As the days grow shorter and the air cools, I find it a time for pausing, to breathe, to listen, and to embrace the changing rhythm of the season. We stand at the threshold of a time long honored for its mystery and depth.
Across cultures and generations, people have marked this turning point between light and dark as sacred. In the ancient Celtic tradition, Samhain (pronounced “Saw-win”) signaled the turning of the wheel of the year – a pause between harvest and the long winter ahead. It was said that during this time, the veil between worlds grew thin, allowing the living to commune with their ancestors and the unseen realms of spirit. Fires were lit, offerings made, and people gathered to honor both life and death as two parts of one eternal cycle.
Yet Samhain, and countless traditions like it around the world, were always more than recognitions of death, they were celebrations of continuity, of the unseen world that nourishes new beginnings. They invite us to reflect on the cyclical nature of existence, where endings and beginnings meet. In our modern lives, though the outer rituals may differ, the deeper invitation remains: to turn inward, to face the darkness not as an enemy, but as a teacher guiding us toward wholeness.
In the natural world, the descent into darkness brings rest and renewal. Seeds must lie hidden before they can awaken to new life. Likewise, our inner world holds places we may avoid—the emotions we suppress, the memories we’ve buried, the parts of ourselves that don’t fit the image we wish to present. In my own practice, I’ve come to see that these hidden places are not meant to be feared but listened to. They hold the very threads of healing we most need.
Transformation begins when we bring light to what has been hidden. In meeting our shadow with compassion, we reclaim lost parts of the self and move toward wholeness.
This season marks the beginning of a fresh cycle and a moment of transition inviting us to find the courage to step into darkness and trust the unseen. Renewal begins not in outer change, but in inner surrender. When we allow the old stories to fall away, we make space for something new to emerge. I’ve often found that the most profound renewal comes not from striving, but from simply allowing – being fully present to what is passing and what is quietly being born within.
This is an invitation to take time for reflection… to sit in stillness, to listen deeply, to honor what is shifting within you. As the earth rests and the nights lengthen, give yourself permission to pause. Allow silence to become a doorway to your own deeper knowing.
At the Cuyamungue Institute, our work is rooted in this same understanding: that wisdom arises through presence. Through the ancient practice of Ritual Postures and embodied awareness, we engage the language of the body and spirit to reconnect with that source of knowing that lives within each of us. This season reminds us that transformation begins in that space—when we slow down, listen inwardly, and allow the light of awareness to emerge from the dark.
As we move through the seasons of our lives, may we honor the dark as fertile ground for transformation. For in honoring the shadows, we awaken the light within—a light that, like the turning of the year itself, is never truly extinguished, only renewed.
I’ve come to see that the hidden places within us are not meant to be feared but listened to—they hold the very threads of healing we most need.”
The name “CUYA” carries with it both history and vision. Rooted in our origins as the Cuyamungue Institute, it now also serves as an acronym — C.U.Y.A. — a guiding symbol that unites our mission:
C — Consciousness: The field of shared awareness that arises in Collective Presence, where the “We” awakens beyond the “I” – moving from the “Me to the We.”
U — Unity: Our alignment with the Cycles of Nature and the rhythms of the cosmos, reminding us that we are woven into a greater fabric of reality. This sense of unity reminds us that our awareness is the shared consciousness that connects all living beings.
Y — Your Awakening: The inner journey of Embodiment and Wisdom, where through direct experience the body remembers. At the CUYA Institute, this awakening is nurtured through Ritual Body Postures and ecstatic trance, where the body itself becomes the doorway to wisdom, presence, and transformation.
A — Ancestral Wisdom: Roots. Our connection to Sacred Lineage, honoring those who walked before us and rooting us in belonging and continuity. Our founder, anthropologist Felicitas D. Goodman looked to some of the oldest, most authentic ancestral records we have — the world’s collection of early and indigenous art — and decoded selected artifacts as embodied “ritual instructions.”
Together, the Four Pathways of C.U.Y.A. — Consciousness, Unity, Your Awakening, and Ancestral Wisdom — form a single tapestry of practice. They remind us that awakening is not an abstract idea but something we live: through the body in Your Awakening, through nature’s cycles in Unity, through community in shared Consciousness, and through the guidance of Ancestral Wisdom.
- …. CONTINUE