To Be a Wild Woman is to Be Born Again and Again and Again (Part 1)

February 7, 2025 10:36 am

“So I am in the midst of a new beginning. Like a baby startled, fresh out of the womb, in her mother’s secretions. The shock from darkness into light brighter than ever seen.

And I’ve been here before time and time again. A beginning is beautiful but scary and disorienting. I’m not sure how long to give myself or when I’ll know. My bones feel so heavy, my muscles slow, my heart palpable through my chest.

I am grateful that it is winter. That I can look outside & see bare trees. Trees with no plans or ambition. Just being, resting in winter. I’ve got lots of ambition & things to do… And the trees feel calming. Letting me trust that everything happens in due time.”

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How many times have you been born?

I can't tell you myself. So many versions of me exist in the ether of time and space like the number of scales on a spiraling snake, like the number of stars scattered in the black sky. One day I want to do a past life regression. See who and where I've been.

But I want to tell you about a time I was born in the mountains. In a place called Willka Qhichwa (the Sacred Valley of the Incas) in Perú. September is a winter month there. I had two winters this past year. Two springs and two summers too.

The mornings are cold in the mountains and at dawn, the sky is the color of pink lemonade. I prayed to these mountains every morning. Mountains like grandmothers and grandfathers. patient and encompassing, sculpted by time.

I think of time and I wonder what it means to the metaphysician, to the shaman, to angels, and ancestors?

And I wonder what it means to surrender. When was the last time you surrendered? Surrender makes me think of sex and birth. In both acts

the body

rides its own waves,

raptures to its peaks,

howls

in its own

valleys.

Here in the Sacred Valley, my body feels it all, especially in the darkness of the temazcalli sitting in the midst of a temazcal ceremony; an indigenous sweat lodge practice and ritual that dates back centuries in Meso and South America. It comes from the Náhuatl word meaning something like “steam bath.” “Tema” is Náhuatl for steam. Ritual and traditionArcheological remains indicate that the temazcalli, the rooms or structures that housed the temazcal, were of considerable importance to the indigenous peoples of the region.

We are from the Earth and we return to her. In this womb of the valley that carries us, we stand waiting near a fire with our shaman and three teachers who prepare us for the ceremony. We are the students, four women, very rapidly becoming sisters on our 21 day journey of 200-hour yoga teacher certification. We know little of what to expect in this free fall of mystery that charges the smoke and herb infused air. It billows all around us like the unending mountains and we stand like little girls on a playground, asking questions we cannot answer, smiling nervous smiles.

When it’s time, we procession into the temazcalli, one by one. It is small and curved and made of stone. At the opening, we stop and whisper our prayers and ask for permission before crawling inside, permeated with reverence. Our knees dig in the dirt as we touch our heads to the ground in gratitude and surrender to Pachamama. Our shaman – Ángel, a young father from a pueblo in the Sacred Valley tends to the fire full of smooth stones outside of the enclosure. I watch him as he transports the stones, one by one, moving like a meditation. His tender hands dancing with an ancestral knowledge that envelops the tips of his fingers. His long black hair is adorned by a halo-like headband as he coaxes the fire and stones.

We drift between two worlds as the sun descends slowly into a tangerine sky. The last we will see of it for how long we do not know. Upon layering the bottom of the pit with stones, Ángel enters into the temazcalli. He covers the one and only exit, draping the world as we know it pitch black. We are in a womb within a womb.

My first breaths turn into startled gasps in the darkness, panicky and shallow as the enclosed air becomes warmer and warmer. I realize I cannot see the hand in front of my face. The ledge beneath my thighs is hostile and rocky and it is almost impossible to sit up straight.  My toes sink in the powdery dirt. I wonder about the endlessly long legs of my tallest yogi-sister.

My thoughts are interrupted when the voice of the lead teacher rings out saying this was the phase of the Serpent, Wind of the South. The first phase of the shamanic medicine wheel of ending and beginnings. In the deep black, we sing and chant.

To the mountains,

to the sky,

to our ancestors,

to all versions of ourselves,

past

present

future.

Shaking our seeded instruments, we bellow primal harmonies, nearly screeching, “Burn it all away, burn it all away, if it doesn’t serve us, then burn it all away!” I lose myself in the rising voices escaping from places within that only women and the women who came before them could know.

In this wild delirium, Ángel opens the heavy cloth cover and retrieves more rocks. A cool air seeps in like a strange but welcomed gift from another world. Ángel puts down another layer of stones and returns to us like an answered prayer. He covers the opening and we return to the familiar dark, fleetingly lit by the vermillion embers from the rocks glowing like fireflies. We are now in phase two, the Jaguar, Wind of the West. The being of mind.

We sing even louder and chant with every fiber in our hearts. In Quechua, in Sanskrit, in Spanish, in holy tongues. Far, far back behind us, I remember there are mountains that were once used as burial grounds. I soon am comforted by a familiar spirit. The Jaguar brings me Jacob’s spirit, my grandmother’s father, my great-grandfather whom I never met. He is warm, gentle, and quiet like everyone says he was. He stays for a spell and I then hear or rather sense a message to go to New Orleans where my grandfather resides. He’s Creole man who calls himself a Taurus lover boy. I whisper to my heart I'll go.

More breaths, more rocks, hotter heat, louder drums, deeper darkness.

Phase three is beginning, the phase of, the Hummingbird, Wind of the North. In the cycle of beauty and passion, the air is thick as velvet. I sing until I can’t breathe. For freedom, for peace, for love for all.

The dark is suffocating and I wonder if I can last much longer. I do not realize, I am in the midst of labor. My sisters' voices wane. My songs become whispers. Ángel delivers more rocks. With honor, with devotion. They nearly tumble out the pit. Heat fuses in every thick breath.

I stretch my neck to gasp for air. Chants sputter out my lungs. It is phase four, the Eagle, Wind of the East – the cycle of perspective above the mountains, the cycle to take flight into our dreams, whoever we’re meant to be.

I think to myself that I am dissolving. My spine twists to fold myself over unto my knees, like some wilted plant, like some ardent monk in hallowed submission. I don’t care that it brings me closer to the burning rocks.

There isn't enough air yet, still I breathe, I breathe. My water breaks.

The darkness droops all around us. I swim in my own sweat that cascades from me like a thawing mountain peak. I prop my head in my hands, my jaw digging in my palms, my elbows digging into my knees as if they are made of clay. Every breath becomes a memory forgotten and I must tell myself to breathe, to breathe, to breathe. Thoughts come and go vanishing into my mind that is now a vortex, a star collapsing upon itself.

I breathe into a miracle. The loudest and most fervent drum stops and a groaning silence takes its place. Our lead teacher speaks, her voice steady and flowered with amusement and a smile. Are there any songs left in us? Do we have anything more to give? Are we ready to end the ceremony? Our voices answer resoundingly and in unison, that yes, we are ready. It’s the loudest vibration we have mustered in quite some time

Ángel lifts the cover and I linger in a space between forever and the moon. At the small opening of the temazcalli, I drop to my knees, praying thank you to Pachamama, thank you to my Ancestors, before I tumble out into the world I forgot existed. My body sprawled unto the living grass, I look up to the black sky, gazing at my limbs with the innocence of a baby. Stunned. Soft laughter woven with disbelief puffs out of me as my fingers sink, gripping into the Earth.

Is this how it feels to be alive?