INDIA - The Why

When I chose to go to India, a lot of people asked me why.

It wasn’t a simple answer.

I didn’t just have one reason to travel to the other side of the world; I had three:

1. I felt drawn to go to India after hearing my teachers talk about their own journeys.
2. I wanted to understand my yogi roots better.
3. The Universe told me I had to in order to become a Mother.

I wanted to go to India from the moment I heard about it in my yoga teacher training in 2015. It’s hard to explain, but it was almost like a soul calling...like I was being pulled there for reasons beyond my knowing. I didn’t know how I was going to get there, or when, but I knew I had to go, no matter what.

Needing to understand the origin of my yoga teaching--that made total sense to me. The mother thing was a little more abstract, but I trusted in that message.

For 2 years, I thought about India.  I put the journey on my vision board.

I started looking into retreats, but nothing really vibed with me.

Then, my husband and I started getting serious about wanting to get pregnant.

India wasn’t happening, and I had already been on a fertility journey for several years. It was time to make a real decision about whether we wanted to start trying “harder” or not. That meant maybe IVF, or, at a minimum, getting on Clomid to maybe help the process. It meant less travel and more focus on home. This wasn’t an easy decision for my wanderlusting soul. After much deliberation, I finally decided to make a promise in early 2017 to take one final year to travel and “get my ducks in a row” and maybe try to get to India before settling down and focusing more on getting pregnant.

I wrote the pregnancy on my vision board.

Next to my India dream I wrote “we will become pregnant between November 2017 & February 2018.” I decided if I didn’t get to travel by the end of the year, India would have to wait until after a baby.

Shortly after making that decision, one of my teachers announced a retreat....in India! The only problem: it was in January, 2018, past the “deadline” I had given myself.
As much as I wanted to go on the journey, I made the hard decision to pass.

I had made a promise to focus on fertility that year, and I would stick to it. I told myself if India was meant to be, something else would open up.

That’s when the Universe spoke to me.

The very day I declined my retreat opportunity, I had a voice speak to me in meditation. I was battling in my head the potential of EVER going to India, knowing I wanted to go so badly, but frustrated with the potential that it may never happen.

Suddenly, the Universe said to me “You MUST go to India in order to become a Mother,” and I saw the words “Shakti Pilgrimage” in my mind. I didn’t even understand what this meant. Diving deeper into the meditation, I was told I had to go to India in order to truly access my feminine energy and understand this part of me that was so foreign. I was told in order to heal my womb traumas and imbalances and have a baby naturally, this was the only way.

Embracing the message, I crossed out “I will go to India in 2017” on my vision board, and wrote “Shakti Pilgrimage to India” instead. I didn’t write a date. I left it open ended, as I barely understood what it all meant in the first place. All I could do was trust and hope that something would work out.

That night, I tuned into a “womb illumination” webinar online—a series I had been watching for a few days featuring different female influencers in the realm of womb health and feminine support. I was listening to a talk by a Tantric practitioner who seemed to have a similar story as mine—grew up in a small town, never felt like she fit in, into the “woo”, etc. I RESONATED with this woman, and I soaked in everything she had to say.

At the end of her talk, she mentioned an upcoming retreat she would be leading--
A retreat to India.

It was called the “Sublime Shakti Pilgrimage,” and it was happening in November-December of that year.

Wait....what?!

Had I not just written those words on my vision board THAT DAY?!?!

Had I not just decided India 2017 was a “now or never” type of dream?!

Mind. Blown.

I signed up immediately.

I still didn’t understand much of what I was getting into. I didn’t know a lot about Tantra, or “shakti,” but I knew I was supposed to go find out more. I knew from the moment I heard about the voyage that I was meant to go—that I HAD TO go if I ever wanted to evolve from where I currently was. I knew if I truly wanted to embrace my feminine energy, if I truly wanted to step into motherhood, if I truly wanted to HEAL, it was necessary for me to travel to the other side of the world.

Not knowing what I was really signing up for, not knowing how in the world I was even going to PAY for it all, I made the decision. It was all too aligned to reject. I knew if I didn’t choose this opportunity, it may never come again. I knew this could be life-changing, and I couldn’t resist leaning into what the Universe had set up for me.

Sometimes you just have to listen and trust. This was one of those moments.

...more to come.