Exclusive Services

This is your Services Page. It's a great opportunity to provide information about the services you provide. Double click on the text box to start editing your content and make sure to add all the relevant details you want to share with site visitors.

Service Name

The opposite of a good girl is not a bad girl.

The opposite of a good girl is a knowing woman.

There are moments that arrive ~ sometimes quietly and sometimes like a claps of thunder ~ and mark a point in our lives when we know something has to change.

They are the moments when we know that although our lives may be "good enough," they no longer satisfy. The moments when we see that we have done all the things we were supposed to do and been all the things we were supposed to be and now we are still hungry for our own lives and we still thirst for more—even if we can’t quite name what that is yet.

They are the moments when all the “shoulds” we have been handed from the moment we arrived here, ripen into a life that doesn’t quite fit anymore, and maybe never did.

They could show up when the religion we have found meaning and belonging in now feels empty.

They could show up when the job that we worked so hard for now feels intolerable.

They could show up when a relationship that has been important no longer feels true enough.

Service Name

This is a Paragraph. Click on "Edit Text" or double click on the text box to edit the content and make sure to add any relevant information that you want to share with your visitors.

People are genuinely interested in learning more about you, so don’t be afraid to share personal anecdotes to create a more friendly quality.

Service Name

Imagine what it would be like to step away from the "shoulds" into a knowing life...

Imagine what it would be like to learn to trust yourself as the primary authority of your own life, so that you can stop looking to external places for permission and be empowered to make decisions rooted in your own knowing, desires, and vision...

Imagine what it would be like to remember yourself as your own trustworthy source of knowing, so you can find the courage to walk out of what no longer satisfies and to live your life in ways that make sense for you...

This is exactly what this work is about, and if you find yourself at this crossroad, I would love to support you as you walk bravely into your knowing life.

Service Name

There are so many places where these moments show up and disrupt the status quo of our lives.

When this happens, you may experience many things: fear, denial, confusion, doubt. But eventually one thing becomes louder than all the others: longing.

Longing for a life that is not shaped by the “shoulds” and by external prescription, but by the knowing welling up from your own imagination, intuition, body, desire, and vision for your life.

You don’t want to be good anymore. You want to be knowing. But … you don’t know how.

The collusion to keep women good is old and deep and strong. The messages are pervasive and the punishments have been swift.

But also, somewhere in the relentlessness of your longing and in the force of your desire, you may remember. You remember that there is a more expansive, true, and free life for us on the other side of these questions, on the other side of this discontent, on the other side of this longing.

Something in us believes that there is a life that does not rely on obedience to the “shoulds” for its permission and blessing, a life that is shaped by our own deepest knowing.

This is the life that we are here to cultivate together.

Service Name

recognize and name your experiences of being a “good girl,” so you can recognize those constricted places and break away from the “shoulds” in your life

understand that just because transgression feels uncomfortable or even painful sometimes, does not mean it is a bad/evil thing like the systems that rely on our compliance would have us believe, so you can be empowered to let go of the fear and shame and step into your own truest life

recognize the many ways we have been exiled from our true belonging, so you can remember that you are not alone and find meaningful conversation and community

remember what you are made of and what you belong to, so you can return to your wild and cyclical nature without apology

cultivate the practice of welcoming all parts of your experience, so you can stop judging yourself and live a freer and more expansive life

recognize your largeness and wildness, so you can learn to not abandon any part of yourself and live your life to the fullest

Service Name

This 7 week immersion experience is meant to meet you in those moments. It centers around this transition from being good into being knowing—in whatever way they are showing up in your life.

Through private sessions, weekly group gatherings, online content, personal practices, and a private online forum, we will create a container for our deep exploration of these places in our lives.

As we gather around this work of breaking away from the "shoulds" and stepping into more expansive and true lives, I will share with you one of my greatest teachers on this journey: the archetypal Eve.

The roots of the story of the “good girl” reach far back into our creation myth in the Western tradition. Eve has been used as proof of the inferior place of females, as justification for horrific behaviors, and as a strong warning to women: obey or you will die.

Even if you haven’t heard much about her or this creation myth, I believe she will still be a powerful teacher for you because she is intricately woven into the legacy of the good girl in our collective paradigm.

But Eve didn’t obey. Eve chose to follow her longing. Eve trusted her instincts. Eve chose knowing.

Through all of the aspects of this immersion experience, we will remember ourselves as our own deepest and truest sources of permission, blessing, and knowing so that we can step into more expansive, free, and true lives.

The many stories that are meant to keep us small and obedient are powerful and difficult to face alone. When we transgress beyond the bounds of the “shoulds” we are stepping into a much larger story and it is a deep medicine to travel these paths in community.

If you are interested and would like to apply or learn more about From Good to Knowing, let me know and I will contact you soon!

Seven Holistic Online Modules

I imagine these seven online modules as virtual treasure troves you can explore during this immersion experience. Each week offers a video introducing the themes that week, as well as teaching slides with narration that really dive deep into the content that week.

