Ibiza Archives - Shakti Priestess

The magic of Salinas

September 18, 2022 by Zinnia Sophia Leave a Comment

My favorite beach in Ibiza is Salinas. Why? Because no matter what changes or how many tourists flock to the island, Salinas stays true to the original, bohemian fun-loving spirit of Ibiza.

This October I return to my Goddess Island and I’m so excited to show you my home away from home and where I come to recharge. Together, we’ll explore Cala Plumas, chill out at Sa Trinxa and enjoy Ibiza’s famous endless summer sunset.

Salinas is wild and protected as a natural reserve. Phoenicians came here in the 8th century BC and set up their colony in Ibiza. They traded salt from Ibiza, a prized commodity and at the time, was called “white gold”.

There are a few restaurants dotting the road where travelers come for a bite to eat or a sunset drink.

But what I love most is the Salinas church. It stands guard in front of the lush expanse of salt flats and bird life where egrets, keels and osprey all graze and feed on the salty marshes.

The church was built in the late 18oo’s in typical Ibicenco architecture – white walls and a bell tower. It even has a shield of XX and YY even though it was never a part of that kingdom.

After some swimming, lunch, and a little dancing with the DJs at Sa Trinxa, I love to go Cala Plumas where all the coves are.

Cala Plumas

Every year when I come to Ibiza, this is my first stop. I’ve been coming here for twelve years so by now I’m a local and I have a community of friends who welcome me home every season.

The water here is a sea of blue jewels: turquoise, teal, green, aquamarine and emerald.

You can enjoy sunbathing and some alone time, write in your journal, explore or walk to the tower.

Every single cove is unique. Some have hidden caves while others have been sculpted with love by Ibiza artists. Here’s a very special cove with the most interesting sculpture, which I’m sure to took months to complete.

Another spot I love is a secret Salinas cave. I first came to this cave with Lorenzo and fell in love with her. Her silence and womb-like embrace touched my heart. Being inside her truly feels like being within the womb of the subterranean Mother. There are so many water caves like this Ibiza but I feel like this one knows me and waits for me.

Salinas has numerous coves to play, swim, explore and get lost in, which is what I do! The feeling in Cala Plumas is magical. It’s always serene here and I really feel I’m in a lost, ancient part of the island.

Spain was rich in silver, copper, tin and lead and other resources so it was natural for the Phoenicians to trade and settle here. Ibiza dates back to Neolithic times with evidence of its inhabitants living in its caves and in the Bronze Age, there is abundant evidence of Goddess worship.

Las Damas, Tanit’s priestesses, were found in southern Spain as well as Ibiza because the Phoenicians had established trading posts and towns on the Iberian peninsula probably before 1000 BCE. We know very little about Tanit’s mystery religion and its rituals and rites. The Romans burnt Carthage to the ground, with its libraries and sacred places, and massacred the entire population at the end of the Punic wars in 146 BCE. There was one place in Carthaginian Spain that escaped the destruction, and that was Ibiza.

Natural water temples

Ibiza is rich in natural beauty and the water feels ancient and magical. In Salinas, there’s an abundance of natural temples made from the dance of water and stone over millions of years.

I hope you enjoyed our trip to Salinas. Until next time, keep your heart open and keep traveling.

Ciao from Ibiza!

Photo credits: Lorenzo Melissari

Letting Go and Falling In Love

October 12, 2016 by Zinnia Sophia Leave a Comment

oct_blog_photo_woman-in-water

Our summer months have come to a close and now the energy of fall is here. Seasonally, this is the time for letting go. Everyone talks about letting go and it is a beautiful skill to have.

Letting go can help you heal…
Letting go can help you transform…
Letting go can help you balance…

Have you ever tried to “let go” of something in your life? A job, career, boyfriend, bad habits, an unhealthy way of life? I have tried to let go of people and situations that I was dependent on and it’s not the easiest thing to do.

This month I took my yearly pilgrimage to Ibiza to let go of the past year and reflect on the lessons I was meant to learn as I prepare for 2017. Letting go of control and addiction was one of them. Surrender was another.

