Alchemy Journey two: Say yes to life’s invitation

I began my life sharing 9 months in a womb with my identical twin sister which nurtured the tenderness of life with the meaningful comfort of connection.

For much of my life, connection meant safety. Safety was the sense of being fully accepted, whole and confidently free. 

I grew up in a male dominant Italian family. As Italians we're a gregarious and lively bunch often speaking in extreme volumes. Early on, at the age of 7 years old, I experienced a pivotal moment around one of our large family dinner tables. The table was enlivened with the usual argumentative tones. I was mimicking a loud demonstrative glass slamming action that my father had just expressed and my glass shattered. My Dad, I imagine out of fear for my safety, ran to my side from the other end of the table yelling with what seemed like anger & blame. 

I remember feeling deeply scared, embarrassed and ashamed. With the shattering of the glass, my capacity to have a voice shattered as well. I developed a fear of expressing myself in life and in relationships which led to the disconnection from my heart and a paralyzing fear of speaking in public.

Jumping forward many years later as a young woman and mother I yearned for the comfort of connection, belonging & freedom that I knew from my ‘twinship’. This led me in my twenties to a meditation practice and a yoga asana practice in my thirties. 

It became a relationship of recognition. Being in my body, mind and heart with awareness helped forge power and strength in me that had been shattered years earlier. I sensed a shift from being separate to being part of something bigger. It became my purpose to teach and share these practices of sacred recognition. This was the first divine nudge to reclaim my voice and despite my fear of public speaking I completed a Yoga Teacher Training program in 1998.

Already teaching for 7 years, I was in my second teacher training, an Anusara training in 2006, when I met Douglas Brooks, a Tantric philosophy scholar and professor at Rochester University. I experienced an alchemical moment when he shared a teaching that broke through my self-limiting beliefs of unworthiness.

“Yoga is an invitation to dance with life and it requires your participation. You honor life by being part of it. You can be a wallflower, hidden and disengaged or you can say yes to all of life and co-create a life that you thrive from living. Life becomes a choice, the choice to say yes to its invitation.” 

I realized that I had been saying no - turning away from life. I had been playing it small by living from the perspective of my 7 year old self who had lost her voice and had been telling herself she had nothing to say and nothing to share that was worth offering. I was the wallflower! NO MORE. I was ready to deepen into the path of embodiment to clear out and heal old wounds to regain the gift of my voice, in order to speak and act with a free heart. 

I have witnessed the transformational capacity of a yogic lifestyle. Yoga not only creates physical vitality and strength, but it continues to take me into my heart with ever deepening understanding of myself, others and life. Yoga is an unwavering life partner that returns me to my hearts’ deepest wisdom to access creativity, curiosity and passion for life. Yoga is a study of self-awareness and a practice of self-acceptance that awakens liberating life-affirming alchemy.

I continue on this sacred path of awakening into my life, aware of the pulse of connection that beats inside my heart, connected to a Universal pulse in the heart of all beings and in the heart of all existence. 

The spiritual path has revealed to me that we all experience a sense of disconnection, severed from a physical umbilical cord at birth. This is our shared human experience. Yet, we are spiritual beings having a human experience and from the Tantric perspective we are eternally connected to a spiritual umbilical cord that can never be severed.

Yoga means ‘to integrate’, and it re-integrates us into the spiritual umbilical cord of intrinsic belonging and bestows divine blessings of connection, wholeness and freedom. 

It's my intention to live fully, love fully and serve fully as a conduit of life’s 'universal umbilical cord'.  It's my honor to accompany others on this path of self-discovery so that they too know their capacity to experience connection, limitless joy and freedom to awaken into their lives with continuous wonder and awe.