Song to Kali

Hi, I'm so glad you're here. I thought that we could work a little bit with Kali, and as is our way, we will talk a little bit first about the stories and the essence and the experience of Kali, and then we will move into some sound making, some mantra making, and we will finish out with a little sit and a mudra. So I'm glad you're here for this practice. Kali. To me, the essence of Kali is bravery in love, ferocious, grounded in love, and we might talk a little bit about the origin story of Kali, and I think I'll talk a little bit about my origin story with Kali too.

Kali does what needs to be done. One of her origin stories is that Durga was in this crazy battle, and I mean like Durga, fierce enough already, right? So Durga is battling these two demons, Chanda and Munda, and it gets so intense that her third eye opens up, and out comes this ferocious new goddess, Kali. Like there just to take care of business, and like think about that. In the moment where, you know, things need to happen, Kali shows up fierce in love.

And then the story continues, you know, maybe you've seen these pictures of Kali where she has a super long kind of crazy looking tongue, like remember that Poison album? Open up and say, that was the one. I'm dating myself to the 80s, but like, so this Kali tongue, like licking up blood, and that comes from this other battle story where there's this demon who, if his blood spills, with each drop of blood, new demons grow out of that. And so this is one dude whose blood you do not want spilling, and so Kali takes care of business and then drinks up the blood so that she saves everybody else. So again, like totally taking care of business, totally taking care of things.

I did not get this at all. I didn't understand how this worked or the essence or, you know, where the love was in any of this until I gave birth to my daughter. And this for me was a super Kali soaked time and also very much like a grizzly bear, you know, where there's this like well of love that you cannot even describe and any potential danger you are on hyper alert for. And in this moment, you know, like when I had a young little baby, oh, Kali, she made sense to me. And although, you know, sort of my Kali origin story coincided with the birth of my daughter, like two things come up around that, like we've all given birth to something.

Like that birthing time is the Kali time and whether that is a human child or whether it's a project or a song or a book or, you know, yoga filming, like we are all in the process of giving birth to something all the time and that is where you can access that essence of like brave badass in love doing what needs to be done. And so that's the essence, the zhuzh of Kali and it's a very special energy, it's a very special place to be in, you know, like the grizzly mama, freshly new moon time of things. So let's make some sounds and the sounds that we'll make, again, are these sort of really seeds of sounds and I'll invite you to, you know, drop into your heart, you know, sort of the cave of Kali and to feel around for what feels right but the mantra that I'm sort of organizing around is Om Mata Kali, Kali Durgay Ma, Om Mother Kali, Kali Durgay, Durga Ma, Shri Ma, Shri Ma, Jay Ma, Kali Durgay Ma. Any collection of those words will be good but if something else comes to you like grizzly bear, mama, ferocious, love, do that, feel your way into it. Om Mata Kali, Kali Durgay Ma, Om Mata Kali, Kali Durgay Ma, Shri Ma, Jay Ma, Jay Ma, Jay Ma, Kali Durgay Ma, Om Mata Kali, Kali Durgay Ma, Om Mata Kali, Kali Durgay Ma, Shri Ma, Jay Ma, Kali Durgay Ma, Om Mata Kali, Kali Durgay Ma, Om Mata Kali, Kali Durgay Ma, Shri Ma, Jay Ma, Kali Durgay Ma, Om Mata Kali, Kali Durgay Ma, Om Mata Kali, Kali Durgay Ma, Shri Ma, Jay Ma, Kali Durgay Ma, Om Mata Kali, Kali Durgay Ma, Om Mata Kali, Kali Durgay Ma, Shri Ma, Jay Ma, Kali Durgay Ma, Om Mata Kali, Jay Ma, Jay Ma, Jay Ma, Jay Ma, Shri Ma, Jay Ma, Kali Durgay Ma, Shri Ma, Jay Ma, Shri Ma, Shri Ma, Shri Ma, Shri Ma, Shri Ma, Shri Ma, Shri Ma, Shri Ma, Shri Ma, Shri Ma, Shri Ma, Shri Ma, Shri Ma, Shri Ma, Shri Ma, Shri Ma, Shri Ma, Shri Ma, and you might notice this sensation of aliveness in your hands.

Let's take the left hand with all of its pulsing prana and bring it right to the center of the heart. And we'll take the right hand and we'll just sort of like easily bring it up into the air, soft elbow, soft shoulder. And with this quality of softness in the hands and this attention to the aliveness in the hands, can you let your right hand sort of form itself around the essence of bravery? You might even sort of breathe into bravery, silently repeating that word as you inhale and feeling bravery in the right hand as you exhale. Breathing in the essence of bravery and breathing out embodying the essence of bravery.

The brave yogi, the brave grizzly bear, the brave mama, the brave lover isn't fearless. The brave human is empowered by love, walks next to fear, looks fear right in the face, and listens to the callings from the cave of the heart. You might relax the effort of holding up your right arm and right hand and rest it. You might again rest the left hand. The brave human, let's bring our hands together, together.

We can do hard things. Thanks for being here.