Author: Sun

Chapters of Freedom: Embrace your uniqueness

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Memories of my childhood are mixed. While I was brought up in a loving home, I was always somehow rejected by the wider surroundings. I could never fit in – I was always the weird, new kid (we used to move a lot), who didn’t go to church and who’s mom was from a “wrong” country (in a post-war ex Yugoslavia). I had very few friends who were scattered around my hometown, however, at school I was mostly bullied – it went as far as almost being deliberately drowned by the “cool kid” during school vacation or beaten up by another “cool kid” in the town center at midday.

At home I wasn’t lacking love. My parents did the best job they could, however they were also subject to their conditioning, and had biased understanding of what my soul needs in order to thrive, or how to nurture my uniqueness and support my creative expression. For example, as a Manifestor child (see Human Design), I would wander off on my own since very early age. I wouldn’t come home for hours and my parents couldn’t find me. It is understandable that my mother used to freak out from worrying, however, the consequences of repeatedly punishing such behavior, which, although in line with my intrinsic nature, was deemed as unacceptable and irresponsible by my parents, resulted in the oppression to the soul.

Growing up feeling misunderstood and unaccepted, I started to reject my outsider material – and by doing that, I also rejected my uniqueness. I was slowly molding this unique, wild nature into the most appropriate, culturally acceptable form – all in order to fit in. But I never really did. No matter how good I played the role of the “good girl”, it never felt real. Not to me, not to anyone. And I was again the outsider, only this time severely unhappier as it felt like I was rejecting and letting down my soul.

But the soul is indestructible. It patiently awaits until we wake up and call on to her. Reconnecting and reuniting with our soul, with our unique wild nature, with our being – is in line with the natural flow. All we need to do is to accept who we are – accept our uniqueness and slowly nurture it back to life. Then it will be easy for us to catch the river of creation and ride her back to the source.

Below is the excerpt from one of the my “awakening” books, Women Who Run With the Wolves, by Clarissa Pinkola Estes. As is happens with such things – I have had this book in my possession for several years before I was finally ready to pick it up and receive its blessing. It happened after I gave birth to my daughter, confirming I was back on the soul track and strengthening all the flavors of the power of motherhood.

For years, women who carry the mythic life of the Wild Women archetype have silently cried. Wherever their lives wanted to burst forth, someone was there to set the ground so nothing could grow. They felt tortured by all the proscriptions against their natural desires. If they were nature children, they were kept under the roofs. If they were scientists, they were told to be mothers. If they wanted to be mothers, they were told to fit the mold entirely. If they wanted to invent something, they were told to be practical. If they wanted to create, they were told woman’s domestic work is never done. (…) Although the scenarios are endless, one thing remains constant: they were pointed out very early on as “different”, with a negative connotation. In actual fact, they were passionate, individual, inquiring, and in their right instinctive minds. (…)

While the needs of the child’s soul must be balanced with her need for safety and physical care and with carefully examined notions about “civilized behavior”, I always worry for those who are too well behaved: they often have that “faint soul” look in their eyes. Something is not right. A healthy soul shines through the persona on most days and blazes through on others. Where there is gross injury, the soul flees.

Sometimes it drifts or bolts so far away that it takes masterful propitiation to coax it back. A long time must pass before such a soul will trust enough to return, but it can be accomplished. This retrieval requires several ingredients: naked honesty, stamina, tenderness, sweetness, ventilation of rage and humor. Combined, these make a song that calls the soul back home.

