Part One.
GiGi's Women's Drop-in Evening on Monday nights at UnaVida has been an absolute catalyst for me: the first class on December 4, 2023 activated parts of my inner being that were dormant, but so ready to come alive.
This is GiGi Madl, Women's Drop-In Evening Guide:
LANGUAGE-ING
Like my experience in Thailand, and my experiences with Brie & Bjorn in Sound Healing & Medicine spaces, this is impossible to articulate in words, but I've learned since December that "language-ing" is important, and so is being witnessed, seen, in the embodiment of this thing that feels so new to me and yet so at-home ... so here's my try at doing that.
NOT YOUR STANDARD WOMENS GROUP
A Women's Group (at least for me, initially) conjured up unappealing imaginings of a group of ladies bashing the patriarchy and feeding the polarity drama ... which is so not my vibe. And now looking back, I can't even remember what helped me to get over my preconception of what this would be, other than I knew GiGi and I thought she was a unique human that I was interested in exploring a healing space with.
- First session: mind 🤯 blown -
How can I even describe somatic embodiment practices that are held in a way that allows for everything? I arrived on that first Monday night in December 2023 late to class, despite my telling GiGi I'd help with registration at Una Vida (where I had been teaching yoga since July and was familiar with the checking-in-students process). On that particular evening I was overwhelmed with work, going through a painful breakup, and in that process found myself very surprised to be feeling a depth of grief that I had never encountered in my life before (How can a breakup feel vastly more painful than a death?). I honestly was the opposite of excited to sit in a group of 13 women and talk — or listen — or do anything — on a dark December evening.
But I pulled myself away from my stack of chart notes at the office and hustled across the parking lot, scooting in through the red studio door. I could barely hold back tears when I was warmly hugged by GiGi, and my apologies for being late were dismissed, "We're just glad you're here." I couldn't make eye contact as GiGi ushered me in to sit on a cushion among a circle of yoga mats in the large practice room. Nervous smiles greeted my downcast gaze and I tried my usual put-on-a-happy-face approach but my eyes were glossy and my throat was tight so I just looked down at my mat and tried to keep it together.
WELCOME EVERYTHING
I was surprised and thrilled to find that the only speaking we did in this women's gathering was a brief verbal check-in after GiGi welcomed us. I sat about midway through the circle, and somehow the invitation to welcome everything coupled with the authenticity of some of the other shares prior to mine (and perhaps because my emotions were so raw I couldn't not ) I shared through a shaky voice and teary eyes how overwhelmed I was and how I almost didn't even come that night and how I might just lay on my mat and cry for the whole class because I was moving through so much grief.
And the way I was received when I shared how I was really, actually feeling, ignited something new inside of me that I don't know if I'd ever felt in my entire life. This was the first inkling of the magic of the women's group I got to experience: the invitation and the ability to hold ourselves and each other in a way where I can just show up no matter what, no judgements, no 'shoulds,' no trying to do anything to get out of what IS.
And then GiGi had us stand up. And we began to move.
SOMATIC DEPROGRAMMING We (the collective we) are programmed since birth to shush-shush-shush our crying, to shut down our rage, to calm our anxiety and subdue our intensity. What really resonates with me is being rewarded for being a "good girl" and striving for being easy to be around, helpful, belonging ... and we are punished when we are noncompliant.
In my experience, we can't recognize these unconscious but deeply imbedded habits until we begin to un-do them. We can't un-do them without feeling them.
THE ONLY WAY OUT IS THROUGH
This Women's Drop-in class is moment-by-moment choreographed (not ahead of time, but in response to what is actively happening in the room) to activate in our nervous systems a way to begin to dis-engage with the programming. It's not a cognitive process, though, it's a way of moving, of widening our perception through our eyes and peripheral vision, of walking, stepping, moving in a way that's just uncomfortable enough to activate our hidden or stuffed or unconscious aspects of ourselves, and inviting them to the table fully, to be embodied and expressed completely.
