Self-healing practice
Welcome to your first self-healing practice. This is your practice. The offerings here are to serve as a guide, not a prescription. By no means do I ever claim to offer you the answers or even the beginnings to your healing journeys, rather I offer tools to dismantle the psychic borders created around your intuition and ancestor knowing. You already have all that you need to heal, let ancestor show you through our self-healing practices.
You are encouraged to move through the practice in the order that it has been provided for at least this first module to allow you to experience the flow of the intended offerings.
For each activity there are corresponding reflection prompts. You are welcomed to express yourself as you are for each prompt through written, photo, video, poems, artwork, and any other way that helps our community be a part of what you are experiencing in your self-healing practice. Your responses can be shared in your individual Google Folder shared in WhatsApp/email and whenever inspired in our WhatsApp thread MONDAY, WEDNESDAY, or WEEKEND. The more we share with each other, the more intimate our community will become.
You are encouraged to move through the practice in the order that it has been provided for at least this first module to allow you to experience the flow of the intended offerings.
For each activity there are corresponding reflection prompts. You are welcomed to express yourself as you are for each prompt through written, photo, video, poems, artwork, and any other way that helps our community be a part of what you are experiencing in your self-healing practice. Your responses can be shared in your individual Google Folder shared in WhatsApp/email and whenever inspired in our WhatsApp thread MONDAY, WEDNESDAY, or WEEKEND. The more we share with each other, the more intimate our community will become.
Decolonizing our healing practices
LISTEN
Our journey will be a decolonial one. We are decolonizing herbalism, decolonizing western philosophies, decolonizing our healing traditions from the ways that they have been stolen, used, and perverted. In our healing we will honor our selves, honor each other, honor the plants, honor the ancestors, and honor the teachers. Our energetic centers and our physical bodies will be the main ways that we learn from the plants during this journey. It is from the lens of decolonization that we enter our work with the our energetic centers, known as the chakras by some.
READ
Read at least one of the written offerings below.
*Note that CH 4 is the lengthiest, while the other 3 are shorter articles.
*Note that CH 4 is the lengthiest, while the other 3 are shorter articles.
READ + WATCH
Our healing journeys need to be just that: healing. Healing for ourselves, healing for others (plants, minerals, and elements included). We live within cultures that thrive on consuming, marketing, and reselling objects, ideas, and traditions. Our work together is about cultural sharing, rather than cultural appropriation. It's about remembering the oldest stewards and originators of practices and traditions now co-opted by Western healing, such as yoga and herbalism. A lot of our recovering is about remembering that much of the medicine that we have access to today is African/black indigenous and indigenous outside of the West.
In Yoga’s Africa Roots: Racism On And Off The Mat Erika ‘LorLorNyo’ Joseph-Gomado shares with us the important OURstory of how yogic philosophies originate in the richness of Africa.
In You Are Here: Exploring Yoga and the Impacts of Cultural Appropriation, nisha ahuja, who is light skinned and lives with caste privilege, provides a framework of what is yoga, how it’s appropriated, and strategies to address cultural appropriation.
*TW: nisha ahuja is honest and fierce in her sharing the roots of cultural appropriation: rape, genocide, and destruction of whole communities.
**TW=trigger warning
In Yoga’s Africa Roots: Racism On And Off The Mat Erika ‘LorLorNyo’ Joseph-Gomado shares with us the important OURstory of how yogic philosophies originate in the richness of Africa.
In You Are Here: Exploring Yoga and the Impacts of Cultural Appropriation, nisha ahuja, who is light skinned and lives with caste privilege, provides a framework of what is yoga, how it’s appropriated, and strategies to address cultural appropriation.
*TW: nisha ahuja is honest and fierce in her sharing the roots of cultural appropriation: rape, genocide, and destruction of whole communities.
**TW=trigger warning
Introduction to meditation
Meditation is a practice of building our intuitive intelligence and cultivating bliss. Through a meditation practice we commune with spirit by going deeper into ourselves. We do this by redirecting our attention from the material realm (our to do lists, our survival, our pain) to the sensations of life force moving through us, our breathe. As breathe deepens so does our awareness. Our awareness brings together that which has been fragmented for many of us: our mind, body, and soul. Through our awareness, as relaxation is conceived, we experience bliss, an all knowing consciousness between realms, rather than the absence or ignorance of pain. It is here that we meet our inner self, our first form: love. It is from love that we journey to our plant and two-legged ancestors.
READ
[optional]
[optional]
LISTEN
Meditation Tips
There is absolutely no right way to meditate. Here are some supportive reminders to begin your practice:
Create a space to meditate regularly
Build an altar and dust off your tools regularly: an altar, a mat, shawl + a blessing herb
Create a sacred time
Determine at least 10 minutes of your day to be alone or in silence
Meditate at the same time daily
Meditate on a relatively empty stomach
Unplug! (Place phone on airplane mode or shut off)
Warm up your body with a movement practice (such as yoga postures or light exercise)
Keep your eyes closed or covered with a scarf
Be an observer of your thoughts.
See them, refrain from judging them.
No need to push them away. Be with what’s there.
Observe it. Let them be. They will fade when you are ready.
Close each meditation with at least 30 seconds of gratitude in stillness
Let yourself be, be however you are gotta be to be!
Create a space to meditate regularly
Build an altar and dust off your tools regularly: an altar, a mat, shawl + a blessing herb
Create a sacred time
Determine at least 10 minutes of your day to be alone or in silence
Meditate at the same time daily
Meditate on a relatively empty stomach
Unplug! (Place phone on airplane mode or shut off)
Warm up your body with a movement practice (such as yoga postures or light exercise)
Keep your eyes closed or covered with a scarf
Be an observer of your thoughts.