Women Who Run With the Wolves

So what does your soul need? What are the basic nutrients that make the unique potion of your song to call the soul back home? They are unique to each women, but they all come from two realms: nature and creativity. The recipe of my potion goes somewhat like this:

  • A whole bundle of dancing
  • 3 measures of words, parchment and books each (preferably from the worlds beyond fantasy)
  • Large portion of good music
  • The song and the smell of moisty forest
  • A pinch of fresh ocean air
  • Pastel colors of the sunset with a touch of sparkly light reflected on the water surface
  • Monthly scoop of moonlight on the naked skin
  • A few drops of jasmine and lavender for aroma
  • My daughters laugh for the secret ingredient

All to be stirred clockwise or counter-clock wise (depending on the day) and allowed enough peace to brew at their own pace

I would like to conclude by a special plea to all my sisters in motherhood. Don’t let your child’s soul be oppressed by anything or anyone. Embrace their unique characters, no matter how quirky or unusual they are. Nurture their little souls and let them surprise you everyday with their creativity. Remember they have their own unique dreams, paths and opinions. Forget all the rules, all the expectations, all the should’ve, could’ve and would’ve. Reconsider what is deemed as “socially unacceptable”- always give your child whatever they need whenever they need it and ignore all the judgmental looks – in the end, all of those are just lost souls crying to get back home.

Chapters of Freedom

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When I was a child, I dreamed of becoming an astronaut. There was nothing more exciting then the thought of being able to explore all the mysteries hidden in the vastness of space and go beyond human experience. Although my life took off in a different direction, I still believe it will happen in the next lifetime.

Another childhood dream of mine that did become my reality was dancing. I danced for as long as I could remember. This impulse to dance never came from my thoughts, but rather from my body. As it was always here with me, so effortlessly and naturally, I didn’t bother for a long time to understand why is it that I dance.

Unfortunately, I was brought up in a culture that isn’t as supportive towards arts as it is towards “real” professions. I kept on balancing between dancing and “more serious” studies (finance) for as long as I could, however, once I got a high profile job in top tier strategy management consulting, dancing fell into the background. For two years I didn’t find the time to dance as there were “more important” things on my agenda.

What I didn’t notice at the time was how I was actually molding myself into this pre-determined corporate role, at the expense of my essential self. This dominant corporate persona was not who I really am – it was just a mere avatar that fits somebody else’s expectations. However, I started to identify with the role, accumulating anxiety around the “insecure overachiever” complex. I was exposed to chronic stress and overstimulated by adrenaline and cortisol. Exhausting my adrenal glands came with a price – I was diagnosed by Hashimoto thyroids & suffered from acute migraines.

Unfortunately these alarming signs my body was sending were not enough to wake me up. It took a more severe “shock” to pull me out of the identification loop. The pregnancy, although unexpected, came as a blessing. I was alone during my pregnancy, in the middle of the pandemic lockdown, what allowed me to immerse into a deep healing process. As I reconnected to my essential nature, I finally understood why it is that I dance.

I dance because dancing means to be myself. And to be myself means to be free.

It means to roam wild through life, reshaping your reality in accordance with your own unique imprint. It means to let go of expectations and judgement. It means to break free from socially acceptable roles and how things should be. It means to redefine your path. It means to do the things your way. It means to embrace fear and to bravely face the unknown. It means to listen to your intuition no matter what. It means to stand firmly in your own truth. It means to let go of all mind-made concepts. It means to stop taking life so seriously. It means to break free from ourselves.

It is my current path to explore different concepts of freedom and how they manifest in my life. I am at the beginning of this journey and it will make me very happy to share my adventures on this blog. Hence the series called “Chapters of freedom” – to share my truth while rediscovering the meaning of freedom and maybe even inspire you to do the same.

Householder yoga: #1 Set your day

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Householder yoga series is a set of practical tools rooted in yogic tradition to help moms build up their daily practice amidst their new role, busy schedules and limited time for themselves. Each tool is integrated in the regular daily activities you are already doing with your baby, in a way that it builds on and expands the mom-baby relationship to directly serve your growth and development. The aim of this practice is to cultivate more awareness, enhance your wellbeing and integrate the power of motherhood; as well as to collect precious moments and have some fun with your baby.

We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit.

Aristotle

Morning practice is – as every good yogi or meditator knows – absolute essential and a core foundation to our path of growth and development. However, there is something that precedes the morning practice – and it happens in first couple of minutes just after we open our eyes. This is the most crucial timeframe in which, whatever we do, sets up our awareness for rest of the day.

