There's a story older than writing about a goddess who chose to go down. At each of the underworld's seven gates, Inanna gave up a piece of her power. Then she rose, and she was not the same woman.
Our time together follows its shape.
Embodiment · Eros · Ritual
There is nothing more intimate than the truth.
1:1 work for women standing in an ending, a birth, a loss or a reinvention. Over three to six months we work through the body, desire and ritual until you can feel what you want, and start living from it.
Join the waitlist Spaces open early 2027.
You're not broken.
You're hungry, and you were taught to be a little embarrassed about it.
Maybe your desires have gone unmet for so long that you got tired of asking. Wanting less started to feel safer.
Then something cracked open, or it's been quietly cracking for years.
Either way, the old life has stopped fitting and the new one isn't here yet.
That in-between place has a name. I call it the Descent, and it's where I do my best work.
I'll walk all the way down with you, and stay until you rise wanting things again ~ out loud, and without apology.
1:1 containers of three or six months, in Austin or online.
This is for you if…
- You can't remember the last time you wanted something just for you without explaining why.
- You're crossing a major threshold (motherhood, marriage, divorce, a new direction in your work) and trying to find yourself again in the middle of it.
- You hold everyone. Nobody holds you.
- Pleasure has gone flat. Not only in bed. Everywhere.
- You've done years of inner work and can explain your patterns beautifully. You're still living them.
- You want ritual that fits a real Tuesday, with kids and dishes in it.
This probably isn't the right fit if you're in acute crisis or need trauma therapy, or if you're looking for couples or relationship coaching. Write to me anyway and I'll help you find the right person.
The work
Five ways inEros: the power of your hunger
Desire is the most honest compass you have.
Eros is life force: appetite, pleasure, creativity, the want that gets you out of bed. Through breath, movement and attention we wake it back up, and you learn to follow it instead of managing it.
What changes: you feel more alive, more radiant and more self-expressed, and the people around you can see it.
Coming home to the body
Your body knew before you did.
Embodiment practice done standing, moving, breathing.
What changes: you move through the world with a confidence other people can feel.
Truth-telling
The work is letting it be true.
We slow down enough to hear it, then you practise saying it.
What changes: you advocate for yourself, in everyday life and in high-stakes rooms.
Shedding old skins
Some of who you've been was armour.
We loosen the roles that have hardened around you.
What changes: you drop the masks you wore to be respected and lead from rooted feminine power.
Ritual for the threshold
An unmarked ending leaks into everything after.
Simple rituals drawn from the seasons, myth and the plants.
What changes: practices that fit how you're actually wired, neurodivergence included.
How we work together
The Descent and Return
The Descent First weeks
We start where you actually are. We name what's ending and what you're hungry for.
The Gates Middle months
One thing set down at a time, at a pace your nervous system can hold.
The Return Final month
You come back up wanting things, with rituals that hold after our work ends.
"The creational process is a relationship between you and the sacred. A dance between the seen & the hidden." ~ Phoenix Waters
About
Hello, I'm Phoenix.
I've started over more times than I can count.
Some of the gates I've walked through:
- coming into this life as an adoptee
- becoming a mother
- two babies I carried and released back to the Mystery
- a partnership that went through its biggest death and its most beautiful rebirth
I don't hold women in these places from the outside. I've been there first, on my knees in the Soil.
Most of what I teach, I learned in my body long before I could put it into words. I've sat in sweat lodges for many years and danced as a Sundancer in the Lakota tradition. I'm a student of Hridaya. I trained as an Attunement Therapy practitioner, and right now I'm deep in John Wineland's 1,000-hour embodiment teacher training. Somewhere along the way I also opened a restaurant, farmed, made herbal medicine and held a community temple space.
Over more than a decade I've had the blessing of sitting with hundreds of brave humans. Watching a woman reclaim a part of herself she'd given up on is honestly as much fun as doing it myself.
I live by one sentence that took me years to believe: my needs are a gift to others.
These days I'm in Austin with my husband, our son, and two beautiful old dogs, Juno and Sunfox.
What I've witnessed
Over the years I've watched women…
- leave an abusive marriage, and find that leaving was the very key to their aliveness and their success
- find ways, through embodiment and ritual, to live with their neurodivergence that had never worked for them before
- move countries
- start dancing again
- realise they were a singer all along
- remember how to be a lover after sixteen years of marriage spent living like roommates
- change the culture of the companies they work for, by bringing their wisdom, warmth and inner knowing into the rooms where big decisions get made
The common thread: they became more confident in who they are and how they move through the world, and visibly more radiant and self-expressed. They spoke up for themselves at home, in the bedroom and in the boardroom. Knowing what you want, and asking for it from a place of grounded power, is a skill few of us were ever taught.
Working together
In my 1:1 work I bring all of me to meet all of you.
I will love you, and I will confront you, sometimes in the same breath.
It's an intimate unfolding, and I'll match every ounce of energy you bring.
- Format
- 1:1 containers of 3 or 6 months
- Sessions
- Weekly, 60 to 90 minutes
- Where
- In person in Austin, or online
- Between sessions
- A practice and a ritual each week, voice-note support, and a recording of every session
- Investment
- Shared with the waitlist first
- Opening
- A small number of spaces, early 2027
Three months suits a woman at one clear threshold. Six months is for a deeper rebuild, when more than one thing is ending at once. We'll choose together on a first call.
Join the waitlistWords from women I've walked with
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~ [First name]"[Client quote]"
~ [First name]"[Client quote]"
~ [First name, city]Questions women ask
Is this therapy?
No. It's body-based guidance and ritual. If you need clinical support, I'll tell you, and I'll help you find it.
When you say Eros, is this about sex?
Eros is bigger than sex. It's your appetite for life itself. Sometimes sexuality is part of what wakes up, and it's welcome here. Sessions are always fully clothed, with no touch unless we've agreed to it beforehand.
Do I need experience with embodiment or ritual?
No. You need a body and a willingness to tell the truth. We'll build from there.
Is this couples or relationship coaching?
No. Your relationships will feel it, though. This work is about your relationship with yourself.
Online or in person?
Both work. Austin women can meet me in person; everyone else meets me online.
What does joining the waitlist commit me to?
Nothing. You'll hear from me first when spaces open, with the format and investment, and you decide then.
Join the waitlist
If something in you leaned forward while you read this, trust it. That's the hunger I've been talking about.
You'll hear from me first when spaces open in early 2027, with the format and investment. No spam, ever.
Your name is on my list, and I'll write to you myself when spaces open. Until then I share weekly on Instagram at @phoenix_waters_alchemy.
In Truth & Beauty,
Phoenix