Movement Medicine Mandala

The Mandala- INTRODUCTION

The Movement Medicine Mandala is a symbolic map of the teachings that make up Movement Medicine. It's made up of 21 focuses, which we call "gateways." Each gateway opens up a landscape of ongoing enquiry for the work of embodying soul in all aspects of your life. As you discover more and more of the inherent medicine of who you are, the gateways become like barometer of how you are evolving and developing throughout the different developmental stages of life.

The Movement Medicine Mandala functions as a kind of compass, providing you with a powerful orientation system for your life journey. It offers a rich territory for ongoing embodied enquiry, discovery and growth.

History

The Movement Medicine Mandala emerged at the beginning of the new millenium, a few years before Movement Medicine was launched into the world. Ya'Acov and I has been working intensively with Gabrielle Roth and the 5 Rhythms for 18 years and knew it was time to move on. Our own work was coming through in stronger and stronger ways.

We asked ourselves: "What really helps?." At that point we'd already had 20+ years of working in the field of embodied human development, healing and transformation with 5 Rhythms, Gestalt Psychotherapy, Family Constellations and Shamanic practice and we wanted to weave together what we had learnt in a way that made sense to us, whilst honouring the incredible teachers who had guided us along the way. Ya'Acov had received the vision of the mandala through the culmination of a 13-year journey with his ancestry who had died in Auschwitz. Later he was told during our Apprenticeship in the Amazon that it was up to us to crack the code of the mandala and discover its meaning. At the same time, Susannah had received the name of our work in the most powerful dream she had ever had.

So we worked in all the ways we knew, movement, ceremony, enquiry, until the mystery of the mandala revealed itself to us in a consistent way. That was the beginning of what we imagine will be a lifelong journey of discovering more and more precisely the healing and creative potential of what the Movement Medicine Mandala is?
On this page we share wth you a little of what we have understood so far.

"SHAMANISM IS INDIGENOUS TO ITS OWN CULTURE."

- Gabrielle Roth

We continue to be inspired by Gabrielle Roth, our teacher for 18 years, who said that "shamanism is indigenous to its own culture." She meant that a shaman knows the suffering and dis-ease of their own culture through having worked with these within themselves. This doesn't mean that we cannot learn from shamans from other cultures. We certainly have and continue to do so. And we are super grateful for that. It simply means that healing methodologies and understandings evolve to meet the wounds they are designed to transform.

Movement Medicine is a contemporary tradition which is inspired by and honours indigenous traditions. It is not an imitation or copy. Anything that has been shared with us by indigenous traditions is integrated with the express permission of those cultures. The feathers and beads that are part of our work now have been given to us and indeed we have been asked to wear them in ceremony as a direct honouring of and connection with those people and peoples who gave them to us.

So what is the suffering, the dis-ease of our culture which Movement Medicine addresses? One way to name it is disconnection. Disconnection from the sensation and wisdom of our own bodies, from our hearts, from each other, from the earth, from the sacred nature of life, from our own sense of belonging, of purpose, and from the mystery, awe and gratitude of being alive at all on this extraordinary blue green planet.

In Movement Medicine the Mandala and the 21 gateways give us a way to attend to this pain and find the most creative approach to healing and re-connection. Movement Medicine supports ecstasis, the wild and tender surrender to the beat that movement brings. Through practice, we discover and develop our sense of being, belonging and contributing, as we learn to stand up, grow and play our role fully in life.

THE 21 GATEWAYS of the Movement medicine mandala

Now let's go through the mandala one section at a time. Here are all the 21 gateways with their names:

🔥 why the phoenix?🔥

Because nothing says transformation like a bird that bursts into flames and is reborn from its own ashes. The Phoenix is not just mythical creature—it’s a powerful invocation. Why? Because to live fully, we must learn to let go - to learn the dance of rising, shining and returning to ashes. And to rise again. And again. And again.

The Phoenix is the part of us that refuses to stay stuck in old stories, even when those stories are soaked in sorrow, shame, or centuries of silence.

Now, here’s how Phoenix flew into the mandala.

Years ago, Ya’Acov stood in Auschwitz, doing deep ancestral work in a place soaked in horror. There, amid the silence and the shadows, something profound stirred. He faced the fire of grief, rage, and unspoken sorrow—his own, his ancestors’, the collective. And in the aftermath of that burning, something unexpected rose: a flicker of life. A glimmer of what could come after. Not denial. Not forgetting. But the possibility of transformation rooted in truth.

And then came the dream.

In the years before Movement Medicine came into being, Ya’Acov dreamed of the Phoenix Festival—a great celebration of rebirth. In the dream, people whose people carried ancestral trauma or their own, from all walks of life gathered, to work, to listen, to hear each other's stories, and to heal. The festival became a celebration of life. And from their movement, light and colour and joy emerged. From that dream, and the work that we had been doing already for nearly 20 years, the invocation at the centre of our work was born:

“Every human being, given enough love and resource, can rise from the ashes of their suffering and create a new story. We can become embodied life artists, taking the raw material of our experience and creating something that aligns with our soul purpose—to become part of the change we wish to see, and to pass something of value on to our descendants.”

That’s why the Phoenix is at the centre of our mandala. It’s not a decoration—it’s a commitment. To the truth that we can transform. That we are not defined by what has happened to us, but by how we respond. And that our healing is not just for ourselves, but for the generations to come.

