View across Lake Atitlan from our retreat center

I just completed an eight day Kundalini Yoga Retreat in Guatemala. We were led in a most sacred time in prayers and healing the wounds of love by Seri Amrita. She facilitated a bringing to the surface of old wounds and healing them. I could hear the shells of them falling from me, leaving me in tears and feeling clean and cleared. The energy built during the week culminated in being blessed with ashes form India on our foreheads, and love being passed into our eyes from Seri Amrita. She is a serious teacher.

Up to the three times a day we exercised, chanted, held positions, and breathed with Seri Amrita. We chanted early in the morning and danced in the afternoon. We played musical chairs and we laughed and laughed. Who pushed who in the process will not be mentioned here. There were no injuries.

In addition to these activities there was Ceremony a few times during the week. There was a Cacaoa Cermony by Paulo, a young woman who prepared the room with flowers, candles and huge crystals, using sacred geomatery. The ceremony was connected to our theme of wanting love, becoming love and being love. We were treated to the cacao tea and to cacao sweet treats. Our hearts were opened as we looked into her eyes.

I had a feeling that my face spread out onto shards and came back together differently.

My ceremony was to lead a two hour dream workshop in the Tiger Temple. The space with blossoms and red rose petals candles and crystals in the center from the previous ceremony.  I walked around in a circle, feeling the rose petals agains my bear feet as I led everyone in completing the dream leaflet. I started singing with the “Our Father” referencing how it connects with the seven chakras. I sang the same prayer in Gaelic before moving onto the “Hail Mary” in Latin. I was teased later for bossing everyone around into completing a seven minute mandala with “more and more color.” Everyone participated drawing representations of their dreams and made lovely connections with their unconscious offerings, whether they came from an old repeating dream or a recent one.

Thinking about using the pan in the wrong way

Seven of us attended a sweat lodge also led by Paulo who had us address the four directions, sing our prayers and use herb and salt rubs, complete with cold showers in between. My singing prompted another to sing and she finished up with a slow version of “Amazing Grace” which she had first heard at a Pete Seeger Concert in the past. I always love the Lodge as it dislodges so much, bringing amazing grace to me. And there was a hot tub warmed by the sun. Sometimes it was too hot or too cold, but it was always welcome after a dip in the cool deep Lake Atitlan.

There is nothing nicer than starting chanting in the dark and then opening the eyes to the pink of dawn, volcanos, white clouds. Getting up in the dark and looking at the night sky was a treat, to see the stars with a clearness not usual at home. Travel was by boat to the local villages, where there was hand woven clothes for sale. I loved the carrying on the head indigenous people and there was much local color everywhere.

We all can see what she is carrying on her head and with such balance.

A fire ceremony was led by a local Mayan shaman called Tomas. He set up a fire, starting with creating flower patterns in the stone circle. Then he layered up the fire with flower petals, incense, pine resins, a square block in the middle, made of good burning materials, making sure it stayed alive for the ceremony.

Making up the fire for the fire ceremony

He then used rituals of cleaning us with water and flowers, with invocation to the four directions, pleading to the sky gods, connecting to the ground of our being, pouring sweat and tears down into the fire, expressing his prayers in another language, in a beseeching on our behalf. He brushed us off with large black and white feathers, he splashed us with plants and water, he has us burn our list of problems and purify our yearnings, listing who we did and did not want to be. He blessed our special items over the fire.

He blessed three small painting I did while in Guatemala

Later his messages to me in a reading, were based on my birth date and dovetailed with the Mayan Calendar. He told me he could not tell the future but he had beautiful words for me. His words had a centering effect on me, telling me I am like the “honey bee.”

I feel truly bless to have been able to go on this retreat. It was more than I could have wished for and I do feel it makes a difference to my future paths. If you want to benefit from the ritual of looking at your dreams, be sure to contact me. I look forward to hearing from you. Coming up blogs include focus on Anger Management relating to the Glands and the Chakras and something on Antigua, and a Leprechaun story brewing somewhere in the back of my head.