Yana Castle, Ph.D., Contemplative Counselor, Author
  • Home
  • Private sessions
  • Book
    • Excerpts
  • ABOUT
  • Blog
  • Contact

Ah, the luxurious full moon

2/12/2025

0 Comments

 
Picture
0 Comments

Where wild nature blends with ancestral tradition

1/8/2025

0 Comments

 
Picture


I am Gintvilė Giedraitienė. Sister of grasslands. I live in my ancestral homeland, Lithuania. Here are the most beautiful meadows, forests, lakes and rivers. To me, nature is beauty, joy, peace, tranquility, source of inspiration, wisdom, water of life, poetry and endless love.
​
The connection with nature and my forefathers' old Baltic sacral culture inspired my art from wild plants and meadows. I started creating in 1997, when Suns, Trees of Life, birds, crowns and accessories began growing to life through my hands. read more

0 Comments

Doe a Deer, a Female Deer: The Spirit of Winter Solstice

12/8/2024

0 Comments

 
Picture
Long before Santa charioted his flying steeds across our mythical skies, it was the female reindeer who drew the sleigh of the sun goddess at Winter Solstice. It was when we “Christianized” the pagan traditions of winter, that the white-bearded man i.e. “Father Christmas” was born.

Today it is her beloved image that adorns Christmas cards and Yule decorations – not Rudolph. Because, unlike the male reindeer who sheds his antlers in winter, it is the doe who retains her antlers. And it is she who leads the herds in winter.

So this season, when we gather by the fire to tell children bedtime stories of Santa and his flying reindeer – why not tell the story of the ancient Deer Mother of old? It was she who once flew through winter’s longest darkest night with the life-giving light of the sun in her horns.

Ever since the early Neolithic, when the earth was much colder and reindeer more widespread, the female reindeer was venerated by northern people. She was the “life-giving mother”, the leader of the herds upon which they depended for survival, and they followed the reindeer migrations for milk, food, clothing and shelter.

read more of this article by Danielle Prohom Olson From Gather Victoria magazine

​image by Chesca Potter
0 Comments

Sukhasiddhi

12/6/2024

0 Comments

 
Picture
Sukhasiddhi painting by Lasha Mutual.
Sukhasiddhi is a revered figure in Tibetan Buddhism, celebrated as one of the wisdom dakinis and an enlightened yogini. Her life exemplifies the transformative power of faith and spiritual practice, as she attained full realization later in life despite humble beginnings and personal hardships. Guided by the teachings of the Mahamudra tradition, Sukhasiddhi's story highlights the accessibility of enlightenment to all who cultivate devotion and inner realization. Her name, meaning "Blissful Attainment," symbolizes the union of wisdom and compassion, offering inspiration to those on the path to awakening.
0 Comments

Motanka dolls

11/29/2024

0 Comments

 
Picture
Motankas are ancient Ukrainian family talismans. They are the symbol of prosperity, goodness and hope.

The name "motanka" comes from the word “motaty” (to wind) ie to make a knotted doll out of fabric, without using a needle and scissors. Motanka served as a talisman of human destiny and our ancestors believed that destiny cannot be pierced or cut. Generally dolls were in the shape of a human figure, usually a woman or a child, and were made from pieces of fabric from old clothes of family members connected by knots.
​
Each doll is unique and made with only good intentions and sincerity as it was believed that it has power and will act as a protector of a household and it’s inhabitants.

0 Comments

A Continual Autumn by Rumi

10/1/2024

0 Comments

 
Picture
​Inside each of us there’s
a continual autumn.
Our leaves fall and are
blown out over the water,
a crow sits in the blackened limbs and
talks about what’s gone.
There’s a necessary dying, and
then we are reborn breathing again.
Very little grows on jagged rock.
Be ground.
Be crumbled
so wildflowers will come up where you are.
0 Comments

On Parvati

9/9/2024

0 Comments

 
Picture
We replicate Shiva and Parvati’s conversation every time we sit together as lovers, as teacher and student, or in a group and seek revelation, transformation, or the insight for change. Shiva and Parvati symbolize the moment when we get spiritually naked together, when our love and trust is great enough to let us be vulnerable and thus make space for revelation to arise. This intellectual merging involves a subtle Tantric embrace of thoughts and energies rather than a physical merging. It is no less an embrace for being subtle. 

