COMING HOME: “I feel safe like I have never felt before.”
A Munay Ki story… with Chris Waters
Recently I did two Munay Ki Retreats back to back, almost — one in the UK and then one in Romania. And one kind of led to the other, in the way that these things happen. We do an exploration during the Munay Ki because two of the Rites are to do with healing the wounds of the Feminine, and healing the wounds of the Masculine.
Usually in those places, what’s useful is to have a discussion with the group. What does it mean? What is the Wounded Feminine? What is the Wounded Masculine? What is the Healed Feminine? What does that look like? And what does the Healed Masculine look like? And to try not to make it into a gender thing, but to understand that these are energies that dance within all of us. We all have Masculine and Feminine energies.
When we got to the Masculine in the UK Retreat, it transpired that what they really wanted was a brotherhood. It’s a brotherhood. It’s that connection.
Women have a sisterhood. We’re not afraid to sit together and chat and share. For men, it can be a much more lonely path. They tend to keep their distance, to keep their emotions under wraps, as it were, because that’s what they’ve been taught to do, I guess. So we had this sense of brotherhood that came out of the Munay Ki in the UK.
Then we come to Romania, and we have a similar discussion: with the women, with the men, with the Feminine, with the Masculine. What do they look like when they’re wounded, and what do they look like when they’re healed?
We were fortunate enough to have Don Francisco and Doña Juana (pictured below) with us, who were helping to give the Rites and doing sessions and so on. We were having a kind of circle time. The rattle was going around like a talking stick, and people were sharing what they were taking away so far.
It got to one man and he said he was really grateful to be able to show his vulnerability, to express his vulnerability. That was great. The rattle went on round — and suddenly he got up out of his chair. He walks out of the circle, around the back, and kind of collapses onto the floor and starts to sob uncontrollably.
You could feel the amount of grief and sadness that was coming from him.
One of the women — not wanting to fix him, but just to check that he was all right — sat with him for a moment, saw that he was okay with his grief. He was holding it really well, but really expressing it.
And the circle continued.
It occurred to me in that moment that, actually, as we had Don Francisco and Doña Juana there, wouldn’t it be a wonderful thing to do a ceremony for the Masculine, for the men, and a ceremony for the Feminine, for the women?
So we went down to the river, where our fire pit is. I asked the men to sit around the fire pit, facing the fire as if they were tending the fire. There were two young boys at the Retreat as well — six-year-olds, I think — who had come along with their mothers.
The women stood in a circle around the edge, and the men were getting their Rite of the Masculine from Don Francisco, while the women were getting the Rite of the Feminine from Doña Juana as she went around the circle.
What I was witnessing was that for many of the women just having that Feminine acknowledgement — receiving the Rite of the Feminine — they began to cry.
I noticed this and because my own journey has been to explore the Feminine because I was brought up to ape the Masculine: to be out there achieving, doing stuff, and forgetting what the Feminine was even like. So I had to learn through my women’s groups and women’s circles. Together, we explored it.
But for many women, that hasn’t happened.
And so I was witnessing all the grief and sadness coming from the women as they received this blessing from the Mother figure.
And the men were getting that from the Masculine from the man, from Don Francisco.
When we were done, I asked the men to stand up – I was making it up as we went along.
Then the men stood up, and I asked them to step into the ‘fire’.
There wasn’t an actual fire, but the fire pit was there, and they stepped into it.
Then, in that moment, I saw what the two boys were doing. They had begun to fight and tussle. They were poking each other and strangling each other.
And I thought, “Yeah. That’s what boys do. That’s what boys do when they want that physicality.”
And I said to the men: “What would it be like to feel a brotherhood right now? What would that feeling look like? What would it feel like?”
It was as though that little sentence had come from the Munay Ki in the UK and landed in Romania, in that moment.
What happened was one of the men put his arm around Bogdan, one of our team members. Bogdan put his hand into the centre and all the men put their hands on top.
And it was — wow.
I then began to cry — because I could feel this brotherhood forming in the centre. This powerful centre.
This is what the Masculine feels like when they’re together, when it’s connected.
I look around the group and the women are crying. They were seeing what I saw, I think: that strength and that power.
Then I asked the men to come out and stand around the edge in a circle, and the women to step into the centre, facing outwards.
And that was so healing for many people.
What I saw was the men standing there like warriors — strong and stable and connected to the Earth, like Herne the Hunter, that kind of quality.
I look around the group and the women are now sobbing.
I said to the woman next to me:
“What is it you’re feeling right now?”
And she said:
“I feel safe. I feel safe like I have never felt before.”
And I thought, “Yeah. That’s it.”
Afterwards, I asked Bogdan, our team member, “What was your feeling when you were standing there, with the women in the circle and you were on the edge?”
I think his words were something like:
“When I saw their vulnerability, I would have died for each and every one of them, or given my life for each and every one of them.”
And I thought, “Yeah! What a beautiful thing.”
It’s almost like reclaiming within each of us — reclaiming our Masculine, reclaiming our Feminine — and integrating them back together.
It would be very easy to see it as ‘men’ and ‘women’. But for me, it’s bigger than that.
It’s the Masculine and Feminine within us.
So, can I personally, let’s say, allow my Feminine to be vulnerable and held by that Masculine within me — the ‘warrior’ spirit within me? Can I ask my Masculine to connect in the way that brotherhoods connect, and feel held by the Feminine support around me?
And that’s an inner journey.
Of course, we saw it on the outside of us, but then the idea is to bring it home.
It was so healing. It was such a beautiful thing. In the moment it was dynamic. It was beautiful. It was healing.
And it was created in the moment.
So I wanted to share that.