In addition, each module contains multiple practices ~ including writing, movement, and artistic prompts, as well as guidance in making your own rituals ~ to help you deepen into the teachings and action steps that will help you integrate and embody what you have learned. These modules weave our own lived experiences, personally and collectively, with this imperative to be good and our own desire to transgress with our teacher along the way: the archetypal Eve. These troves are meant to offer you both content and practices, so you can not only learn the ideas but also allow them to shape your daily lives ~ opening your life to more freedom, more ways of being, more ways of knowing, and most importantly, more trust in yourself as your truest source of permission and knowing.

Eight Weekly Group Gatherings (via Zoom)

In these gatherings we create a sacred space where we can be witnessed and supported in a circle of women. Our cohorts are small and intimate, with no more than 9 participants in each group. There is so much power and medicine in this ancient practice of creating and holding space together, for each other.

Often one of the struggles I hear women who are beginning this work of letting go of the “shoulds” is that they feel alone and like no one understands what they even barely understand yet. Through the years I have seen how much this kind of gathering means in our lives—it is a strengthening elixir to know and witness other brave souls asking the hard questions, taking risks, and moving continually toward their own knowing lives.

These weekly gatherings will offer you this container so you can return to your life knowing that there are others also walking this pathless path who are holding you with care and blessing and you will remember that you are not alone.

Private Online Forum

This private online community will give us a chance to stay connected between gatherings. Again, community is so important as we learn new ways of being and knowing!

This is a place where you can bring your questions, reflections, and insights, and read what your cohorts are wondering about and learning. You will be able to access this forum on your computer as well as on your mobile phone. This space will allow you quick and low barrier access to me and your cohort so that we can accompany each other more closely on this journey and be empowered to step into a new way of inhabiting our lives.

Two Private 90 Minute Sessions with Vanya

In these sessions we will have an opportunity to dive deeper into the questions, struggles, and longings that are coming up as you do this work. The private sessions will give you safe place to explore how what you are learning connects with your own lived experience and give you an opportunity to discover ways to practice and embody these shifts in your daily life.

Many Personal Practices

In all of the elements of this experience, you will be offered practices that will help you deepen into the learning and the work so you can be empowered to cultivate your own unique way of living from your deepest knowing.

These practices will help you discover how you best connect with your intuition, imagination, visions for your life, and knowing and how to embody them in your daily life.

Week One: The Good Girl

In the first week of this immersion experience, we begin to trace the edges of our indoctrination to be good—the training that teaches us to follow the “shoulds” and to look to external places of authority for our knowing.

We will follow the threads of these ideas back to the dominant creation myth in the Western tradition: the story of Eve. We will begin to uncover how our fate has been tied to Eve.

This uncovering helps us recognize the Good Girl and where she is showing up now in our lives, and how our personal stories connect with our collective narratives. This will empower us to see beyond the overt, understanding the the ways the Good Girl has served us, the ways she has harmed us, and the ways we can peacefully (maybe even gratefully) let her go so that we can step into a more empowered ways of moving through our days.

Week Two: Images of the Feminine Sacred

In the second week, we will explore the exile of the feminine sacred as we unearth the battle being waged at the heart of the Eden story: the dethroning of the images and stories of the feminine sacred. We will explore how the Eden story was part of a much larger mythic movement called the Great Reversal and what this might mean for us as images of the sacred feminine and sacred female body were relentlessly exiled from the Western imagination.

As we unearth what is buried in the Eden story and what has been cast into the shadows in our collective paradigms, we will be able to name more clearly and powerfully what has been cast into the shadows in our own lives. As we remember images of the feminine sacred, we also remember parts of ourselves and of our own sacredness so we can live rooted in that deep sense of power and belonging.

Week Three: Seeds of Transgression

Transgression ~ crossing beyond assigned boundaries ~ lives at the heart of creative evolution.

Transgressive acts are often portrayed in myths as an integral part of the mythic and psycho-spiritual adventure. This week, we will explore the importance of creative transgression and the significance that in a patriarchal paradigm we have equated transgression with evil, thus elevating unquestioned obedience to the status quo as the highest virtue.

This learning will help us understand that just because transgression feels uncomfortable or even painful sometimes, does not mean it is a bad/evil thing like the systems that rely on our compliance would have us believe, so that we can be empowered to let go of the fear and shame and step into our own truest life and power.

Week Four: Ways of Being

The archetypal Eve shows us certain ways of being that are involved in this kind of transgression toward knowing. For example, leaving behind a life that offers a certain kind of safety and favor for a life that is truer but more uncertain can bring with it a sense of conflicted loyalties, ambiguous belonging, and contradictory stories. This week, we explore these ways of being and how we can recognize them and hold them in our own lives.

As we name and recognize the archetypal elements of this experience, we move from feeling only lost, disoriented, and confused to having some sense of what is happening.

With this wild and mythic wisdom, rather than falling back into the stories that draw us back into obedience, we can be empowered and feel accompanied as we take each next step into the unknown.

Week Five: Ways of Knowing

When Eve was cast out of the Garden it was not only the images of the sacred feminine that were buried but also the ancient ways of knowing associated with the traditions of the feminine sacred.

