Shakti Is Not a Concept: Healing Religious Shame Through Yoga and Embodiment

What if everything you were taught to fear is actually sacred?

In this intimate, resonant conversation, Mariana Garcia Flores and Rosalind Atkinson, dear friends and fellow teachers speak about Mariana’s life story which continues to unfold in powerful ways. Raised in a strict Catholic school environment in Mexico, Mariana shares how years of religious repression shaped her understanding of sexuality, embodiment, and spirituality and how the practices of Yoga, meditation, and humanistic psychotherapy helped her unravel those beliefs and come home to her own sacred aliveness.

This episode is not a theoretical conversation. It is an embodied testimony to the power of Yoga as life itself as Shakti, as descent, as the energy that we are. Together, we question the cultural scripts that pit spirit against flesh, and remember what it means to live in a world where the seen is the source.

Subjects Explored

• Growing up Catholic and the repression of the body

• Unlearning religious shame through embodied practice

• How Yoga reunites what doctrine divides

• The holiness of desire and the wisdom of William Blake

• Why the feminine can never be denied, only exiled

• Shakti as the undismissable truth of nature

  Key Quotes

  "Shakti is what we are. There's no denying Shakti."

  "The body is not a shell to the soul. It is the soul."

  "Religion told me that the closer I was to God, the further I should be from the body. Yoga showed me they were never separate."

  "The repression of nature is not safety. It's suffering."

Key Takeaways

• Embodied Awakening – True spiritual life begins when we reclaim the body as sacred.

• Shakti Cannot Be Denied – The feminine principle is life itself—wild, wise, and ever-present.

• Beyond Duality – Spirit and matter are not in opposition. Yoga reveals their unity.

• From Shame to Sovereignty – Dismantling internalized doctrine opens the door to freedom.

• The Holiness of Desire – As William Blake taught, energy is delight. To feel is divine.

• Intimacy is the Practice – Yoga is not an escape from reality but a deep participation in it.