As I reflected and relaxed under the sun, I swam, sailed on boats, watched the sunset and danced across the sand. When I had filled my cup with love, Ibiza began her magic and the island sent me a surprise that mystified me.

Recently, I reached out to a soulmate who I thought I would never speak to again! In previous years, we had cathartic fights and betrayal between us and I realized I was still holding onto old anger and resentment.

I let go of the anger…
I let go of the resentment…
I let go of the defensiveness and the wall around my heart…
And fell in love again…

I fell in love with this soulmate and we have fallen in love with one another so many times. Before we fought and fought but something changed this time. My heart was so full of love that I only wanted his happiness. As short as our love story was, it is now full of friendship, flow, forgiveness and unconditional love.

The truth was, I had been running away from him because he mirrored my intense and difficult feelings about myself, and that meant I was running away from myself.

I was having trouble trusting after my divorce creating a solid relationship bond with another, and having a healthy, nourishing, friendly bond with my own heart, feelings and emotions.

I was addicted to running away, flying away and not staying connected to my body, mind and emotions and whatever came up for me.

This time in Ibiza, I let everything come up and then I let everything go with the compassion I would have for a child crying to get their needs met.

For me, this was a chance to outgrow my dependencies and addiction and it meant growing new emotional muscles and compassion for my inner child.

When I first started to feel the dark and difficult sensations, my first reaction was to repress them like I had done during childhood in order to survive around my parents.

Addictions are eliminated when there’s no longer a need to numb-out, or run away from You. And when you can feel the full spectrum of your feelings from shame, rejection abandonment, unworthiness, betrayal all the way to beauty, happiness, joy, bliss and ecstasy, your feelings bring about wholeness and healing.

Real love is based on freedom.

So when I met my soulmate again, Love filled my cup and offered me the “freedom to choose” without any bindings on this person, and I chose a balanced path instead of following a negative path leading to self destruction.

This is the mystery of the Sacred Feminine. You always have the power to choose which path you will take.

The feminine has many faces.

Love can feel free. Life can feel full of joy!

The Sacred Feminine teaches you that who you are is free, liberated already, completely free of all dependence. This is wholeness. And from wholeness, everything comes to you!

If you want to connect and stay embodied to your emotions, feelings and to the light, here is a beautiful invocation I use from Wistancia Stone’s book, “Invocations To The Light”.

Reaching For The Light

Invocation is a sacred act. Some personal preparation to bring you into sacred space is important for it to be the powerful tool of transformation that it is. Remember, the heart is the gateway – or stargate –to feeling the sacred unity of life. So access the heart. Begin by connecting to Source in whatever way you can, be aware that intention is a dynamic tool to manifest a linking with Source. Be present in respect, in faith, in sincerity.

Take a moment to center yourself. Visualize white and golden light encompassing you. You can say to yourself, “I surround myself with peace, love and light” and create a sheath of protection around myself.” You may choose to outpicture platinum light – a frequency above the gold. Take a few slow, deep breaths and release the tension out of your body. Each breath is a new gift of life—the Masters call it a “new morning.” And with every in-breath and out-breath there is a point of stillness, which brings serenity when it is your focus. Feel the finer energies around you. Feel your heart and connect with your breath. You may wish to visualize a “figure eight” connecting your breath with your heart so they are joined and begin to intertwine. It is like breathing through the heart. From your heart breathe light into the rest of your body. Feel the top of your head—your crown—and consciously intend it to open to bring light from the higher dimensions into the physical, emotional, mental, and etheric layers of your Being.

You can do this invocation daily or a few days a week to connect to yourself and to higher vibrational energies.

In Ibiza this time, I was reborn. Time to live life again with flow, freedom and fully in the feminine. I’m so grateful for love and sharing from this deep heart space of giving, sharing and cherishing the people in my life.

With this new love I am announcing my new love project! I am hosting my first Sacred Sensuality Retreat for Women in Ibiza in October 2017. I made a video to share my vision and excitement with all of you! Click the image to watch!

Go ahead and watch the video and be sure to join the conversation in the comments below. I want to hear what your experience has been like with letting go and opening your heart to new experiences. Please share!

