Priestessing The Body - Stella Stathi

26/08/2023

I’ve danced more in the last six months than I had in years.

Not because these have been the greatest, happiest months of my life, but because they have been the toughest I’ve ever lived through.

There is this misconception, and thus the expectation, in our modern world that we dance only when we’re joyful and celebrating, but when we’re in pain, we stay still, frozen.

It is still a sort of taboo for people who have experienced great loss to go out into the world, listen to music, let alone dance. It can be perceived as insensitive, disrespectful to the one who is gone…

And yet our ancestors knew differently.

They instinctively knew what we now know scientifically; that -all- emotions live in the body and require expression.

They need to take space and shape. Voice and rhythm.

They need to be moved. To be given a way out, after we’ve travelled deep down within ourselves, to meet them.

And dance is one of the most powerful ways to do so.

Our ancestors lived and breathed what we’re only starting to re-member; that dance is medicine.

Dance was present in every part of their lives, every milestone -not just those that amplify, like the births and the weddings, but those that bereave us too; the deaths, the wars, the disasters.

They knew that dance is ritual, and that ritual is vital.
To our soul. To our lives.
Essential in marking an experience, processing it, having it be woven deep into the fabric of our being, and, eventually, stepping over the threshold, into a new reality.

Over the past six months following my nephew’s passing (it’s been eight so far in total, but in the first two, I was indeed frozen), it hasn’t been a talking space I’ve been looking for, not even a therapeutic one. And that’s interesting for a therapist to experience.

I’ve wanted to dance.
I’ve wanted to move.
I’ve wanted to read and write poetry.
I’ve wanted to dream and imagine.

Not to fix.
Not to overcome -there is no such thing in these cases anyway.

Just to experience.
Life. Moving through me. In the midst of Death.
Myself, shifting.
My soul being pulled apart and put back together, different.

That is the direction my work is moving into as well.

Away from the healing, the treating, the fixing.
The therapising.

Toward the experience. The ritual. The making of soul.
The Dance, with Life 🌹

21/07/2023

🌹 Ecstatic WholeIness™; The Dance of Human & Holy 🌹

Join us this Sunday 23rd July, as we take an alchemical movement journey through the BodySoul and create a dancing bridge between the personal/emotional and transpersonal/archetypal parts of ourselves, to experience Whole(I)ness.

This month's Dance is dedicated to the new moon in Cancer and the archetypal energies of the Great Mother and the Primordial Waters of Creation.

And -as we will be dancing the day after Mary Magdalene's Feast Day (22nd), we'll also be bringing in the powerful energy she represents; that of the Ecstatic Alchemist.

Find out more and join us here: https://www.priestessingthebody.com/ecstatic-wholeiness

A replay is always provided if you can't join live and/or want to repeat the practice, valid until the next new moon on 16th August.

I can't wait to share space with you! ❤

art:
1. 'Holy Grail' by Autumn Skye
2. 'Cancer' by Johfra Bosschart

04/07/2023

Capricorn full moon blessings, everyone 🙏🏼🌕

Join us this Thursday 6th July at 6:30pm UK time for ‘Move your Words, Write from your Body’, an embodied writing experience, dedicated to the archetypal energy of Capricorn; the Elder, the Wise One, and the themes of Chronos (linear time) versus Kairos (spiral time).

Combining body-based visualisation, intuitive movement and guided embodiment practices, with free-flow writing, and simple yet potent prompts, you will be supported to access the wisdom that lies in your body/soul, and allow it to be felt, moved and integrated.

75 minutes dedicated to your sacred self-expression.

All the details are in the link below -can’t wait to dive deeper together 🌹

An intentionally-crafted fusion of writing and movement, to help you access and express the wisdom that lives in your body/soul, under the light of the full moon.

21/06/2023

I sometimes forget
that I was created for Joy.
My mind is too busy.

My Heart is too heavy
for me to remember
that I have been
called to dance
the Sacred dance of life.

