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Dr. Anodea Judith is a dynamic speaker and workshop leader who touches your heart and holds it in eloquent metaphors from beginning to end. Whether it’s about healing the human the soul, awakening the life force, creating your life on purpose, or addressing the world situation, her talks and pictorial power points bring the entire audience into a deep realm of being and purpose and leave them inspired to make change. Anodea takes you into the realm of the sacred, for indeed, the sacred is at the center of Anodea’s purpose, and the center of everything she does.
Hello Anodea! Thanks so much for taking the time to answer these questions. Talk to me about your current feelings and emotions…
I’m excited to be alive. These are incredible times we are living in, and I’m happy to be in my elderhood and enjoying the blessings that come with age. More time, more maturity, less drive to succeed, and just appreciating the finer, more soulful things in life.
“It’s interesting that even as the outer world
seems to get worse and worse,
those I know who are on a spiritual path
have lives that are getting better and better.”
How has 2020 been for you?
2020 has been a mixed bag. On the one hand, I have felt terrible angst over the corruption of American politics, the death and suffering due to the pandemic, and deeply concerned about climate change and our failure to address it adequately. Yet personally, it’s been a great year for me. After three decades of flying on airplanes once or twice a month, to staying at home for nine months straight, I’ve had a chance to slow down and really catch up with myself. It was much needed. It’s interesting that even as the outer world seems to get worse and worse, those I know who are on a spiritual path have lives that are getting better and better. Or maybe it’s just my age group that is old enough to finally be harvesting the gifts of wisdom!
Tell me about your early life, and your journey to where you are at present.
I was fortunate to grow up in a family where creativity was highly valued. In fact, we were only allowed to leave a mess if it was a creative project in progress. I taught myself to read by age 4, learned to play piano at age 5, got my first oil paints at 10, and had my own garden, and sold strawberries in front of my house at 11. So I was always creative and entrepreneurial. I was fascinated by what made people tick, and my parents’ divorce when I was 11 put me in the position of being their therapist, for which I was wholly unqualified at the time. So that led me to a desire to study psychology, and my love of art took a back seat, while my love of healing became the forward thrust of my life. I also started yoga in 1975 and that brought me into the chakras. It was only after I wrote Wheels of Life that I went to graduate school and got my Master’s and Doctorate. My formal education was the least informative part of my learning. But I did my graduate work while mothering 4 kids, being president of a large organization, remodelling our house and struggling with Lyme disease. That was a time! Currently, I am most interested in what serves our collective awakening. I’m rather tired of the spiritual narcissism that is only about furthering oneself and doesn’t look at the bigger picture.
“Put on loud music, dance, shake out
your arms and legs, make sound,
and discharge some of
that energy.”
I first read Wheels of Life during a 200hour Yoga Teacher Training, and it’s a book that I pick up on a regular basis. I love the story you share in the preface, and how the idea came to you during meditation – can you share more on that?
I was living in Berkeley, California, all set to go off to art school in New York City, but had recently started TM meditation in 1972. So one day while I was meditating, I had an out of body experience and saw myself sitting there in meditation with a book about chakras on my lap, written by me. I knew then the whole trajectory of my life would take a turn. I sold most everything I had (which wasn’t much), bought an old Jeep and went and lived alone on top of a mountain over a mile uphill from the nearest 4 wheel drivable road. That was my “ashram” period, but it was with Mother Nature, not a guru. I learned a lot during that time, and that’s when my basic understanding of the chakras came to me. The rest was research. After my son was born in 1982, I went to graduate school, had a healing practice for 20 years, then as he grew up and I had more freedom to travel, I took to the road and taught workshops worldwide. I’ve now taught live in 20 countries, and reached well over a 150 countries online.
A lot of artists and creative people will be reading this, what advice can you share surrounding visualization?
Visualization, like anything, is a practice. The more you do it, the better you get at it. But just like a painter needs colors on her palette to make a painting, we need to drink in light with which to visualize. (We’re all light deprived.) So I teach a practice I call “Capturing Light.” Whenever you see something beautiful – a bright color, a sparkle off a window, a candle flame, a smile –open your eyes wide and really drink it in. As if you were one of those old fashioned cameras that takes awhile to make a picture. Then close your eyes and see if you can still see the image on the inside. If not, open them and look again, more closely. Repeat, until you can see the image clearly with your eyes closed. You have just made a deposit to your visual bank account!
