I up-dog to the crescent new moon.
I sip spearmint tea, break off pieces of Mast chocolate (the organic milk chocolate bar allures with this advertisement … “taste like belly laughs and weekends”), and curl up to indulge in a rerun of Bridgerton, where opulence, romance and swoon-worthy British accents reign.
I meditate in early morning sun rays, and lift my gaze up to a hawk effortlessly spiraling far above.
Here is your masculine spirit-animal, confirms the inner voice.
She is melodious and speaks from the cavernous back of the heart, the mysterious and knowing space in between the heart and the spine. The previous evening, snuggled into blankets, the window opened to the night air, and propped up by sturdy pillows, I rest and read Gabrielle Roth’s Sweat Your Prayers, a delicious, lyrical read about conscious dance. The passage I traverse before slipping into the tapestry of dreams is about spirit animals, those wise animal guides whose characteristics and unique teachings offer clear counsel, encourage intuitive insight, and provide comforting companionship for our spiritual quests, our soul-full expansions.
Hawk has come to me before. He comes to me now.
Hawk instructs me to shift my perspective, to zoom up and zoom out, to witness the bigger picture, to coast on the currents.
These spring days, like the hawk, I am coasting on the currents of my curiosity, with delightful detachment, an openness that lets me soar.
My books delightfully range from mint-julep toasted, southern-steeped reads to teachings on dance as soul-full therapy.
My podcasts jump from breastfeeding to ensure proper palette formation and jaw structure in babies to chuckling comedians riffing about electric cars in Nascar.
My Netflix que entices with soapy indulgent Bridgerton likened shows and dishes up an array of sports documentaries. From gulf to tennis, to Formula I to NBA championships, I follow my own heart-driven impulse to be immersed in knowing the true game that plays out in every athlete’s personal story.
This is hawk medicine.
I don’t forcefully flap my wings.
I float on my interests, letting my inner curiosity propel me higher.
I get winks that I am on track.
I get to know Michael Jordan in the docuseries, The Last Dance. And later that night, nestled in to read about conscious dance, about the patterns and rhythms that move through our lives, I read that Michael Jordan is a brilliant example of flowing, the dance-like movement of receptivity and response. My mind instantly conjures up a scene from the recently viewed documentary, of Michael literally flowing down the court, flying to the basket like a super-human being with hawk-like grace.
I pause, in silent astonishment, letting the universe weave its workings through glimmers of curiosities. Up close, they all seem disjointed – this prayerful book on dance as spiritual practice, this Netflix series on Michael Jordan and the Bulls’ championship season – but they complement and connect. The feminine and the masculine link arms and nudge me to transcend, to be the hawk, to keep the gliding momentum through trusting and acting on the intuitive impulse.
I’m in the process of unschooling myself, freeing myself from indoctrination of formal schooling, and rediscovering – with this crescent moon, with this revitalizing spring energy, with that chocolate-infused Bridgerton binging, the natural interests my four-year-old self so confidently knew: An active imagination beautifully suited for storytelling and theatre performance, a genuine motivation to understand human nature and explore emotional complexity, a real love for movement, particularly dance (and for me, yoga is a dance, a flow of postures guided by breath), and an innate reverence for the divine.
Unschooling nourishes radical self-trust. Unschooling rewinds me back to my inner child’s innocent and cosmic-blessed curiosity.
Unschooling frees me to break out of confines and shapeshift, to be an enigma, to surprise myself and to believe in my own learning-process, my own creative process, and stay open to the ever-changing views available in rooted-and-lifted flight.
The hawk is my masculine spirit-animal. This handsome bird embodies archetypal masculine traits … penetrating intellect, a predator who provides and protects, a stabilizing father-like presence – comforting in his clarity, his prowling power disciplined and devoted to seeking higher and higher truths.
This is a renewed curiosity that blooms from my own internal feminine revolution, where well-being is top-priority, where pleasure is power, and felt-knowing guides me. This is the teasing flirtation of spring. This is the motherly lullaby of the inner voice telling me, “You’ve focused on healing and empowering women, now it’s time to heal and empower men.”
And those words from beyond me and within me stir my curiosity.
I am listening … as I venture to the coffeeshop perfumed by sugar and dough, as I gravitate toward the small table near the floor-to-ceiling window, as I take a seat and unravel this winding thread of a post that travels wisely to you.
All heartbeats of interests, longings and hopes, daydreams and actualized plans, hawk medicine circling above the noble crowns of our heads … softening into the support of the life-spiral that promises to lift us higher, to expand the view, to stretch the capacity of the heart … to choose the chocolate that tastes like belly laughs and the always-now curiosity that delights the ever-whispering muse.