Featuring Mischa Estrada: Understanding our Root lies in our darkest moments to reveal the most raw state of our essence.
Talking to Mischa felt like immersing myself in an audio poetry book. Mischa shared her truth with grace and gentleness as she delved into the darker times of her life, explaining that those times were in-fact pivotal to learning the importance of balancing darkness and light.
In those moments, she encountered the potency of allowing oneself to experience “getting messy”, being raw and embracing deep vulnerability – these three key ingredients laid the foundation of her avid sense of freedom and liberation, which she fully embodies today.
Mischa’s story:
Upon first meeting Mischa, she embraces you with the warmth of a thousand hearts; one would have assumed she was raised in an environment rich with love and support.
Yet this was not true for Mischa; she had a challenging upbringing, riddled with neglect and limited resources to help support her dreams as she was growing up.
From a young age, Mischa learned how to be content with what she had, while also building the gumption to go after what she wanted.
Mischa became a natural go-getter. At nine years old, she decided she didn’t want any more hand-me-downs, so she created a business of doing odd jobs for people so she could buy her own clothes. From this early age, Mischa always found joy in work and had a natural fire in her belly to find opportunities in life.
At 18, Mischa began practicing yoga and became increasingly committed over the years. In 2015 at age 50, she began cultivating a deeper awareness of her mind & body connection through daily advanced Kundalini & Vinyasa practices and meditation.
Her dedication to her practice and subsequent connection to her intuition was the reason she survived an extremely close encounter with death.
Mischa tenderly but distinctly guided us back to a decade prior.
She was due to have a seemingly simple operation, being at peak health with her yoga practice, there were limited concerns. Once the operation was complete, the doctors told Mischa she could go home, but her intuition told her something wasn’t right. And indeed, it was not.
She had an internal bleed and needed to undergo substantive surgery to save her life. She’d lost over half her blood. If she had gone home that night, she would have died in her sleep.
It took Mischa three months to recover.
During this time, she sat in darkness. Both intentionally and literally. She sat with herself, with no noise and no light, allowing herself to be held in the darkness. Understanding she needed to nourish and replenish her body before coming back into the light. Her relationship with darkness changed to one without resistance or fear. It softly surrounded her. She let it in and it brought her to a deep peace.
She recalls that time fondly as, “finding nirvana in the wall”.
She remained curious, following the threads of light as they appeared.
Germinating in a dark pod and slowly bringing in the light, she began to heal and grow.
In the darkness, Mischa felt the most profound sense of rawness and vulnerability. Being raw and messy and accepting imperfection during the recovery process was like weaving through a tapestry of experiences. Each element contributed to the overall picture, but the the root that held it all together was embracing deep vulnerability as she stitched the fabric of her wellbeing together, perhaps for the first time in her life.
She found her path and committed to it.
Mischa’s life has been one of constant curiosity and courage.
Following her curiosity time and time again, enabled a powerful connection with her heart. It hasn’t always made sense, but each time her heart 'lurched' towards something, a photo, a lecture, a play; she honoured it by fully leaning into the experience of what life had to offer. She began to blossom.
She gave herself permission to be curious, nothing was off limits.
I asked Mischa how she was able to connect with her heart in such an influential way. She said, “it comes back to remembering your inner child.” A time when you were allowed to be playful and messy, to use your imagination – a lot of liberation came when she gave her little girl permission to run free. Mischa emphasised that giving yourself permission is different from ‘trying.’
Trying isn’t doing.
“Trying” is ultimately setting oneself up to fail. For when one tries to do something and doesn’t succeed, one can say, “well, at least I tried.” When Mischa removed the word “try” from her mindset, she began to truly live. She finally started having experiences she incarnated to Earth to have. These experiences brought her much joy.
“It’s on all of us to continue evolving. If we don't keep ourselves evolving, that is when we die on some level; people lose their ability to dream and get caught in a loop where it becomes more difficult to feel alive.”
A lot of people want to arrive, be there, and be done, as though it is a simple formula. Life doesn’t work that way.
If we’re stuck in the mud, curiosity and playfulness will help us feel creative enough to find the solution, which might be as simple as actually enjoying the mud! It doesn’t have to be perfect. It never is. It is a constant, slow sometimes messy process which takes commitment.
By aligning with our heart and nature as guide, and embracing inevitable change, we embark on a journey toward a more fulfilling experience, transcending the routines of daily life.
I asked Mischa what was her biggest lesson so far; she said:
"Learning to allow and embrace tenderness. To be more tender with myself. To soften and be more vulnerable with others – it is through those moments we can access a more playful and enjoyable life – our birthright."
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