Image above – example of Anodea’s art – A 19 foot diameter platform in Anodea’s back yard, “the benches are all on a slight slope and the galaxy is the stage, making it a natural amphitheater”.
How can we encourage more spiritual thinking within Western society?
By being a shining example of awakening through our actions and how we treat each other. Just being “spiritual” however, does not always translate to action and behaviour, which I think are the real test of spirituality. I’ve seen a lot of great people who do not meditate, and a lot of meditators who are quite clueless in a lot of ways. Not that I’m knocking meditation, having practiced it for 50 years, but it alone does not make you a better person.
For people who have had little or no experience with the chakra system, how do you best explain it to them?
I describe the chakra system as the architecture of the soul. Just as bones and muscles form the architecture of the body, the chakras are the energetic organs of the soul. We all have a similar pattern, but it is also unique for each one of us, just like the human face. The individual chakras are energetic habits in the energy body. But my formal definition for a chakra is:
“An organizational center for the reception,
assimilation, storage, and expression
of life force energy.”
I also describe chakras as chambers in the temple of the body, programs in our psyche, and portals between the inner and outer world.
For people who have been suffering from stress and anxiety, particularly throughout the pandemic, what advice can you share to help them manage their wellbeing…
Anxiety is a result of having too much “charge” (think life force) without the ability to properly discharge. We carry charge through our emotions, triggers, challenges, and practices. When we’re cooped up indoors through being in lockdown, we don’t have any place for that energy to go. It gets trapped in the body and becomes anxiety. The best thing to do is put on loud music, dance, shake out your arms and legs, make sound, and discharge some of that energy. That will bring your charge down to a more manageable level.
Eastern Body, Western Mind fascinated me, you offer a very refreshing approach to the westernized Jungian perspective of psychoanalysis and the more eastern yogic philosophies. Tell me about how this book came about, and why you feel it’s important…(I’ve recommended this book to so many people, who tend to have either a westernized psychoanalysis view, or the latter.)
I was in private practice at the time as a body oriented psychotherapist. In my clients, I was tracking the associations between their stories of their upbringing and their issues in life, viewing it all through the lens of the chakra system. I was a passionate reader of psychology and philosophy at the time, especially Jung and the somatic therapists, such as Alexander Lowen or Wilhelm Reich. I have a knack for seeing patterns and connections, which served me as a therapist, and I saw the universality of these wounds, just as Wilhelm Reich did with the character structures. No one had written about it, so I felt compelled to do so. So my love of spirituality and psychology came together.
What do you think Jungs’ response to Eastern Body Western Mind would be?
Oh, wow, I am humbled to even consider this! I think he would be very interested in the parts that correlate to body structure, as Jung’s view of the psyche didn’t focus on the physical very much. Jung did write a book about the chakras, which was part of my research, but he saw them rather abstractly, as most people still do today. But I think he would be pleased how I coordinated the process of individuation, and included the elements of light and shadow, anima and animus, and the transcendent function.
Tell me more about your clairvoyant training…
I was always a bit clairvoyant, but I couldn’t count on it. Sometimes it was there, sometimes it wasn’t. When I trained in the late seventies at the Berkeley Psychic Institute, I realized they were seeing the chakras much like I was. They taught me to stay in my body, to have better boundaries, and to train my mind to focus. They also gave me a language to describe what I was sensing, even if that language was kind of jargon-like. Then I got so I could count on it, and I went on to do readings for many years. However, I stopped doing that quite a long time ago, because I felt that people gave much too much credence to what “psychics” have to say. I didn’t want that much power over anyone.
What has been a pivotal moment in your career?
Well, I think my time of living off the grid on the land was formative. I grew the least during my years of graduate school, and learned most of what I know and work with, either from workshops, my own research, or my own therapy!
Tell me more about your time as high priestess, and later, president of the Church of all Worlds…?
That was part of my period of living on the land. I lived in a magical community that conducted rituals for the turning of the seasons and the balance of nature. A religion with a goddess gave me a way to hold power that was feminine more than masculine. My magical training taught me how everything is connected, and gave me a rich source of mythology and pageantry to feed my soul. That study of mythology informed my work in the book in the book: THE GLOBAL HEART AWAKENS, which looks at the evolutionary flow of mythologies through time, from goddess worship to our current domineering sky god philosophy. What we now need is a new myth that balances worship of the masculine and feminine divine, and that makes us the Divine Child. IN mythology, the Divine Child has powers beyond either of its parents. So what is coming will be way beyond anything that has been before.
