I am a Prayer Artist. Not because I decided I was. How could I? I’d never heard of such a thing. And neither had anyone else. I know this because when I googled prayer artist, nothing—I mean nothing—came up.

But I clearly heard those two words whispered in my left ear in the wee hours of February 25 2018 and wrote them with a trembling hand on the yellow pad beside me in the dark.

Have you ever had that experience, when your body tells you something major is happening and everything is about to change?

Hearing Prayer Artist was that moment. And it was both thrilling and terrifying at the same time.

Immediately, I began exploring what prayer artist means.

I thought it meant offering prayer intensives and I started doing that right away. And loved it. Come on, what could be more fun than gathering people you adore and exploring profound mystical prayer practices with them in sacred soul community.

But after a few intensives, it dawned on me, that being a prayer artist also meant redefining prayer.

Uh oh. Now things were getting scary.

Really? You want me, one woman who’s written a few books holed up in her back bedroom in a tee-tiny town in Florida…you want me to tell the world, the big patriarchal power-hungry, rather abusive world, that they’ve had the definition of prayer all wrong for a few thousand years?

Have you completely lost your mind?

I got no response. I took the silence to mean, yes, actually, I do.

And so I began. Tentatively at first, and then I dove head first into redefining prayer. And discovered that I love freeing prayer from the tight constrictions all our patriarchal religions have wrapped around it.

This is a work in progress, but for now, I am redefining prayer as:

1. love songs of your personal intimate sacred marriage with the Beloved of your heart
2. sacred medicine that cherishes the body, embraces the heart, completely rearranges the mind, and utterly enchants the soul
3. intimate relationship with all who have ever prayed and with prayer itself
4. vibration of love that goes beyond all universes
5. a field that opens you, all of you, right down to your tippy toes, to who you really are, who you’ve always been, and who you are here to embrace—the living embodiment of the divine

Every time I look at those five definitions, I try to imagine what my life might have been like if from toddlerhood, I had been taught how precious and delicious prayer really is.

Maybe someday, as more and more people start seeing prayer this way, children will begin to walk through life surrounded by and nourished by sacred living prayer.

So, now we get to the rather strange question of the day.

After creating 18 prayer intensives offering prayer practices from Ho‛oponopono to the goddess rosary to the magical labyrinth, I’m now asked to create a yoga practice. A very different yoga practice that weaves ancient prayers from the Celtic Isles and Egypt, new and old yoga traditions from India and beyond, mystical lunar astrology, and even deep soul writing into something called Mother Moon Yoga.

So what is this? Is Mother Moon Yoga a prayer intensive?

My web designer asked me where to post it in my website because well, it’s not a prayer intensive.

To answer her question, I went back to my 5 new definitions of prayer. Actually these definitions aren’t new at all, but are memories of what prayer was long before any of our patriarchal religions showed up on the scene. Back when the moon was our primary calendar and women lived in rhythm with the ever-changing faces and energies of the moon.

I held Mother Moon Yoga beside my five definitions:

1. Is it an experience of the sacred marriage? Yup
2. Is it sacred medicine? You bet
3. Is it a relationship with everyone who’s ever done yoga of any kind? Absolutely
4. Is it a vibration of love? Heavens yes.
5. Is it a field that opens you to who you really are? Yes, it’s a new discovery every time.

So is Mother Moon Yoga a prayer intensive? Yes. But it has a very different structure and schedule from any intensive I’ve ever offered.

We gather for the first time this Tuesday which is the eve of a 3-day period of the dark moon when there is no visible moon in the sky.

The dark moon is the period of the lunar cycle that our ancestors considered most sacred.

This was the time of prophecy, divination, insight, and expansion, all happening as women in the community gathered together to open to receive the gifts of the Feminine Divine in sacred sisterhood.

That’s the way it was then, but why Mother Moon Yoga now?

Ramani Shiva Vaught, who will be leading us on Tuesday, asked this very question in deep soul writing and received this clear and sacred response from the Mother:

“It is time to be seen, heard, and felt, my children. This Earth and her beings have struggled much as programs of fear, lack, power over, and hierarchy have predominated. Out of the shadows comes the full light of my moon to shine where darkness has hidden the gifts of the Mother. She rises, the Mother rises. Just as the Moon rises every night, so too your Mother rises within every being. 

Those who choose to be in this practice have already opened the door to what can be. I am here within you always Dancing the Dance upon the Earth at this time. Destruction-Creation-Destruction-Creation. Do not get caught in a web of attachment. Dance gently and softly, yet fiercely, confronting the ego's sabotaging ways of manipulating and pulling you back into the web. 

You are strong my children and you are ready. You are never alone; my love surrounds and encompasses you always. When the doubts come, plant your feet firmly on Mother Earth (envision this if you cannot be outside) and feel the light of My love growing within your heart cave with each breath, and then extending out filling you, enlightening every cell of your body and extending out through your energy field. Because my children, we are one.”

Mother Moon Yoga 

to coming together under the dark and the light of the moon to remember our feminine strengths, our gifts, and our full creative capacity,

Janet