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In this talk, educator and yoga teacher Cynthia Abulafia presents her new book Embodying the Goddess: How to Cultivate Curiosity and Reverence on the Spiritual Path, which Richard Miller calls “a profound exploration of the divine feminine and a call to action for our personal and collective healing.” In her book, Abulafia steps away from the familiar language and tropes of spirituality to unpack the nondual divine feminine through the lenses of history, lineage, and contemporary embodied practice. Spiritual seekers have long been taught to transcend the body and the human condition. Embodying the Goddess reveals why embodiment is, in fact, not a distraction from awakening, but essential to it. While many spiritual practices emphasize stillness, detachment, and an “up-and-out” movement away from the body, her book asks a different question: what if the missing half of the map — the aspect of practice that makes awakening sustainable — is the return to the body? Drawing from sacred traditions, her lived experience of kundalini awakening, and decades of working with others undergoing spiritual emergence, Abulafia challenges the “transcendence bias” and invites us to turn back toward life itself — with all its limitations, sensations, and complex relationships — as the ground of spiritual recognition.
Many practitioners have experienced a kind of “transcendence hangover,” where coming back into ordinary life feels disorienting or disappointing. Embodying the Goddess offers a reorientation toward embodied integration. Following her talk, Abulafia will hold an open discussion and sign then copies of her book, which will be on sale.
Cynthia Abulafia is an educator, author, and yoga teacher devoted to giving language to the divine feminine. As the author of Embodying the Goddess: How to Cultivate Curiosity and Reverence on the Spiritual Path, she works from the belief that words matter. Naming and mapping the divine feminine can awaken curiosity in the heart and invite rebalancing in the body.
Cynthia is committed to examining and dismantling the conditioning of patriarchal spirituality, which she calls the transcendence bias. For her, embodied experience is itself the teacher. Following a series of kundalini awakenings, she dedicated herself to the Goddess, whom she describes as breath itself. In her workshops, trauma-informed yoga teacher trainings, retreats, and writing, Cynthia presents the breath as a living map of experience and offers natural breathing practices to engage this map directly.
Cynthia holds the highest credentials in yoga and yoga therapy, has a master’s degree in nutrition, and is currently pursuing a master’s degree in Yogic Studies. She is part of a Shakta Tantra lineage, works with students navigating kundalini awakening and spiritual crisis, and is a longtime student and teacher of multiple nondual traditions, with over 20 years of practice and teaching experience.
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Event Venue & Nearby Stays
The Alembic, 2820 7th St,Berkeley, California, United States
Tickets
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