184. Our Wombs, Cycles & Menopause as Doorways to Spiritual Power (Uma Dinsmore Tuli)

As many of you will know, Uma Dinsmore Tuli has been a powerful force for good in many fields for decades, including Yoga, Menstruality, and women’s health. She describes herself as a writer, an educator, a Hyperactive Yoginī, a mother of three and a devotee to the Dark Mother.

Today we chat about the cycles that guide Uma’s life, from the planets, to the moon, to her early relationship with her cycle and how it led her to develop Womb Yoga and write the best known of her six books, Yoni Shakti, a feminist retelling of yoga. All the way to Uma’s menopause process, which happened during the crucible of Covid and being silenced due to a legal battle, and the unstoppable flow of creativity power it awakened within her. 

The golden thread we track throughout the conversation is how we can experience our blood, our orgasms, our pregnancy and pregnancy losses, our lactation, and our menopause as extraordinary portals to power, but only if we’re conscious of them, and if we respect them.

We explore:

• What happened when Uma showed up to her yoga sessions, as a new mother, with a postpartum body, how the practices - as they were being taught - didn’t meet the needs of her bleeding, lactating and how this inspired her to write the book that she needed: Yoni Shakti.
  
  
• The healing power of circling as women as a radical act of resistance to patriarchal and colonial oppression, and as a pathway to recultivating our trust in each other.
  
  
• Why we need to decolonise our sleep - as a way to recover our menstrual and menopause health - which is one of the reasons why Uma wrote her new book, Nidra Shakti: the Power of Rest - an illustrated, decolonial encyclopedia of Yoga Nidra. 

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Sophie Jane Hardy: @sophie.jane.hardy - https://www.instagram.com/sophie.jane.hardy
Uma Dinsmore Tuli: @umadinsmoretuli - https://www.instagram.com/umadinsmoretuli