Womb Wisdom, Feminine Lineage and Stay-At-Home Retreats with Marya Stark
Episode 286: Marya Stark is an award-winning vocalist, composer, producer, performer, and multi-instrumentalist. She is a storyteller, bard, poet, and muse. When she is not on stage or deep in her craft, Marya offers her medicine as a Musical Midwife, supporting the Archetypal Embodiment Journey of her students. Marya Stark is a mentor in the art of voice and songwriting, working with those passionate about refining their unique sound and bringing it to life. Steeped in the alchemical arts of womb clearing, she currently leads her 'Voice Of My Womb' vocal enrichment workshop series globally and online. Marya Stark is a chaser of waterfalls, and rememberer of the songs of the Sapphire.
Show notes:
Why we’re feeling blocked from our creative outlet and what to do about it.
2020 as a year of creativity.
What is music therapy?
“When we’re involved in a musical process, our entire brain comes online. When we’re engaged in the creative music process, all of us is turned on. We’re designed to process music in a way that puts us all together.” - Marya Stark
What do you think we’re healing when we’re doing ancestral work and womb wisdom clearing?
The importance of connecting to the song of our female bodies.
The deep polarization with the masculine and feminine.
How as women do we call forth the masculine to be guided and led?
“The great work that women get to do is deeply steep in this womb clearing because that’s what clears our energetic signature of resentments, misalignments around our own voice and boundaries.” - Marya Stark
How does one do the womb clearing if they don’t know what happened in their feminine lineage?
How she creates personal, creative space for herself.
The power behind her stay-at-home retreats — how she conducts these retreats and the significance of resetting her body.
How to create a psychic, spiritual, psychological boundary.
The commonalities within our menstrual cycles and hormones.
The Optimized Woman https://amzn.to/2ZMMTXv by Miranda Gray.
The more we rest during the time that we bleed, the more we set ourselves up for success for the month to come.”
Must-read book: The Smell of Rain on Dust https://amzn.to/2szAv13 by Martín Prechtel.
Connect with Marya:
Website: www.marya-stark.com
Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/artist/2lntMaVHOro0wJYMYHco9d?si=4LT0hSR7S3mOeCC-w3mopg
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/maryastark/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/maryastarkmusic
[Tweet "Womb clearing is what clears our energy of resentments and misalignments around our own voice and boundaries. #mindbodymusings"]
COACHING: receive personalized, 1:1 coaching from Maddy Moon to create your own feminine and masculine embodiment. Heal your heart, build confidence, create an online business (if that's a goal!) or simply feel happier. Apply here: http://maddymoon.com/coaching
FEMININE SPIRIT SCHOOL: this school is the one-stop-shop for all things feminine energy! If you've been wanting to embody the feminine but feel stuck on the how, this program will take you through the entire realm from start to (well...we're never really finished, are we?). Learn about the feminine/masculine, shadow sides, ancestral healing, boundary setting, empowerment, sensuality and sexuality, sovereignty and so much more. Sign up here: http://maddymoon.com/feminine-spirit
READ THE FULL TRANSCRIPT
Maddy: [00:00] welcome to the podcast, everybody this is your host, Madelyn Victoria Moon, and I am on a roll right now. I’m recording this a little bit before the podcast airs which most podcasts are like that and I’m in this really like ooey gooey cave state of creativity. I’m coming back home y’all coming back home; I’m coming back home to my dreams of being a creative with this acting I’m doing now and with writing this book idea I’ve had forever and even approaching my Instagram writing in a new way of just wanting to make it as simple as possible. Write in the morning, something I want to share for the day, posting that thing I want to share on my Instagram and then like walking away energetically like not consistently opening my phone. I’m just really focusing on creating some structures and systems to protect my little creative baby inside; my inner child who just wants to go back into where would my inner child be going? She would be going to the shire. She would be going to the Shire and she would be wearing like corsets, and she’d have braids in her hair and she’d be eating honey all day long and drinking honey wine and be singing songs and playing the flute. Like if I could do anything and just transport myself into some magical place I would probably be in the Shire as a hobbit just having fun all day long; making love, eating food, singing songs and waiting for Gandalf to arrive on his carriage but I am not doing that right now so the next best thing I can do is imagine it and be creative and allow myself space to just go there, like energetically, metaphorically, spiritually, relationally just allowing myself to make up worlds in my mind and that’s what’s allowing me to go back to my creativity. So many of us are so blocked we are so blocked from our creative spirits from writing nonsense from singing songs that also are nonsense from like poetry that poetry really involves a certain level of letting go of what makes sense to sensical in life. Sensical? Sensical? Yes that is a word. So that’s where I’m at right now of looking at my 2020 as a year of creativity. Maybe that’ll be my word for the, for the year I never remember my word for the year at the end of the year so I realize it’s not important, of a thing to me. If I can’t remember my word of the year at the end of the year it really shows that does not mean that much to me but if I was to have a word of the year, this year it would be, creativity. Coming back to my creative heart and the best person right now for us to talk about this with is today’s guest. She is a catalyst for why I am reignited in my creative spirits, why I am being disciplined summoning up my masculine to create a container for me to flow in my creative spirit again. Today’s guest is Marya Stark even that name. Oh my god, Marya is an award winning vocalist, composer, producer, performer, and multi instrumentalist. She is a storyteller, a bard, a poet and Muse when she’s not on stage or deep in her craft Marya offers her medicine as a musical midwife, supporting the archetype embodiment journey of her students. She is a mentor in the art of voice and songwriting working with those passionate about refining their unique sound and bringing it to life. Steeped in that all chemical arts of womb clearing she currently leads her voice my womb, vocal enrichment workshop series globally and online, she is a chaser of waterfalls, and rememberer of wrong of the Sapphire. I didn’t ask her what that was about the