EMBRACING UNDERGROUND 2026 COMPLETION
Great Mother House · 20 April 2026
We recently concluded another edition of the “Embracing Underground” retreat in Poland. It was a profound journey of transformation through darkness and shadow through tantric rituals and bodywork sessions. As every year, much happened during the workshop for all participants.
The individual processes of many people concerned the transformation of underground parts associated with the masculine archetypes of the destroyer and rapist, which directly correspond to the field of dark masculine present in the World. Men, but also women, were able to come face to face with their unhealthy masculine aspects, unleashing their inner power, the energy of suppressed anger, buried deep in fear of destroying themselves and others.
For many, the activation of the masculine underground began the dismantling of the internal structure of guilt and self-hatred. Structures that, over time, transform into our personal prison.
For many women, the masculine underground parts suppressed and enslaved their feminine lineages for generations.
Gradually, during the workshop, they were finally identified and neutralized.
In many situations, the very embodiment of those suffering and hungry aspects was causing their release and transformation.
During the retreat, we also dedicated time for activation and healing our inner dark feminine parts, which created a powerful field that neutralized dark masculine aspects. Simultaneously, thanks to the presence of the Kali archetype, some underground structures could be transformed into personal allies and protectors.
Some participants were able to connect with the memory of inner feminine structures that harbor resentment towards masculine energy and are burning with a desire for revenge. By embodying these wild, hungry, and sometimes crazy aspects, they were able to regain access to their personal power.
Throughout the workshop, our individual dark, repressed aspects were accepted, nourished, and connected to the heart and our higher self. Once again, the “Embracing Underground” process opened a space of unconditional love for our personal and collective shadows. Creating a field in which all rejected and repressed parts could emerge, be expressed, nourished, and integrated. Thanks to this, most of the workshop participants could enter a new stage of life with greater self-acceptance and bigger awareness of aspects hidden in our body memory.
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Some interesting testimonies from this year’s participants on working with underground aspects:
EMBRACING UNDERGROUND SUMMARY
What I experienced in the underground was truly life changing. I was able to connect to multiple creatures inside of me that I had no idea that existed.
The first one that appeared was a dragon. A very strong, powerful dragon with big wings.
In the first session, it felt empowering. But in the second session, I was receiving too much pain and I wasn’t clear about my boundaries.
I was trying to push through it, almost forcing myself to endure it. And that had the opposite effect — both on my underground and on my dragon.
I could still channel and embody it, but the dragon itself felt shut down. He became very sad, almost like a victim — crying in the corner of a cave.
After that, in the following sessions, I decided I didn’t want to push through pain anymore.
I wanted to try a different approach. And that shift worked really well for me.
In those next sessions, I connected to my inner witch.
I could really feel her. I could feel this deep anger towards men, and this desire for revenge.
I had these vivid, almost playful but dark fantasies — cutting off their lingams, cooking soup out of them, making hot dogs from them and then selling it back to them.
And there was something almost joyful in that. It was creative, imaginative, and it gave me a strange sense of pleasure.
It was interesting to observe that contrast — the darkness of the imagery, but the lightness and joy I felt while being in that witch energy.
Then, in other sessions, I started connecting to the masculine underground.
That’s where I met my werewolf energy — and also what I can only describe as a rapist energy. That part was much harder to access. There was a lot of shame around it. But at the same time, there were moments of joy there too — especially when I connected to the pure wolf aspect. When I first really let that wolf out, it felt incredibly alive. Full of energy. I had these visions of hunting, eating flesh, blood — very primal, very animalistic.
And it gave me so much life force. I felt like I wanted to run through the forest, to find other wolves, to belong to that pack. It felt like an ally, like something deeply natural inside me.
But then I discovered there was an even darker layer beneath that.
A part of that energy that wanted to attack women. That wanted to take without consent. And that was extremely confronting.
As a lesbian, I’ve always been very careful — almost hyper-aware — about not making women uncomfortable, about respecting boundaries. So to find a part in me that just wanted to take, take, take… that was scary.
And the visuals that came with it were very intense.
I saw myself raping a virgin. Fucking her without her wanting it. Eating her pussy aggressively, even biting it until there was blood, and then sucking that blood.
It was raw, violent, and deeply disturbing to witness.
