Fairytales are gateways into the unconscious. They help us see ourselves, one another, and the culture we belong to through a prism of archetypes and symbols. They can help us learn, reflect, consider, and reorient ourselves around the circumstances and situations we find ourselves in. They carry us into the space where our imagination weaves old worlds into new galaxies. They speak the language of the soul. When we explore the meaning of the Evil Stepmom’s mirror, or the Wolf Archetype, or the Princess and the Frog symbolism, we can gather pieces of self and society, and step into a creative process of transformation. 

The princess goes out to play, out into the forest, away from the palace, away from daddy. She signifies to us that we are ready to leave our comfort zone, ready to learn something new, ready to embark on a journey. Joseph Campbell would call this moment; The Call To Adventure. If you’re reading this, I think you’re probably one of those people who feel the call to adventure several times a day. You’re a seeker, a creature of transformation. And so you know that the frog is not just a character. You meet him by the well often. You, like our princess, are ready to face the parts of you that live deep down in the waters of the unconscious. And you, like her, feel uncomfortable with the idea of kissing it. 

Welcome to your yogic path, your mythic journey, your life in the 21st century – a forest full of frogs. 

The beauty of fairytales, of myths, of stories, is that their meaning isn’t set in stone. The symbols may mean different things for different people at different moments in their lives. The brilliance is that a story is open to interpretation. I am about to share with you some ideas about the princess and the frog symbolism, some of which are rooted in study, others stream through me, their origin unknown to me. And so before you read on, I invite you to contemplate what some of the symbols mean for you, and perhaps even expand the contemplation to include the world around you. .

What part of you is the princess? And where is she in our society right now? What parts of you are the frog? What’s the golden ball doing in your life? Where is it in the current river of events? Where is your well? What does it mean for you to have to kiss a frog?

A Deeper Look at the Meaning of The Princess and the Frog

So the princess goes out into the forest. The forest is the place where shadow and light intertwine, a space of liminality, where some things are hidden while others are revealed. Symbolically, the forest, like the ocean, signifies the unconscious. Neither here nor there, in the realm of the imagination, where old versions of ourselves shed skins, and new forms emerge covered in leaves and vines. 

She takes her precious golden ball with her to play – the princess is a younger part of us, on the precipice of change; playful, innocent, and also immature. She throws her ball up in the air, and catches it, up and down it goes, like the sun, like the moon, like life; cyclical. The ball bounces as wholeness, and well roundedness, and its goldenness radiates. The golden ball is the solar power around which we spin, giving warmth, light, and life. 

When the ball falls into the well, it’s like the sun has set, or like the Autumn Equinox announces the descent of light into the deep well of darkness. Darkness is where the sun dies, where the decomposition of our old selves occurs, and it is also where transformation happens, and where the sun re-emerges from. The deep well of our being holds in its dark, moist depths the possibilities of renewal. 

But before this renewal can unfold, we gotta not only meet the frog, we gotta let it eat from our plate, sleep on our pillow, and yeah baby, we gotta kiss it! 

Frog Symbolism in Myth and Fairytales

The frog hears the cries of the princess, and comes out of the well to see what’s up. An amphibian is a creature of the liminal – it can breathe in water and in air. It croaks in the language of the inbetween. The frog lives in the murky waters of the pond, in the deep well of the unconscious, but it has no problem hanging out on land. The word amphibian, like the word ambiguous, holds the Greek root Amphi, which means “on both sides.” 

As far as fairytales go, the frog shows up to symbolize the unattractive, unappealing parts of ourselves. But we know that this frog is also a prince. It dances with the ambiguous. It lives on both sides. It invites us into the less obvious, less clear, less direct passageways of the heart and mind. It wants us to be less certain, and more curious. It evokes unstuckness. 

From where the princess stands, the frog is the thing that you did that you’re not proud of, and never really processed properly. You stuffed it deep in there and moved on. But you never really dealt with it. You didn’t take responsibility. You didn’t want to talk about it. You never want to look at it. Or maybe it’s that wound you never really wanted to make a big deal out of, because it wasn’t safe to acknowledge the hurt, and you needed to toughen up and suppress the pain. The frog is the parts of you that you don’t want anything to do with; the things you think are ugly, the qualities you don’t want to associate with yourself. “I’m not ___” But now it stands on the side of the well, croaking in your ear: “Ribbit! Why are you crying princess?”

