together through a creative dance that will bring you through the portal of your sacred body into an awakened life, including: Sacred Feminine Embodiment Practices, Somatic Meditation, Earth Medicine, Breathwork & Gentle Yoga for All Levels.
I highly recommend this course for anyone wanting to grow a deeper connection to your body and to awaken the limitless joy, wisdom and open heart of embodiment!
This course will also be excellent preparation for the Spring 2019 Immersion, Healing the Mother Wound.
Who is the Embodied Woman?
Embodied Woman is at home in her body and loves every curve, bump and beauty mark that makes her unique. She knows her body is her temple and the place where she connects with the divine. Her feet are rooted to the Mother Source and crown opened to the stars.
Embodied Woman celebrates her Emotional Intelligence, allowing feelings and moods to flow through her and opening to receive all of her experiences as gifts. She allows it all to inform her, nourish her and guide her deeper into her life.
Embodied Woman is an Alchemical Creatress. She knows that life is a heart-breaking-open love affair that provides the sustenance for her soul’s growth. She trusts that life is for her, not against her, and flows with what is offered. She uses the energy of her experiences as the fire needed to transmute loss into opportunity, pain into tenderness, sorrow into a deeper connection to all that is.
Embodied Woman is a Warrioress of the Heart. She holds great capacity for love, offering it without condition or restraint. Through not turning away from suffering, she has tuned her heart strings to sing a song of great compassion for all living things. She is a Protector of the vulnerable, Champion of the underrepresented, Guardian of all sentient beings and Mother Earth.
Embodied Woman has reclaimed her voice, and uses it to plant seeds of truth, wisdom and inspiration along her path. She knows that silence is not empty, and that listening with all of her body presence allows for spontaneous knowing to arise.
Embodied Woman has awakened to her Intuitive gifts. She sees through the one dimensional obvious to an expansive open sky of pure potentiality. She has learned the language of dreams, and honed her abilities to receive guidance from the spiritual world. She is as comfortable in not knowing as she is in trusting the wisdom she discovers when she seeks her own counsel.
Embodied Woman embraces her perfectly imperfect human self, even as she remembers she is an Embodiment of the Feminine Divine. Shame has made way for Self-Acceptance. Judgement has become Discernment. She shines her self-love as a beacon, inviting others to also embrace their own sacred messy selves.
The Illusion of Separation from Life
Thousands of years ago when Patriarchy began to take root in our societies and human perceptions, we entered the Great Forgetting and begin to live in the Illusion of Separation. We forgot that we were already whole, and that life was found in the totality. Out of a desire to control the uncontrollable and make sense of the unknowable, the magical and mysterious gifts of the feminine were deemed unessential and less-than, dangerous and sinful. The gifts of the masculine, the thinking brain, analysis, judgement, invention, achievement, expansion, and tribalism took precedence over the gifts of the feminine, the body, sensuality, intuition, instinct, nurturance and protection of life, and inclusiveness. Religions were dedicated to Sun and God up in the sky, and spirituality became a practice via the mind, at the expense of our bodies and the body of Mother Earth. We became split apart, disconnected from the source of life itself.
Returning Home
Yet, something important is happening, Sister. I know you can feel it. It’s why you are reading these words. There is a stirring in you, a deepening desire to birth something that is essential for your healing and the healing of this planet. You are not alone. Millions of women around the world are being called. Called to what? The best way I can describe it is as a calling to return home. Home to the Body. Home to Presence. Home to the Earth. Home to Sisterhood. Home to our sacred gifts as Women.
And it all feels so familiar, like we are remembering and relearning something that we once knew. Women are returning to reclaim their places alongside their sisters in places of healing, devotion and conscious awakening: Circles, Temples, Covens, Churches and Lodges. Women are reclaiming titles that have been forgotten, suppressed out of fear or control of the Sacred Feminine in all her forms: Healer, Goddess, Priestess, Queen, Shaman, Sage, Oracle, Witch, Wise Woman.
Yet how can we become Embodied Women when we are exiled from the Divine Feminine in all Her forms, including ourselves?
