Skywoman Earthwoman was first inspired during the time that I was living in Canada, when I was first exposed to the Sky Woman legend, in addition to all the Greek mythology I was exposed to in my childhood… the tales of Demeter, Persephone, Gaia… I found it beautiful, mesmerising and infused with symbolism.

Yet perhaps, the journey towards birthing Skywoman Earthwoman began much much earlier than that. I was born in Egypt, but grew up between the small island of Cyprus and the lush greenery of Switzerland. Most days were spent by the beach or hiking up a mountain. As a child, I loved it, but once I hit my teenage years, I found it boring… I wanted to see the world, and had many big dreams. I ended up moving to England, and spent many years in London, and perhaps this is where the journey became more prominent. I found a split within myself… the part of me that wanted to live in a big city and fulfil those big dreams, and the part of me that was an island girl who simply desired to hug trees, bury her toes in the sand, and let the sea hold her.

I was studying my MA in ethnographic documentary filmmaking and it was this doorway into anthropology, that later became a doorway into my spiritual journey. I was curious about different communities, particularly those that still practiced indigenous traditions around the globe and focused predominately on gender, race, ethnicity, migration policies and kinship. In those studies, I noticed how there was a common thread between so many cultures. A lot of them embarked on rites of passages, performed rituals and ceremonies that revered the land, planets, sun, moon, water, different gods and deities… I didn’t quite understand these ceremonies and rituals, but I was fascinated by it.. writing essays and reading books about them all.

It was only until May 2023 when I entered what was the beginning of a profound spiritual awakening after an encounter with a stranger, that held up a mirror reflecting all of my dreams, desires, strengths, and wishes, but also all of my wounds and fears. Shortly after this I began to notice lots of signs and synchronicities that felt too coincidental, but didn’t think anything of them.

I simply made a promise to myself to work on all of those parts of myself that still needed healing… and in that I met the most profound teachers that truly held my hand throughout the journey to come.

At the time I was running at about 110%, determined to grow in my career, hustling my way through life. I was so desperate for balance but didn’t know how to get it. My body was screaming for me to slow down. I realised I was addicted to a certain level of adrenaline that felt like a drug… My body had been in fight / flight mode for such a long time that I didn’t know what normal even looked or felt like… and so I threw myself more than ever into my yoga practice. A wonderful woman held my hand and helped me get back in touch with my body… I meditated twice a day. I did yoga nidras and slowly but surely my nervous system began to calm down and I began operating from my parasympathetic nervous system. One may argue that the connection to the east was instilled into me far before, while I was in the womb of my mother who is a yoga teacher, but I hadn’t taken it as seriously until then.

I then discovered reiki. I didn’t know what it was beyond Japanese energy healing… but felt such indescribable sensations… I was convinced I had imagined it but thought I would give it another go… and this became the pivotal moment in my journey, when a dear mentor and friend opened up a whole new world for me…

A flood of even more signs, synchronicities, ‘coincidences’, telepathy, premonitions etc. rolled in after this like a wave of oceanic waters. Sometimes they came as dreams, other times a gut feeling, songs, numbers, posters, animals, people, names, films, books, little whispers of voices, colours, apparitions…. The world looked different and I was suddenly aware of a whole layer of consciousness that I had never previously tapped into.

Meanwhile, I was still running at what was now 180% speed, and ultimately took two months off to travel in South America. My entire soul just melted. It was the first time in years that I simply let my body be… I became so in tune with nature and the pleasures of life again. The sweetness of a mango. The sound of the waves. The feeling of soil beneath my feet. I was surrounded by the kindest of friends, and was more in touch with my inner child than ever… her sense of play and softness… Everyday I swam in the ocean and felt so held by Mother Earth.

One day, I met another magical teacher that helped me with my journey. She happened to be round the corner from where I was staying in a place called Floripa in Brazil - also known as the Magic Island - and also specialised in reiki. At this point, I was completely open. She taught me how to do reiki on myself.

The next 4 months upon leaving Brazil and Argentina felt like a complete tornado and earthquake… I was faced with the complete destruction of my ego, and forced to look deep within my childhood, and also my present life… everything from a near death car accident I had experienced as a child, to panic attacks as a teenager to my current friendships and relationships and worklife… It was the death card, the tower card and the ten of swords card all at once. I later came to learn that this was my dark night of the soul… a profound spiritual awakening that takes place, pulling the rug from underneath you, making you question everything in your life… it is different for everyone… sometimes it’s the death of a loved one, sometimes it’s our own ‘death’ that instigates it.

In some ways it seemed as if I was excelling in my career, I was so deeply fortunate for all of the opportunities and also for all the travels (which I am aware is a deep privilege) but in other ways my health and wellbeing was taking 10 steps back. It was only until a foot injury led me to hospital in June 2024, where I knew I had to stop. I was operating on sleep deprivation, burning myself to the ground, eating poorly, not breathing properly and then using my days off to recover, only to do it all over again…

I made a promise to myself to be kinder and softer with myself… I found myself once again in the world of yoga. I became fascinated by Ayurveda, Traditional Chinese medicine, and was able to tap in so clearly into what my body was communicating with me… what chakra was it connected to? What meridian line? And ultimately what emotion?