This class is an acknowledgement that our magnetic-electric bodies are literally designed to process and move emotions through us, and when we do that we become incredibly powerful, potent creators of our reality. The opposite of that is: when we buy into the "it's not appropriate," or "you're too much," and so on, these emotions and expressions get physically lodged in our tissues and create distortions in our energy fields until they turn into illness and disease or worse.
Somehow in the two hours of moving and breathing and dancing and sound, witnessing and being witnessed, we begin to un-hinge the hooks and constructs that we didn't even know were running us. We begin to realize how much we can and do feel, and we begin to experience what it's like to let those expressions rip (or ripple) through our bodies instead of getting stuck in the crevices.
Guided by GiGi's impeccable perception, we are invited to feel, to evoke, to express, to deepen. I found myself dancing with tears running down my face in a way that felt like I was crying the tears of lifetimes, but fully, lusciously, allowing and releasing in a depth I'd never before experienced.
THE WITNESSING & THE NAMING
At one point in the class, GiGi invited half of us to the center of the circle while the rest of us sat around the perimeter. The instructions to those of us seated was to observe. The women in the circle were invited to move to the music in a way that embodied a quality they were calling in. Mine was "Truth." We didn't share our words, we just embodied them inside of ourselves as the music started.
I struggled to keep my eyes open, not because I was tired but because my eyes, my gaze, watching these women, somehow felt vulnerable. It was incredibly awkward at first, just sitting there looking at women who were feeling self conscious or unsure or whatever else they were feeling ... and then something happened. The movements started small, and as the music went on, more and more of the women began to tap into their depths. Awkwardness transformed into exploration and exploration transformed into sensuality, potency, power. It was an awakening of embodiment in front of my eyes.
I watched in awe as these women danced joy, rage, wildness; tears streamed down my face as I saw capacity, love, freedom. I observed a process unfold through each of their moving bodies that created tangible waves in my own system and shook loose those aspects in my being that resonated in some deep way with what they were expressing.
BEING SEEN
And then it was my turn to dance. It was too much to have my eyes open, seeing and feeling myself being witnessed, so I kept them shut and danced TRUTH through my body, moving into awkward contorted positions, coughing, breathing, shaking. Some strange alchemy I've never experienced began to move me, ricocheted my physical being. I began to hear less of the flood of my inner voice, "This is weird, this is terrifying; am I doing it right? ..." and began to imagine breathing TRUTH into and out of my cells, allowing myself to drop into my legs, stomp into the floor, tears, anger ... The music softened, then silence. I lay down on the floor, arms spread out wide, breath heavy.
"Those women who observed, speak a word into the room that describes what you witnessed ..." was the instruction from GiGi as I lay in a star shape in the middle of the room, catching my breath. I basked in the reflections spoken into the space: "sensuality," "freedom," "authenticity" ... when I heard "TRUTH" spoken, I laughed in resonance and two tears slowly trailed down my cheeks. I was seen. This work is magic.
GiGi says that there is a quantum effect when we are witnessed in the embodiment of what we wish to cultivate. In these Monday night classes, and then into the weeks that follow, I feel and experience that this is always true.
EVOLUTION
After that first Monday night, my entire life changed. I couldn't wait till next Monday so that I could feel that alive again. I wondered how I could bring the realness I got to experience into my day to day. My grief was transmuted and what's more, I can orient toward discomfort in an entirely new way.
Attending these Monday nights, I began to attract incredible experiences that were more in alignment than how my "old" life felt. The other women felt it too. The drop-in shares at the start of the class got juicer and deeper and the way the women moved became more and more authentic with each passing week. I asked: How can I live in this state, constantly?
I brought my friends. They brought their friends. And I'm continuing to attend Monday nights, amazed at the expansion, growth, and continued waves of intensity as my body integrates these somatic releases and those changes ripple out into my life.
There's so much more to say. But how can I possibly encompass this in words? That's something I'll keep trying to explore and refine, and that I'm finding comes more and more easily as I dig deeper into the depths of this richly held embodied experience.
HERE'S GIGI IN A POWERFUL DEMO OF THE WORK
Images complements of GiGi Madl, with permission.