The Myth of Persephone

Persephone (pur SEF oh nee), the daughter of Zeus and Demeter, was out picking flowers one day when Hades, the god of the underworld, being a desperately eligible bachelor with severely limited wooing skills, abducted the young woman to have her sit beside him where he reigned as King of the Dead.

Her mother, Demeter was goddess of the harvest. In her mourning of the loss of Persephone, she went on strike and brought about a bitter-cold induced famine. She nagged Zeus, god of the heavens, to rescue their only child. Zeus bade Hades return Persephone—if she had not yet tasted the food of the dead. When it had been discovered that she had already munched on some measly pomegranate seeds, the arrangement had to be tweaked. The result: she still had to spend one-third of the year with her hubby, but the other two-thirds could be spent with her beloved mummy.

When Persephone was with Hades, her mother refused to let anything grow on Earth. In short, she invented winter. When her daughter came back to her, spring would kick in and make the Earth bountiful and beautiful again.

At any rate, the myth of Persephone illustrates the cycle of the seasons, the constant renewal of life, and the internal and external goings on in nature. The same cycles exist within each of us, too. At Persephone's Garden, healing (aka, a bringing back of spring) is cultivated through bodywork. A wide variety of techniques are employed to uncover the beneath-the-surface causes of illness or infirmities and , as partners, to focus on their remedies.