Hence as a first tool in the householder yoga series, I invite you to spend the very first moments of your day immersed in one of the most powerful feelings that instantly raise your vibration – gratitude.

You can do this by connecting with your heart and your baby and acknowledging the appreciation for this little miracle of life. I usually sleep with my baby so it comes very naturally – the very first thing I see when I open my eyes is her. It fills my heart with joy every single morning and brings a smile upon my face instantly. In case you don’t sleep together, I invite you to go get your baby as the very first thing you do after you wake up, in order to build a short practice of immersing into gratitude, joy and happiness.

What turns this seemingly regular mom-baby morning interactions into a powerful daily practice for rising your vibration is intention and awareness – we must have the intention of consciously experiencing these moments and purposely connecting to gratitude. Here is how:

  • This practice must be the very first thing you do in the morning, especially before you check your phone (which is not recommended to do within 1 hour after you wake up).
  • If you sleep with your baby – and she or he is the very first thing you see when you open your eyes – then all we need to do is to bring intention and awareness.
  • If you don’t sleep with your baby – I invite you to go get your baby as the very first thing you do
  • Once you have your baby next to you, first connect to you heart. Remember how blessed you are to be chosen as her or his mother. Remember how, even in the most difficult times, your baby is your biggest blessing.
  • Repeat a little prayer of gratefulness, be it in your thoughts or out load. You can use any of the prayers you already know and are connected to – or simply create a new one. Start by expressing gratitude to your baby for choosing you as her or his mother and deciding to become a part of your life. Then express your gratitude towards yourself for being such an amazing woman.
  • Close your eyes for a second and feel this gratitude deep in your bones, Feel every cell of your body whispering “thank you”. Take a deep breath and as you exhale, whisper “thank you” to the God or to the Universe for the miracle of life. Gently open your eyes.
  • You can continue by expressing gratitude for everything else you feel grateful for that day (e.g. your family, friends, pets, Mother Nature, food, creativity, work, etc.); or simply stay focused on the connection with your baby.
  • Observe the pure being, the pure essence of life that so naturally shines through our babies. Open your heart to their innocence and their intrinsic goodness. Let them wake up the same pureness that resides in your self, in your own inner child. Keep the attention focused in your heart area and connect to the gentle, warm kindness that resides there, intrinsic to every human being.
  • Stay couple of more minutes for some cuddles or ticklish laughs with your baby before you get up and start your day.
  • It helps to commit to doing this short practice daily for 21 days, in order to make it a habit. During this period, try to observe what else changed in your day as a consequence and write it down in your journal.

Cyclical nature

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Much of the problems prevalent to western culture come from the discrepancy of how we measure time (linear) and how nature is (cyclical). The orders of linear time, as have been so rigorously established in the west, require our cyclical nature to succumb, resulting in severe friction in our systems and consequently – symptoms such as depression, anxiety and hormonal disbalances.

In other words, we were not designed to operate in a way modern society requires us to. This relates especially to women. Our systems operate in cycles – be it in the Life / Death / Life nature of our psyche or in the four phases of our Moon cycle – the same principle guides the way we think, feel, create and operate. Honoring that is a path to restoring our being and realizing our full potential.

I come from a high-profile corporate job that is all about productivity, delivery and deadlines – I used to work 16h per day and most weekends. In our culture, this is a path to career success, and there is no place for bad days, unproductivity or even your Moon cycle. You are required to show up every day to the task, regardless of how you feel, and constantly exceed some one else’s expectations. However, this way of operating is completely out of line with our cyclical nature, what will take a toll on your health eventually.

The toll I paid for forcing myself to fit into such imposed way of operating was Hashimoto thyroiditis, weekly migraines and irregular cycles. It wasn’t until I became a mother, that I finally stopped to observe and listen to my intrinsic cyclical nature.

