8 minute read

Mari Kennedy is many things: a teacher; a women’s development coach; an integral facilitator; a mindfulness, yoga and embodiment guide; and creator of the Celtic Wheel, a year-long ritual for women. I’m lucky enough to have had Mari as my yoga teacher and to call her a friend. Having done The Celtic Wheel with her in 2020 – at a very important inflection point in my own life – I wanted to talk to Mari about the practice, and learn more about why so many women in midlife are drawn to her work.

Can you explain what the Celtic Wheel is and what it means to do the “sacred work of the feminine”?

For me the Celtic Wheel is a map left by our ancestors – a lost wisdom that was left behind in our evolution; a wisdom that honours the feminine. What I offer in the Celtic Wheel is a whole year to really connect with the cycle and a map that starts with the feminine. Our world is always leading with the masculine – with over-doing. In our dominant culture, this is what’s valued: the busyness, the producing, the achieving. It’s all connected to your worthiness, but it’s all external.

When you start the Celtic Wheel, you start in the darkness, moving first into rest, into letting go, into shedding, into surrendering, just as the trees surrender their leaves in winter, and just as the life force descends deep into the centre of the earth. That’s not taught in our world – to lead with the feminine first and to execute, then, with the masculine. This Wheel brings us back into cycles and rhythms that are both softer and gentler but which offer a much fiercer way to live.

It’s not that we all want to become Celts again, but we can go back and reclaim that wisdom and use it to heal the split between masculine and feminine. We can bring this knowledge into science and new wisdoms and integrate them – that’s what I’m interested in.

When you talk about the trees surrendering their leaves, I’m reminded of the mythology of the Cailleach [a mythic Irish Goddess], and how she shakes leaves from trees. She also shakes us to help us let go of what we need to shed from our lives. When did the Cailleach show up in your life?

I was living the dream, but it was a dream; it was an illusion. I was very lucky in my life in many ways. I had a very fortunate career, working in the arts and then working with Mary McAleese, and it was very high-powered. I had the house, the job, the city breaks, the skiing, the summer breaks, red carpets, the whole shebang; it was the Celtic Tiger and I was at the party.

But that all came tumbling down when the Cailleach came to me and said: No, you can’t live like this, it’s not living in alignment with your soul. Little by little at first, she started to pull those ‘leaves’, although I didn’t listen. Eventually, she had to shake me from my roots, and she showed me I had no roots. My work was to begin a mythical descent into the depths of my soul. I was living very much in the bright half of the year and denying the dark half, which is what our culture does. I was very ‘Pollyanna’ in my outlook, always. It was a very difficult and challenging time, but it’s been the richest journey; to come down and root deeply and at a basic level redefine success.

Can you tell me more about this challenging time and the path forward that the Wheel offered?

I was in my late 30s trying to get pregnant, but I couldn’t, yet I didn’t want to have IVF. I was in a very tough place and I just didn’t feel right in my body – I’m not saying IVF isn’t right, I’m just saying that I was in a very strained and tough place.

I ended up trying NaProTechnology to track my cycle, which was something I had to approach much more slowly. I remember thinking, my God, how did I get to 36 and not track my cycle? And then, at the same time, lots of things happened in my life, and it was as if I was being invited back into cycles and rhythms and nature. And in this time of darkness and sadness and loss, I found a map that was connected to my ancestors – our ancestors – on this land and their connection to nature and cycles. It felt like some kind of portal to help me navigate a very difficult time.

The first thing I began to really understand is that darkness and loss are an initiation into greatness. Here was a map that showed me that darkness is okay, that sadness is okay, that things falling apart is okay, and that I could trust this.

As I worked with the Wheel over years and cycles, I saw how much it could help us reclaim the feminine, which had been lost, and help us heal the split between the feminine and masculine.

I know that embracing the feminine is a key element of working with the Celtic Wheel. Is this why you chose to make it exclusively available to women?

I work in quite a binary way. For me, no matter what gender you are or how you identify, there are two forces in nature – feminine and masculine – and they are so much out of balance in our modern world. The Wheel has taught me not to go too big, too fast, or to force something. Instead, just come from the depth of what you know. So, it felt much more important for me to gather women to meet, to have a conversation, to let our collective wisdom emerge. That’s not to say I wouldn’t include men at some point.

When I did the Celtic Wheel with you I was struck by the number of women in midlife on the journey with me. Why do you think so many women are drawn to the Wheel at this time of life?

There’s a natural deepening that happens as we get older and I definitely think it’s connected to our hormonal endocrine system as well as life experiences – in midlife you have more knowing, more wisdom, your way of perceiving the world changes. Heartbreak, and having children, for instance, influence how you perceive the world. I know from the Wheel that if you’re living a life that isn’t aligned to your soul – that isn’t congruent with your heart or nature – your soul will conspire to show you that. I do feel it begins as we reach our mid-late 30s. The Cailleach shows up at the end of our 40s if we haven’t listened to her already! As you grow older, you’re coming more into your own sovereignty, so instead of caring about what other people think, you’re really wanting to attune to “who am I?” and “what do I really believe?” I want my life to take that shape, an expression of my deepest truth, of who I am.

I’m glad you brought up sovereignty as it’s one of the big themes I took away from working the Celtic Wheel with you in 2020. What is it about this concept of sovereignty that interests you so much?

I think it’s because for so long I didn’t live true to my essence – I handed over power to things around me. Then, I discovered, as I was working with the Celtic Wheel, that sovereignty is such a strong, feminine, power within the Celtic tradition – whether you are a man, a woman, or however you identify. There’s a sovereignty within the feminine. In the Celtic tradition, the Goddess, or the feminine, bestowed the sovereignty on the king; if he’s not living in his truth, the kingdom will not flourish. So there’s all this beautiful coming back into the centre, the inner marriage of the masculine and feminine, and I was really intrigued by this.