Sapphire I got to ask her about that later. I am, head over heels for this podcast we talk about the womb wisdom, we talked about what one of the number one things as women we are healing right now and a movement we’re starting and creating. We talk about creating stay at home retreats which is another thing I am now putting on my calendar for 2020, every single, every single quarter there’s going to be a series of a few days where I delete all social media off my phone and I have a stay at home retreat; cooking nourishing meals, taking baths, loving myself, rubbing oils on my body and like, just getting real. I’m getting very serious about the detoxes this year not the food detoxes, the energy detoxes it’s happening. I’m summoning that masculine discipline to make it happen otherwise we’ll just forget about it. This podcast is going to inspire the spire inspire the Queen out of you, inspire the inner child out of you, big time and I have received Marya’s permission to play a 01:32 clip of one of my favorite songs from her. I also did this with Trevor Hall whenever I had Trevor Hall on the podcast about two years ago, oh my goodness so long ago and it’s very helpful for everyone to be able to get a feel for someone’s music before listening to them speak and Marya’s music it is everything I’ve been waiting for. It’s so good and I’m so impressed by how much she has I mean this woman she has taken her calling to heart, and she sets the systems in place to, to be in her creative flow and you’re going to feel that in this one minute and 30 second clip and I will include the link to her Spotify in the show notes for this, so make sure you go over to the show notes for this maddymoon.com/Marya-stark and click on the Spotify link to subscribe to her music, you’re really not going to want to miss at all. Today I’m asking all of you to hit subscribe also on the podcast. This is the number one way for iTunes to be like, whoa, people like this show, we should put it higher on the ranks so more people see it. So if you enjoy this podcast maybe this is a one off maybe you heard of this podcast through Marya, and you want more podcast in the realm of the feminine and masculine spirituality and creativity open up your Spotify or your iTunes app and hit subscribe and you will never ever miss an episode every Wednesday, you’ll get it. I’ve been doing this for five over five years and I’m not quitting anytime soon. So when you hit subscribe on my podcast, you’re going to be enjoying episodes for a long time to come and I would love to have you as part of my community so hit subscribe, follow me on Instagram @madelynmoon where I post lots of my writings some of my acting clips because I am an actor, having fun saying that now, and much more. So, head on over to all those fun places but first things first, let’s just like all take a moment to slow down, close our eyes, put our hand on our heart and listen to this beautiful song called Ishtar by Marya Stark.
[08:00] *clip of Ishtar by Marya Stark*
[09:24] Marya Stark Welcome to the mind body musings podcast, I have been obsessed with your music since I discovered it about a month ago. I mean, all day long in and out it is playing and clearing any negative energy in my apartment, any negative energy as I go to the subway in New York like it’s just constantly putting me in this like I mean it’s like it’s like the ancestral version of Lizzo, Lizzo is putting you in this empowerment place of like, Girl I got this like I can do anything and then you’re like, bringing in this spiritual energy and it’s just like heart opening and amazing.
Marya: [10:07] thank you. I love that beautiful combo
Maddy: [10:13] because it’s like so not Lizzo like if you’re so different but like the same exact feeling you get you get from both of y’all of feeling really empowered and, and your music nourishes something that feels more like remembering from the past. I feel like I remember things from the lineage of women, that is, so I don’t think I’ve ever experienced that from music before like I’ve yeah like I’ve experienced that with yours.
Marya: [10:43] thank you, I appreciate that feedback and, those songs really did come from a deep dive I am imagining the music you’re talking about from the album lineage that all that those songs came from such a deep dive into my own ancestral healing and womb clearing work. I like became really obsessed with womb and with like womb wisdom and rites of passage and, and I’m like, how can I just like digest and incubate with all of this information and like integrate it and embody it so that I’m walking in the world from these places within myself, rather than feeling like there’s some threads outside or behind me.
Maddy: [11:28] where were you in your life, when the songs came to you; what was happening?
Marya: [11:32] it 2016, and I was transitioning from working as a music therapist, which I loved you know like just it being having been a music therapist for almost a decade, but then there was this other call for my soul to go further to take the understanding of music is medicine and the map that music therapy provides as a, as a body of like healing work, how do I take it further in my creativity. I started working with this storyteller named Sirena Andrea who was one of my best friends and collaborators and she had a whole, like, five month program called the yoniverse monologues where she took a group of us through this process of rewriting our like a true life story about our experiences as women, and going into all of this like deep clearing and from that experience and just doing a five month intensive in this expressive arts therapy process around being female and all the looks and corners and crabbies and all these circle songs came forward that were about womb wisdom. Just before that I had been on tour with Scarlet Crow with one of my bands with sister girl mama crow and we had all of these songs that were, we were sharing together around remembrance and around, you know the like the lineages of women and kind of like the historical references around the divine feminine and like where it got skewed and what is the impact currently on gender alchemy and how we relate to each other and our intimate relationships and like what was the cultural context. I had just been in this like dive with her and then into the yoniverse and I was like oh my god and my girl Sirena backstage before we were getting prepared to go on stage to tell our stories in front of audiences of, you know, hundreds of people of like deeply intimate, you know, pussy magic *laughs* stories. She was, we were nervous backstage so she asked me to sing the women into their bodies and so I wrote these songs backstage to integrate the journey we’ve just been on and to sing this into our body so a lot of the songs were just scenes that I was like shouting out and they were singing back and they became these songs and body of work.
