Category: Rites of Passage/Initiation
On the Air: Kindred Media: The New Return to the Great Mother with Isa Gucciardi
In this interview, Kindred Media’s editor, Lisa Reagan, talks with Isa Gucciardi, Ph.D. about the seven life initiations needed to move into our full state of wholeness and our full potential for thriving – and what happens when these initiations are broken, interrupted, or culturally unacknowledged. Isa shares her considerable insight into how we are thwarted from completing our seven initiations, and how we can reclaim, and even heal, our innate paths to flourishing.
On the Air: Birth Ease Loss Support Podcast: Episode 24: Grief, Loss, and The Great Mother with Isa Gucciardi
In this interview with Birth Ease Loss Support Podcast host Michelle Smith, Isa Gucciardi provides insights from her over twenty-five years of experience in supporting the bereaved. She shares the initiations that women experience throughout their lifetime which include our own birth, puberty, menses, the first sexual experience with another person, giving birth, menopause, and death. Isa explains the Great Mother as a source of wisdom, creative intelligence, and nurturing that can bring comfort and healing into the journey and complexity of grief. Isa and Michelle also discuss holistic ways to support the grief process such as plants, herbal sprays, homeopathic remedies, and meditation.
On the Air: Our Birth Journey: The New Return to the Great Mother
On the Air: Our Birth Journey: The New Return to the Great Mother In this conversation with Our Birth Journey, Isa Gucciardi discusses the topics covered in her newest book, The New Return to the Great Mother, which include understanding birth as an important initiatory moment and understanding the importance of a connection to inner […]
On the Air: Well, Actually… Podcast: A Conversation About The New Return to the Great Mother with Author Isa Gucciardi
Isa is the author of The New Return to the Great Mother: Birth, Initiation, and the Sacred Feminine and I had her on the podcast to share more about how we might implement these incredible tools and perspectives into the work we are doing as mothers, doulas and midwives. Join us as we explore Isa’s background, including her experience during the ’70s and ’80s during the renaissance of home birth, her birth experiences as a medical interpreter, and how her meditation for connecting with The Great Mother has impacted many thousands of women already. I am really excited to have her book to hand out to clients at the first visit, so that she can come to her second visit ready to more explore her relationship with her body, her spirituality, and the initiations she has already been through. All so that we can help her ready and steady herself as she prepares for BIRTH, one of the most intense initiations of all.
On the Air: The Birth Ease Podcast: Episode 100: The Great Mother with Isa Gucciardi
In celebration of the 100th episode of The Birth Ease Podcast, host Michelle Smith and Isa Gucciardi discuss Isa’s new book, The New Return to the Great Mother: Birth, Initiation, and the Sacred Feminine. Isa shares about her experience of meeting the Great Mother while giving birth to her child and how she became an early advocate for birthing women.
Isa’s passion is to help women understand that birth is one of many biological initiations that she goes through over the course of her life. These initiations include our own birth, puberty, menses, the first sexual experience with another person, giving birth, menopause, and death. Birth is the movement of the seen and the unseen and the Great Mother mediates all creative processes. Isa explains how everyone can connect with and perceive the Great Mother as this source of wisdom, creative intelligence, nurturing, and healing and bring this awareness into everyday life.
Podcast: Episode 74: Isa Gucciardi: The New Return to the Great Mother
On this episode, Laura Chandler is joined by writer, teacher, and co-founder of the Foundation of the Sacred Stream, Isa Gucciardi Ph.D., and they are talking about her latest book, The New Return to the Great Mother: Birth, Initiation, and the Sacred Feminine. The book is an updated and expanded version of Isa’s acclaimed book, Return to the Great Mother. In this new edition, Isa offers a fresh perspective on birthing as a sacred initiatory process. She takes the reader on a journey to rediscover the transformative feminine power at the heart of childbirth and teaches methods of tapping into this ancient wellspring of power to create a birthing experience that is deeply intuitive and empowering. The book is filled with inspiring true stories, and helpful tools and exercises for connecting with the wisdom and power of the Great Mother.
Blog: Excerpt from “The New Return to the Great Mother”
By Isa Gucciardi, Ph.D.
Open. Open. Open. This is the clarion call of the midwife to the birthing mother as she is encouraged to surrender to the new life moving through her. Childbirth is a sacred initiation that requires our full participation, mind, body, and spirit. We will meet ourselves completely—the parts we like and those we try to hide away in the shadows. But we are far from powerless in this process. In fact, there is a deep and unbroken source of power we can align with for support: the power of the Great Mother.
The Great Mother is the essence of all generative and creative power. Such power is perhaps most evident in nature, where the cycle of life and death is constantly in motion. This is why the Great Mother is so often depicted as an earth goddess. From Pachamama, the earth and time goddess of the Andes Mountains in South America, to the ancient Australian aboriginal mother goddesses Kunapipi and Eingana, and even the relatively modern Mother Mary from Christianity, we have been personifying and revering this great source of feminine power for centuries.
Article: Bridging the Worlds between Life and Death with Shamanic Practice
By Isa Gucciardi, Ph.D.
As part of Tarka’s “On Death” issue, I have been asked to speak about the approach to death that my tradition, that of shamanic practice, follows. Some of the questions I have been asked to address are: What is death from the perspective of your tradition? What transmigrates, if anything, from the perspective of your tradition? What key text, verse, or poem offers insight or clarity around the experience of death? How has an experience of death in your life informed your teaching? What is a practice that directly addresses our relationship with death? I have tried to address all of these questions in this short exploration of the shamanic worldview regarding death.
In his book about the Australian Aboriginal experience, Voices of the First Day, Robert Lawlor offers a statement regarding Aboriginal views about death which are reflective of a larger, more general shamanic worldview. He says, “Death, in the Aboriginal view, is not a termination or a dislocation from this world to another; rather it is a shift of the center of one’s consciousness to invisible, subjective layers that are substrate to, and involved within, the natural world of mind and matter.”
