There is a misconception that keeps more women from their own power than any other I have witnessed in nearly three decades of this work.

We are taught — sometimes gently, sometimes with great force — that the divine lives somewhere else. That the gods and goddesses, the universe, the higher power, whatever name your life has given it, is external. Above us. Outside us. Something to petition from a distance and hope it hears.

But consciousness is not somewhere else. Consciousness is everywhere — which means it is within you, and within all of life. The Goddess is not a statue on an altar. She is the intelligence that beats your heart without being asked, that turns your food into life force, that grieves and rages and loves through you. The altar simply helps us remember where she already lives.

I know — that is a big concept to take in. You don't have to grasp it with your mind today. This teaching is not only something to understand; it is something to experience.

Why remembering matters for your health

Here is why I care about this so deeply as an Ayurvedic practitioner, and not only as a woman on a spiritual path: our wholeness depends on it.

In Ayurveda, we understand that dis-ease in the body and mind begins with prajñāparādha — often translated as "the failure of wisdom," and understood by many teachers as the forgetting of our own true nature as the divine. We forget what we are, and then we live against ourselves — against our rhythms, our needs, our inner knowing — and the body quietly keeps the record of that forgetting.

So this work is, at its essence, about remembering the wholeness within. And it is intensely practical: it is about remembering that you carry deep inner resources — courage, nourishment, voice, release, delight, devotion — that you can call on in times of need, so you can meet the real stressors of a modern life without abandoning yourself.

The fifty percent

I often say to my clients and students: if we show up for ourselves — and therefore in devotion to God, to Goddess, to life itself — at least fifty percent, we will be met with support for the other fifty.

Grace is a two-way stream. She does not ask for perfection. She asks for your half: the practice done imperfectly but done, the early night chosen over the scroll, the truth spoken with a shaking voice, the boundary held one more day. In my experience — and I have watched this in hundreds of women — when a woman brings her fifty percent, life begins to conspire with her in ways she could not have engineered.

Living in devotion means listening beneath the noise of the ego and the echoes of old wounds. Easier said than done — which is exactly why we cultivate the practices. Mantra, meditation, breath, movement, elemental ritual. Ritual is not superstition and it is not decoration. Fire, water, flower, flame — the elements speak the body's first language. A ritual nudges the feeling-tone of your whole system; it wakes the cellular memory of what you are. You cannot think your way back to wholeness. But you can breathe, chant and kneel your way back to it, one small ceremony at a time.

I know this because it has happened to me — more times than I can count. Let me tell you a few of those stories.

Gaṇeśa — the one who takes my pain

As a Śaivite Hindu, Gaṇeśa — the elephant-headed guardian of thresholds, the remover of obstacles, the earth element embodied — is a key deity in my life. I have chanted his 108 names. I have sat cross-legged on the cold, cleanly-dirty stone floors of some of the oldest temples in India and Sri Lanka, at his feet, circling him clockwise — asking him to remove what blocks the way, and to take my pain.

My most vivid memory of him is from Kerala. Near Somatheeram, where I hold my Panchakarma retreats, there is a Śiva temple right on the ocean front. I was ending a relationship at the time, and I sat down with Gaṇeśa and simply broke open. Tears falling down my face, sweat from the heat dripping off my body — my whole body crying, grieving — with Gaṇeśa and a few curious priests as witness. And then the skies opened. Three days of torrential rain, as if the whole world had become my grief. And when the sun finally came out, some of that pain had been transmuted — composted into new beginnings and clearer insight.

I did not think my way through that ending. I sat at the feet of the earth element, in the heat, by the ocean, and let the elements grieve with me — and they answered.

Durgā — she lived in me before I knew her name

I would love to tell you Durgā was my first goddess encounter. But if I am honest, my first encounter was nature herself — the winds, the oceans, the mountains. Only later did I learn the tradition says exactly this: Durgā is recognised in the strong elemental qualities of the natural world. She had been introducing herself all along.

The day she arrived by name, I was in Colorado, in a guided meditation at a festival. The teacher invited us to imagine strength walking towards us — and then into us. And she came. Durgā. I have never found perfect words for the merging: it was as if she stepped into me — or better, dissolved into me. A divine experience I did not go looking for and could not have manufactured.

From that day on, a picture of Durgā — her many arms spinning their tools — has lived in my office, supporting my ability to hold space in business and in life with grace. Or at least to try. And that honesty matters: embodying the Goddess is not a destination we arrive at and keep. It is a relationship we return to, breath by breath.

Kālī — the fierceness that is pure love

One year, at a wild women's festival, I stood around a large bonfire with hundreds of other women under a silvery moon. We were invited to allow a goddess to come to us. And I remember being a little scared — because it was Kālī who came, riding towards me in such fierceness.

Only to realise, as she drew close, that she is actually pure love. The fierceness is a front — a face she wears to strip the unnecessary from life, and to protect what is precious.

So I danced with Kālī in my heart, under the beat of drums, held in sisterhood. Her strength in my red-blooded veins. My tongue ready to devour whatever no longer served my higher good. My blade of discernment sharp — ready to cut away anything untrue, anything that was a danger to my growth.

She does not come to destroy you. She comes to destroy what is destroying you.

The quieter arrivals

Not every goddess comes on a lion or through a bonfire.

Sarasvatī has come to me quietly, all my life, the way a river moves — through knowledge and study, through kirtan and sacred sound, through svādhyāya, the practice of self-study, and through gentleness itself. She is the one who cools my pitta when the fire of my nature runs too hot, who reminds me that wisdom flows rather than forces.

And Lakṣmī taught me that abundance was never only about money. She is the beauty all around us, waiting to be noticed. My whole life, flowers have been my most constant offering — it is even my name. Creating flower mandalas. Receiving and giving. And beneath it all, her deepest teaching: the quiet, cellular knowing that life will always provide.

A doorway, not a doctrine

There have been others — Śiva and Murugan from my own Śaiva path, a Native American chief who walks with me, ancient Aboriginal wisdom codes, Indian vidyās. The list goes on, and it will for you too, because the sacred is endlessly generous in the forms it takes to reach us.

That is how it works. They do not wait for us to learn their names. They rise when they are needed — through temples and meditations, bonfires and drumbeats, flowers and three days of rain — and the practices simply teach us to recognise them, so that next time, we can call them by name.

An invitation

If something in these stories stirred you — a recognition, a longing, even a healthy scepticism — that stirring is worth following.

ĀyurGODDESS: Awakening the Shakti Within is my six-week journey through the energies of the great goddesses — Durgā, Lakṣmī, Sarasvatī, Kālī, Lalitā and Pārvatī — woven with practical Ayurveda, mantra, meditation, ritual and honest journal work. It is the body of work I first created in 2018, now deepened by everything the years have taught me. Our first two Goddess Circles are live online, then we gather in person in Burleigh — or you can walk the whole journey online, in your own rhythm.

The Goddess is not waiting for you to become worthy. She is waiting for you to remember.

Begin Your Journey — ĀyurGODDESS

Not ready for the full journey? Take the free Which Goddess Are You? quiz and meet the face of Shakti living most strongly in you right now.

Oṁ Śhakti,
Jasmine Grace · Co-Founder, Ayurveda Alchemist Academy