Return to Your Animal Body
a live, online women's collective working with the power of cycles
Do you find it hard to listen to your body or to trust yourself? Do you find yourself depending on others’ approval or guidance to make decisions?
We are all aware that women’s trust in ourselves is repeatedly undermined in patriarchal culture. As a result, we often look outside of ourselves for answers or guidance.
For generations, women have come together to remember the authority of the cycles that live in our bodies, to witness and be witnessed by one another, to support and share our deep sisterhood.
Modern, western culture is isolating and lonely, encouraging us to compete rather than collaborate. This culture teaches us to abandon our bodies and ignore our inner voices. Instead we are encouraged to obey other human authorities.
However, the authority that governs all of life is the cycle of the calendars of the natural world - the seasons, the movement of the sun, the phases of our lives...
Each of these calendars is mirrored in our bodies, for example, in the menstrual cycle.
The source of all life, the authority which guides everything that happens in the universe LIVES IN OUR BODIES.
Together, we reinhabit the body and listen again to the cycle of life.
Listening though the body reveals wisdom that you received from your grandmothers' grandmothers.
They whispered their secrets into the waters,
the same waters in your mother's womb
where you were created.
Those secrets live in you.
Our world is so full of distractions that it really helps
to listen together,
to remember how to focus your attention
and align the arrow of your purpose.
Women have been taught not to listen to our own voices or to other women.
We have learned to ignore our intuition.
Yet this intuition has guaranteed the future of humanity for generations.
In this collective we remember together
how to listen to the body
and hear your intuition
how to align the arrow
and manifest transformation.
The work of the collective manifests as
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greater ease in listening to your own inner voice
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more grounded decision making
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increased capacity to build a web of community to support you and your beloveds
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a sense of sisterhood among the women of the collective and in other areas of your personal life
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deeper intimacy and authenticity in your relations
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clarity and sharper attention
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positive energy with which to approach the sacred tasks of day-to-day life
"The collective is this incredible jewel in that it is as relaxed and easeful and low key as just meeting up with a group of friends on zoom and yet there is a depth to it, there is a strong ancestral presence amongst the group.
"I have sat in many women's circles and held many myself, and this is closest I have felt to what I imagine it is like to sit in a real community where women - sisters, aunts, cousins, friends - live together and are gathering around the kitchen table to create something together, bringing their voices and wisdom, sharing a language and a knowledge - and are constantly learning from that exchange. And it feels so completely natural."
-Rose Gil, 51
This collective could be for you if
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You identify as a woman
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You want to embody your natural authority
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You long to feel more at home in your body
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You are seeking deeper intimacy
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You are longing for more authenticity
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You want to recognize the interconnectedness of all life
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You are willing to love your body and listen to the wisdom that moves through you
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You yearn to feel the presence of the sacred every day
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You want to live in alignment with the rhythm of your body and the rhythms of the natural world
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You hold space for others and want to refine your leadership
"Even when the world is going crazy, I know that I have the collective to ground me. It grounds me every day via the practices Naomi shares, throughout the month. I choose to feel my body, to feel the water inside my body and notice how it flows and how I flow in the world. I can connect to myself even when I only have five minutes. I can be more present with my children and how I raise them together with my partner. The collective is a safe, sacred space."
-Beth Meshel-Spivack, 44
"Through this collective I have found again my capacity to express myself more naturally, which is great. I feel so safe in this group and I am always really touched when I see the women, especially in these crazy times."
-Svetlana Fiserova, 66
"This collective has redefined how I relate to so many things in my life. I am able to be more present with my family, I speak my truth at work and I feel so much stronger, physically and emotionally. I feel clear and focused. I give myself permission to rest when my body asks for it, and then I am so much more ready for action when it's time."
-Nina Green, 48
Perhaps you’ve been to women’s circles and retreats or tried different workshops, yoga, meditation, conscious movement, sacred sexuality, therapy.
In moments, you have felt an authentic connection with other women and/or sacred presence in your own body, but that feeling doesn’t seem to last.
In certain contexts, you have been able to really stand up and speak your truth, but that sense of confidence still eludes you at times.
Returning your attention to your essential relations with the cycles that define our lives realigns you with the authority of your body's wisdom.
We need ongoing nourishment and support to keep our attention focused in these times of distraction and overstimulation.
The cycle that defines the movements of the natural world is mirrored in your body.
It doesn’t matter if you are living the menstrual cycle or not - you know, in the deepest knowing of the waters of your cells, the movement of this cycle.
The dance of the rhythm of birth, growth, death, composting, rebirth lives in you.
Listening to that dance allows you to cultivate and use the power of transformation that lives within and around you.
You can remember how to collaborate with the power of cycle to manifest transformation.