The Exile from the Feminine takes many forms within you as a Woman:
Physical:
- Disconnection from your body wisdom and instinctual nature.
- Inability to determine your needs and desires.
- Inability to experience sensual pleasure.
- Shame around your feminine body and your monthly bleeding.
- Hormonal imbalances resulting from over-masculinization of doing, achieving, producing.
- Using food, drink or other substances to numb or awaken difficult-to-access emotional states.
- Feeling numbed out, disengaged, disinterested.
Relational:
- Inability to create or sustain healthy intimate partnerships.
- Toxic friendships with others who do not uplift you and celebrate you exactly as you are.
- Fear and mistrust of other women.
- A lack of boundaries in personal and work relationships.
- Difficulty in speaking your truth or asking for what you need.
- Defaulting to a state of subservience or people pleasing with others.
Emotional:
- Feeling less than, not enough, too much, broken or that something is wrong with you.
- A mistrust of your emotional experience.
- Self-doubt, lack of confidence in decision making.
- A feeling of emptiness, as if something is missing from your life.
- Inability to allow your emotional experiences, or allowing your emotional experiences to overwhelm or control you.
Spiritual:
- Disconnected from Mother Earth and her seasons, nature, animals, cycles of the moon.
- Mistrust of Life itself.
- Participating in a spiritual practice that perpetuates the split from the Feminine.
- Blocked creativity or not taking the time for creative expression.
- Inability to see, celebrate and directly experience the magic and mystery of life.
There is a path to your Embodied Awakening.
Now, Sister, take a deep breath, one that you feel all the way down through your heart, belly and pelvis. Place one hand on your heart, and one on your lower belly, and call yourself all the way home to your body temple. Tune into your first chakra at the base of the spine and the pelvic floor, the circling pool of collected energy that is rich ruby red, blood red, life source red. From this chakra, allow a root of red light to reach down into Mother Earth, and feel yourself being held as you ponder these questions below.
Would you like to:
- Inhabit your body temple, and experience the world through all of your senses – alive, awake, and present?
- Reconnect with your intuition and learn the language of your body wisdom?
- Reclaim your voice, and use that voice to speak your truth, spread love and share your wisdom?
- Sit in a safe, loving and empowering circle of women, where you can be witnessed and uplifted as you reclaim the Feminine?
- Remember your sacred gifts as a Woman, and offer those gifts to the world?
- Heal wounds you hold around the Feminine Body, for yourself, your ancestors and generations to come?
- Renew your relationship with Mother Earth and the Feminine Divine?
- Return to your natural flow and rhythm as a woman, intimately connected to the moon cycles and seasons of Mother Earth?
- Rewire your wounded instinctual nature as you grow your trust in your Inner Wisdom and Intuition?
- Learn many beautiful practices you can weave into your life that can bring you home to your body, nature, and the richness of life this magical world?
Women are embodiments of the Feminine Divine.
Our energy and creative cycles mirror the Eight cycles of the moon.
Our life cycles reflect the four seasons of our Mother Earth.
Our bodies are sacred terrains of magic and mystery suffused with pools and rivers of flowing Shakti.
How this works:
Over the course of two moon cycles, each of the eight weeks will be focused upon a different step in the journey home to awakening embodiment. The ninth week will be integration and celebration time.
This is a powerful time to do this work, Sister! We begin our journey on May 1st on Beltane as it is honored in the Northern Hemisphere. Beltane means "Bright Fire" and is the celebration of the masculine and feminine divine union. That is an auspicious beginning to our work together. At the end of our 2nd week we have Mother's day, which we'll use to honor all the mothers in our lives, including Gaia, Mother Earth. In our 8th week we celebrate Lithia, the Summer Solstice.
The flow of our journey will move from Full Moon as we connect in our sister circle, through the descent to the New Moon where we'll do some deep releasing work, through the ascent back up to a Full Moon as enter into the fullness of our Sensual Body, through the descent to do some deep rewriting of our stories and then ascending up again to our integration and celebration.
