In an instant, the drop of the blanket turned day into night and my body swiftly registered the void space we descended into. The pitch-black, empty fullness around us cradled my every cell. Before the wetness from the rocky steam could kiss our skin, my eyes doused me in liquid grief. My infinite salty waters came and poured and danced all along my every crevice. I fell into Tonantzin’s embrace and rested into a strangely familiar safety.
My first Temazcal experience is one of many chapters in the book of my week-long life titled, “Malinalco,” where I lived and died many times over.
With the support of Lilia and her loving family, we were given the grace to come back to ourselves, our ancestors, and our sweet madre tierra. Our time together was full of nourishment. From Delia and Zoco’s plantita-based meals seasoned with love, to the gentle curandera touch of Señora Libertad and Señora Marina’s hands and words; every moment of this retiro is nutritious expansion and contraction. I loved learning from the curanderas and observing their sweet, playful relationship with one another. I am especially grateful for their support in holding me throughout a cerrada. They brought my belly’s pulse back to it’s natural center, they gently massaged my neglected womb space, and they held me in my grief. Their sweet hands moved stagnant sadness from the back of my lungs out through my eyes where my tears were met with loving compassion. Muchísimas gracías a Señora Libertad y Señora Marina <3
Between our visits to sacred archaeological sites, Taller Rebocero Don Fermín in Tenancingo, platicas con las curanderas, cacao learnings with family, and Malinalco’s Primavera Festival de Mezcal, we had intentional asana and pranayama practices to ground us throughout it all. I am so grateful for the blending of ancient spiritual wisdom. Our daily asana and pranayama practices gave my body structure and vitality to receive all of the nourishment we were met with everyday. Mil gracías Lilia <3 Your guidance during our morning movements filled me up.
Since my departure from this portal, I come back to my home and I am greeted with rapid, welcomed shifts in my reality. The moment I decided to pursue Lilia’s retreat offering, I knew that nothing was going to be the same. My spirit told me that certain agreements, relationships, and beliefs were going to shift. An alchemy would take place that would lead to endings and beginnings. Despite my massive aversion to deaths and endings, I knew I had to pass through this threshold. An all-knowing trust led me every step of the way and I could not ignore the invitation. The ancestors walked me to meet this experience, they held me close throughout it, and now they hold my hand beyond my time at Casa Huitzilin. With the communal support of that retreat’s container, I can access liberation even more. More space has been carved out to allow for embodied liberation.
Malinalco is truly full of magik and to have been welcomed so warmly by the land and all the people who supported us in our time there, is such a gift. I am happy that this retreat experience is all family-run. When visiting lands outside of my own, it is important to me that I am contributing to the well-being and people of those lands. Not only are Lilia’s offering completely family-run, but she also makes an active effort to build relationship and contribute to the well being of folks indigenous to the land. To know that I am supporting Lilia, her family, and those she builds intentional relationship with, puts me at ease and lets me know that the exchange is reciprocal, just, and fair.
My first time to the motherland was all that I wanted and more. Thank you to the ancestors and the beings that brought everything into alignment. I continue to swim in the ripples of those experiences, those knowledge shares, those plantitas, those warm embraces, those belly-full laughs, those tasty tlacoyos, those salty tears, those rebozos, those sacred stones, those sweet animal friends- Tostada, Taco, Tigre, Loto. So much gratitude to Lilia and all who she rallies around her to make these retreats happen. These spiritual adventures are what makes collective liberation possible. I cannot wait to return and to continue nurturing the relationships of those I came to know from this experience