You can listen to your intuition and take accurate steps to look after yourself and your people.
It’s hard to do all of that alone.
Women have always supported one another to rely on the rhythms of our collective body.
We need one another, a web of support to collectively manifest the revolution we want to see.
This is an invitation to come together, to dance the dance of life and death, while holding grief and pain, joy and celebration which move through us all.
This is an invitation to do all of that together, witnessed and held by one another.
"This collective has helped me connect to femininity in a way that is both powerful and soft."
-Hila Shemesh, 38
We follow the ancient map of the medicine wheel, drawing on the energetic teachings of each of the 7 directions.
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East - focusing your attention
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South - engaging your passion
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West - grounding your vision
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North - resting and preparing for rebirth
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Earth - attuning to the wisdom of your feminine
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Sky - aligning with the arrow of your masculine
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Heart - gathering into your center
In this collective we
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Deepen our relation with natural cycles in order to better align our actions with our body’s rhythms and the rhythms of life
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Relax into the relationships we weave in this space and in our lives
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Embrace the ongoing movement between rest and action as a key to health
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Weave community to support our individual and global transformation and manifestation
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Develop practices to focus our attention on the waters of our body to allow for deeper presence
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Trust your own intuition, which will support you to approach various day-to-day situations with clarity and calm
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Embody gratitude which can ground us into balance
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Reclaim our attention so that we can use our energy in nourishing ways
“I have learned - What am I, as a woman, capable of bringing into the world? Why is it important to listen to my cyclicality, to the cyclicality of life that is reflected in me, in my body? This connection is so deep, the understanding that this cyclicality lives in me defines how I relate to so many things in my life now. “
-Hila Shemesh, 38
As a young woman, I learned that my body is an object, public property, for others to look at, judge and use. My body didn’t look like what I thought it was supposed to, so I separated from it - we became two entities, Naomi and Naomi’s body.
That separation led to me essentially abusing my own body, particularly by engaging in sexual encounters that I didn’t actually want. I thought that doing so would make me feel better about my body. I have spent years working with women and girls, and I know that many of us share similar experiences of detachment from our bodies.
About ten years ago, I completed an initiation with my teacher, Carmen Vicente, a medicine woman from the high Andes. She shared practices of the women of her community; under her guidance I retreated for four days and four nights every month, during the time of my bleeding, over the course of one and a half years.
During this time, I slowly learned to listen to the cycles in my body. I bridged the gap between the two entities we had become in my adolescence and reconnected with the wisdom that flows from the universe through my body. This reconnection has changed my life.
For the past 25 years, I have worked with hundreds of women and girls to reclaim our relations with our bodies and our innate wisdom in countless women’s and girls’ circles, retreats, workshops and ceremonies as well as through 1-1 mentoring. In 2014, I published Beautiful, a guide for adolescent girls and the adults who support them.
I am a dancer, and for me the body is my channel to spirit, and to any kind of deep relation with life. All of my work integrates embodied practice. I have been deeply moved by the teachings of Gabrielle Roth and a number of her students, with whom I have been walking for nearly a decade.
I am passionate about redefining culture for women and girls by revitalizing our relationship with the wisdom that lives within us and reweaving the web of sisterhood that nourishes all of life.
"Naomi, you are a very special woman. Your facilitation makes everyone feel comfortable as you make space for all voices to be heard. It is clear that you have so much knowledge, and so much to give. I am thirsty to learn more!"
-Rachel Elany, 60
Is this for me?
The details:
We meet once per month, via zoom, on Tuesdays from 4-6 Central European time. Click here to check your time zone.
We meet on the third Tuesday of each month, unless otherwise noted in special circumstances.
The women in the collective come from various places around the world. We speak in English, though most of the participants are not native English speakers.
We meet for two hours. Please meet us in a space where you can move, and ideally, where you set up an altar. Be sure to have water on your altar. Please be sure to open your camera so that we can meet one another’s faces.
I am asking you for a collaboration of 70-150 Euros per month, whether you attend the meeting live or receive the recording. (If you want to participate and you can't manage this amount, you are welcome to reach out to me about it. Sometimes we can find another way for you to support the movement that is growing from our work. )
I am asking for you to commit to a minimum of 8 months in this circle, so that we can work together deeply.
If you have not yet participated in my course - CYCLE. WISDOM. POWER - your journey in the collective will begin with the video version, so that we can all begin on the same page, speaking the language of the cycle.
The doors of the collective open to new members every four months. If you are interested in joining us, contact me to book a discovery call.
