6 spots available at full price. 2 spots at a 10% discount. 2 spots available at 15% off 1 spot at 25% off. Please read my SLIDING EQUITY SCALE page for details and discount codes.

The work and play of Mother Tongue is an exploration in direct knowing and both remembering and honing our vaster modes of perception.  Story, movement and dreams are of our most indigenous human expressions and capacities. The timeless and universal mother tongue of archetype and symbol is a language that cuts through and speaks to us at the deepest level- in flashes of insight and bone-knowing, these symbols point us toward true north, wisdom and next steps. They are maps, mirrors and medicine that we need for our birthright of thriving, evolving and creating. This work creates real change, action, agency and forward motion in the right direction.

This is a space of quenching a deep longing and a space to invite the “parts” of us into wholism. To integrate grounded participation and creative response in the topside world with the hand of a field greater- the unseen world. This is anything but a “woo woo” endeavor or group. The capacity and integrity of walking between worlds is indigenous to all of us. It is only our conditioning and the reduction of socialization that would have us think otherwise.  Our lives, communities and activism are starving for this integration and soul-food. I invite you into the essential work and skill of getting lost, allowing edges to dissolve, learning to see in the dark, dissolving so that we can rise back up in forms of greater coherence and integrity.  We exist in an ecology of living intelligence, the presence of the unseen world, an eros and interconnection of the personal and communal/global. We will traverse the wisdom and gestures of archetype (story and dreams also as gestures) not just for our individual selves, but enter the emergent field of becoming that is our evolutionary task. 

Sarah offers 3 stand-alone series each year, as well as an IMMERSIVE 9 month MOTHER TONGUE program (begins April 29) that includes all 3 of these series, plus additional small-group guidance and exploration into the themes and threads at hand.

Every series – each with its own specific theme and story frame-is a weave through the profound portals of archetype and symbol- A story or grouping of stories (among other places, from the oracular book Women Who Run with the Wolves), the unique ritual of physical movement and gesture through archetypal qigong, and the symbolic world of personal dream images – for the purpose of recovering embodiment, lost energy, right- sight, direction, meaning, and spark to create and live with the sustenance of “the river beneath the river” while we create life in the topside world.

MAY SERIES: The Story of Bluebeard: Stalking the Intruder,  is our beginning initiation. The Bluebeard story has been knocking clearly on the door for many months now. This month will be a wisening up in the face of the predator, both inside and out, a task that asks us to get very honest with the bargains we make that cost us everything, with where we would rather stay young and naive in hopes that someone/something outside of ourselves will come and save us and make our dreams come true,  a good hard look at how and where we are bleeding out, losing life energy, and also, in the very same flow of blood, evincing life-force.This story is brutal and necessary. And meant to be traveled in the company of a village. This story is essential for these times, a sobering and critical excavation into the world of the predator, both inside and out. We can all think of the countless predatory forces outside of ourselves that seek to steal our light, life-force and energy, but how familiar are we with the predators lurking on our insides, barely recognizable because they are so well disguised as truths, but stop us in our tracks anytime we are poised to express real power and creative agency. This story is fundamental to every human evolution, and brings a critical maturation in these times of global crisis.  

AUGUST SERIES: The essential and haunting tale of La Llorona. In this story we explore our primary task of encountering, protecting and nourishing our creative energy, a force that if not poisoned, dammed, diverted or misused, will flow in us like a wild river, with the surge of eternal headwaters and healthy tributaries that know how to bring our dreams, visions, inspirations and deep loves to life in tangible ways in our lives. “The wild creative force flows into whatever beds we have for it, those we are born with as well as those we dig with our own hands. We don’t have to fill them, we only have to build them...a woman’s creative ability is her most valuable asset for it gives outwardly and feeds her inwardly at every level: psychic, spiritual, mental, emotive and economic…If we are gasping for creative energy; if we have trouble pulling down the fertile, the imaginative, the ideational; if we have difficulty focusing on our personal vision, acting on it, or following through with it, then something has gone wrong between the headwaters and the tributary.” Dr. Clarissa Pinkola Estes Reyes from Women Who Run with the Wolves. We enter this tale to gather  instruction about what has gone wrong, and what is needed to recover this vital energy. 

NOVEMBER/DECEMBER series:  TBD. This story has yet to show her face but surely will. I have been “dousing” for stories in this way for over a decade, trusting and always finding that just the right story reveals itself as the medicine for the moment. This is a beautiful kind of oracular synergy and conversation with the livign body and intelligence of story. 

“Mother Tongue” is a place for remembering our deep song, for embodying our sacred conversation with Life itself, the wisdom of the unseen world and the bone-deep, original language with which they speak both to and through us.

Please note : Sarah Byrden no longer endorses the MogaDao Institute or study with Zhenzan/Zhenevere Dao in any capacity, no longer teaches or studies in association with the MogaDao Institute, operates under the designation of “MogaDao Teacher”, nor represents or endorses MogaDao as a tradition or entity in any way.