A Tigress In The Temple

January 9, 2015 by Zinnia Sophia 1 Comment

Being true to yourself is old magic. It’s a key to self-realization, to being all you can be and to living an abundant, joyful, harmonious and rewarding life. Being true to yourself is a way of living where you stay connected with the beauty of your innermost Self, listen to Its guidance, follow your heart, and speak and take actions that express your truth, ideals and values. One of the greatest challenges in being true to yourself is knowing what choices best honor you and reflect your deepest truth, your sacred beauty. Being true to yourself requires self-awareness, where you are in touch with your dreams and vulnerability. It means knowing what empowers you and what does not. Self-awareness comes from being in contact with the divine within you.

To be true to who you are, to know how to express your deepest truth, requires awakening to your true identity as a soul that is greater than your mind, emotions and body. This is how the spirit of Ibiza awakened me. Through the Goddess. And through dance. Three years ago I traveled to the island of Ibiza, Spain. My intention was to live there, retreat and rejuvenate during my divorce. My healing journey in Ibiza happened when I decided to unleash my wild sacred self. To untame the tamed woman I had become. And to release the tigress within, the priestess, dancer, the wild woman who ran with wolves, who danced in ancient temples amongst tigers and forests. This was a woman who was buried deep inside of me. And this was a woman I needed to uncover once again, if I was going to live from my true authentic self.

I arrived in Ibiza on a warm spring day in March. The breeze was playful. The island was green with rain and I could feel her thawing, opening, blossoming as if I was one with her heart, her round hills and electric skies. My first week I was introduced to the island’s longest living resident dancer, Zorah LeDuc. She was a beautiful, sensual belly dancer and lover of gypsy music. She was a gateway. She awakened me to dance again. In the first class, I felt the awkwardness of my body while watching young, beautiful, supple belly dancers shimmying and sashaying through the room. I was terrified of the feeling bubbling up inside of me. There was an old voice shaming me, “who do you think you are?” Shame, self-disgust, fear, judgment. Why had I stopped dancing? Why wasn’t I slim, healthy and radiant like these women? How had I allowed myself to become fat? I cried when I got home and promised myself I would dance again. My wish came true. As I trained, ran, got in shape and practiced dance, I received a message from a Dutch woman who had met me in a restaurant in San Josep. I forgot we had exchanged numbers to discuss future events. She asked me if I would dance at her restaurant opening. I said, “Yes, yes, of course I would!” I thought I was ready. The day of the performance, there were not so many people at the restaurant. I was crippled with fear. I hadn’t choreographed anything. I was just going to move with the music. But my body could not move. My heart was frozen. Thankfully, the music system didn’t work either and so I could not dance that day. My friends who had come to support me all consoled me and told me, “Its okay, you’ll dance another time.”

That night I had a dream. I dreamt I was dancing inside a red temple. There was a blazing fire in the middle and I was dancing around the fire, waving my arms in ecstasy, swaying my hips in sacred circles and offering my heart as a prayer to the sky. A tiger came to dance beside me. She whispered something in my ear and afterwards I was able to dance with great force and devotion. My hair fell along my back like a river of dusk and in the red ray of light my spine opened to fire. I felt part of me hiding in the cocoon of my skin, until my heart began beating, drumming began. I heard ancient chanting, sounds floating on red steps. The sounds opened me. Orange flames rose from my heart as I danced in spirals, red hibiscus in my mouth. A flame whispered inside of me. Even the heat had music. I broke open. I broke loose like a snake uncoiling across hills into a fierce, old woman with round eyes and crimson plumes flying in all directions. The tiger symbolizes devotion and this word danced in my mind while I had the vision of a beautiful sun dancer dancing with the element of fire. I felt I wanted people to see my unique, individual expression in all its forms, and in all the ways I could dance. I felt my heart desiring and longing to express the fullness of my talents –- a full range of grace, drama, fire, discipline, devotion, softness, technique and skill. And I wanted to enjoy the journey through this process. Growing through the gift of sacred beauty and sacred dance and remaining in humility to the Goddess who bestowed her gift to me.