Full Moon /Week 1 – Calling the Circle – Creating Safety. Belonging. Connection. Our Body as Home. Mother Earth as Home.
Descent/Week 2 - The Sacred Art of Surrender - Flowing Woman
New Moon/ Week 3 – Grieving/Forgiving - Clearing the body for a new way of being.
Ascent/Week 4– Boundaries- Protection/Connection. Voice. Empowerment.
Full Moon/Week 5 – Sensuality. Pleasure. Body Love. Play.
Descent/Week 6 – The Feminine Divine Within and Without - Meeting Shakti
New Moon/Week 7 – New Stories - Rewriting. Reweaving. New Contracts.
Ascent/Week 8 – Reclaiming - -Remembering. Reunion. Restoring.
Full Moon Week 9 - The Awakened Embodied Woman– Integration. Celebration.
About the pacing and depth of this course: This is an Immersion, a deep dive into tender spaces and potent places within you. Think of it as a boot camp for the soul, one that can positively impact your life in all areas. Even as this will be powerfully transformative, it will be equally nourishing, supportive and uplifting. You will be fed at all levels of your being. As the arbiter of your own experience, you'll be in charge of how deep and how fast you go. I'll keep bringing you back, over and over again to your own wisdom so that you can trust your way, your truth, your timing and depth, all along your journey.
The Embodied Woman Retreat includes:
Before We Begin:
A welcome PDF Guide and video to call you to the circle, and offer suggestions for useful tools and ways to prepare to make your journey safe and fruitful.
Weekly:
- At the beginning of each week and just before each weekend, you'll receive a video offering instruction and encouragement, along with recommended practices (always optional to incorporate when it fits for you), including one or more of the following:
- A Guided Meditation and Breathwork Practice
- Embodiment Practice
- Earth Medicine Ritual
- Yoga Practice (Postures, Mantras, Mudras)
- Physical Nourishment
- Journal prompts.
- Inspiration from art, poetry, music.
- Each week's theme will include suggestions for supportive tools of corresponding crystals, essential oils, herbs, plants, colors, mudras, mantras and yantras.
- A weekly live virtual gathering via Zoom with ritual and conversation.
- Full and New Moon, Beltane and Solstice inspirations to keep us in contact with Mother Earth's seasons and cycles.
Additional Support:
- A safe and warm Community of Women who witness, support, uplift and encourage you in everyday living and your spiritual journey.
- An ongoing, accessible private virtual gathering space to give and get support throughout the course and beyond t0 continue your The Embodied Woman Retreat.
- Toi Lynn will be actively involved in the gathering space, offering additional resources, encouragement and conversation.
- Open access to Toi Lynn by email.
- Discounted Embodiment Coaching and Dreamwork Sessions with Toi Lynn.
What Others Are Saying...
“I was empowered by the commonality I discovered among all of us.”
Catherine de Sauvage MFT, and Somatic Practitioner, San Mateo, CA
“She’s a pioneer.”
Nancy Ann Key, Friend and Fellow Wayshower, Sebastopol, CA
“A truly masterful yoga teacher.”
Georgia, Educator/Tutor and Booksmith, Burlingame, CA
“This retreat was amazing!”
Jennifer Rowland, Middletown, Ohio
“I truly trust in her healing offerings.”
Abby Volk Neuberg, Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist, San Francisco, CA
“Can’t rave about her enough!”
Patricia Robinson, Counselor and Artist, Danville, CA
Best retreat I have ever been a part of…and had the most growth from.
Kristina, Madison WI
Why Join Me on This Path to The Embodied Woman?
Oh, Sister, I've traveled many roads to get here, to this place of being called to offer a space for the Awakening of Feminine Embodiment. My entire personal and professional life has been leading up to these offerings of healing, awakening and living through the portal of this amazing gift of the body.
I first embarked upon the journey to self discovery when entered therapy at 20 in order to make sense of what had been a painful and lonely childhood, and a new marriage that felt hauntingly the same. Therapy became my safe space for exploring myself for the first time. My experience was so healing that I changed my major from Landscape Architecture to Human Development, and went on to get an MS in Clinical Psychology and a license as a Marriage & Family Therapist.