I was created to smile
To Love
To be lifted up
And to lift others up.

O’ Sacred One
Untangle my feet
from all that ensnares.

Free my soul.
That we might
Dance
and that our dancing
might be contagious.

~Hafiz

May we dance.
May it be contagious.
Solstice blessings, everyone ☀️

Join us this Saturday, 24th June, for an ecstatic movement journey into Whole/Holy-ness, under the energy of the Summer Solstice and the recent Gemini new moon!

https://www.priestessingthebody.com/ecstatic-wholeiness

04/06/2023

I have had a writing practice since I was in elementary school. It sometimes included crafting stories and scenarios, poems and tales, but, for the most part, I wrote down my thoughts and feelings.

During my undergraduate years in university, when I had ample free time, I must have filled about 30 journals, all of which I still keep in my home in Greece. I wrote a lot.

And then…life got busy. I kept writing, but found it progressively harder to prioritise it. Just like with other forms of ‘self-care’ or inner work, it tends to be among the first things we drop, when there are a million others to take care of.

But even when I would sit down to write, it would take me a long time to truly connect with myself -to go deeper than the surface layer of my awareness- and that only reinforced my “I don't have time for this!” attitude.

If you think about it, it really makes sense. Our nervous systems are so overwhelmed with information, stimulation and constant input that the slowing-down and tuning-in that writing requires becomes hard to access.

To be able to connect with the parts of ourselves that hold our ‘gold’ -the knowing, wisdom and insights that are truly valuable, that truly matter- we need a way to regulate and soothe our systems, to land in them and in the moment.

And I haven't found a more effective, potent way that bringing the body into the picture.

Weaving embodiment into our writing creates a direct gateway into the core of our being.

Drawing our awareness to the body's experience, through sensation, emotion and subtle feeling, quickly quietens the mind's busyness. Letting words emerge from the body is slower. More meaningful. More substantial. More charged -with truth.

Bringing our words back into the body and letting it respond to them through movement, creates a magical dance, a back-and-forth, an ouroboros cycle, that infinitely enriches our process, engaging the verbal and non-verbal parts of ourselves alike.

It is this exact alchemy that ‘Move your Words, Write from your Body’, our monthly, embodied writing, community experience has been created to facilitate -and we are meeting for our first one this coming Tuesday, 6th June, at 6:30pm UK / 1:30pm ET.

Through a combination of intuitive and guided movement, and free-flow and prompt writing, we will be accessing and giving expression to the truth and vision that our bodies hold (themed around the full moon in Sagittarius).

You can sign up for this class individually, or through one of two available bundles.

The link is in the comments.

I can't wait to share my two favourite expressive languages with you 🙏🌹

01/06/2023

I used to be completely all-or-nothing when it came to personal practice.

I’ve been the super-dedicated yoga practitioner, who *had* to repeat the exact same routine, at the exact same time, every single day…

regardless of how I felt, what my body needed -let alone wanted-, the phase of my cycle…

panicking, feeing guilty and ‘bad’, and beating myself up, if I ever had to miss one.

Pure yang.
Earth and fire taken to an extreme.
Inner parent -inner critic rather- at the wheel, inner child not even in the car.

I’ve also been the one completely going with the flow and the mood of the day, with no rhythm, no commitment, no structure -no awareness.

Whenever, wherever -mostly, never.

Making a practice out of distraction, rather than connection.

Pure yin.
Water and air all the way.
Inner child in the driver’s seat, inner parent on vacation.

One extreme following the other; what’s known as the pendulum effect. When we swing too far one way, we will have to swing further the other way, before we come back into balance.

When my pendulum eventually stabilised, I realised:

I need BOTH.
WE need BOTH.

Structure and flow.
Commitment and freedom.
Containment and wildness.
Repetition and novelty.
Sameness and experimentation.

BOTH/AND.

