I had the privilege of interviewing Dr. Anne Davin, Mama Gena’s creative partner and as Mama Gena so lovingly describes her: “The Force Behind The Force.”
This interview makes my heart swoon for two reasons:
First, Anne is a depth psychotherapist and since I have a background in psychotherapy, her views and words take my soul back through time. When you read the interview you will see what I mean.
Secondly, the School of Womanly Arts is about unfurling the feminine through fun and pleasure. In the spiritual circles I travel in, I suspect many roll their eyes at this idea … like I first did (“Sure, pleasure … that’s … cute.”) However, when one dares to follow their call and walk through the school’s doors, you are reconnected with the most ancient and sacred aspects of yourself. This interview gives you a clear glimpse of the school’s profound work.
Without further ado, it is my greatest pleasure to bring you this Returning Interview with one of my greatest teachers, Dr. Anne Davin.
Right now in this moment, what is your top gratitude?
I am exceedingly grateful for my terrific man who has loved me for the past ten years. His love for me has allowed me to risk way past who I thought I was. Because of him, every day I become a better version of myself. My capacity to serve life through all my creative gifts and what I value most has grown exponentially. This relationship is a direct consequence of my studies as a SWA student.
How did you come to find and attend the school?
A colleague recommended Regena’s book to me in 2006. I read it and was hugely intrigued by her message and her method, so I signed up for a correspondence course. Regena and I became immediate friends. It was clear that my professional experience and life experience as a young wife living in a Native American pueblo in the Southwest could contribute to the SWA teachings and philosophy. How? I saw then what I continue to stand for today: that the SWA is a modern-day global village of women who, by practicing the Tools and Arts, initiate one another into spiritually maturing women. It’s a cultural and personal right of passage in which a woman comes face-to-face with who she is as a sentient being. A woman’s turn on and sensuality is seen as a place where she encounters herself spiritually.
In mother cultures (indigenous), humans saw the holy in all things, especially nature. They felt it was their role to literally keep the holy alive in our world by seducing it with eloquent speech, courting it through acts of beauty, feeding it through ritual and ceremony, and embodying it as sensual beings. There was no separation between the erotic and being human. You were not fully human unless you were living your erotic nature. Every initiated man and woman was seen as a courtesan of the divine. And, it was their union with one another that called forth the greatest presencing of this divine encounter.
Tucked behind the SWA’s pink boas, tiaras, and the philosophy of the Tools and Arts, not to mention the vehicle of its delivery, Regena’s charismatic teaching, is this essential perspective. Sister Goddesses are women who are restoring this deep knowing and live it actively in their very modern worlds.
As a psychotherapist, how has your experience with the school influenced how you view/practice psychotherapy?
Traditional psychotherapy lends itself well to reflecting on and naming one’s personal history. Hundreds of techniques for doing so are practiced every day by counselors who seek to minimize the emotional suffering of their clients. I used to be one of them. My experience at the SWA has shifted my practice of psychotherapy tremendously because I now focus on increasing a client’s tolerance for pleasure.
Therapy has to liberate itself from the consulting room and consider the social conditions of a woman’s life. Women have been socially conditioned to think negatively about themselves and therefore not only require new thinking but a community to reinforce a healthy lifestyle. Women require a way of communicating that reflects the language of their “psyche,” the latin word for soul. This language is the language of pleasure, in which a woman reveals her desires and celebrates herself as uniquely woman.
Women are made of pleasure right down to their biology. And, it is through pleasure-practices that a woman opens to her full potential and emotional health. I now draw on the best of what traditional therapy has to offer and use the Tools and Arts in the form of homework with clients to assist them in living in a new way. If you are interested in more of my thoughts on pleasure and women’s emotional health check out my article “A Clinical Case for Pleasure.”
What excites you about your new bootcamp program?
I absolutely love the Virtual Pleasure Boot Camp curriculum. When I saw that Regena had not taught her book Mama Gena’s School of Womanly Arts, which introduces all of the Tools and Arts, I was thrilled to design it. We live in a culture that renders us handless maidens. You know the mythology? A woman is victimized so badly that she becomes lost and helpless against the challenges of her inner and outer life. She suffers without taking real action towards her happiness.
Virtual Pleasure Boot Camp is the direct route to changing this in every woman. The methodological teaching and practicing of each Tool and Art grows a woman’s hands and therefore her power to transform her world in the direction of her deepest desires. Doing this within a ten-week period is just the kind of intensity that can make for sustained pleasure and happiness where there was once ongoing pain.