Rev. Doju Freire
I sat down with Rev. Doju shortly after she offered a zoom event with GPIW where she shared her knowledge and experience with listeners about the ancestral Feminine. At the end of the meeting, Doju guided a meditation for participants to come into a direct experience with the subject matter. I had never followed a meditation that was so specifically tailored to connect with the sacred Feminine. Most of my experiences with this inner landscape in the past had been spontaneous and ineffable, but Doju seemed to have developed a framework and articulation that securely held points of access to this mysterious and sacred wisdom. In our conversation, we explored her life story and what brought her to the work she does with La Danza Madre (The Mother Dance), a body movement practice designed to connect people with the ancestral Feminine. She brought me into the terrain of her work as she discussed the essential qualities that tend to arise in the creative process of La Danza Madre. We also looked at the structure of the process and certain key points of entry into this sacred inner space. Our conversation was full of both heart and story as we looked for a way to talk about something that defies the rational mind.
Born in Brazil, Rev. Doju Freire’s South American roots can be found in her close relationship with life and her maternal lineage which held a strong presence in her upbringing—something she attributes to her cultural background. She is also a professional dancer and has dedicated her life to understanding the body through movement and creative expression. Doju currently resides in Italy, where she has dedicated herself to the monastic life as a Buddhist nun of the Zen Soto lineage. These identities and experiences ooze out of her and spill over into her expression of and reverence for, what she calls, the ancestral Feminine. She traces her relationship with the ancestral Feminine back to her mother, a living example of feminine strength, who raised Doju to believe that women are powerful and should be respected. Doju observed how the maternal lineage in South America is still very present, and her relationship with her maternal grandmother has also had a deep and significant impact on who she became in life. Under the care of these women, Doju was raised with the understanding that the birthing process is a powerful and important force to honor, be it in animals or humans. These were the beginnings that eventually led her into deep relationship and sacred dance with the ancestral Feminine as part of her life’s work and spiritual practice.
As an adult, she moved to Italy and began to read books on Feminine archetypes, myths, and symbols. She became fascinated with the subject and picked up information anywhere she could, eventually stumbling upon Carl Jung’s work with archetypes. As her curiosity developed more, she simultaneously began to practice Buddhism and continued to strengthen her dance practice. These threads came together and manifested as a need to go deeper and discover the Feminine archetype in her very body.
Soon, her body embarked on the transformative journey of pregnancy and she found herself more focused and able to integrate all of the information that she had been researching for years. She began to write about the ancestral Feminine, linking this timeless wisdom to humankind’s relationship with Gaia and the body. In her 40’s, she became a monastic and dedicated herself more fully to her spiritual life and practice. At this time, she felt a pull to focus her research on her direct experience with free dance and the ancestral Feminine. She would dance alone for hours, driven by the desire to understand this subtle energy on a more intimate level. This initial research was the conception of La Danza Madre (The Dance Mother), Doju’s spiritual and artistic research that has given her the framework and practice to investigate the ancestral Feminine up close.
Years later, her body underwent another change when she entered into menopause. She describes this moment of her life as a time filled with potency. She was already doing free, improvisational dance work with a group of pregnant women and she started to observe the energy of the ancestral Feminine express itself through these women’s bodies. Doju noticed that the women she worked with all had different backgrounds and body types, but nevertheless they would succumb to very similar movements when given the space and safety to move freely. She wondered if there was a common denominator to their dance forms, if perhaps they were expressing a deep connection to the ancestral Feminine. She was asked by some of the women in her groups to do something solely with the Feminine and she responded with a receptive curiosity, a quality that has been essential to the work she does. Once she opened the door to evoking the ancestral Feminine into her work with others, things seemed to develop quickly from there.
In reflecting on how events unfolded for her, Doju said: “I always worked this way. I would offer something intuitively and observe how people reacted. The research continued on in this way.” She considers part of her work to be about bringing clarity to the free-form dance that she facilitates. She will often focus on specific symbols or archetypes, such as the wild, the crone, the divine masculine, among other themes. From her work with women in Italy, Doju expanded out to different places, bringing this dance exploration to people in Brazil and Africa. Furthermore, she has offered her work at GPIW gatherings in India, Cambodia, Thailand, Japan, and Cyprus. She has found that, across all cultures and contexts, there have been themes of the ancestral Feminine that have emerged for her in her role as a guide and witness. She explains, “every place I went there was a manifestation of different myths, but it was always about the same thing. It is the demonstration of something that is really old inside of us, something that is really essentially the power of life.”
Doju has gathered the breadcrumbs on her path into often uncharted territory. She has examined the pieces of wisdom that have fallen at her feet as she followed her calling to go deeper into relationship with the ancestral Feminine. From her years of experience, she has found general elements that arose in connection with this ancient wisdom. She said, “there are qualities that are alive in our minds and bodies that are connected with the archetype of the ancestral feminine.” One of these primary qualities that she named first and continued to return to was openness. As we spoke more about this[HB1] , she whittled away at the meaning behind the word, revealing its particular form and texture in the context of the ancestral Feminine. She spoke about openness as a form of receptivity, which embellished the concept of being open with a more relational aspect. To be “open to receive” is embedded in the relational world because it innately implies an Other. She linked this kind of receptivity to the space in the womb that must open in order to receive life. This quality of receptivity can be cultivated in our minds and hearts as well as our bodies and it is what carves out the space for the creative process to unfold. It is akin to a deep listening and seems to be the guiding force in her life’s work.
