Swamping: Turning Hot Mess into Holy Magic

Swamping is a tool of The Womanly Arts taught by Mama Gena, founder of said school and author of Pussy: A Reclamation. She’s doing incredible work out in the world helping women light themselves, and each other, up. I just adore her. She might as well have written the Bible, in my book!

The actual process of Swamping stemmed from the need for women to gather and honor the clogged-up emotional gunk in their systems that was weighing them down. We are talking gunk that wasn’t getting the airtime it needed because life doesn’t always allow for, say, screaming your face off while walking down the sidewalk. (Although, now that I’m writing this, I have more compassion for the folks who actually do that.)

So, Swamping was created by Mama Gena. She called in her girlfriends, and they rented a yoga studio they could take over for an hour. They dressed the part with combat boots, shirts proclaiming their inner bitches, trash bag outfits… whatever brought forth on the outside what they were trying to move and transmute emotionally on the inside. Pretty cool.

Some women journaled before their Swamps. What were they trying to release that they had been hanging on to? The boss with the unrealistic deadlines? The person who cut them off yesterday? The pain of tragic news? Whatever it was, they came ready and willing to move the energy behind it.

Evocative music played. LOUDLY.

There was a microphone women could grab and speak into: shouting out their pain, suffering, and gripes.

They moved. They shook. They smacked the walls with dish towels. They even beat pillows.

And then, the air would clear a little bit. Tears and giggles would emerge, along with smiles. The women would gather and start bringing their light back in…lighting up themselves and, consequently, every woman there.

They would do this by witnessing one another in what Mama Gena calls the Holy Trinity, where they round out the Swamp by sharing their brags, gratitudes, and desires. Instead of ignoring the muck, they learned to transmute it. Skillfully and artfully, they used their hot messiness to take them higher.