Something in me just clicked. I found myself once again surrounded by people of a spiritual nature walking a similar path… I found myself embracing my birth name Yasmine (rather than the nicknames Jessmeen / Jessy / Jess that were given to me as a child), I chopped off my chemically straightened hair in a rather Mulan fashion, and embraced the curly texture of my hair… and the inner wild, playful, silly, carefree, pure feminine flower and lioness within me that was so full of life and light…

I was then taught by my dear mentor how to channel all of the messages and synchronicities I was receiving and the healing of angelic reiki… the road has not been easy… but it has been THE BIGGEST GIFT.

Suddenly, I was writing, singing, painting, and dancing again. I was listening to the birds, talking to horses and cats, and hugging trees and so connected to passed loved ones and all the living beings around us. There came gratitude. And there came such a waterfall of forgiveness for others but more importantly for myself. There was a new sense of love. For the gift of life. I found myself.

My curiosity in different communities, cultures and indigenous traditions returned… I now knew why they worshipped the land, the sky, the planets, deities etc. it was not spiritual bypass, but a profound connection to a world so much bigger than us… a lineage of ancestors calling us forward. During that time, I connected deeply with my mother line and father line, I traced the lineages of my ancestors and connected to them in ways I never even imagined possible…. And this was deeply healing… from my family tree, all the way to the Ancient Egyptians… and even further into past lives. And in that there was so much love and forgiveness and protection.

I went on to study sacred sites, and embarked on my own journey towards them. Each time, I would come back in awe of our world. This opened the doors to spiritual ecology, land, women, mythology, energy, and deeper learnings in Vedic astrology and transpersonal psychology about our psyche and collective consciousness.

I later discovered homeopathy after falling into a period of deep fatigue, and found that so much of this was linked to as early as childhood or teenage years. This became another huge catalyst of significant change, and I became even more intrigued with the concept of the vital force and the natural modalities around the world that can help the body heal naturally. How much of our lives was being suppressed and then manifested into ailments and how can we avoid that to begin with?

Time passed and something still stirred within me, a desire to discover new lands and connect even more to all the places that I had studied in my anthropology books during my Masters. The little girl in me that wanted to be Dora the Explorer and Pocahontas came through strongly and in a series of unexpected turns, I ended up working in aviation… through this I found myself once again in a split… the part of me that wanted expansion and to see the world, and then the part of me that struggled to find balance between being up in the skies… this experience challenged and tested my foundations of grounding even more, and I found myself craving stillness more than ever to retain my equilibrium… on one hand, this opportunity opened enormous doors for me, whereby I was able to have access to all corners of the globe, to speak with the local people, eat their traditional foods, and understand their ancient ways, their rituals, their ceremonies, their relationship to spirit and to land… and this sparked my creative practice of filming, photographing and writing massively… on the other hand, I found my body fighting. I struggled with the continuous shift of time zones, sleeping patterns and feeling unrooted. There were moments when I experienced several episodes of vomiting, nausea and all nighters disguised by the glamour and promise of seeing the world… I kept wondering if I was too ‘sensitive’ but I knew my vital force was speaking to me and that my body was intelligent in the signs that it was sending me… that my ‘sensitivity’ was actually my superpower. For what a gift it is to be able to listen to what no longer serves you, and to remind you that everybody experiences things differently… and what a gift to then be able to make the choices that honour your truth, to choose what is right for YOU and not for others.

I noticed how it was pushing me even more than before to not just find my anchor, but find that anchor within myself regardless of what country or continent I was in. I continued collecting the ancient ‘hacks’ from my travels and found myself implementing them in my daily life, from more pranayama to chewing on ginger… for none of those teachings were ‘trends’ but what people had been doing for centuries, as they already had a relationship with the land.

This season of my life was short lived and only lasted a few months, before it led me back to my path and it was from here that the nudge to build Skywoman Earthwoman came. I found myself, like most flight crew and cabin crew, as this woman continuously swinging on a pendulum between the sky and the earth and it became my mission to find the balance and harmony between both worlds. For me the sky was always the metaphorical place I would go to in my meditative practices, a way to connect to Spirit, the cosmos, universe, God, and with that comes the balance of being rooted within a spiritual practice… but then the sky became a physical home too, that also needed to root. I began looking deeply at the symbolism and Jungian archetypes of a sky woman and an earth woman. What was being presented to me in my current lifestyle with these archetypes and how can I find a way to help others through this?

The Skywoman became a motif of the part of us that trusts the fall, listens to intuition, and follows the unseen. She is the woman with wings. She can fly.

The Earthwoman became the emblem of the grounded self who remembers the body, the land, and the wisdom of the earth. The nurturer, the ultimate grandmother.

And so Skywoman Earthwoman was born as way of illustrating that both can exist, and live in union, and within those two female archetypes, also lives:

The woman who travels both outward into the world and inward into the shadow.

The woman who walks through the flames of passion, creativity, change and transformation, cultivating her inner fire.

The woman who swims and wades through waters, emotional healer, carrying softness, flow, and ancestral memory.

Ultimately it was an invitation and a calling to return to the cyclical ways, reminding us:

To slow down.
To look.
To listen.
To learn.

To remember…. To come back to the rhythms of the Earth, and the nature that lives within us.

May this be my offering to all the sky women and earth women in the world trying to find their inner balance and harmony as well as their inner fire and water. I hope you enjoy embarking on this journey with me, perhaps finding your own equilibrium, or perhaps simply learning from all the cultures around us that live in harmony with the land, and their bodies.

May it be a way of retaining all the stories within our hearts and the hearts of those before us, and those to come.

Yasmine in the Jungle,

one skywoman earthwoman to another x