So the precious, golden, playful part of you fell down a well, and the radiance of who you are feels a bit dim, and you’re crying in the forest, where shadows and light weave a wider web of you, calling you into transformation. And now a frog… 

Frogs can leap and reach into another area in your psyche, just as it can leap from one side of the pond to another. They are metamorphic; born as eggs, hatch as tadpoles, develop into frogs. They can “freeze” in Winter and thaw and come back to life in Spring, reminding us of resurrection. The frog can bring back the sun from its underworld plunge. 

The frog offers to retrieve your ball. The thing you defined as ugly, the part of you that you didn’t want to accept, offers to bring back the source of your joy, the golden radiance of your light, the ball of fire that gives us life. 

The rebirth of the sun on the Winter solstice, the renewal that follows loss, all sit together like flies on the tongue of the frog, who in several ancient cultures has been a symbol of birth and rebirth. Think of a woman’s natural birth position (not on her back, but on all fours), with parted legs and bent knees. Egyptian Heqet – Goddess of embryonic waters, protector of pregnancy and birth – had the head of a frog. Figures with frog bodies and the faces and genitalias of women dating as far back as 6000 BCE have been found. Frog goddesses with womb connection are ancient. 

What the Princess Teaches us

The princess lifts her head off her forearms, her face stained with tears. “ Really?” She sniffles and her eyes light up. And the frog is happy to do that for her… but not without conditions, because in order to rise from the ashes, or from the well, in this case, we need to integrate the pieces we rejected. We need to take responsibility, we need to claim accountability, we need to look the frog in the eye and know that it’s a part of us. We need to take it to the palace and let it sleep with us. It can no longer stay hidden in the well. 

When the princess says yes, but then tries to run away from her part of the bargain, you can’t help but understand her, even though you know her actions are out of integrity. And we all have that immature part that wants nothing to do with taking responsibility for our words, our actions, our lives, and what’s going on in the world. We’d rather go back to the palace, have dinner with daddy, and try to forget about our encounter with the frog. Even though he was the one who midwifed our golden ball out of the womb of the well, and into our hands. 

But king daddy is the part of us that knows that if a promise was made, our word must be kept. And so when the frog knocks on the door of the palace, and the princess tries to dodge that bullet, the king of the psyche lovingly turns our attention toward the door, urging us to open it and let the frog in. (who let the frogs in?! Ribbit, ribbit, ribbit, ribbit!)

It’s not easy to let the thing that you reject in yourself enter the dining hall and eat from your golden plate. Think of the thing you are most ashamed of. Now imagine having dinner with it, while it licks your food. How’s your appetite? And now it follows you to your bedroom, and while you change and put on your pj’s, this frog of shame and regret and guilt settles on your pillow, still wet from the pond, slimy and croaking. 

Ribbit. 

Now, those parts of you that you really don’t want anything to do with, demand that you come to bed, and snuggle up next to your face. If frogs breathed in and out of their nose and mouth, you’d feel their breath on your face. How can anyone get any sleep like that? We’ve all been there, right? Another sleepless night, tossing and turning, because you wanna ignore it, but it’s way beyond that phase. You’re grappling with it. Maturity is being cooked. You don’t wanna, but the ball is rolling. There’s no stopping it now. 

Ribbit. 

“Kiss me.” says the frog. And you open your eyes to see it staring at you, so close, it’s practically part of you now. “Kiss me.” the frog croaks again. “No way!” you say. You sit up in your bed, cold sweats, heart beating fast. No fucking way! “Kiss me, princess!” it hops from the pillow onto your back and up onto your shoulder. You are horrified. This is the stuff that nightmares are made of. You try to wake up from it, pinching yourself everywhere. But there’s no escape. There’s a frog on your shoulder and it stands on its hind legs and stretches itself up toward your face. “I gave you back your golden ball.” it guilts you, face almost touching yours. You look at your frog with disbelief. And all the stuff you’re not proud of is staring back at you through its eyes. The frog puckers his lips toward a kiss. 

What are you going to do? Are you going to become intimate with your wounds, with your fears, with your mistakes, with your shame and guilt and disappointment? Or are you going to keep waking up with cold sweats every night for the rest of your life? 