During those years, I also began to explore Meditation, Buddhism, Earth Medicine and Celtic Spirituality. As I became more present with myself, I intuited that I had a deep mother wound that could only be healed in the presence of other women. So, I called a women’s circle, which is still together 25 years later. This sacred circle of 6 women became home for me, and inspired me to create the same experiences for other women. I’ve been leading women's circles for 26 years now, and I truly believe it is where I fell in love with being a Woman, in the center of being held, reflected, challenged and uplifted by other Women.
In my early thirties, I discovered Yoga, and my eyes were opened to world of the Soma, the body. My body became my guide and the portal through which I began to experience the fullness and beauty of living. In my body temple I reconnected with my inner wisdom, found the courage to leave my toxic marriage, remembered my divine nature, grew my self-worth and sense of belonging in this world and opened myself to a loving marriage with a man who sees the Goddess in me every day.
This awoke in me a hunger for even more discoveries so that I could offer myself as a conduit for healing and awakening. So began a 17 year long journey of soaking up every training and experience I could to understand how we work, how we relate, and where we fit in this Universe. I became certified in Bikram Yoga, Ashtanga Vinyasa, Thai Yoga Massage, Reiki and Hypnotherapy, and immersed myself in studies of Shamanism, Dreamwork, Jungian Psychology, Priestessing, Feminine Archetypes, Somatic Meditation and Sacred Embodiment Practices.
Over the past three years I've been on sabbatical in Kauai, in deep introspection and rewriting of my stories, and in an even deeper journey into the Soma, the body. Not easy, and sometimes painfully messy, this time has been a homecoming. It is truly my passion, my life purpose, to bring people home to themselves.
FAQS
What kind of program is this?
This is an Immersion into the body temple as a path to awakening. Embarking upon this journey is making a commitment to yourself, and to your awakening. It is a radical act of self love. Even as you do this for You, this course will trigger waves of healing that will flow through other people in your life, as well as the collective. When we do this healing work, we also heal the wounds of our ancestors, and stop the wound from continuing into future generations.
Can I join at any time?
To create a safe and sacred space, we will close registration at midnight Tuesday April 3oth.
I feel nervous about spending this money on myself.
We understand! Money calls up all sorts of questions around worthiness, abundance and self care. One mantra that I invite you to ponder is "Caring for myself allows me to care for others." Another is "My self love invites others to be more self loving" or "I am completely worthy of living an abundant life."
$269 is an investment in yourself, your future, your family and this earth. In this course, you'll receive deep, transformational and life long impactful support that is just $134.50 a month. You are so worth it!
Here is what I recommend that you do:
- In a private quiet space, stand with your feet hip width apart, and place a hand on your lower belly and a hand on your heart.
- Close your eyes.
- Take several slow, deep, soothing breaths, breathing all the way down through your hips and to the bottom of your feet, and all the way up through the top of your head.
- Imagine your feet growing red roots down into Mother Earth.
- Feel how you are held in unconditional love.
- Imagine a crown of golden light on your head that extends up into the stars.
- Feel how you are connected to light, love, stars.
- Now ask yourself "Is The Embodiment Retreat right for me?" and then listen.
- Listen to how your whole body feels in response.
- Keep coming back to your body and breath.
- Keep feeling the love from Mother Earth and the Stars.
- Trust the wisdom that arises in you.
What is your refund policy?
This course is non-refundable. Once you enter through the doors to our healing space, you have received all the downloadable content we created, along with indefinite access to that content. Thank you for understanding.
Is my course membership transferable?
Your membership is not transferable to another person. However, we do offer gift certificates for friends.
What happens if I violate the Wild Sacred Awakening Guidelines for Ethics and Participation?
If you participate in shaming, bullying, victimization or drama, you will be removed from the course without refund. We will notify you ahead of time. We reserve the right to refuse entry to anyone not deemed appropriate for the community.