So what it is about? First of all, whole universe operates in elliptical, repeating patterns. Planets circle the Sun, Sun orbits around the center of the galaxy. Other planetary bodies also follow highly elliptical orbits. Earth’s nature transforms through seasonal changes. Women’s moon cycles mimic the similar pattern:

spring / maiden / follicular phase

summer / mother / ovulatory phase

autumn / witch (wild women / luteal phase

winter / sage (wise women) / menstrual phase.

However, maybe the most interesting cyclical manifestation comes in the form of Life / Death / Life principle that governs human psyche (ouroboros). Every act of creation is first an act of destruction. And this creation destruction paradox is the foreground of any personal transformation, where old ideas are destroyed in service of the new news, where our unconscious projects archetypes to destroy conscious mind’s unhealthy ideologies.

As humans, we are often conditioned to fear destruction, to reject darker parts of the cycle. We fear our relationships to end. We fear our projects will fall through. We condemn rest as unproductivity. We cannot sit in silence. We cannot bear the thought of death.

To resist the darker, passive, destructive parts is to deny the essence of the cyclical nature. Creation and destruction are just different sides of the same coin. Embracing both sides and understanding their paradoxical relationship paws the way to a healthy psyche, to a healthy life.

In the unity and synthesis, both sides eventually strengthen and support each other, leading to a state of equilibrium. It is in this equilibrium where transformation occurs, as we become more susceptible to the space in between creation and destruction. This space in between is the space from which both have emerged and both will return to, the space where the coin of the cyclical duality has been forged and will again melt to the basic substances of consciousness.

Essence

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Mechanism of motherhood is an elaborate of a refined system that activates intrinsic talents and abilities unique to feminine aspect (the power of motherhood), and also shows us the path back home (the essence, being, source). The home, the essence, is the place from which all creation emerges – be it babies, art, projects, ideas, innovations – or any other form of (self)expression.

Being connected to the essence is something we all are by default, however, this connection might be blurred or covered by layers and layers of mind made concepts (thoughts, fears, personalities) – hence it might be difficult to feel it.

I want to talk how this essence feels like. At the beginning, I could only access it in meditation – the feeling was of abundance, warmth, tenderness – and a little bit of shyness. The space was suddenly filled with self-love. Then I noticed how the absence of the connection feels – dry, barren, automated. Strictness and roughness instead of self-love. And this was the feeling I was used to, the feeling I perceived as “normal”, everyday state.

When I became pregnant, the feeling of essence became more and more profound on its own. I decided to deliberately pursue it and cultivate the connection, feeling it more intensely in my body – coming from my ovaries and feeding into every cell inside out. What I found at the other end of this connection is that my essence – my being – has been waiting all this time to break through, waiting to be fully expressed in all of its wildness, strangeness, beauty and intelligence.

This is where the mechanism of motherhood comes from and leads back to. This is the most important relationship and the most sacred calling of every human being – to just BE.

I would like to finish by quoting G. Gurdjieff, as transcribed in the book by one of his most notable students, PD Ouspensky (In search of the miraculous):

In actual situation of humanity, there is nothing that points to evolution proceeding. On the contrary, when we compare humanity with a man, we quite clearly see a growth of personality at the cost of essence, that is, a growth of the artificial, unreal, and what is foreign, at the cost of natural, the real and what is in one's own. ere
Together with this we see a growth of automatism.
Contemporary culture requires automatons. And people are undoubtedly loosing their acquired habits of independence and turning into automatons, into parts of machines. It is impossible to say where is the end of this and where is the way out - or whether there is an end and a way out. 
One thing alone is certain, that man's slavery grows and increases. Man is becoming a willing slave. He no longer needs chains. He begins to grow fond of his slavery, to be proud of it. And this is the most terrible thing that can happen to a man.

Householder yoga series

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As a dedicated seeker, I have spend more then a decade exploring and evolving my practice. I have tried different schools and teachings – from traditional ashtanga yoga and vipassana, to Christianity, plant medicine and Gurdjieff – just to name a few. In my experience, different teachings do call you when you are ready to receive them – as they all lead towards the same goal, only the paths slightly differ.