That night, I vowed to honor the truth flowing inside of me. Opportunity after opportunity flowed to me after I made that commitment to myself. Nature lives commitment. One month later, I returned to the restaurant in San Josep and danced my heart out in three choreographed performances and spontaneous ecstatic dances. Then I continued to dance at weddings, healing festivals, lead workshops, and opened concerts for famous musicians like Prem Joshua and the Sunny Singh Bollywood Dance Academy. I also created a dance movement called Sacred Dance, Shakti Flow and Dance of the Kama Sutra. I danced for three years in Ibiza and in Greece.

Layer by layer, I unfolded. I followed my inner child, my little girl who was full of talents and gifts to share with the world. As she revealed her pain I listened and held her in her pain. I listened to her stories of shame, abuse, humiliation and I held her so she felt protected, loved and cherished. That it was safe to be vulnerable and express her gifts again. I’m no longer frozen dancing. I’m whirling in the joy and existence of my body.

This feminine power that flows deep from within me. It was the courage of a new beginning that set me free. The voice of courage was wiser and deeper than the old ancient voice of shame. And she roared. She said, not now, not ever again. The fire of that inner courage unfroze me and awakened me. Now I empower myself and tap into inner power. Now I allow my inner power, grace and beauty to shine. Now I listen to my intuition and inner guidance. I flow moment to moment. I believe in my heart’s deepest desires and dreams. I follow sweet delicious feelings inside my fountain of joy. I open to the language of my body. I open to pleasure, sensuality and delight. In Ibiza, I unleashed every wild, waking moment inside of me. I set my inner soul free. I danced on cliffs, sang with stars, swam nude in the midnight ocean with the lunar light floating upon me. I did everything my wild soul wanted. And I drank in Ibiza. I drank her in.

I continue this journey with a woman who is wide awake, alive and open to all the strength that lives inside of her. This was the gift of the journey. To reclaim truth and a divine vision of myself. To not believe any longer the stories of a broken, damaged, less than woman.

Now when that voice asks me “who you do think you are?” I am vulnerable to it. I do not hide from it or let it control me. I open up and meet it, shake loose my hips and I reply, “I am a Goddess, dancing my truth. Join me.”

The Power of Joy

November 30, 2014 by Zinnia Sophia Leave a Comment

“When everything seems to be going against you,
remember that the airplane takes off against the wind, not with it.”

~ Henry Ford

Getting divorced was the hardest experience I’ve had up until now. It was frustrating, emotionally crippling and felt like spiritual abandonment. The experience forced me to face my darkness and to face what choices had brought me to this moment. Why I had separated with a partner who I had pledged to spend a lifetime with. I do not commit easily and when I do, it’s for deep soul partnership. When that dream shattered, I became lost.

I was fortunate to have the strongest weapon in my spiritual arsenal during that time period. My faith. I used the melancholy time to go inward and reflect. I committed to feeling the pain, understanding the pain, cleansing myself consciously and journaling every day. While all of that that helped me intellectually, nothing touched my soul the way that joy would. It was a journey I was meant to go through and it changed my life and gave me soul purpose in a way that nothing else had the power to.

At some point in the divorce process, I decided I wanted re-invent myself and change my career direction. I was an advertising executive working in San Francisco and New York. I began to dream of a life I’ve always wanted but was scared to pursue. One year in the Mediterranean. I imagined a life in Spain. I listened to flamenco music and Cafe del Mar all day long, I had vision boards of “My Life In Spain” in my house and at work, I listened to my intuition on places to visit that matched my inner desires, once I arrived there I networked and created trustworthy relationships with people who lived in a magical island called Ibiza.

