I GO! Edition 34 - Yoni: the sacred origin of a woman’s deepest authority.

This Week: Paris

“Hope lies in living together with all five senses, which is the only way to develop oxytocin, the brain chemical that allows us to empathise with each other. It is what we humans have been doing around campfires for millennia, sharing stories and learning communally.”
— Gloria Steinem, Women’s Forum Global Meeting 2025

What an insanely busy, elating, electric week.

First Paris Infraweek, where I opened the inaugural day and moderated discussions on global economic corridors and the geopolitics of European defence. Then the Women’s Forum Global Meeting - two days of unfiltered conversations on Courage, vibrantly alive with ideas, intellect and generosity. I am still buzzing with it all. And as I met or reconnected with wonderful women change-makers from various walks of life, united by the same inner fire - I felt something ancient stir. A recognition. A remembering.

The power of Yoni.

Yoni is the creative force that moves through the entire universe

Yoni, in its oldest sense, predates language as we use it today. In Sanskrit, one of humanity’s oldest living linguistic systems, yoni means ‘womb’, ‘source’, ‘origin’, ‘abode’, ‘sacred passage’. Over time it has developed parallel meanings: portal, creative force, source of power, intelligence, intuition, mystery.

Yoni is the divine feminine procreative energy.
It designates the birthplace of life, but also the seat of generative power - physical, emotional, and cosmological (Yoni is the symbol of the Hindu goddess Shakti, she who creates and destroys).

It describes the place where life enters, rests, transforms, and emerges anew.
It symbolises not only reproduction but creation in all its forms: ideas, art, wisdom, cycles, renewal.

Over time, patriarchal cultures flattened the concept, reducing it either to modesty or taboo. But the original meaning remains powerful: yoni is the locus of all beginnings, the convergence of instinct and insight, the seat of a woman’s deepest authority.

To “worship” it - for me - is not ritualistic. It is a practice of living in a way that honours what it represents.

It means listening to instinct before noise.
Protecting the inner space where clarity forms.
Making choices from intuition rather than expectation.
Saying yes only where energy expands.
Saying no without apology.

It means treating the body as intelligent.
Allowing warmth to be a form of power.
Letting creation take many shapes - projects, conversations, ideas, connections, decisions.

Listening, applauding, laughing, crying, sharing, challenging each other during the Women’s Forum - I felt the same force that once gathered women around fires, rivers, temples, birthplaces, decision-making circles. A collective charge. A deep force of communion and recognition.

We come from the same source. We create. We endure. We rise.

Fast intelligence & Embodiment Science

Yoni, for me, is a state of being - unapologetic receptivity, fierce creativity, life-making in all its forms, the ability to hold complexity yet still move forward with clarity and instinct. It is also a strong belief that the body is not a container for the mind or an accessory to consciousness but its operating system, its architecture.

As Gloria Steinem stated, it is about living with all five senses. Because our nervous system, sensory receptors, fascia, microbiome, and hormonal pathways shape perception before the mind interprets anything. What we call “intuition,” “instinct,” or “gut feeling” is often the rapid integration of sensory data processed through the body’s intelligence long before thought emerges. Power, in that sense, is physiological. When the body is grounded, open, coherent, aligned, the mind becomes sharper, decisions clearer, presence stronger. This, too, is Yoni: authority that begins in the body before it becomes language.

This week in Paris, surrounded by women whose courage radiates from centre to edge, I felt the pull of the generative feminine force.

Yoni … the source, the circle, the reconnection, the ancient wisdom.

I walk away from this week feeling intensely, defiantly alive.

With love, feminine power and energy,

Charlotte