Protection in Hopi Wisdom: Why Women Often Struggle to Set Boundaries
There are teachings that cannot be explained.
They are lived, in the body, before they are even understood.
This one came to me through a plant, in 2010.
Today, I want to talk to you about protection, about sacred boundaries, and about this circle we can draw around ourselves.
What the plant taught me
In 2010, I began a plant diet in the Shipibo tradition, here in Europe, with a European plant. The plant diet is a Shipibo healing method, not the name of a particular plant. This is the traditional framework I followed, with a plant from home.
I didn't yet know what it would teach me. I suddenly became aware of what could enter my space and disturb the plant's energetic work. My attention sharpened. I started, for example, to stop touching others. Not because I was afraid of them, but because I felt something needed to be preserved. It was hard to explain. It might even have seemed excessive from the outside. And yet, for me, it was very concrete.
I often think of the parallel with Covid. During that time, we all experienced a new kind of attention to the invisible. We paid attention to what we touched, to what could enter our bodies, to what could contaminate them.
With the plant, I lived through something that made me think of this, but on another plane.
The plant had made me attentive to what could enter my space and disturb its work. And perhaps this is where the real teaching lies: to protect something, you must first pay attention to it. In caring for the plant, I was also learning, without yet knowing it, to care for my own space. Something had awakened in me: a new vigilance, not rooted in fear, but in awareness of what I was preserving.
And that awareness has never left me.
Why was this boundary so foreign to me?
I have always struggled to say no.
Especially with men.
An insistent look.
A place taken without asking.
A hand placed on my shoulder.
A closeness I hadn't chosen.
I stayed silent.
I let it happen.
And often, I didn't even realize something had been crossed.
This is perhaps what struck me most with the plant. It made visible something I had never truly looked at: my own space.
Before it, I had never really asked myself what I was letting in.
Is this nature, or upbringing?
I asked myself this question for a long time without daring to answer it.
Social psychology has studied, for decades, how girls learn, very early on, to attend to others' needs before their own.
To be kind.
To avoid causing pain.
To yield rather than clash.
To protect the relationship, sometimes at the expense of their own space.
This is not a weakness we are born with.
It is a transmission.
And this transmission is not only individual.
It is woven into a culture, into an upbringing, into a way of teaching girls and women how to inhabit the world.
Not every culture teaches us to inhabit our space in the same way.
Among some Indigenous peoples, this awareness of space, boundaries, and what may or may not enter our field of presence is much more deeply rooted.
This is something I discovered through the Hopi teachings: another way of understanding Protection in Hopi Wisdom, and in particular, the protection of what is sacred.
Protection in Hopi Wisdom: What It Teaches Us
Our culture often teaches us to think of boundaries as something social. A matter of politeness. A line between two people. The teachings I received led me to see it differently: as a space to protect, because it is sacred.
In the Hopi tradition, there exists a Kachina who teaches young girls how to protect and mark the edges of their space.
This teaching moved me deeply, because it isn't simply about learning to say no. It speaks of a much older awareness: knowing where one's own space lies, recognizing it, and not letting just anything cross it.
In the Women's Way, we receive this teaching through this Kachina.
I won't reveal its precise content. In the Hopi tradition, what is sacred is also secret. What is transmitted within a circle of teaching is not meant to be exposed outside it.
But I can share what it awakened in me.
A woman must know where her sacred space begins.
And where it ends.
This is not a matter of distrust toward the world.
It is a matter of awareness.
Because if I don't know where my own space lies, how could I know what may enter it?
A wall, or a boundary?
A wall is born from a wound.
It rises in urgency, and it makes no distinctions.
It stops everything.
The bad.
The good too.
A sacred boundary is different.
It is set with awareness.
It doesn't say: nothing enters.
It says:
Here, I begin.
There, you begin.
Everyone already carries a space around their body.
We build others, without even thinking. The walls of a home. A seat in a car. An office.
We live within limits, every day.
But women often forget to draw one for themselves.
In a love story.
In a family.
In their own living room.
And once we've let something in for a long time without truly looking, it becomes hard to know where to set the limit.
This is where awareness begins.
Your body is sacred
Your body already carries this boundary, even before you think it.
