Lips As A Portal
Photo: Magali Couffon for 'Wish you were here', March 2018
Lips
Opening and closing.
Inhale and exhale.
To receive and to expel.
To swallow and to purge.
Lips as portals
Lips and yoni*.
Things enter, things leave.
To receive and to birth.
Upper lips and the lower lipsconnected by the spine, the central column,
around which our energy rises and descends.
The snake sensuously winding its way up and down the tree.
The kundalini rising up and down the vertical.
Vertical time.
Spiralling up and spiralling down,
spiralling in and spiralling out.
Spiralling into Desire.
The lips first appeared to me in a meditation in 2012. At the time I wasn't quite sure what they were - i just knew something was opening and closing and had the texture of elephant skin. Over the years they would reappear in both my dreams and my meditations in various forms.
I love this photo of my lips, captured by Magali Couffon- the elephant skin texture, the opening, the shape of the yoni, the shape of the heart.
In one of the earliest dreams I unpacked with Natural Dreamwork practitioner Laura Smith-Riva, a young girl of 9 years falls on her face and wounds her lips. It reminds me of a similar fall I had as a 9 year old and ended up breaking my two front teeth - A wound I carried for a long time. In another dream I see a yoni shaped wound in my armpit, where the heart meridian ends. In yet another dream I am prevented from kissing my beloved, because my lips are bloody and scratched from the braces I wear on my teeth- the braces a cage for my teeth, an obstruction of my desire.
The lips continue to appear to me - mostly as symbols of sensuality and exquisite tenderness. Earlier this month for the first gathering of Trsna (our online Desire group), I offered this image as the initial invitation to open into our deep body.
*Yoni is a Sanskrit word that has been interpreted to literally mean the "womb," the "source," and the female organs of generation. [It also connotes the female sexual organs such as "vagina,""vulva,"and "uterus,"or alternatively to "origin, abode, or source" of anything in other contexts.(from Wikipedia)
Natural Dreamwork practitioner Brinda Jacob-Janvrin is a movement-based expressive arts therapist and a contemporary dancer/choreographer with more than 25 years of performing experience. A qualified counselor, she has been working extensively with movement and arts therapies since 2003. A practitioner and facilitator for Authentic Movement and Natural Dreamwork, Brinda is passionate about the arts, the mysterious workings of the Psyche-Soma and connections between the Body and Earth. Brinda is the founder and managing trustee of the Studio for Movement Arts and Therapies Trust, a registered charitable Trust.