At the same time, I was able to stay with it. To observe it. To not act it out, but to allow it to exist inside me.
Across the sessions, I could move between these different energies quite fluidly — depending on what was triggered, the music, or whether we were working in the masculine or feminine underground. And eventually, I was able to take all of these parts into my heart. To accept them. To not reject them, but to integrate them and bring some lightness to them. Then, in the higher ground, something completely different opened.
I had visions of myself as Pan, playing the flute. As a fairy — a good, loving fairy. Bringing connection, softness, and love to all the creatures living in my underground. And that part was very touching.
Participant of Embracing Underground March 2026
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MY EXPERIENCE WITH THE UNDERGROUND
During the first underground session suddenly a vision surged up. I experienced myself as a being standing in flames. The feeling and the vision came at the same time, very intensely, without any story or gentle introduction. The sensation and the knowing were just suddenly there. I saw the image of myself surrounded by fire, and at the same time I felt as if I were truly in the fire, living through the situation.
I was a mix between a rather feminine human and a dragon/reptilian being, and I was being burned for what I am. I don’t know whether I have “good” or “bad” intentions on this planet, but I truly believe I am innocent and simply living my nature—I don’t want to actively harm humans, I just want to do my own thing. But they don’t understand me, they overpower me and burn me. And in this session I experienced RAGE and REVENGE and HATRED toward these humans. I hadn’t ended up in a fair fight—I had been overrun. This human race may be more evolved than my kind, less animalistic and direct, but they are simply stupid. I am a reptile, there is only me, I am a loner, and I understand that they are a kind of animal that lives in groups.
And I am burning in this fire while they watch indifferently, and I feel my power and my essence, and I know that I have venom glands and fangs, and I spray my poison onto these humans, and I scream my soul out while my acid melts their faces. I am what I am, but I followed the rules of coexistence. They broke the rules out of stupidity, and now they should all feel the fire of my venom.
In the session, I notice how my body first goes through this emotional and physical pain, writhing—and then I rise up to spray everyone with my venom and show them my disgust. I hate the human race! Individually they are so weak, but together they act like a collective swarm—not necessarily intelligent from my perspective, but too powerful—so I will destroy as many as I can while I am burning.
The rest of the session is uneventful. This vision and the acting out of my revenge lasted only about 1–2 minutes “subjectively,” but it was extremely intense and vivid. The clarity is astonishing. My partner and the lovely team members try to keep triggering me, but I am exhausted and tired once my awareness returns to the seminar room. The energy and memory of the reptilian being, the pain and the revenge—these vibrations keep resonating. I continue to spray venom so they leave me alone. I am still standing in the fire—I believe I will always have to stand in this fire, as an eternal reminder of the stupidity of humans and my pain.
Reflections / Addendum
I feel that through the encounter with the reptilian being, I have regained some of my objectivity. I try not to approach it mentally, but rather to recognize the emotional frequencies I experienced in the session. During the session, my feelings consisted of revenge, hatred, and anger—but not because I or my body were destroyed, rather from disappointment about what I had to experience.
I would say the feelings are not gone, but I can now place them better. I feel that this memory is stored somewhere deep in my DNA and occasionally rises to the surface. Either way, these frequencies have influenced my life—but now I can recognize them more for what they are: old memories that can indirectly affect my life if I don’t see them for what they are.
Because of this experience, I feel I can now more easily recognize, understand, and allow this part to be. At the same time, I currently feel that this part is very active. In the days after the retreat, I had very vivid dreams of death, darkness, and murder. One night, something tried to choke me. It was a very intense experience. Somehow, this being loosened its grip around my neck, but it was still next to me. In the dream, I began to chant the Kali mantra and surrounded the being with it. That gave me a lot of strength. When I woke up, I felt strong—and since that dream, those kinds of dreams have not returned.
Participant of Embracing Underground March 2026
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REMEMBERING THE LION KING. A TESTIMONY
‘Embracing the Underground’ retreat – Great Mother House
It’s Monday. I’m back home from the retreat and I took an extra day off.
My journal notes are in front of me. Connecting the dots.
Let me start where it actually started: with resistance.
I did the underground retreat the year before. My first response afterwards was simple and
clear: “Never again! Too much! Too raw!” And too close to things I had carefully arranged not to
look at. Then Dechen invited me back. Not pushed, not convinced, just invited. And I knew I had
to go. Not because I was looking forward to it. I wasn’t. But the ‘not’-looking forward to it was
exactly the reason to say… ‘Yes’.