Finally, the Phoenix represents the Great Mystery and just as the Tao says:
From the One came the Two.
Unity gave birth to polarity — yin and yang, light and dark, inhale and exhale.

From the Two came the Three.
The dance between opposites called forth the Yun - rhythm, the breath, the dynamic space — the Tao moving through form.

From the Three came the Ten Thousand Things.
Life unfolded. Countless forms, beings, stories, and mysteries — all expressions of the One, playing in the many.

yin, yang & yun

We have used these terms because they are much better suited to how we work than masculine and feminine. We acknowledge the wisdom of the Yin - Yang symbol known as Taijitu. The symbol first appeared around the Song Dynasty in China (960–1279 CE).

It was popularized by Zhou Dunyi, a Neo-Confucian scholar, who used it to illustrate the cosmic evolution from the Tao to yin and yang, and on into the ten thousand things.

🌙 Yin in Movement Medicine🌙

In Movement Medicine, Yin isn’t passive—it’s powerful. It’s the root system, the listening field, the quiet intelligence of the body that doesn’t push, doesn’t strive, doesn’t need to prove anything. Yin is the part of us that knows how to receive, how to rest, how to yield without giving up.

We dance deep to know the difference between Yin's shadow and essence. In shadow, the loss of ground, the collapse into passivity, becoming fog not depth, inertia not rest. In shadow, Yin subsumes—avoiding directness, and controlling through withdrawal. Passive aggression: the unspoken no, the pseudo-softness that manipulates instead of yields.

In its essence, Yin invites us to slow down and drop in. To soften the edges. To meet gravity like a long-lost friend. To feel what’s really going on under the surface. Yin movement reveals the more subtle truths. It opens the door to embodied presence and connection. Imagine being so rooted in the depth and intensity of Yin, that you can welcome and ground the intensity of Yang. An invitation not a demand. Yin says: “Come, bring it all.”

☀️ Yang in Movement Medicine☀️

In Movement Medicine, Yang is the spark of action, the courage to show up, express ourselves clearly, stand tall. It’s direction, expression, focus. We dance to know the difference between the shadow Yang - out of touch with Yin, hard-edged, controlling, dominating - and Yang as it is - conscious, protective, the active principle that makes space for Yin to flower. The kind of power that builds bridges, dances with purpose, and protects what it loves.

As an inspiration for movement, Yang calls us to expand. To take up space. To be precise. It’s the the warrior heart, the clear 'No!' and the clear 'Yes!' It’s hips pulsing, feet pounding, voice rising. It’s doing in service of being.

Yang is what moves the dream into action. It’s the dance of determination, clarity, momentum. The will to create. To build. To say: this matters—and I’m here for it.

yun - the fruit of the dance 🌙 + ☀️ = 🌈✨

Yun is what’s created from the dance of Yin and Yang — how they meet, love, hate, how they make love, how they fight, how they make newborn, always evolving movement artistry int he now.

In the shadow, Yun becomes distortion: confusion, control, disconnection, war. Yin and Yang cancel each other out, push each other away, twist around each other in power games and silence. We all know that dance — its been around a long while. It runs in our blood.

But there’s another way.

When Yin roots and Yang rises in right relationship, Yun emerges as something luminous. A felt sense of harmony. A clarity of purpose. The shimmering third thing that wasn’t there before. It’s the essence that reveals itself after the storm — the unique flavour of emerging soul expressed through embodied presence.

Yun is coherence. It’s the very real outcome of responsible honesty, mutual respect and upholding. It's the foundation of what most people are seeking - a passionate peace where opposites create life rather than destroying it.

tHE 4 ELEMENTS AND DIRECTIONS

Now let's come to the 4 elements in the 4 directions.

We are elemental beings and we are literally made of what we call the Unbroken intelligence of these elements. Learning to move as these elements do is a never-ending journey that gives us more ground, passion, fluidity and spaciousness. To return to them time after time is an ongoing education for what resources us every second of every day of our lives.

THE 9 GATEWAYS

So now let's go on to look at the 9 gateways which form an arc over the top of the centre. These are divided into 3 groups of 3, from left to right:
1. Journey of Empowerment: Body, Heart and Mind (vertical) - sometimes called "The Vertical Axis".

2. The Journey of Responsibility: Past, Present and Future (horizontal from back to front) sometimes called "The Arc of Time".

3. Harvest: Fulfilment, Interconnection and Realisation (horizontal, lateral - from side to side) - often called "The Harvest".

These 9 gateways, as they are shown above, are a 2 dimensional way of describing a 3 dimensional "star", with three axis.

THE VERTICAL AXIS

The first axis is the vertical axis - the Journey of Empowerment - in which we learn how to awaken and interweave the intelligences of our body, heart and our mind. This creates what we often call the triple woven intelligence of the soul, or simply, is a journey of empowerment.

THE ARC OF TIME

The second axis runs from behind us (representing the past) to in front of us (representing the future) with the present being signified by the line where we are now. The past goes back to all that we have lived, our ancestors and right back to the beginning of life on earth. The future stretches forward to the next minutes, days, weeks and years, through the rest of our lives, past out own deaths - and into the future, where (whether or not we have biological children) are ancestors of those who follow.