Maddy: [14:10] what? so you were backstage and you were like I’m going to sing them into their bodies and this line works and this line works and then you went out there and you did it and then later that night you’re like, let’s put this someplace on a piece of paper. Wow, what a process.
Marya: [14:25] totally, it was beautiful. It was like very emergent, it was in response to a request, and it was in response to preparing to break the silence so that these true life stories could be heard and experienced as medicine by the whole community and bring us all closer together and these songs came as a way to weave all of that process together and it’s been beautiful because those songs on lineage, started just to get shared before I even recorded them. They were starting to be shared in circles and they were woven into so many threads and so many communities and became like a real cornerstone for the work I’m doing now and it’s been really fun to see like this unexpected because those songs, you know, I’m a songwriter and like a storyteller and I like writing like art songs you know like bard songs so they’re really different they’re like for me they’re medicine songs are like circle music they’re not where I’m necessarily hanging out in my like deep creativity It’s like one voice of my creativity, but it’s just been interesting to see that these things that I had to do almost just to document this kind of healing journey I went on have become this, this wave that I have carried and so I just bear witness, I’m grateful, I’m grateful to feel so many folks connecting to those songs, it is just an honor.
Maddy: [15:51] what has your journey been like, becoming an artist? Have you always been this way was it supported as a child?
Marya: [15:56] I have always been this way and I am a blessed artist in that my parents deeply supported me and my mom, definitely went out of her way to create context for me to go deeper into my art and my music and expression and it’s been it’s something that I’ve I think a lot of children left to their imagination are very creative, and I happen to be one who like was so taking a stand for my own creativity and had other people taking a stand for me that it really caught to flourish. So yeah, I went to, you know, always as grade school I went to a middle school and high school that was steeped in the performance arts like one of those performance art schools which was super fun and went into college, studying performance art and vocal alchemy but I got into music therapy when I went to college, which just kind of changed the paradigm for me of how I was relating to my reality and that really opened up this whole other kind of like the Bartok arts, the healing arts, you know, compassion communication intimacy practice, looking at all of the other things and then how to weave all of that and then it’s just continued to grow. I’ve been writing songs, my whole life and really dedicated to it as a craft for over 20 years.
Maddy: [17:26] what exactly is music therapy? For anyone who doesn’t know.
Marya: [17:33] well music therapy is a, it’s a body of work, it’s a discipline that is paired with other kinds of medicines; it’s a holistic health practice and music therapy is the use of music in therapeutic settings so we go, depending on the population that we are working with you have a different kind of approach to how to work with music to build relationship to help support rehabilitation if there’s been traumatic brain injury or if people are doing deeper PTSD healing. I’ve worked with people who’ve had strokes, I’ve worked with people who have had, you know, kids with different abilities, autism, people are recovering from addiction it’s like the scope of practice for any expressive arts therapy is very wide, but the principles are that we the music it engages our whole system like there’s very few processes that activate our entire neurological system you know we have these brands that you know we have like our frontal cortex and it does these things and, you know, these parts of our brain maybe we just other things, fine motor skills, gross motor skills or imagination and like working these pieces but when we’re involved in a musical process our entire brain machine comes online. There’s something really powerful in the contemplation of like, wow, when we’re engaged in creative process and music process, all of us is turned on and so it, it occurs that we are designed to process music in a way that puts us all together like creates this whole electrical grid that’s aligned and on and attuned so when we apply that to people who’ve maybe they’ve had parts of their brain go offline it becomes a way to start bridging places that are injured or they have gone dormant or to create plasticity because we’re engaging our body, our memory, our imagination, our breathing, our fun and it’s a fun process and, you know. So many studies about learning and says like well you can learn something after 400 times of repetition unless you’re playing then you can learn it in 10 or 20 and so it engages that part of us that is designed to play and designed to communicate and connect and create harmony and so it’s really a body. I love it like music therapy is such a powerful body of work and the philosophical roots of it as modality are so pure and universal and it’s just steeped in like human beings connecting with each other and celebrating life together no matter what’s going on with you and your unfolding, if you’ve got injury, if you’ve got had harm, if you had emotional whatever like you’re invited to come be in the musical experience and that starts to create repairing.
Maddy: [20:41] it’s so beautiful how powerful music truly is like what would life be like without music, I can’t even imagine it and that is how I really get into my own embodiment work is hand picking certain songs that feel like they’re going to help me touch the parts that need to be touched that day, emotionally, and making that a sacred practice in itself of choosing the songs, and then getting on my mat and moving my body and processing whatever needs to be processed but truly it’s running on those songs I pick. Like my practice is really I don’t think I ever emphasize this really but how I move my body is 99% based off of what music I’m picking to move to that day. If I am picking, I don’t know Rage Against the Machine I’m going to be releasing a lot of anger, it’s just I mean that’s how it works but if I’m picking songs that remind me of when I was 13 and I used to listen to music at the same time I was going through that thing with my family. That can take me back to that time to actually heal that thing when I was 13 going on, with my family that I never really knew how to heal. So it can transport us.