The first days were hard. My energy hit freezing point on day three. Everything in me was
stalling, contracting, bracing. And then… without drama, without a clear turning point, it
reversed. And kept climbing. Way higher than the starting point!
My initial role was to hold a safe container for others. That’s a role I know well. Too well,
perhaps. The steady one. The protector. But something shifted during the week: the container
turned around and it began to hold me. That’s where it got difficult. In the best possible way.
I have physical barriers to certain kinds of expression. Shouting has always felt genuinely
impossible — not as a metaphor, but as a physical fact. My throat would close, my voice would
go hoarse within seconds. That changed this week. And fighting — even playful, embodied,
wrestle-it-out fighting — I’d be spent in thirty seconds. Like having a body of someone a
hundred years old. I have no memory of a single physical fight. Not even from childhood.
These barriers dissolved across the week. Not suddenly. More like ice in slow water. The
sacred lottery kept bringing me exactly what I needed: strong counterparts who could hold my
raw energy without flinching. The oil was burning. Literally and otherwise. The fire underneath
me turned out to be much larger than I knew.
I met four parts in myself that week. The ‘Destroyer’. The part that dismantles, cuts and ends things without sentiment. Pure force
with no attachment to what falls. I’ve spent a great deal of energy keeping this one in the
basement. And yet… a king needs a destroyer. Transformed, it becomes the ability to cut away
what no longer serves. Cleanly. Without apologies.
The ‘Raper’. The part that doesn’t ask for permission. That crosses boundaries. That takes. The
shame around this one was enormous. Nowhere else in my life could I have looked at this
figure directly. Named it out loud. Expressed it within safe structure and lived through the
shame of it. What lives on the other side is not what I feared. It is power. I spent years mistaking
over-sensitivity to crossing borders for a virtue. There’s more to it than that.
The ‘Vampire’. The one who takes energy from others without asking. When I looked carefully, I
found its opposite at my core: an almost compulsive unwillingness to receive. Even not taking
what’s actually mine. A hyper-vigilance about consuming too much space. Transformed, it
becomes the permission to finally accept what’s offered. Without guilt. Without immediately
giving it back.
The ‘Banished Woman’. From my female lineage. A generational wound. Women who learned
to stay small because staying small was safer than the alternative: being cast out. Being alone.
I recognized that pattern in my own body the moment it surfaced. The memory of learning to
shrink. To stay under the radar. Because somewhere along the way I had learned that
confrontation means losing love. The transformation is simple: the courage to be fully present.
Knowing that friction doesn’t mean rejection.
These four are not pathologies.
They are raw, unfiltered forces… caged up because at some point, that caging was the only
option. I kept myself small to stay safe. I became the safe container for everyone around me
and locked the beast behind that role. Here and there — secretly and inevitably — the energy
found its own exits, but not the ones I would have chosen consciously…
The liberation came from a specific source: the deep sexual energy within the practices. The
fire from the first and second chakras. Strong women who could hold my raw energy without
managing it. Something that had been pressed down for a very long time found room to move.
Four or five years ago, when I first met Dechen, I described what I wanted in a single image: to
be a king. The king of my own life. To take full responsibility for my territory.
I had almost forgotten that. Dechen hadn’t.
He reminded me during the retreat. He still sees the Lion King in me. And looking back at
everything that surfaced this week — the destroyer, the boundary-crosser, the one who takes,
the one who survived by staying invisible — I understand now that these were never obstacles to that. They were the ingredients of it. The suppressed raw power that a king needs in order to
reign. Not to dominate. But to be — completely, consciously, with the full spectrum of what he
carries.
A Lion King doesn’t apologize for his power. He doesn’t cage the predator to seem safe. He
takes full responsibility for his territory. Protects what matters. Uses his force consciously — in the service of everyone within his domain.
I’m home now. A few days out. The bliss is settling into something quieter. More mine.
The second chakra feels genuinely more free. Something real shifted this week. Not a problem
solved. A door opened that I didn’t know was there.
The work continues. It always does. But I went back into that cage. I looked at what was inside. And I didn’t run. That’s enough to build on.
Participant of Embracing Underground March 2026