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What is the time commitment?In truth, the meeting time is only a small part of the work we are doing. The time between the meetings is the opportunity for each of us to integrate the work and the practices in order to make them our own, in order for them to be useful in our lives. You decide how much time to devote to that. Additionally, I ask all of the women in the collective to find time to meet 1-1 with someone else in the collective one time over the month. This allows for more intimacy on all levels and deepens group trust. If a month goes by and you don’t have time for this, no worries. I always follow up our meetings with an email to help us integrate our intention and remind us of the practices we are taking on for the month. This email also includes a recording of the session. I communicate with the group via whatsapp on a relatively regular basis (about 1/week) in order to keep the content alive in our day to day. Sometimes I am sharing voice notes of my thoughts or experiences in my own practice, sometimes a guided mediation, a photo, a piece of music - various different types of content. You are welcome to engage with this content as often as you like, or not at all.
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What is the structure of the study?We walk the ancient map of the medicine wheel, meeting each of the 7 directions through the perspective of the menstrual cycle.
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What if I want to work with you 1-1?You are welcome to check out my 1-1 mentoring program. You can do both mentoring and the women’s collective at the same time. Women in the collective receive a special price for mentoring sessions. Please reach out if you are interested in this.
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Does this really work over zoom?Before the pandemic, I would not have dreamed of trying to share my work online. The necessities of that time opened this door for me, and I have since seen that it is not only possible to create transformative spaces over zoom, but that individual journeys can be even deeper when they are grounded in the comfortable, familiar setting of home. In my experience, when working virtually it’s really important to remember that the work we do over zoom is focused on the individual journey, which is supported by witnessing and holding in the group space. This collective is designed to align with that understanding.
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What if I do not menstruate?Please note that this is not a fertility awareness course, and we are not tracking our cycles. We are working with the spiritual and energetic understanding of our cycles and our bodies in the larger context of the natural world, which are accessible to all. As such, this course is great for self identifying adult women, and anyone who wants to learn about the energetics of the menstrual cycle, whether or not you are currently or have ever menstruated. This course is also great for girls who have experienced menarche over one year ago. This course is also great for adults who work with girls who are coming of age, to support their well being.
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Is there an opportunity to meet one another in person?I hold many different retreats and workshops around the world, and women from the collective often encounter one another in those spaces, sometimes planning together to meet at an event, and sometimes by the magic of coincidence and good timing.
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Will I benefit from this experience if my cycle is irregular?Absolutely. We are working with the menstrual cycle as a tool to deepen our connection to our bodies and to the cycles in the natural world. This perspective helps us to understand the importance of the cycle beyond its role in pregnancy and birth. We are working with a holistic understanding of women’s cycles as the basis of all life. From my own experience in the phase of shifting from a regular cycle to not bleeding anymore, I can say that my understanding of the relation between the menstrual cycle and the other cycles in the natural world has been an incredible support and source of stability and health in a time of so much change in my own body.
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What if I want to leave the process?You are welcome to leave the collective at any time if it doesn’t feel right to you. That said, I am asking you to come in with the intention of staying for a minimum of 7 months so that we can cultivate trust in the group space.
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Who are the women in the collective?I have been traveling the world holding spaces for women for over 20 years. Most, though not all, of the women in this group have participated in some form of in-person experience and/or have some awareness of their relation with the sacred, though this is not a requirement to participate. The women in the group come from different countries/languages/cultures. The women in the group are of varying ages, ranging roughly from 24-64. Some of the women are mothers who have birthed children. Some of the women are mothers of projects and ideas. Some of the women do not see themselves as mothers. I take the time to speak personally with every woman who applies to join to feel her energy and clarify the commitments and responsibilities that make our shared space safe.
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What if I miss a live session?I send everyone a recording of the session within a week after it takes place. The recording is available online for seven weeks.
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What happens in a session?Sessions are 2 hours and take place over zoom. We usually begin our session with a grounding practice, breathing and landing in the body and in our shared space and time. Our time together generally includes teachings I offer to the group as a whole, opportunities to share in pairs or small groups and collective embodied practice. We listen together to the wisdom coming through our words as well as through the silence and the movement in our bodies. We employ practices to direct our attention and listen with the totality of our senses. These practices might include breathing techniques, movement or voice activation. We finish our session by taking on a practice which will allow us to integrate the work we have done until our next session. Sometimes practices will be individual, each doing her own thing, and sometimes we will take something on as a group, committing to the collective power of shared practices.
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What if I need to contact you between sessions?If you wish to share something or ask a question, you are welcome to email me and I will respond as soon as I can. If you are feeling an urgent need for support you are welcome to contact me by phone and I will do my best to schedule a session with you as soon as possible.
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How does payment work?In order to maintain clarity in our relationship and ground our commitment to one another, I ask that you pay for the first month before we begin, and then send your monthly collaboration via a recurring payment on paypal.