Do you think holograms, virtual reality and other new technologies will aid visualisation and creative thinking?
Like every new technology, there are wonders and benefits, but also a shadow. Cars are great things that allow us to see the world, but they contribute to climate change, which could be our demise. Smart phones are incredible devices, but we are seeing the effects of addiction, social media influence on fake news, and other unexpected consequences. I suspect the same will be true of things like VR, AI, 5G, and other technological “wonders.” They will boost creativity, but take us further away from reality. They will make us hyper-connected to each other in some ways and more disconnected from ourselves, each other, and nature in other ways. They will distract us from our pain, yet prevent us from taking the steps necessary to heal that pain.
Will we see a decrease in the more shamanic and yogic ways of meditation and visualising?
Shamanism is a good antidote to mechanized living, so the more technological we become, the more we will yearn for shamanic experiences. The benefits of yoga and meditation are so numerous that these techniques will still be around for awhile, just as they already have been here for centuries if not millennia.
How can technology aid the promotion of shamanic knowledge and ancient spiritual beliefs?
Technology can provide and propagate information, but it can rob us of true experience. Just take the pandemic—thank heavens we have the technology of Zoom to stay somewhat connected. But Zoom is not the same as face to face connection, hugs, sharing a meal, or going for a walk in nature. It’s just not. But we could get so used to it, that it becomes the stand-in for reality, and we forget the wonders of what’s real.
What do you have coming up in 2021?
Triyoga in London is sponsoring a virtual 7 month chakra intensive that will cover both theory and practice, with two short workshops a month. I’ll be doing some contributions to yoga teacher trainings out of Dallas. I may teach another course for Shift Network. But I also have a number of self-paced online video courses, such as my Charge Mastery Program, or my Architecture of the Soul, or the course I did for MindValley, the Chakra Healing Quest. All of this can be found on my website.
What have you found to be the biggest challenges, and learnings of 2020?
Teaching students I can’t see or touch. Staying connected to my world wide community through zoom. Figuring out how to serve in new ways. Trying not to gain weight when the gyms are closed!
The year is 2070, tell me about your visions for what the world looks like?
We made the course corrections for climate change, but much of it was too late to avoid a pretty big change of life. Population is reduced, so the world is becoming greener again. Technology is lighter – in that we use less resources to stay connected. There’s been a spiritual revolution, money is a thing of the past, and people are valued for what they give not what they take. We work less hours, and have more time for creativity. Women have more positions of power and things associated with the feminine, like nurturance and care for each other are more highly valued. But we narrowly dodged the bullet of climate change and are still adjusting to its effects.
What rules do you live by?
Be excellent to each other. Create beauty everywhere. Choose love whenever possible. Practice, practice, practice.
How do you get into your creative flow?
By avoiding what takes me out of it. When I reduce distractions, busyness, pressure, and let myself just be, the flow is there. I also try to stay inspired by witnessing other’s creativity.
What’s your philosophy for life?
We are undergoing the initiation to our planetary adulthood, as young gods and goddesses, tasked with creating a miracle. That miracle is an eco-spiritual awakening to a new kind of human, and an inseparable connection with nature. But I can sum it up with one sentence: Our purpose here is to create Heaven on Earth.
And your definition of success?
Leave something better than you found it. If you do that, you’ve been successful.
What advice would you give to your younger self?
Life is long. Don’t hurry. Fully savor every moment for what it is. You will get there if you keep putting one foot in front of the other, just keep on learning, continue healing and stay open.
Tell me about your biggest “failure”, and what you learned?
I don’t know if it was a failure so much but my biggest struggle was with many years of debilitating Lyme disease. Fortunately, that is pretty much over now. But it taught me compassion, forced me to practice better self care, and really listen to what was good for me.
Recommendations – what book, music and/or artist can you share with readers?
My favourite contemporary artist is probably Alex Grey because he paints what others only imagine. Musically, the Beatles have to have been the greatest songwriters ever. My favourite book is actually Erich Jantsch, THE SELF-ORGANIZING UNIVERSE, but it’s a dense read for anyone that isn’t fascinated with evolution. But I’ve read that book two or three times. For fiction, it has to be THE MISTS OF AVALON.