Blog: Aging Gracefully In A Youth Culture
By Laura Chandler
In a recent article in The Atlantic titled, “Your Professional Decline is Coming (Much) Sooner Than You Think” (July 2019), the author, Arthur Brooks, looks for a silver lining as he explores the idea of his own unavoidable decline and the loss of relevance he will suffer in old age. His investigation takes him to different psychological principles, Darwin’s theory of evolution, happiness studies, and ultimately to an Indian guru, Acharya. His question to this master was this: “Many people of achievement suffer as they age, because they lose their abilities, gained over many years of hard work. Is this suffering inescapable, like a cosmic joke on the proud? Or is there a loophole somewhere—a way around the suffering?”
Blog: The Great Feminine: An Excerpt from Return to the Great Mother
By Isa Gucciardi, Ph.D.
The concept of a Great Feminine principle is common to many cultural and religious traditions. The icon of the Great Feminine is viewed in these traditions as the generator and caretaker of life. The images of the Great Feminine vary from tradition to tradition, but the values and qualities of these images are surprisingly consistent. Whatever her form, she is always considered a protector and guardian of life.
Article: Who is Tara?
By Isa Gucciardi, Ph.D.
One of the oldest Stone Age artifacts that has been recovered is a small statue of a full-bodied woman carved from limestone. The statue was named the Woman of Willendorf, after the small village where it was found in southern Austria, and is estimated to be around thirty thousand years old. Many similar statues dating to the early Stone Age have been discovered throughout Europe and beyond. Expressions of the feminine have been found in the art, mythologies and spiritual practices of many ancient cultures, often represented in the form of female deities and goddesses.
Ancient images of Quan Yin, the goddess of mercy, have been found in China, Korea, Thailand and throughout southern Asia. Pachamama, the goddess of the Earth and time, has long been depicted in the traditions of the Andes Mountains of South America in stories and art. Long before Mary, the embodiment of the great feminine in Christianity, Middle Eastern and African cultures revered Isis, who presided over the other gods, life, and death. Images of Kunapipi and Eingana, the mother goddesses of the Australian aboriginal cultures, have been found in rock art dating back at least ten thousand years.
Blog: Encountering the Great Mother in the Birth Environment
By Isa Gucciardi, Ph.D.
To understand the essence of the Great Mother, it is helpful to look to the earth. From the moment we are born until the moment we die, we are held in the earth’s embrace, and it has many valuable lessons to offer us about motherhood. The earth is abundant, nurturing, unyielding, and adapting. The Great Mother is the embodiment of these qualities, offering us tremendous teachings about the mutuality of experience in the natural world.
You can find the power of the Great Mother expressed in the many mother goddesses appearing in different cultures around the world — Pachamama in the Andes, Tara in the Himalayas, Quan Yin in China, Isis in ancient Egypt, and Hera, Thera and Athena in Greece and Rome. There is a widespread understanding among different cultures about the importance and necessity of being in alignment with the power of the Great Mother, not only to bring forth life but also to nurture life in a way that is beneficial for everyone.
Despite a lack of understanding about mothering and matriarchal priorities in the west, the power of the Great Mother is accessible to women in the modern time. By connecting with this power, women can sustain themselves no matter what is happening in their birth process. Women can use their connection with this power to receive guidance and to understand the deeper meaning of their experience.
Blog: Ask Isa: Unexpected Pregnancy
By Isa Gucciardi, Ph.D.
Question: I’m pregnant and I’m having a hard time connecting to my child. I wasn’t planning on getting pregnant and I’m not sure how I feel about it. What can I do to feel more connected to my child?
Isa: First of all, there isn’t anything wrong with you if you don’t feel connected to your child right away. This is a huge moment in your life, and you need to give yourself all the time and space you need for this pregnancy to fully register for you.
If you can’t connect with your child immediately, it’s likely because you need to take time to explore the ways you’re going to change as you become a mother. In order to connect with your child, you first have to connect with yourself. If you don’t put your own emotional and physical needs first, it will be more difficult to connect. Focusing on yourself in this way is not selfish, but will actually be beneficial for your child.
When preparing for motherhood, it is essential to reflect on what being a mother means to you and to consider how having a child is going to affect your everyday life. I recommend looking at your own definition of “mother” and examining the way you were mothered. If you have been well-mothered, reflect on what values you might emulate as a mother for your child. If you were not mothered well, there may be places within you that need healing.
Blog: Repatterning Life Transitions and Initiations
By Isa Gucciardi PhD
Within each of our lives, we have important moments of transition, which we experience in our bodies, that can be understood as initiations into a new way of being. Birth, death, puberty, the sexual encounter, becoming a parent, and for women menstruation, menopause, and giving birth, are all potent initiations we experience in our lifetimes. Each of these initiations holds powerful information and the possibility of transforming long held patterns that no longer serve us.
Blog: Safeguarding Birth, Invoking the Sacred
By Isa Gucciardi, Ph.D.
From the moment we are born until the moment we die, women are constantly engaged in the processes of creation, creativity, and change. For much of our lives, through our monthly cycles, our bodies create forms to prepare to receive new life, and if that new life is not received, a process of destruction of those forms takes place.
When we give birth, in the process of becoming a mother, our old sense of self as an independent being falls away, and, in defining ourselves, we include the needs of another in a very real and intimate way. As a woman goes into labor, however, the new definition of self as a mother who includes the identity of her child as part of her own self-identity has not quite gelled, and the old definition of self as a single, unitary being is challenged. As this challenge occurs, the power that was binding together the old form – the independent woman – is released. This power is then available to create the new form – the mother.