Some of these ways of knowing ~ knowing through the body and the senses, knowing through instinct and intuition, knowing through Earth ~ are precisely the ways of knowing you need as you walk into a life that is sourced and shaped by your own discernment, desire, and knowing. This week, we explore these ways of knowing and how we can cultivate them in our own lives.

This will help you feel empowered with many ways of deepening into our own knowing so that you can feel confident as your own authority and source of knowing and live the life that is calling to you.

Week Six: Curses and Blessings

Part of creating a sovereign and knowing life is about freeing ourselves from the curses that keep us small and learning to know in our bones that we are the source of our own blessing ~ we have the power to bless ourselves and each other. This week, we explore the curses laid upon Eve and Adam and how they might show up in our lives today and also ways that we can banish those curses and claim our birthright blessings.

As we recognize and cast off the stories, narratives, and systems that are committed to keeping us compliant and obedient, we find that once we lose favor from the familiar places of external permission and authority we are sent on a quest of finding a much deeper, truer, and lasting source of blessing ~ a blessing that comes from knowing our deepest belonging. This blessing that comes from within opens up space so we can live our lives according to their most natural cycles and wildest natures without shame.

Week Seven: How Shall We Then Live?

In this last week, we ask this very important question: How shall we then live?

As we continue to move from being good to knowing and as we integrate what we have learned about our mythic history, our curses, our blessings, and our sovereignty, we will explore the practices and the ways in which we will continue to be transgressive and fierce in our faithfulness to our deepest knowing.

This week offers us an opportunity to reflect on what we have learned and prepares us to walk into the next part of our stories feeling empowered and able to bridge what we have seen and learned with how we live our daily lives.

A Mini Course on Dream Tending ($497 value)

Dream Tending is a vital practice that will add depth and richness to your life as you cultivate a knowing, wild, and sovereign way of being in the world.

The course consists of three modules that will explore, among other topics:

~ the value of dream tending

~ multiple practices you can consistently use to develop a robust and rewarding relationship with your dreaming life.

~examples of dream tending to help you cultivate your own practice

If you already practice dream tending, this will refresh and recharge your work. And if you are new to dream work, this course will offer you a solid foundation to get started so you can access one of the most profound and mysterious sources of knowing and not only infuse your lived experience with this deep wisdom, but also, be re-enchanted as you learn to see your life through the dreams and the imagination.

A Mini Video Course on Active Imagination and Imaginal Ways of Knowing ($297 value)

Active imagination is a term coined by Carl Jung. It refers to a way of knowing that helps us get out of our conscious patterns and egoic habits and dive into the imagination as a source of deep and wise knowing.

In this two-part seminar we will explore:

~ The power of the imagination and image

~ Active imagination

~ Other imaginal ways of knowing, like somatic knowing, ecopsychology, and dream tending.

In this short video course, you will have an opportunity to learn about these practices and be empowered to live a life that is deeply guided by the mysterious powers of the imagination and the invisible realities infusing and surrounding our lives. Your life will be profoundly enriched as you root yourself in realities larger than you and are re-enchanted as you remember your belonging and participation in a living and ensouled world.

If you are wondering if this immersion experience is right for you, see if any of these statements resonate with you:

I no longer fit in the usual places that I have felt belonging and I don’t know where to turn
I am longing for a community that has conversation on a spiritual level and ways to find meaning in the mundane
I am tired of the status quo and beginning to become aware of the bullshit messages of the patriarchy and of my up-bringing and I don’t know what the other options, but I know they had to exist somewhere
I rush through my busy days, sometimes I feel like I am spinning and trying to keep everything going and everyone happy, but I am wanting more ~ more depth and spiritual meaning but I am too busy and the places I look to seem trendy and trite
The usual ways I would cultivate depth and meaning in my life aren’t working anymore
I try to talk with the people in my life about this nameless longing for more, but I rarely feel understood
I don’t want to live by the “shoulds,” but I don’t know how to break those patterns and I don’t know how else to be
I am struggling with feeling like my life is good but not satisfying, like I spend too much energy doing the things I am supposed to but am not findings the meaning in it that I used to find or had hoped to find

If some or all of these resonate, this experience may be just right for you at this time in your life!

Alexa Young, CA

"Having spent a lifetime unconsciously living out the "good girl", I was eager to participate in the course that would help me understand the larger forces at work - namely creation myths that aren't at all personal and have a deeply personal impact. I feel freed up in a way I haven't felt in a long time. Unbound, liberated. It's lovely. Vanya is a wonderfully patient, inclusive and playful course leader who created a community even though we women never met in person. I highly recommend this course to any woman who wants more freedom."

Past Participant

Morgan James, NY

"I can't recommend this course enough! Vanya has such a gift for cultivating spaces that foster self-reflection, discovery, and transformation in community with other women. I'm so grateful for Vanya's wisdom and the opportunity to learn from her and be witnessed and supported in my own journey from good girl to knowing woman."

Melissa

Lisa Driver, MI

“Have customers review you and share what they had to say. Click to edit and add their testimonial.”