See them, refrain from judging them.
No need to push them away. Be with what’s there.
Observe it. Let them be. They will fade when you are ready.
Close each meditation with at least 30 seconds of gratitude in stillness
Let yourself be, be however you are gotta be to be!
LISTEN
This is a guided yoga nidra meditation. You will need at least 15 minutes and a sacred space. You may return this recording as many times as you wish in preparation for our journey together!
Note: struggles with the volume here. might need to listen to this with headphones in and at full volume by the middle of the mediation.
Note: struggles with the volume here. might need to listen to this with headphones in and at full volume by the middle of the mediation.
REFLECT
Describe your relationship with meditation.
How do you feel when you close your eye or soften your gaze?
What comes through during intentional breathing?
Describe your experience during the yoga nidra.
How do you feel when you close your eye or soften your gaze?
What comes through during intentional breathing?
Describe your experience during the yoga nidra.
You may return to the yoga nidra (or any within your existing practice) to deepen your state of bliss and relaxation.
Preparing to work with our energetic centers
Before we enter the individual journey of our soul, ancestors calls for preparation and clearing. All life changes require preparation. To obtain more from ourselves, our tribes, the universe, we must be ready to receive more, rather than give more. During this guided ritual we call our guides to clear a physical and spiritual path so that we may be able to be realign with our intuition.
Gather:
white candle
cup of water
used bowl/calderon
lighter
honey/sweetener
spirits [brandy, whiskey, tequila or rum]
clear quartz, selenite or any mineral that feels protective
sacred journal [all your dreams, observations + magick will be held here]
white candle
cup of water
used bowl/calderon
lighter
honey/sweetener
spirits [brandy, whiskey, tequila or rum]
clear quartz, selenite or any mineral that feels protective
sacred journal [all your dreams, observations + magick will be held here]
LISTEN
For your reference, we called on the gods of fire: Shiva, Xiuhtecuhtli, Oya and Chongli.
REFLECT
Describe what needs to be cleared to be present in your healing journey.
Describe your experience with the clearing ritual.
Share any wisdom that may have come through the ritual.
Describe your experience with the clearing ritual.
Share any wisdom that may have come through the ritual.
Community Commitments
With the love and intention that you have come to other parts of your individual self-healing practice, come to our community. Review our Community commitments below:
We commit to the liberation of our ancestors, their technologies, and our freedom fighters in our own healing journeys.
We engage in curiosity-driven DIALOGUE, not debate or arguing.
We embrace multiple perspectives with compassion.
We expect and accept discomfort.
We take breaks for self-care.
We work to keep RADICAL UNAPOLOGETIC LOVE the goal of all of our dialogue.
We commit to the liberation of our ancestors, their technologies, and our freedom fighters in our own healing journeys.
We engage in curiosity-driven DIALOGUE, not debate or arguing.
We embrace multiple perspectives with compassion.
We expect and accept discomfort.
We take breaks for self-care.
We work to keep RADICAL UNAPOLOGETIC LOVE the goal of all of our dialogue.
REFLECT
Our first commitment is to liberation: We commit to the liberation of our ancestors, their technologies, and our freedom fighters in our own healing journeys
Before our first gathering, take a moment to reflect on this commitment: "I commit to the liberation of our ancestors, their technologies,
and our freedom fighters as integral energies in my own healing journeys." With much compassion, breathe into the medicine in your veins, lived experiences, and YOURSTORIES, finish the phrase:
MY HEALING JOURNEY IS AN OFFERING TO...
After our first gathering your offerings will be reflected here!
What does this commitment mean to you?
How can we embody this commitment? What does it look like, feel like, sound like?
What are other commitments you need/want for our community? Share them here: MONDAY, WEDNESDAY, WEEKEND
Before our first gathering, take a moment to reflect on this commitment: "I commit to the liberation of our ancestors, their technologies,
and our freedom fighters as integral energies in my own healing journeys." With much compassion, breathe into the medicine in your veins, lived experiences, and YOURSTORIES, finish the phrase:
MY HEALING JOURNEY IS AN OFFERING TO...
After our first gathering your offerings will be reflected here!
What does this commitment mean to you?
How can we embody this commitment? What does it look like, feel like, sound like?
What are other commitments you need/want for our community? Share them here: MONDAY, WEDNESDAY, WEEKEND
Gather
Below you will find the common and botanical names of the plant ancestors needed for our Module 1/April journey.
Please gather them dry or fresh by our gathering dates. At minimum 1oz is needed of each.
Week 1: Linden leaf + flower [Tila spp]
Week 2: Nettles leaf [Urtica dioica]
Week 3: Oatstraw [Avena sativa]
OPTIONAL: Red clover blossoms [Trifolium pratense]
Please gather them dry or fresh by our gathering dates. At minimum 1oz is needed of each.
Week 1: Linden leaf + flower [Tila spp]
Week 2: Nettles leaf [Urtica dioica]
Week 3: Oatstraw [Avena sativa]
OPTIONAL: Red clover blossoms [Trifolium pratense]
April Gathering Dates
MONDAY April 12 + 26 7p est
WEDNESDAY April 14 + 28 7:30p est
WEEKEND: SATURDAY April 17 6p est
Zoom meeting info will be emailed to you and made available in Module 1 once it is released
WEDNESDAY April 14 + 28 7:30p est
WEEKEND: SATURDAY April 17 6p est
Zoom meeting info will be emailed to you and made available in Module 1 once it is released