Can you talk to me about how you put sovereignty into practice in your own life, because it’s hard, isn’t it?

It’s a constant exploration, and it’s something I’ve really explored in the past five years. Sovereignty is a word that’s kind of bandied around a lot, especially in the world we now live where there’s so many narratives – this post-truth world. Where do I find my centre in all of that? Where do I find my truth?

To me, sovereignty means I am the highest authority in my own life. So I have dominion over my body, my mind and my life, but with that I stay open to other perspectives.

I don’t just become closed in my truth. No matter what’s going on around you, you are able to find the centre – it’s a dynamic state. You fall out of it but you come back. In practical terms, it’s about leaning back into the feminine, listening deeply, and the more you cultivate that, the more you cultivate your capacity to be centred and to live from what feels true for you. But you don’t have to impose it on other people. Stay open, because there’s always signals in every truth. Philosopher Ken Wilber taught me about the partiality of truth: “Every truth is both true and partial”. It’s true for me but it’s partial, because your truth is different.

Right now, we’re coming up to the Spring Equinox. When is it and what does it represent?

Spring Equinox is the time of year when there’s equal night and equal day, equal feminine and equal masculine. This year, it’s March 20. The Spring Equinox is the last festival before Bealtaine, the gateway to the bright half of the year, so this is a beautiful time where we can work with those opposites.

Everything is starting to really grow and show itself and express. It’s a time we see the glorious creative tension of opposites. That’s what I really celebrate at the Spring Equinox – the masculine is getting stronger, the sun is rising high in the sky, it’s warmer, the days are longer, much longer since Imbolc [St Brigid’s Day]. We are working with that rising masculine energy of outward expression, but what’s really important is that we never lose connection to the feminine – the part of us which knows how to take time to rest, to stay soft, to stay connected to our depths – so that any outward action we take is rooted deeply in the highest alignment with our soul. In true balance, the masculine arises out of the feminine, which is always underneath.

I know many women do the Wheel with you a number of times and some, like me, do it once. What are the stories you hear from your community about how it’s changing their lives and relationships?

The stories I hear always surprise me and I don’t know why because it changed me so utterly! One woman who has done it quite a few times says that she used to be an “angry Mammy”, but her son tells her now that she’s not angry. She puts this down to reclaiming her feminine through the Wheel. I’ve seen women bring it into the corporate world and into their families. They just decide: “I’m not going to do Christmas like I’ve done it before. I’m going to rest more, I’m going to take the time, I’m going to savour it.” Or, “I finally have given myself permission to rest, hibernate and go slow, not to keep rushing and racing” and they notice how it affects their family or team at work.

There are incredible stories of people changing their values and seeing the beauty of slowing down, having the courage to not try to control or be so busy. People go through illness, cancer diagnosis and treatment, they have babies, they have miscarriages, divorce, new relationships, but the Wheel allows us to reframe all the joy and the sadness. So many of the stories I hear are around darkness, around rest, about how depleted we all are and the effects of this on our relationships and on ourselves.

So many women have been talking about the difficulty of coming out of lockdown quite suddenly after two years, and a lot of people have been saying it was so hard to move out of the gentle slowness of Dreamtime [the period between the Winter Solstice and Imbolc] and also hard to move out of lockdown. We talked about paying attention to the transitions, how to be sovereign enough to find our own rhythm in moving out and the importance of reflecting at any ending, or any new beginning, of thinking: “Oh yeah, this is what I’m going to take with me, and this is what I’m going to leave behind.” Those ritual pauses are so important. It’s that undoing, unlearning the very straight line.

We’ve talked a lot about rhythms and cycles. Is using the Celtic Wheel helping you with menopause?

I’m still at the tail end of perimenopause – even though I’m 55. It’s about approaching menopause in a different way than the cultural narrative suggests, which is that you get old and you lose your juiciness and your relevance and you become invisible. In the Celtic Tradition, this is when we become really radiant, kick-ass women!

And yet, at the same time it doesn’t mean that it’s not difficult, it doesn’t mean I live like a radiant Goddess with glittering grey hair where everything is amazing. It’s tough, but in those tough moments you can say, okay, there’s a transformation happening here. If I can surrender, something new is emerging and it’s a power that I have never known before. But it does take shedding and a grief around a loss of youth. But you learn through the Wheel how to be with those transitions and how to honour what’s being shed and mark those moments.

Recently, I just felt it was time for me to finally let go of the dynamic youth I was. I could really feel the grief; I could feel my body was no longer as flexible, vibrant or strong. I can’t run like I used to, so I’ve given up running. I knew in that moment, it was time to do a little ritual and be with the grief and the pain of that loss. I just went down to the local trees and I did a ritual walk of letting go and it was amazing. I just let nature help me mark the moment. To have a place where you can let that go and really honour it and honour the feelings of sadness and grief creates another space for something new.

You discovered the Celtic Wheel in your late 30s – what’s your big enquiry at 55?

My passion is our evolution – the bigger cycle and the question of how we can live more wisely. I believe we are at a time between worlds when an old destructive order is dying, and a new, more generative heart- or soul-oriented world is being born. It’s about power. I know that’s hard to believe with what’s going on in Ukraine, but we have to realise that a new story can be born through us in each moment. Everything we think, say and do is either keeping the old world alive or birthing a new world. That takes radical self -responsibility, a sovereignty to step out of the old power dynamic of oppressor/victim, to live in a new story. Deepening more into the feminine, I believe, will heal the split with the masculine within us. Give up the war. We are not powerless when we can create the kind of world we want to experience within ourselves and in every moment we are alive.

Yvonne Cassidy, March 2022

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Honouring The Feminine