The frog is out of the well. There’s no way back now. You encountered it. It gave you the source of your joy back. But you’re not joyful. And you know that there’s no getting rid of the frog now. You tried. But the king won’t let you. It’s so uncomfortable. Arrgh. 

“One kiss is all I’m asking for.” the frog says. “I promise that’s gonna be it.” You’re not sure you can trust it, but as annoying and disturbing and discomforting as this whole experience has been, the frog hasn’t lied to you. It gave you your ball back before you fulfilled you part of the deal. If anything, you were the one who lied. Maybe if this really is the last request, it will leave you alone now? 

You turn toward it and you feel nauseated, but you really hope this is gonna put an end to it. You close your eyes, and you let your lips touch the lips of the frog.

Getting a prince to emerge out of a frog is letting the process of integrating your shadow reveal your beauty. 

The princess and the frog prince will now get married, of course. And this marriage symbolizes our capacity to bring together the different parts of ourselves. It tells us that when we learn to make room for the rejected pieces of ourselves, we can move into deeper intimacy with ourselves and with others. Wholeness and growth demand that we integrate and mature, which requires breaking and opening and resisting and grappling. We can alchemize the wounds into marks of beauty. Leaning into discomfort can become the very pathway of our wholeness, our well roundedness – the very essence of the symbol of the golden ball appears again in the symbolism of marriage. 

Note here, that wholeness is not without fragments, without differences. The princess and the prince get married, but they don’t become one person. The frog, I’m sure, still lives with the prince, and every once in a while, she wakes up from him croaking in his dreams in the bed next to her. We are more than one thing. Take away the Happily Ever After, and remind yourself that the well still holds the deep water of the unconscious out there. The forest will remain her beloved playground. And the ball, still her favorite toy, will keep rolling. Inevitably, it will fall into the well again. 

The journey of life is cyclical, the golden ball reminds us. Other frogs live in the well too. And they make babies. The story doesn’t end. We are incomplete, unfinished, and that’s a gift. 

Embodying the Story: The Princess and the Frog Symbolism as a Yoga Practice

Fairytales, like art, are evocative and transformative. Every time you hear them, they can touch a different part of you. The well of the unconscious is deep and the water holds many frogs, many opportunities for metamorphosis. In a way, mythology and yoga have a lot in common. Yoga is a practice that takes us deep into the unconscious, deep into the belly of the beast, deep into the land of the dead, where the sun loses its luster, only to be reborn through the mouth of the frog. 

Maybe that’s the symbolic reason for the popularity of sun salutations in the beginning of the practice – to bring the sun back to life. Warm up the body. Cool down the mind. There’s space for something deeper than mundane thoughts to emerge. We move and begin to retrieve the golden ball.  

You can feel this story in your body. You can embody any story through practice. You go into the forest – yoga is not the palace. You’re a seeker. You’re ready for adventure. There are challenges. There’s playfulness. There’s loss. There’s a process of facing your shadows. You wanna stop. You wanna go to the bathroom. You wanna check your phone. But when you continue to move in spite of all the distractions, and all the discomfort, you end up kissing a frog. And most of the time, the frog becomes a prince. 

Frog pose is a great example of a yoga pose that helps us work with our resistance, to open ourselves up within our tightness, to be in a difficult position, but learn to breathe in it, and to open our hearts, to stretch who we are, to rise to the occasion of integration. 

Practice The Princess And The Frog Yoga 

This (FREE) yoga practice includes an exploration of this story, and an opportunity to embody the lessons, and to contemplate them deeply. We will get to Bhekasana – Frog pose. And it will make us croak a little, but it will help us deepen our breath. 

Check it out. Practice with me. 

What Stories Speak To You? 

Leave a comment and let me know what your favorite fairytales are. I’d love to know. And I might write a piece about it just for you, and turn it into a yoga practice too. Make sure to subscribe to my mailing list – easy button below – so that you don’t miss your story coming to life with the unpacking of symbols, and the practice of Fairytale Yoga. I’ll let you know when it’s up.

And get on my Substack – Muse Medicine will come your way every Monday.

XOXO

Hagar

PS – If you enjoyed this reading, check out this essay about myth as medicine.

PPS – the image above is a painting of the Princess and the Frog by Warwick Goble