For months I journaled through my resistance and transformed doubt and worry into passion and purpose. I channeled the joy I felt about this life. When I journaled about the possibilities of this experience, there were so many voices that cautioned me out of it. What will my parents say? What about my full-time job? I trusted the words that poured out of my soul. I followed that. I trusted my inner voice and my inner vision. I chose that. After hundreds of pages filled with the voice of a woman’s whose soul had been set on fire, I had discovered the ability to follow the voice of my soul consistently and discern between soul and ego. My body was tingling all over. My heart was pounding and I felt excitement and passion flow again through my veins. I had laid down plans for a new vision for my life. My deepest longings and desires to dance at festivals and concerts the way I once had when I was young girl. To swim in moonlight and dance across the shore of an ocean. I wrote down all the possibilities. I arrived in Ibiza with money to live there for a few months, retreat and rejuvenate. I took long meditative walks in nature, spent time meditating on my desires, enrolled in belly dancing classes, painted and wrote poetry. In other words, I connected with a beautiful, sacred and magical part of me. I was not only dancing at healing festivals and concerts and weddings again, I was dancing with life.

I had found joy.

After the first year of discovering joy, I knew I had tapped into a fountain of power and it had regenerated me. Now, how to maintain that power? This was to be my next learning. I created a daily manifestation practice as well as a seasonal one where I trained my mental powers and physical body. I made decisions based on my core values, spoke my truth even when that meant disappointing others. I took inspired action, believed in my worthiness and deservedness to receive all my heart’s desires and became a leader of my community.

The result?

I ended up living on a magical island for 3 years, developing a sacred dance practice, life coaching business and a wisdom school to mentor young women. Every year I felt stronger, eating fresh salads and fruits, swimming in turquoise Mediterranean waters, running 12 kilometers three times a week on an ocean road, learning new spiritual skills, belonging to a sacred community who embraced me. I had learned how to take care of myself again and belong. And not make my partner responsible for filling those needs for me. I marketed my dance company in the Mediterranean and was invited to dance in Greece. I danced with famous sacred musicians who taught me the value of joy through dance, song and music. I was so connected to my personal power and what I could manifest with that. By this point, I felt I had fulfilled all my wishes.

I looked back on my vision board I had created three years ago and I wept. I had achieved everything I wanted. A life based on music and dance, strong community relationships, and feeling beautiful inside and out. I felt very abundant. But there was something missing.. Something was still holding me back. There was resentment, bitterness and unforgiveness. I had to learn to let that go. If I was going to have a beautiful relationship with myself – clean and pure – I had to let go of old emotional programming.

The divorce was final. The courts had signed the papers. I was a free woman. I called my ex-husband and I wished him well. I let him know that I would always be here should he need anything and that I honored our friendship still. I gave both of us the gift of forgiveness. And I gave myself the gift of self-acceptance and peace with my past.

Once I did that, the magic began again. And a new set of opportunities presented themselves to me. I was done with my three year retreat on the magical island of Ibiza. I had finished the lessons life was teaching me. It was time to learn a new challenge. Now, a new career is now opening for me. To teach sacred dance, online empowerment classes and open a wisdom school to mentor priestesses in training. My new dream is to spread these rich teachings globally to women. Some are transitioning from a relationship, some have been abused or mistreated and some just desire more abundance from life. I have a message for these women, “Yes, joy exists, After everything you’ve known falls apart, it is this one thing that can save you. And you have this power within you.”

Here are my top 5 tips on how to connect with your power:

Trust your inner voice Envision your ideal life, desires and dreams. How do you feel? What are the things you want to do the most now? Let your voice flow and listen. Feel the quality of freedom of being able to do this. Journal to connect consistently to this voice.
Claim your personal power Believe in your worthiness. Write down all of the goals you’ve already achieved this year. Character traits you love about yourself. Read this list over and over. They key here is to believe in yourself and go after your dreams!
Manifest your dreams You can manifest anything by getting clear. Clarity cuts through confusion. Get clear on how your perceptions. Get clear on your imagery. Get clear on your expectations of your life. Feel into the possibilities of the picture you’ve just created.
Transform pain into wisdom Master how to change one form to another form. Transform depression into expression of life. Transform deep loss and regret into life lessons and joy. Shape-shift your career into your spiritual mission and life path.
Own your magnificence The world needs your brilliance, joy talent, grace and radiance. Hold the vision of your life, sing your soul song out to the world and be a light.

Joy is a practice. You have to practice it every day. Joy is based on pure desire. Desire it. Long for it. Claim it and own it. Not only will you attract and magnetize to yourself the life you want, but a life that you deserve.