Marya: [21:54] music is amazing it you know like, it takes us, it’s this thing that exists in time but it also exists out of time and it is these time portals because like, our memories you like time map, the whole experiences, and then songs activate the process and it is really healing you know so you can revisit something and be transported. If we’re at a later stage in our psyche development we can integrate emotional processes that we haven’t had the bandwidth or capacity to understand before but now we can like see it from more like our mature adult side and like welcome those pieces back. So some, a lot of music therapy process include that it’s like start you know, taking songs that we love looking at the lyrics feeling the emotion like going into the depth of feeling you know and it’s so much like we were such powerful animals were like, create all of these identities and how we work through these feelings and sometimes songs just bust through like crystallized selves that we have adopted to function and survive in society with expectations or whatever and sometimes music can just penetrate through the BS and connect us to so much, you know, more pure and essential to who we actually are. I think that like when we have that we can start building bridges to these other parts of ourselves we can start coming online and working with more of what we have inside of us.
Maddy: [23:25] I believe that a two minute song can touch something and dissolve it in the same way that like 10 years of just talking about that thing, you know. So you can you can listen to one of these songs, move your body, touch that part of your heart that’s trying to open to that more and I’m all for therapy. It’s great and it keeps us in the headspace and things like music and sensory experiences get us embodied in the body. So, how do I phrase this exactly, this is a big question, but I want to go into like your mind because I have a very strong intuitive hint that you know a lot about the lineage of the feminine and of women and I’m curious; what are you feeling is one of the biggest things as women we are collectively healing when we do ancestral lineage healing and work?
Marya: [24:28] there’s a lot to be said here. I think one of the and I can speak from personal experience and what I gathered from working with so many women is number one, I think that women are at a point where we are noticing that our natural time is different than what the collective time relationship is that like mop maternity and the paternity does not actually match, a female body sense of time and that one of the way that we are reclaiming our voice at this time and reclaiming our embodiment is to really be in a deeper relationship to what is my natural time? Who am I week by week based on the hormonal song that is playing in my body? What is actually optimal for me, one week is different than what’s optimal for next week is different than what’s optimal the next week is different than what’s optimal when I’m bleeding and I think that this is one of the most essential nutrients that women can start to reclaim within their beings and start bringing that balance back to the song of the village, because so many people, I think are missing the juiciness of the female presence, when she is connected deeply to the song of her own body. One of the ways that manifests is expecting us to be expecting ourselves to be full a full moon when we’re in union or expecting ourselves to be a waxing when we are actually a waning moon, and the idea that the kind of productivity and focus that I have in a week when I’m like in a dynamic phase of my cycle or when I’m ovulating if that doesn’t carry over the week before I’m bleeding or when I’m bleeding than there’s something wrong with us, rather than there is a natural creative cycle that half of the population goes through biologically that is a match for what happens in the natural world, and we have disconnected so deeply as a culture because our priorities have been about accomplishment and the bottom line and very strong linear thinking and it’s been an imbalance that has taken its toll on women’s wombs, it’s taken a toll on women’s bodies and it has a taken a toll on relationships, it’s taken a toll on family systems, and it’s one of the causes, I believe of a lot of the womb diseases that we’re seeing, and it’s creating a quality of life that is I think it’s harmful. I think it’s creating a lot of soul sickness, and so and for me what how I perceive it in the great song cosmology, of the, of the guy in grid so to speak, is that we are not actually singing our song like we’re not using our voice coming rooted deeply from the source of value of who we are as mythical song beings as a female bodied individuals which is very different than our masculine counterparts, that we are not using the voice that’s deeply connected to that root system and so there’s a miss there’s missing tones in the song frequency of what would actually be a pitch match to the earth like the natural world is calling forth from us. That is one of the key pieces around doing ancestral work and womb clearing work is where we’re in my lineage of Mother, father of time did we disconnect from the womb, are there unmourned losses from the womb? Are there ways that women’s wombs had to carry the ungrieved losses of the village? Was there a place to mourn openly those things or did they go into silence? Where there veils and cloaks of invisibility put on the female voice and the female knowing and knowledge as a survival piece as a way to just navigate the wars that were happening as a way to pull things together while the men were off and fighting and the women were at home and having to like this deal with the things and then post war you know, coming online to like do the work and this whole revolution of feminism and like we’re going to take our equal place the seed of earning and it’s like having our voice matter but then like is that coming online on top of all of this, unprocessed rage, you know? So there’s also.