It is sacred.
Not because someone told you so.
Because it holds you, all of you.
To set a sacred boundary around it is not to close yourself off.
It is to recognize its worth.
When someone crosses your space without your consent, something in you may feel invaded.
Learning to recognize that feeling is already the beginning of protection.
And every time you set a clear no, you honor your space.
Respecting yourself begins there.
In this circle we finally dare to draw around ourselves.
Entering someone else's space uninvited
There is also this, in this teaching.
Never cross someone's sacred space without their permission.
To do so is to enter a space that isn't ours.
How many times have I entered someone else's space without being invited?
How many times have I let someone into mine, thinking that saying no would be selfish?
The boundary works both ways.
It protects my space.
And it teaches me to respect the other's.
A daily protection ritual
This ritual is not a Hopi ritual.
I built it from what I understood of this teaching, and from what the plant taught me: protection begins with intention.
I suggest practicing it in the morning, before entering the momentum of the day.
1. Return to your body
Standing, feet on the ground, take a few slow breaths.
Don't try to relax.
Simply try to be present.
Feel your body.
Feel its contours.
Become aware of the space it occupies.
2. Visualize your protective space
Close your eyes and imagine a protective envelope around your body.
It can take the form of a bubble, an egg, a circle of light.
Don't try to give it a perfect shape.
What matters is feeling that your space is there, all around you.
Imagine this envelope protecting your space without enclosing you.
You can breathe.
You can see.
You can hear.
You can go toward others, and others can come toward you.
But not everything crosses this boundary.
You are the one who chooses what enters.
3. Name what you are protecting
Place one hand on your heart, and the other on your belly.
Out loud, if you can, say slowly, three times:
"I am sovereign in my space.
I protect my circle, and I respect yours."
Then stay a few moments in silence.
Then begin your day.
And during the day?
There's no need to repeat the whole ritual.
If you feel a person, a place, or a situation taking up too much space, pause for a few seconds.
Return to your body.
Feel your feet.
Breathe.
Then visualize this envelope around you again.
And you can say to yourself, inwardly:
"I am sovereign in my space.
I protect my circle, and I respect yours."
Stay a few moments in this feeling.
Then continue your day.
What the plant awakened
My diet didn't teach me to close myself off from the world.
It taught me to be attentive.
To care for the plant and honor the work it had come to accomplish, I had to become aware of what could enter my space.
And in caring for it, I began to understand that I also needed to care for myself.
A boundary is not a rejection.
It is a form of respect.
Respecting what has been entrusted to me.
Respecting what happens within me.
Respecting my own space.
To protect oneself, then, is not to close oneself off from the world.
It is knowing where you stand, and being aware of what you let in.
Not out of fear.
Out of respect for what is sacred.
And in the evening?
The circle of protection can also be set before sleep.
In our culture, we've learned to protect our homes, to lock our doors and windows, to check the locks. We think far less about protecting our space while we sleep.
And yet, in the traditions I've encountered, the world doesn't stop at what we can see. It extends into the invisible world too. Sleep is another state of consciousness.
In the evening, before falling asleep, take a few moments to return to your body.
Visualize your circle, then repeat the same prayer.
Protection is not a gesture made once and for all.
It is an attention.
An awareness.
A care we bring to our own space.
To go further
If, in reading these words, you recognized something of your own path, you can continue this exploration.
The Women's Way
This teaching is part of the Women's Way, a transmission from woman to woman around the body, sovereignty, our relationship to the world, and what our mothers and grandmothers weren't always able to pass down to us.
A path to reclaim, step by step, one's own voice and to fully inhabit one's own space.
The teachings
The Women's Way is only one of the teachings I share.
Other paths exist, each opening a different door toward a deeper understanding of oneself, of the living world, and of Hopi tradition.
Living a teaching in person
Some teachings take on another dimension when lived within a circle, in the presence of others.
If you're near Bordeaux, I offer workshops at Studio Yoga With You, in Le Bouscat.
The community
Teachings take on another dimension when lived and shared with others.
The community is a space to continue the path, to exchange, to ask questions, and to no longer walk alone.
"The one who knows their circle also knows their place in the world."
ASKWALI
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