The Skerries Selkie with Jen Murphy | Ep 4

Guest and storyteller Jen Murphy is a Feminine Embodiment Coach, Mythologist and Anthropologist. She is the creator of Celtic Embodiment, a cutting-edge modality that fuses the ancient wisdom of Celtic Mythology with the emerging field of Feminine Embodiment Coaching, to transform modern life for women.

I have the good fortune of being part of Jen’s yearlong program, the Celtic Women’s Voyage where Jen takes us on an imram, a mystical, embodied journey to the otherworld and to the realms within.

Learn more about Jen and her brilliant work at www.celticembodiment.com

Jen comes to KnotWork with her own story, The Skerries Selkie, which is set in Skerries, County Dublin, right beside the Irish Sea. In our deep diving conversation, Jen and I explore:

• The parallels between the Selkie and An Mhaighdean Mhara, the mermaid
• How important it is to reclaim the feminine from the patriarchy and recover the lost self 
• The masculine and feminine energy that exist in all of us and how we leave behind seal skin (the feminine) when we suit up and head off to work and enter the masculine world
• The problem with “doing the feminine in a masculine way”
• Valuing doing over being, logic over intuition, linear over the cyclical
• The bean feasa, the wise woman who comes in to help and heal the mother who has lost herself
• Sisterhood, rupture and separation, the quest to return to companionship and the arms of the sea.
• The sacred geometry of the Celtic Embodiment logo, with all of its straight lines and spirals and how evocative it is of this story and these ideas.
• How systems of oppression can play out in the body
• Animism: the belief that everything has a soul. The Brehon Law, the original laws of Ireland that protect trees, proving the way that everything had an essence and a soul.
• The way the body remembers. A book recommendation from Jen: Kimberly Ann Johnson Call of the Wild: How We Heal Trauma, Awaken Our Own Power, and Use it for Good
• What it means to be a mother of sons (as well as daughters and non-binary children) in a culture with so much trouble with “toxic masculinity”

Our show music is a compilation of traditional tunes, including "The College Grove," performed by Beth Sweeney and Billy Hardy: http://billyandbeth.com/

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