Maddy: [29:52] oh my gosh, can we zoom in on that because yeah like you just hit something that I was talking about this the other day trying to put it into words and you’re bringing it full circle around, sometimes when I talk about feminine and masculine and how it’s a gift for the feminine because we’re powerful as fuck and for us to be able to choose to let go with the chosen conscious King, and for them to lead us into places, maybe we can’t lead ourselves like that’s a gift to me, and it doesn’t feel like anything’s being taken from me because I’m so I feel so self assured that women and men are equal in all ways. I mean like in value our gifts are different but in value we are, and I still get heat from women who read the things that I’m writing and I get it because sometimes it’s out of context they are not following my message and hearing all the ins and outs I’m sharing about the feminine masculine they see that one post about submitting to your king out of choice, and then that triggers something within them of like how dare you that’s not serving us as women to, to be led like fuck you for that. I will like try to share with them, you know, hold on, it’s not what I’m saying like, you can listen to my description on a deeper level or not but I’m coming full circle to what you’re saying it’s, there’s an energy of that; of the unprocessed anger underneath and on, would you say like not cleared not healed that leads to putting all of this, rah, rah, rah we can do everything we want to do, we’re all equal, we have the loudest voices on top of that
Marya: [31:36] yeah, there’s like unmourned shit and like the causes of imbalances have not been deeply mourned and held, in a way where everyone involved can bear witness and mourn together and so there’s all of these icy strategies on top of that to like problem solve and do the thing and it creates this deep polarization between the masculine and feminine, I feel you I you know I love, I love the that David Dieda lineage of perspective around the play the divine love play between the masculine and feminine and the feminine part being led by the trustable king but that you know for a lot of women I’m imagining they have not had a great example of a trustable king and so they’re like, submit to what the jester over here and they’re like fucking boy brands like I am not submitting to that shit, fuck now. So it’s like how do we call forth our kings and how do we, as, as women who want to, like, summon forth the, the availability to be guided and led enough like how do we make ourselves available to be met in response to that like and what is the field of energy that would give rise to the like any way that the masculine shell has like held back his king because he’s also still in his archetype evolutionary process, you know like. So from my perspective, the great work that women get to do is deeply steeped in this womb clearing stuff, because that is actually what clears our womb of the energetic signatures that are holding on to these resentments, and these misalignments around our own voice in our own boundaries and the ungrieved losses of our mothers and our ancestors and that creates a space for us to actually arise new with a space open for a new vision to come forward but if we are rising with our power on top of all of this upset that that is going to be the frequency range that we’re going to keep meeting our beloved inside us.
Maddy: [34:03] so true. How does one heal, do the womb clearing and healing if they don’t have any resources in their particular lineage, or they’re just out of this loop of like, I don’t know what happened in my specific lineage to mourn but I feel this deep, the deep mourning but I don’t know what it is; how do they go through the process of clearing the womb, mourning what needs to be mourned in a container without knowing the specifics?
Marya: [34:36] I mean this is and this is like kind of this big steep of a lot of the work that I do in person, and in some of the courses that I teach is that like we take women through different rites of passages and different explorations and inventory processes around what are the stories that they know and what are the stories they don’t know so that we can actually start to understand what is there to know? What’s possible in the knowing that my, my body knows? What are the stories that my mother like have I even asked my mom, you know? Do I have access to my mom? Have I asked her about her stories or am I even relating to my mother as a mother, and as a woman or am I relating to her as a parent figure? You know that’s still like am I still inside of a construct of my own mother that is has dehumanized her, you know, and so there’s, there’s a lot of layers to this and how we can start to unpack that and I think for, you know, there are sometimes we don’t have access to, to those intimate connection with our parents for whatever reason and that is also information, you know, and I think that with any of the nervous system and like somatic healing stuff it takes time, it takes slowing down and asking, and listening, and some of my favorite ways to do it are like through, we were talking about this before we got on the call but through toning and through embodiment work and through starting to use the voice as a way to connect with the parts of myself that I believe I don’t have access to and actually just start calling forward from my body hey, is there any information in my body that I need to know in order or are there any somatic pieces in my being that are calling are like what quality of safe space do I need to create for myself so what side of me that’s dormant, or that’s being held back feels safe enough to emerge on its own. So it’s not like a hunt, you know it’s not like a treasure hunt of like digging through like where’s my trauma it’s more like how can I create spaces where I’m somatically available for the flowering of truth to arise.
Maddy: [37:01] what does that mean exactly creating spaces?
Marya: [37:07] I think, like this again comes down to a lot of like how, how much time do we take to just be with ourselves.
Maddy: [37:18] and I imagine you being an artist, you actually cut out time for like just being because that’s where things arise for you; I’m making this assumption.
Marya: [37:27] I have to, you know and it is a fight you know because I think a lot of us are so distracted in the digital world with social media and with like, if you’re an entrepreneur with like constant creative content output and like keeping up with all of it, that takes a certain quality of attention and like bandwidth that doesn’t give a lot of space for boredom and reflection and so you create it and then that runs on top of this energy which we talked about before, which is like go and do and accomplish and that doesn’t stop unless, you know you take the time to create a halt. So one of the ways I create space for myself, is I will several times a year take times where I’m completely unplugged from the internet from phone, and I’ll take, and I’ll take you know for a couple of, even if it’s just one day but sometimes I’ll just do like six days or seven days and go on personal retreat where I am doing a lot of inventory, I’m writing every day and just being with myself, I’m doing different meditative practices and I’m asking for my subconscious and for my like spirit to reveal to me like what is my system holding on to as far as like emotions that I haven’t processed it for or, or memories that I’ve been carrying that have actually been creating a field of energy around me that is contracted. So that’s one of the ways that I create space for myself is just personal retreat and I started. So that’s one of the ways and just like my, you know, I do dance practice, I do other practices and I have personal practices that I put inside of those times for myself where I’m literally creating a space whether it’s for 15 or 30 minutes, where like now I’m in a womb, I’m in a womb of self discovery, this is a space like I’m popping a sphere around 15 or 30 minutes of time, or I get to fall apart, where I don’t have to know the answers, where I don’t have to have the clear vision and I get to just explore my mammal body and like my weird uncooked shit.