I had an established daily practice to which I was rigorously dedicated – kriyas, pranayama, asana (ashtanga sequence), chanting and mediation. Every night before bed time I would do some reading and studying, as well as some occasional journaling and dancing when I felt like I needed it. And I would do all that with a full-time successful business career in top tier strategy consulting.

Then I became a mom. My whole world shifted and at the beginning, the only time I had for myself was during the shower – so I literally made those 10 minutes of my life time for my daily practice. I would stand under the hot water with closed eyes, trying to feel every drop of the water on my skin. Nothing else existed. I needed it so much, that it was easy to quiet my mind, become fully present and enter the space.

Over time, as my daughter was growing, my body was rebuilding and my energy was getting stronger, it became much easier to manage. As mothers, we do get a new superpower of stretching time, however – priorities do shift, and with your baby being priority #1, you might find yourself lost among all other things that you need to get done (especially if you are a working mom).

Efficiently managing time is also one of the key milestones and among my top themes to address with this blog. Householder yoga series fits well under this umbrella topic – as here I want to share insights on how to best utilize time you spend with your baby so that is serves your growth and development.

This comes from my own need to keep yet transform my daily practice so it fits into my current life schedule. Hence the name – householder yoga. In traditional Indian culture, there are 4 stages of yogi’s life: Brahmacharya (Student), Grihasta (Householder), Vanaprasthya (Hermit) and Samnyasa (Renunciate). Householder yoga series is about switching your practice from Student phase (e.g. couple of hours on the mat or sitting in meditation) to Householder phase (taking your practice from the mat/meditation pillow into your daily life).

Each week I will post one tip on how to use a certain technique or tool during daily activities with your baby, in order to cultivate more awareness, enhance your wellbeing and expand your power of motherhood. You will be collecting moments with your baby that are most peculiar and precious because you are being conscious and present, as well as learn what it means to hold space for your baby. And of course – have some fun!

Eclipse me

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This eclipse, I personally feel like I want to explode with creation. I feel my being supercharging, wanting to burst open with all kind of supradelicfunkalicious stuff – planetary dust, sea shells, mandrakes, wild flowers, octopuses and all sorts of abstract assortments. I want to start as a wild horse roaming free, tune into one life episode of Charlie the unicorn and finish sipping mandrake root afternoon tea on a porch in Alabama while writing some poetry (see below below).

It is quite intense. Whatever it brings out – it is usually exactly what you need (to face). As a wise man once said: “Courage is not the absence of fear, but action in spite of it.'”

Dear Moon
Call out my wildness
Let me taste its fullness
Teach me how to let go
Sit back and enjoy the show
Let me just be
I promise to roam free

Tips for new moms on yogitimes.com

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As a part of my transformation journey, I was invited to write an article for yogitimes.com on tips for new moms.

From understanding of what to expect when you’re expecting (or how your hormones affect your bodymind changes) to sharing top #6 tips and resources for new moms (yoga, coaching, online courses, staying fit, natural postpartum and single mom support) – I hope this comprehensive guide will answer some questions and ease some uncertainties around this magical period.

Hope you enjoy the read! In case you want to talk further or explore the Work, please do not hesitate to book a curiosity call.

Welcome!

Sun

Hello! I have created this website on 11 May 2021, during the dark of the moon. There is a tradition long established among those who know, where the energy of the moon is intentionally used to support our projects and intentions. Under the new moon, we are cosmically supported in setting intentions and creating new projects. 

The energies related to this particular new moon are those of beauty, fertility and abundance – exactly what I envision this space to be about. I have decided to hold this virtual space in order to express some of my creations, as well as to invite and support anyone who resonates with my offering  to the world. 

Here you will find some of my thoughts and insights on yoga, energetics, motherhood, the (super mario) game of life, as well as some of my creations: dancing, stories and poems. You are welcomed to join me in this space and explore the guidance that is here offered. As a wise man once said – All in good time.