The waters of our being held by solid earth.

This is the ground I’m building my current offerings on.

Ongoing, cyclical containers that you can enter and meet the depths of yourself in.

Practices with a solid structure that are new every single time as we journey with different qualities, archetypes, tools and lenses.

The opportunity to join as many or as few as you need, each month.

Yin and Yang, together.

If you’ve had a complicated relationship with personal practice too; if your commitment tends to fluctuate, I hope this space meets you where you are.

Let’s enter the crucible -and dance with what is! 🌹

{link in the comments}

28/05/2023

There are two things that kept me going throughout last year, when life hit pretty hard:

personal practice
and
community.

In combination, especially.

Because I’ve had a complicated relationship with committing to practicing on my own (story coming up).

And I find that when we practice together, our experience gets amplified. It gets richer and deeper. Just by being in the same ‘space’, while doing our own, individual work.

I feel that many of us need them both. So, I’m bringing them together.

I am creating a consistent, cyclical space where we can commit to our inner work, in community.

(I know, consistency is not a very attractive word. Believe me, I know! And -it’s what creates real, lasting change.

It includes three monthly opportunities to connect, practice and learn together.

I’ve intentionally crafted each one to create a whole; to engage all parts of ourselves -mind, body, emotions, spirit- through my triptych of Psychology, Embodiment and Spirituality.

You can join each experience individually, or sign up for the whole month.

{the link is in the comments}

The space is open, I’m pouring lots of love and the best of what I have to offer in it, and can’t wait to see you on the inside 🌹

17/05/2023

For the longest time, I felt like I was suspended between two worlds, with one foot in either, but fully belonging in neither.

I was too “woo-woo” for mainstream psychology and not enough for popular spirituality.

I often felt like I had to check a part of myself at the door before entering a space dedicated to one single energy -and then pick it back up when I came out.

I’ve had incredible experiences in both therapeutic containers and spiritual ones.

And -I deeply longed for the two worlds to meet. Within.
To bring my whole self into a space and have it be ‘worked’.

I know that I’m not alone in this experience.

I know that many of us feel like “in-betweeners”, in so many ways, in so many spaces.

Too much for one world, not enough for another.

If you recognise what I’m talking about, hello. Welcome.
I see you.

I have created a practice for us.

A practice that’s here to be a bridge. A both/and.
A whole-ing practice.

Tomorrow, Thursday 18th May, I’m holding a free introduction to it, and I would love to have you join us.

The link to sign up is in the comments.
And all-of-you is welcome 🌹

13/05/2023

It is time to bridge the split between the personal and the transpersonal; the emotional and the archetypal; the human and the spiritual.

It is time to grow whole, and grow wholly. Because it is in our Wholeness that we experience our Holiness -not by leaving behind parts of us that we consider ‘low’ or less than, not by transcending or killing the ego, not by reaching for the light and escaping the darkness (and not the other way around either).

If I had a mission statement right now, this would be it. I am so here for it.

I have been immersed in both the worlds of Psychology and Spirituality for over two decades now, and have experienced first-hand the great split that often exists between them; how emotional and therapeutic work can lose its deeper meaning and purpose, when disconnected from the realm of the Soul, and how spiritual work can become ungrounded and lead to spiritual bypass, when disconnected from our human, embodied reality.

I’ve been speaking about this and have been bringing both sides into my work for a long time now -and yet, I knew that a more specific, deeper synthesis was on the way.

And it eventually came through my own body in the form of Ecstatic Whole-Iness; The Dance of Human & Holy.

A practice of both emotional *and* spiritual growth. One that I’ve been devotedly developing behind the scenes for 9 months now.

Join me this Thursday 18th May, at 7pm / 2pm ET, for a free, live, experiential introduction to it.

We will explore what becoming whole means, through the lens of Western Alchemy, and then bring the Alchemical Work (the Opus) to life through the body.

The link to sign up is in my bio 🌹