Maddy: [39:49] the mammal body. That’s what I was going to ask like on a daily basis, what are those I’m like a mat; I get so sucked into aimless pointless scrolling and social media, and it goes into not actively comparing my content to theirs, but subconsciously there’s something going on there like perceiving how many other people are producing content day in, day out, and it just overwhelming me somehow just scrolling even more and then pulls me out of any potential I would have for thoughts and feelings to arise and come up for me. I create these structures sometimes, and then I just lose I lose them. I’m not disciplined with creating these every single day structures for like what you do letting go of social media for one day or six days; that would be so healthy for me. The retreats as well, I’m hosting them but I don’t always take time to do that myself, and there are things I’m like, I need to do that and then I’m like I should host one instead. I like, I’m coming back and remembering like these are really important things for a creator for humans because all humans are creators, sometimes we just don’t know it, because we have so many things and so much shit to do piled upon that time where we could be creative.
Marya: [41:17] it’s a game of like entropy, like, it’s like how do we like it’s like one of the things that I keep coming home to is one of the bass notes of the song of my life is that creative inspiration spark emerges from the void and emerges from the silence and often, it will pierce through the entropy, but entropy in order, right. It’s kind of like when I think about the heart, you know in Chinese medicine like an order is one of the values of the heart it creates this calm; fire entropy creates all of this like ecstatic like excitement and like kind of anxiety and so we have these like two heartbeat like this beat of life this entropy in order
Maddy: [42:05] it is the feminine and masculine. I have just never heard of it like that; entropy and order. It’s so beautiful.
Marya: [42:11] and so when we have these moments of epiphany right like creative epiphany is almost there’s this like moment of coherence from the from the entropy, but entropy will never feel like, and like we cannot fight the end of entropy like it is like we embrace and become really good friends and have an incredible sense of humor about the unending inevitable stuff like dust will continue to gather like the leaves will continue to fall, you can rake your yard and the next day there will be shit all over it and there’s just there’s no end to that. So how do these creators, get peace with that and be not let it take over our dreaming and hijack our genius that like we’re trying to control the uncontrollable but how do we come into a balanced relationship with it. Well, here it is these this is the game board that I’m opting in to play this game with and then if I am in a creative flow awesome and, you know, I’m sometimes going to fall out of a creative flow that’s entropy and I’m going to go into this like weird things like comparing or whatever like that is human but how do I pull myself out of that faster? Take the space right like how do I create space for myself to just like listen back to my own spirit, and that’s why I think like these boundary things I like how do I create psychic, emotional, spiritual boundary place for myself so I can give birth to myself and how do I do that in daily practice through meditation or creative practice or, you know I have like vocal practices that I do, how do I stay connected to those places that are nutrient rich for me and I’m not doing it you know for Instagram, like I’m literally doing it to reconnect to the being in this like weird holographic beautiful dreaming reality, and I get to be an active player in that. To take time on a regular basis I personally do for to rehabilitate my creative child, or else, like she will get lost in the matrix of like constant information it just happens you know and there’s nothing wrong with me about that it’s designed that way, it’s designed to hook into my addictive patterning and it does a great job and so now that I know, like, it’s up to me as someone who wants to increasingly take responsibility for the machine of my brain body to know what kinds of programs get hooked in there and take care of the software and the hardware sometimes. Hey, here I am free from the conditions of other people’s thought processes.
Maddy: [45:16] do you have support when it comes to your business for social aspects, so that you protect it or do you handle all that yourself?
Marya: [45:25] I have an assistant that’s starting to come online and support me a little bit it has mostly been me, and it’s in, you know, it’s growing like everything’s growing, I’d say for the social aspects it’s mostly me like interacting and like creating the things and creating the flow. So I’ve just had to get to, I am increasingly coming to a place where I’m like, I’m going to do this for me and I’m going to post and create, because I like to create stuff and share. I, it’s, it’s either going to be because it’s evolutionarily fulfilling for me or I’m not going to do it and so how can I build a relationship with what I’m sharing on social media that is about my own evolution as a soul, and everything else can go fuck off.
Maddy: [46:14] yes. Do you have any favorite places to go that revive you creatively the most when you speak of retreats and just getting out?
Marya: [46:23] I love waterfalls, anytime I can like hang out at by a waterfall I feel like a little like five year old in a happy place, for sure. I also just love being in my room honestly I like to like, I like to veg out in my room but in a place where I’ve like turned everything off like nothing can get me for five days, and it is the womb room. It’s like, it’s not easy. I won’t, I will say that, creating a three day retreat, a five day retreat, a seven day retreat of unplugging and being disciplined around it is very revealing to the habits of the mind like it’s not an easy task, but it is an incredible spiritual gym.
Maddy: [47:16] seriously, like I imagine I would be like my hungry, what do I want to eat? Can I turn the TV? Oh maybe I should scroll? I’ll notice even when I’m walking, let’s just say I’m getting out of the subway and I am just trying to you know walk in just a normal everyday thing I was walking I will notice this knee jerk reaction to open my phone I will need to find my phone and it disturbs me so much, and yet it happens so subconsciously, and I don’t know I am looking at it more and more. This has been a year of me, intentionally; I used to post on Instagram twice a day no matter what twice a day morning and night and now I just post whenever I do feel inspired. So I’ve worked on that a lot this year of detaching from that but now it’s a space to see the patterns of my body, and it feels like their tricks and tactics, work, like so well, to get people addicted and it’s talking bullshit and I’m sick of it and because it inhibits us. Okay, I wanted to circle back just for a moment about you talking about because it was the first thing you said so it must be very important of allowing yourself as a woman, to have different phases every week, being able to yeah go from one phase to the next to the next. For most people, is it the same whenever the moon is waxing, you’re going to be energetically waxing or do you have to find your own?