The image of Shiva and Parvati sitting together in a grove on the crest of a mountain not only carries the archetype of divine lovers, it also stands for the mysterious creative moment when two or more people enter a “we” space together. In the “we” space, our essences connect, and we are then hooked up with superconscious source of insight. Physicist David Bohm called this process “dialogue.” Dialogue happens when, like Shiva and Parvati, we recognize our fundamental unity, our interdependence. Instead of being in a conversation between separate individuals trying to find solutions with their minds and from their egoic selves, dialogue happens in a shared space of presence. It comes from the inspired, revelatory, transformative energy that shows up when a group of people allows boundaries to come down and real mutual vulnerability
to emerge. 

Dialogue always starts with a question, an inquiry. In their coupling, Shiva and Parvati epitomize this fundamental creative conversation in which truth always comes out of the silence behind words, rising into expression through verbal exploration.
​
How can you be more present in your interactions today?

— Sally Kempton

0 Comments

Giving Yourself Compassion

8/15/2024

0 Comments

 
To celebrate today, the Assumption of Mary, here is a visualization on self-compassion that can be used when finding oneself in a difficult situation. I found this painting in an old church in a remote village in northern Romania on the border of Ukraine. 
Picture

Read More
0 Comments

Stop Rushing, my love...

7/16/2024

0 Comments

 
Picture
Stop rushing, my love. Stop stressing about the future and worring about the past. Stop wasting your precious seconds on this earth by making everything about things you cannot change and things you are not able to control. Just let it go. Just stop. Take some deep breaths and listen to your heartbeat. Be present, be mindful, be right here, right now. Because the now is all you have. There is no need to obsess over you past or your future - the only thing that happens is that you miss the now. So, let go of ‘what if’s, ‘could have’s and should have’s and accept everything for what it is. Sometimes you really need to remind yourself that you only get this one life, this one change to live your life to the fullest. Do not waist it, my love. Inhale. Exhale. And make the most of every second. 

—anniespositivity from soulxsigh on Instagram


0 Comments

Don't Fear the Tiger

5/28/2024

0 Comments

 
Picture
Don't Fear the Tiger: The Evolutionary Role of Anxiety
by Jowita Kiwnik Pargana from Prezekroj Magazine
 
(revised)

We find it easier to remember unpleasant events than nice ones, we notice an angry face more easily than a happy one, we are quicker to dislike something than to like it. This is because our brain works like it did thousands of years ago. 
​
Taught to fear As the American neuropsychologist Rick Hanson observes in his book Hardwiring Happiness: The New Brain Science of Contentment, Calm, and Confidence, our brain evolved to learn quickly and draw conclusions from bad experiences. This approach had an adaptative function, as concentrating on dangers helped our ancestors survive. The crucial role was played by fear. The fear of being attacked and eaten by a predator, the fear of other, hostile groups of people, an encounter with whom could end tragically. 

“Our ancestors could make two kinds of mistakes: (1) thinking there was a tiger in the bushes when there wasn’t one, and (2) thinking there was no tiger in the bushes when there actually was one. The cost of the first mistake was needless anxiety, while the cost of the second one was death,” Hanson writes. “Consequently, we evolved to make the first mistake a thousand times to avoid making the second mistake even once.” 

This way, anxiety has become virtually impressed into our DNA. “It is believed that anxiety, as an emotion or a mechanism that enabled us to survive as a species, is encoded in us,” confirms Karol Grabowski, a psychiatrist and cognitive-behavioural psychotherapist from Gdańsk Medical University.


Read More
0 Comments
<<Previous

    Yana's Blog

    Welcome to my blog! Here you will will find posts on consciousness expansion, folklore, poetry, articles on women's healing practices, Eastern thought and other topics. I hope you enjoy these offerings as much as I have had collecting them. 

    cover: artist wang yi guang

    Archives

    February 2025
    January 2025
    December 2024
    November 2024
    October 2024
    September 2024
    August 2024
    July 2024
    May 2024
    April 2024
    March 2024
    February 2024
    January 2024
    December 2023
    November 2023
    October 2023
    September 2023
    August 2023
    July 2023
    May 2023
    April 2023
    March 2023
    January 2023
    November 2022
    October 2022
    September 2022
    August 2022
    July 2022
    June 2022
    May 2022
    April 2022
    March 2022
    February 2022

    Categories

    All

    RSS Feed

Copyright Yana Castle © 2025
  • Home
  • Private sessions
  • Book
    • Excerpts
  • ABOUT
  • Blog
  • Contact