Doju went on to apply the metaphors of pregnancy and birth. She explained that after being open and receiving, the seed needs protection and nurturance to grow. She brought in the qualities of warmth and flexibility and explained that the movements of the people she worked with would so often awaken profound feelings of tenderness for her. Doju has come to find this to be a necessary condition to grow and cultivate a relationship with the ancestral Feminine. She also has discovered a great deal of flexibility and fluidity in people’s movement when exploring this theme. She explained that flexibility is a quality of life, in contrast to the rigidity found in death. Doju concluded by reminding me that this entire process requires patience. Life takes time to develop, and she has found that to encourage its process of becoming requires a great deal of patience. Over the years her work has revealed that if we nourish these qualities and make space for them, they become self-generative.
We spoke about how to create a container that can hold people as they enter into such subtle and tender places. Doju emphasized that the foundation of this process must be safety. She spoke about the importance of creating a safe environment with appropriate lighting, sound, temperature, etc., for people to feel comfortable enough to open to this inner space. She also touched on the importance of not trying to explain or talk about things too much. We discussed our addiction to the thinking mind in modern society and how it can be a hindrance when connecting with other spheres of intelligence.
Luckily for Doju, working directly with the body is a great way to get out of the mind and her background with dance has been a strong asset in her work because of this. She explained to me the different verbs in Italian that mean to understand. The first, capire, means to understand something mentally; to grasp a concept. The second, comprendere can be divided into two different words : com, which means with, andprendere, which means to take. Comprendere, therefore literally translates to take with. When Doju explained this, she opened her arms wide and brought her hands in towards her as if she were hugging the air in front of her. This gesture perfectly illustrated the meaning of comprendere: a comprehensive, full-bodied, and integrative way to bring in knowledge and information. Perhaps, we could say, a feminine way. Doju explained, “if you are just mentally understanding there is something that cuts off your deeper feeling and intuition and it is in that place where the ancestral Feminine lives, the unknown place. It is the dark side of things where people are afraid to enter. We have to break this addiction with mental understanding, but we cannot explain this to people because they will become even more afraid.” So, she concluded, dance and movement with the body are what create the opportune conditions to comprendere.
As we spoke further about the process, she described certain thresholds that arise as people enter into and return from this inner space. Over her years of research, Doju has found some important keys that she offers people in order to open and close the doors that permit one to cross over into the unknown. Once people are feeling relaxed and more connected to their body, Doju has found that it is supportive for them to ask permission to enter into this sacred territory where the ancestral Feminine resides. This is a crucial aspect of the process because it begins to build relationship, trust and communication with this inner wisdom. Once people ask permission, they can cross over in a safe and respectful manner. The magic of what one discovers on the other side is unpredictable and almost always surprising. When Doju attempted to describe this, she seemed at a loss for words. There is little we can say that can capture these kinds of experiences.
The second threshold people come across is when they want to come back to their “normal” waking consciousness. She says, at this point it is important to leave with humility and suggests departing with a gift for the ancestral Feminine. However, she emphasizes, it is important how we leave this gift. As we return, we arrive at another point of listening in the process and it is imperative here to ask the ancestral Feminine what kind of gift she would like to receive. Doju described with reverence how the answers that arise often surprise participants and reveal a profound sense of meaning for their lives. I was struck by how deeply relational the entire process was. By asking permission and leaving a gift, it seemed that Doju was uncovering pathways to a form of communication that was thoroughly submerged in respect and reciprocity.
One important point that Doju often makes sure to reiterate is that the ancestral Feminine is not a gender-specific phenomena. All genders have access to a significant connection with the ancestral Feminine. In fact, Doju asserts that it is something inherent to all of life and therefore not even limited to the human experience. This constitutive force, therefore, is already inside all of us and all we need to do is look at the direct experience that speaks through our very bodies. It is accessible to everyone, and yet nobody can tell you exactly where to find this mysterious lifeforce. It is up to each individual to discover the ancestral Feminine by following their personal experience. Likewise, Doju underscored, “it is not a question of believing in the [ancestral Feminine] but seeing [Her].”
To illustrate this, she told a story. When Doju’s daughter was giving birth for the second time, she went to support her in the birth process. Little did she know, the kind of support her daughter would need would be quite literal. To their surprise, the baby came out so quickly there wasn’t enough time to call the doctor. Doju went to check on her daughter and suddenly found herself receiving the head of her granddaughter with her bare hands. She describes the magic and power of the maternal lineage in that moment as grandmother, mother, and daughter met for the first time. Her daughter’s husband was standing in the kitchen as Doju received the tiny body of her new granddaughter, and he noticed that a fox had come to visit them in the garden just as the birth was happening. Doju seemed to be reliving this moment as she told the story. She took a deep breath, her face filled with awe, and said “Life is safe, you know. We have to die, that’s normal, but life is fundamentally safe like a mother. It is here to protect you.”
I feel if you want to bring this into “we” there needs to be context, like “GPIW sat down with Doju to discuss…. Etc. Otherwise, I would omit this and just share what she said.