Marya: [48:48] there’s I use the moon cycle as a map of like the emotional energy women bleed at all times of the month and the day it’ll change depending on the woman, change depending on the year and so that’s not like a fixed map but what is there are cycles within the hormones and there are like studies that show commonalities that when you know and these are some of the womb mysteries that I love to work with, and there’s a great book all I’ll do a plug called the optimized woman by Miranda Cray, who wrote this incredible book on working with your moon cycle as an entrepreneur female and I recommend everyone read it men and women, non binary folks that bleed or don’t bleed like just to like tune into what half of the, you know what, half of people are going through. There’s a bunch of books on cycles, but I liked that one because it was a game and I got to go through a 28 day process of like tracking every day my, my womb cycle, and like what was really strong that day and what was harder to do and what I will share and I’ve done a blog around this called the rose tube is that there’s four main cycles that women go through within a womb cycle or within a blood cycle that is just like 26 to 35 days, generally sometimes longer or shorter depending what is happening in a woman’s body, but typically it will be in that 20 day range, and the first week after we’re done bleeding tends to be a time when we have our like single minded focus where we are most strongly in our masculine time. We have the most in like vitality, in terms of being able to get shit done, and having a really clear head about it, making rational choices and logical stuff and just doing it and you know we feel really good we’ve just like come from bleeding we’re just like oh I’ve got my energy back I’ve got my mind back like I can think straight handling it and so a lot of women handle a lot of stuff this week it’s really nice. Then we go into ovulation we’re like, magnetic and we like our faces are symmetrical and we are calling in potential like, you know, like mates and more like very like relationally charged we are the most intuitive at this time we’re very intuitive to other people’s feelings, we’re very like we’re a big yes and like supporting people and this is a time when women could get pregnant and this is the time where we could conceive big ideas were very traditionally, this is the cycle and that is most associated with women with feminine like the Goddess, the curvy like magnetic like sensual vital energy and this is a time where we can overcome, we can overcome it, we can say yes to too much during our ovulation cycle, like I can of course I’ll do that oh yeah oh yeah all these things. So we got to watch out for making long term sacrifices or like giving too much away during this time because of that and then right after this time we’ll, we’ll hit a dip, you know, and then we’ll go into this third phase which is more of a like wild woman phase the creative phase and this is the phase that a lot of people, you know we shift and like those first two phases were like waxing moon full moon and then we go into this like waning moon phase where we have a drop, we still have a strong drive, but we don’t have the same amount of rising energy our energies actually starting to wane which can be very creatively frustrating. Plus, our, our, our mindset is we’re not as rational as we before we’re actually in a less rational place so women can feel like people say like are you about to bleed right now is that time of the month. Yes, they can. It we’re starting to digest what is in the unconscious so this is a time we can actually see what’s not working. We can start to really because we can feel the inner tension of some of what’s not going right so if any systems that we’ve been acting like working with, like in the previous two weeks if we like had started a new project like two weeks ago to, now we can see what’s not working from it, and it can feel or seem like something’s wrong, but it’s actually the part of our tracking that’s available to digest the unconscious information and so we’ll start having realizations around what’s not working, what doesn’t feel good, and where our hormones are starting to like drop and we’re not as connected to the like stream of focused energy and then, and which are culture values and now I’m in a place of my cycle that is not valued it’s, and so now I’m not, it’s harder for me to value myself in this cycle. Yet, this is a time when we have, we can be very creatively prolific, we can have huge incredible insights because we’re not in a rational state we can have out of the box thinking like, suddenly can make connections about problem solving in a different kind of way and so it’s incredibly valuable time. So it’s reconnecting to the value of that and not expecting it, like it did a week or two weeks ago and then we move into our bleeding time this four weeks which is the time of deeply restful like low productivity and it’s time when if we give ourselves the time to rest during our bleeding time it’s so powerful because our brain is in a beta state so we’re in this like natural harmonious meditative state and even though a lot of women experience pain during this time it can actually be a huge relief of the hormones that have been building and the tension relief because our bloods clearing and our liver is clearing and of all of this clearing energy and if we rest this helps to reset the Yin energy for the whole month. The more we rest during the days of our blood, the more we set ourselves up for success for the month to come because our kidneys can restore our blood can clean our mind can clear, we have those inner knowings we can listen to the depth of like now I know what I need to do and it is the time the inner voices of our intuition, really speak to us and we can really let shit go during this time, we can really know okay this is no longer mine to hold or okay I’m going to hold this but I need to hold it in a different way and then that next week we can start the new plan. We are going through this creative cycle, every month like it’s so beautiful like we’re going through the growth, the bloom, the decay the dying, the reborn and this is just the map and the song of the female body and it’s profound and beautiful, but our culture like half of the cycle of that our culture does not value and so we have so many women walking around who don’t value half of their creative process and so we wonder like why have we been shut down and why is there so much repression, why does our womb hurt so much when we’re bleeding maybe because we’re not fucking resting and taking the time to care for our bodies when our bodies are asking us or begging us to slow the fuck down during this time, so that we can receive the wisdom that is trying to come online so that we have a new clarified vision to bring forward in our work.
