To know my work, you need to know the unfoldings in and of my life
In the past, I perceived it to cost me my life, my belonging, my essence. It is only recently that I am learning to include the truth without loss of connection through the availability of my Emotionally Mature Adult body. The Whole truth of me was always here – in waiting. Now I am learning to be here with it, to agree, and to include it fully. This Knowing awareness guides me to receive the experience of pain (of separation, exclusion, splitting), and pleasure (of connection, inclusion, and belonging) with curiosity, compassion, and kindness.
I belong to the Nair community of Kannur (Kerala) whose kinship organization was matrilineal, matrilocal, matrifocal. The Nair community practiced an earth-based spirituality centered on the mother-feminine-goddess principle that celebrated menstrual blood, feminine body, and female sexuality. Their ritual practices, ceremonies, and celebrations were connected with Rites of Passage gateways, Seasonal, and Lunar interconnections, Sacred Groves, Ancestral reverence, snake worship, oracular divination, and Earth medicine.
My paternal roots come from the Kurup sub-clan whose lineage can be traced to the Thacholi matriliny of Vadagara, known for its legendary Kalaripayattu warriors, battle stories, revenge, and loss. My maternal ancestry belongs to the Nambiar sub-clan with stories connected to the Cherukunnu Annapoorneswari Temple. Both sides migrated to their present area of the dwelling. In the last century, Nair social organization collapsed and shifted from a Mother-centered Matrilocal Living toward a father-husband-centric nuclear life. My grandparents were the last to be raised in the old system. They witnessed the splitting of land, resources, families, homes, and relationships. In fact, my grandfathers were the first ones in their lineage to fully take on the role of a husband-father and become the sole provider for their wives and children while also, showing up in their Matrilineal responsibilities.
The repercussions of these movements are visible in the exclusion and alienation that exists between families in the present times, the prevalence of physical ailments, psychosomatic illnesses, phobias, addictions, early deaths, suicides, childlessness, unhappy marriages, and more. Both my sides carry stories of pleasure and pain, generosity and loss, peacemaking and violence, kindness and cruelty, oppression and oppressing; even though the expressions and coping through this pleasure and pain are different on both sides. I stand in their line as one of them re-pairing this pleasure and pain.
I was raised far away from my kinship within a nuclear family structure. I did not know of its past. I arrived at that through a personal life catharsis in 2010 stemming from my own disconnection with my female body, sexuality, and spirituality. It led me to do an M.A specialization in Women’s Spirituality at the Institute of Transpersonal Psychology (ITP) Palo Alto, California. Within the ritual and ceremony-infused academic explorations, I discovered for the first time the pulsating rhythms of my Ancestors in and within me – their wholeness, their split, and also, their alienation, and pain. I discovered many stories. Over the last decade, my journey of Re-membering My Ancestors have opened several doorways to agree and include all of their truths within me.
I am their survival story.
I am their offering.
I bear their many gifts into the world thru my work.
My parents were raised in village life. The many hardships they experienced were different from mine. Even though they grew up within a nuclear home of father-mother-siblings, their near and extended relatives were in and around them in the village. They went to the same school throughout their life. Grew up with people they knew, and areas of familiarity. At seventeen in hopes of a better life, my father left his village and drafted himself as a soldier into the Army. When my mother married my father, she too, had to leave everything familiar including family, place, language, food, way of life – everything behind. I arrived within a year of their marriage, and my sister 4.5 years following my arrival. My father’s transferable job took us through the different states of India from the North to the South every three years. The challenges of adapting to a new place were as new to me as they were to my parents.
So my fate required me early on to adapt and show up in new places, new neighborhoods, new schools, and new peers without displaying vulnerability, emotional struggles, and resistance. It shaped my personality early on as an empathizer, leader, go-getter, initiator, cooperator, analyzer, organizer, mediator, people pleaser, fixer, solution creator, etc.
I developed the knack to preemptively recognize situations, people, and things as easy to difficult, and initiate to fix, diffuse, include, befriend, or simply hide or obliviate when nothing worked. These coping strategies brought me several skills and achievements in navigating the World of Mind and Doing at school, in my Bachelor of Engineer in Computer Science, as a IT Professional in Silicon Valley, California, and later even, and also, as a Yoga and Meditation teacher within my Spiritual Community.
In hindsight, I realize that these adaptations also, made me constantly judge and evaluate myself and others as good or bad, right or wrong, easy or difficult, spiritual or non-spiritual, and continue to fix, and save. There was no room for fear, mistakes, and not knowing. My essence was locked and suppressed.
What began with the catharsis of my personality in 2010, and the journey of Re-membering my Ancestors at ITP guided me further to know, and train in therapy modalities like Expressive Arts, Systemic theory, Family Constellation, Trauma-informed Psychosomatic therapy, EFT, and more.
Now I am able to recognize and acknowledge the iceberg of developmental and relational trauma, the ocean of grief, the hidden despair of early infancy and childhood that is still locked and available in my body. Even two decades of spiritual practices and discipline could not release it.
While, my personality learned to suppress, separate, and disconnect myself from pain early on to survive in the world, avoidance of this pain did not allow me to fully be myself. I am slowly developing, re-pairing, and re-informing my inbuilt adult capacity to navigate psychosomatic emotional pain with compassion, curiosity, and kindness.
As I learn to agree and include the Whole Truth of me, I am moving into the center of my life. I am learning to inhabit the Emotionally Mature Adult Body without losing connection to mySelf(essence). From the world being my center, I am inhabiting the center of my life in my essence. I am allowing myself to be true to the Knowing, take 100% responsibility for my triggers, acknowledge the protective parts of my personality, attune with my emotional pain by holding myself with kindness, and re-story my perception.
It is a movement of slowing down and settling into my own skin.
Training and Certification
2023 - Compassionate Inquiry® Certification
Traumatic Stress Studies Certificate Program - 2022
2021 - Trauma-Informed Leadership Series
Emotional Freedom Technique - 2020
2019 - 200-Hour Certified Yoga Teacher
Trained Systemic Family Constellations Helper - 2019
2016 - Community Building Thru Rhythm
Expressive Art Therapy Certification - 2015
2015 - Vital Voices Fellow
Certified Footzonologist - 2014
2014 - PYE Creative Art Facilitation
Spiritual Inner Alchemy - 2012
2013 - M.A in Women’s Spirituality
Non-Profit Management Training - 2009
2009 - YES! For Schools TTP, IAHV
AOYP Yoga for Youth Certification - 2008
2008 - Art of Living TTP Level 2
Art of Living TTP Level 1 - 2006
1999 - B.E - Computer Science. GIT
“I enter darkness, to enter birth, to wear the rainbow, to hear her
hissing loudly, clearly, in my inner ear: Love. I am spiraling, I am
spinning, I am singing this Grandmother’s song. I am remembering
forever, where we belong.”
– Alma Luz Villanueva
(Mexican-American Poet, Short Story Writer, and Novelist)