In April 2022, I spoke at the Global Counterterrorism Institute’s panel talk on “Women in Extremism” and asked the question of whether women’s rights as the West has interpreted them, interfere with women’s needs. Did the drive to push a ‘strong independent woman’ annex a woman from her innate and intuitive need for connection?

“This is the only prayer I know. This is the only prayer that only I know. This is my prayer, in the tongue of my embodiment. A language only I know.” — Shireen Qudosi. A practice in embodiment through non-linear movement that is as sacred as any inherited prayer.

The cave, a geological cavity, is allegorical code for going inward. The underworld is a state of creation and dreams, the weaving together of things, of attachment and detachment. Ushered by forms of silence, descent into the underworld cuts the fantasy that tethers us to world outside. The outer world that determines what is ‘normal’ is created by the same systems that have taught us to see the underworld as dark and fearful, systems that have pushed humanity further away from a true homecoming.