Life and Ascetic Practice
Having fled an arranged marriage and been exiled to Siberia under an assumed name, Domna embraced the ascetic path of yurodstvo, holy foolishness for the sake of Christ. She kept no permanent residence and often slept outdoors, owning nothing and refusing monetary donations, preferring instead to accept bread which she distributed to wanderers and the poor.
Her foolishness took distinctive symbolic forms. She carried sacks of rags that she bore as spiritual 'chains,' and she distributed broken glass, stones, sticks, sawdust, and pieces of sugar to people, attaching allegorical meanings to each. By tradition these objects carried spiritual lessons: broken glass for tears, stones for a hardness of heart to be broken, and sawdust mixed with sugar for the mingling of the bitter and the sweet in life.
In churches she would rearrange and extinguish candles, gathering some into her bags. She kept stray dogs as companions. When Bishop Porphyry gave her a fur coat, she gave it away to the poor. Though her public conduct was that of a fool, in private conversation she spoke rationally, and an acquaintance who visited Tomsk reported holding fluent discussions with her in foreign languages.
She sang spiritual songs loudly in the streets to console prisoners, a practice that led to her own detention by the police.