Maddy: [56:41] I have had these phases explained on the podcast several times and I’ll be totally honest, a lot of times when I hear it I honestly am like huh, there is so much you’re giving me but the way you just described it like everything makes sense now. I feel so much more comfortable going into because I track my cycle and I’m like, okay, got it, because it’s, this is what the first week is like go, go, go get shit done feeling really motivated, second week, you said this is when this really feminine goddess energy of ovulation, we are magnetic, we are relationally charged, and then we’re kind of like going into this wild stage we feel a bit less rational, lots of goodness to come and then rest and it really quite easy whenever you just look at it like that. Is the time that you typically take away from social media is that typically during when you’re bleeding? When you rest or is it like the week after, when I mean?
Marya: [57:48] well I do my retreat I schedule mine annually when I do the longer retreats, although I do try and rest as much as possible when I bleed every month. Sometimes I will take and do less on my phone sometimes I won’t but it just depends on what I’m up to but I love, I love going into the lodge when I am bleeding. Again, when I do take the time to go offline during that time I just come out with, I come back with clarified vision. It’s just it’s the time when I have access to my most deeply unconscious end fight.
Maddy: [58:34] okay, I’ve got a couple divine deep round questions for you but before we go there, where can people connect with you online?
Marya: [58:43] well I have two websites one is my own creative artists website which is Marya-stark.com and I have an academy site, which is the rosebardacademy.com and that is the site where I share about my mentorship work, working one on one with women going deeper into creating these portals of time for themselves in their creative visioning and I also, that’s where I have retreats and my online classes where we could do this stuff that I’ve been sharing on the Muse and on womb clearing and going into all that stuff deeper.
Maddy: [59:23] amazing, I will have all of that on the show notes for this episode maddymoon.com/Marya-stark. Alright divine deep dive round question; number one’s really hard. I’m sorry. If you had to pick one archetype that reflects the spirit of your soul, at least the most for right now where you’re at right now, which archetype would this be?
Marya: [59:51] I would say the scribe.
Maddy: [595:55] scribe? Tell us about the scribe?
Marya: [59:55] well the scribe is the one who’s like listening to all of the Muses chat and she’s just like taking it all and like writing it down and listening more and like kind of like joking around she’s the she’s like the Bard. She’s the Bard Scribe.
Maddy: [01:00:18] I love that when you text the other day you wrote you said something like, I’m listening, the Muses or something are circling around and I’m listening to them and I was like, first off I just was like what I was like, Oh, the muses she’s listening to them, they’re all around and then I got it. It took me a minute. I was like I really like this girl; she’s me. This language is the best.
Marya: [01:00:40] I couldn’t stop what I was doing.
Maddy: [01:00:44] I totally get it I have these moments as well. I just didn’t phrase it like that now I’m totally going to see it that way it much more magical. What’s the best investment you’ve made in 2019 under $10,000?
Marya: [01:01:02] probably training; like going to train in New Mexico was the best investment I made. I did two trainings in New Mexico with someone I studied with on human development, and that was easily the best investment I made.
Maddy: [01:01:23] sounds mysterious; Human Development huh?
Marya: [01:01:25] how do we do, what is what’s possible as a human being. How do we unfold the gift of who we are?
Maddy: [01:01:35] I am very interested but I’ll move on. Favorite place for you to sing?
Marya: [01:01:40] caves underneath waterfalls.
Maddy: [01:01:48] what is the color that lights your heart up the most right now?
Marya: [01:01:50] sapphire.
Maddy: [01:01:55] so besides you mentioned the optimized woman besides that book, what is another must, must read book everyone’s got to get it?
Marya: [01:02:07] the smell of rain on dust by Martin Prechtel.
Maddy: [01:02:12] is it poetry?
Marya: [01:02:14] it is, you can call it poetry, it is prolific musings and speaking about the power of grief and mourning as praise for life and he is absolutely poet so it is a wash of virtuosic language that is extremely beautiful and enriching.
Maddy: [01:02:39] when I get married one day, if I have one; will you sing at my reception?
Marya: [01:02:43] sure *laughs*
Maddy: [01:02:46] glad we got that out of the way. Final question; who would you say is one of your most significant mentors or teachers?
Marya: [01:03:02] gosh there are so many, I have been really blessed with incredible mentors and muses in my life. I’ll mention my friend Laurel Layla who has been in my team for the last 10 years and we actually just created a class together called honoring the losses of the world, and she got to share her wisdom and hold ceremonial space for women who’d experienced any kind of loss of the womb or a miscarriage and loss of innocence like lost a child, and she profound influence and mentor and friend to me and I’ve learned so much about how to be with my woman self through her holding and knowledge. So I’ll share her she’s an incredible leader and Alchemist and I love her.
Maddy: [01:03:52] I love, I love that you just mentioned your friend as your teacher and mentor, I think that’s those are the best friends and the ones we see in those lights. Marya, thank you so much for coming on to the podcast, you are doing significant work in this world and I am so excited for my audience to know about your music now it’s going to impact them tenfold.
Marya: [01:04:14] my pleasure it’s been so fun to connect with you and hang out with you today; thank you again for inviting me and to everyone who’s listening. I love you all so much. Thank you for taking the time to be with us today and I look forward to weaving together at some point down the line.