Mātrikā’s Muse

“This book is powerful, and it will benefit many different kinds of people.”

– Elisabeth A. Benard, Author: The Sakya Jetsunmas:
The Hidden World of Tibetan Female Lamas

Mātrikā’s Muse

“This book is powerful, and it will benefit many different kinds of people.”

– Elisabeth A. Benard, Author: The Sakya Jetsunmas: The Hidden World of Tibetan Female Lamas

Mātrikā's Muse: A Journey to Awakening Through the Senses is a radiant, mystical meditation on embodiment, healing, and the subtle teachings of the senses.When a young seeker, Athena, visits the elder Lila at her spiritual retreat — a home set among fruiting gardens, majestic trees, and mercurial wildlife — an intimate friendship begins to unfold. Through their dialogue, and Lila's gentle guidance and playful prodding, Athena comes to see her past trauma and fraught relationships not as wounds but as doorways — into lucid dreams, intuitive vision, and embodied awareness, all guiding her next move into the larger world.Rooted in ancient yogic traditions and woven from the textures of embodied wisdom, the book summons readers into an understanding of awakening that is relational and immediate. Its deepest teaching is a vision of the feminine not only as gender, but as a spiritual and creative principle: receptive, intuitive, and life-giving. Rather than offering doctrine, it invites us into a world where memory, beauty, and inner listening are the heart of transformation. Interwoven with poems that carry the reader well beyond the lush narrative, Mātrikā's Muse offers a path for anyone drawn to a more conscious and deeply felt way of being.

Purchase the Book

Praise & Endorsements

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Mātrikā's Muse is the story. Lara is the steward.

Lara Sanderson is a writer, meditation teacher, and contemplative whose debut book, Mātrika’s Muse: A Journey to Awakening through the Senses, blends spiritual memoir, literary reflection, and embodied wisdom. The book earned widespread praise and was awarded a Silver Medal in the Religion/Spirituality of Eastern Thought category of the 2026 Nautilus Book Awards.

Through the story of a budding yogini’s mystical friendship with an admired elder, Mātrika’s Muse invites readers to awaken their intuitive creative force and rediscover their connection to nature, the senses, and the living current of energy that moves through all things. The BookLife Prize called it “a contemplative offering” that shows readers “their pathway to peace and contentment through the power of words.”

Sanderson’s writing emerges from decades of lived practice. Her spiritual path deepened in 2011, following a period of profound personal loss that redirected her life toward full-time contemplative study. Rooted in her father’s yogic lineage and enriched by the guidance of meditation master Sally Kempton, her work explores the wisdom already present within the body, the imagination, and the awakened heart. A certified yoga instructor and Reiki practitioner, she draws from meditation, hatha yoga, dance, and subtle-body disciplines.

Before devoting herself to writing and teaching, Sanderson spent more than fifteen years in government relations, community affairs, and political organizing, advancing initiatives in housing, education, and social well-being. In 2006, she was awarded an American Marshall Memorial Fellowship as an emerging leader in transatlantic relations. She is a graduate of The Center for Women & Democracy and a member of Alpha Sigma Nu, the Jesuit honor society. Her commitment to amplifying underrepresented voices extended to film, where she served as executive producer on Jinkx Monsoon: Drag Becomes Him (2015) and the documentary Angels Are Made of Light (2018).