Sista, Your Yoni is Beautiful…

I don’t even know how to describe the amazing-ness that was my Valentine’s Day…

I give thanks for being able to spend my Valentine’s Day with NINE, beautiful sistas. A group of like-minded sistas ran a workshop, entitled “Black Woman, Love Thyself: The Yoni Project”:

an interactive workshop [that provides] a safe space for Black Women to connect with their bodies. The focus of the workshop is to create a holistically healthy relationship between Black Women and their bodies, particularly one of the least talked about …parts: the vagina. Her interactive Yoni Project uses the word yoni instead of vagina, since its rich Sanskrit-meaning, “origin of life,” recognizes the spiritually healing and empowering components of the vagina. Despite the yoni being one of the least talked about body parts, it is one of the most sacred, empowering, and healing. In developing a healthy relationship, Black Women can have more a fuller relationship with their bodies, foster a healthy sexuality, and build a strong sense of self as a woman. Using various art techniques (creative writing, mixed media arts, movement), Black Women construct liberating messages about their yonis, similar to what Eve Ensler’s play Vagina Monologues has done for older women for years. The Yoni project believes that when we teach Black Women how to explore and love their entire bodies on their own terms, we teach them that nobody can define those terms for them. When we help them to discover a language for these terms, we helped them discover meaningful power. Each yoni has a song. The Yoni Project teaches Sistas how to hear it, and become in tune with its rhythm.

 After I left this group of women, I experienced feelings that I have never, ever felt before. It was like I was finally beginning to feel connected mind, body, and spirit. I felt whole. This workshop was very humbling, empowering, and SO uplifting! During the workshop there was a period of meditation, and I told my girlfriend that I have never been so focused and my mind has never been so completely still, as it has been during that time.  My yoni has become part of me again, and I apart of it.

The name of my yoni is Lydia.
Her favorite color is purple.
Her favorite soap is pure cocoa butter.
On her best days she smells like lavender.
Her favorite song to dance to is Beres Hammond’s I Feel Good.
On her bad days she usually hides.
Her dream is to empower all women and young girls.
If she had a million dollars she would donate to various charities and organizations, as well as The Yoni Project to ensure that her empowering spirit presses on .
If she could speak she would say please remember me.

The above is an exercise that was completed by all during the workshop. “If she could speak she would say, ‘please remember me.’” The yoni is “the source of all that exists” – it is of sacred power. In cultures around the world, the yoni is celebrated and worshipped, as it should. We as women should never forget its significance or its sacredness. It should be protected, and treated with care, and because it is the gateway of birth and death ( via STDs, such as AIDS), it should be shared with those most deserving.

I am grateful to have reconnected with my yoni…I hope that all women, alike, will be able to explore their bodies and discover their yoni’s song.

The light in me, sees the light in you…Sista, your Yoni is BEAUTIFUL!!!