HEALING THE FEMININE

 MY OWN JOURNEY OF HEALING SEXUALITY, CULTURALITY, & ANCESTRAL TRAUMA

As a South Asian Indian American woman of color, born & raised on the east coast of United States, I’ve always been a bridge between the east and west. Although my cultural lineage is one of honor & indigenous wisdom, it is also comprised of colonization and trauma. Thus, there is a discord in the way womanhood, sexuality, sensuality, & culturality is viewed.

I come from a lineage of warriors, known as the Maratha Empire. Men protected Indian land from invaders while women danced the sacred dances in palaces & temples; from belly dance that supported women through feminine healing & childbirth to Indian Classical Dances which preserved the cultural arts & stories. Post colonial invasion, warriors were stripped of their culture & land while women were sexually exploited. It is my parents who immigrated to the U.S. to reclaim what was "lost" by working the 9 to 5 as accountants but at the cost of severing their roots to our homeland, or diaspora, longing for "belonging & home".

As a little girl, I was struck by my mother's dual life. Functioning as a "model minority citizen" in order to survive the western world, but coming "home" to a sanctuary of sacred dances & cultural practices in our living room which seemed to rejuvenate her. When I was younger, I despised my cultural roots and yearned to fit into American society. However as time passed & womanhood greeted me, I began to see how moving my womb through belly dance would reclaim my menstrual cycles & sensuality, while storytelling through Indian Classical Dance would awaken my voice and self expression.

I have realized I've been gifted the opportunity to reconnect women to their intuitive wisdom & healing that already exists within us. While our bodies carry ancestral trauma, we also possess wisdom & medicine. My intent is to bring back the indigenous into our modern day lives through decolonization. To remember, reclaim, & awaken the "roots" that have been severed so we can come back "home" to our bodies, sensuality, sexuality, womanhood, and culturality.