teomauistli
With much humility and reverence, ancestor and I invite you to walk, cry, laugh + open your heart to the incredible medicine of this journey. Over the next 9 months we will compassionately and unapologetically put up a mirror to the ruptures, that which has been severed, and that forgotten by the processes of colonization, modern systems of oppression, to come into our radical sacred bits. ximopanolti/welcome to la mala yerba's teomauistli year 1: xinachtli/seed. soy xóchitlcoatl and i'll be stewarding this 9 month journey. watch the video to hear me gussshhhhhhh about you + more! hope you enjoy my mooning brain welcome!
xóchicoatl aka the flowering serpent is one of my native names. prefer to be called xóchitlcoatl or xochitl (pronunciation in the welcome video). live from all pronouns (we, love, ella, elle , she). currently live in transition in occupied Wampanoag and black liberator lands and hail from the Mexica, Mixtec people of southern Mexico with west Nigerian, and Spanish-Portuguese ancestors.
The following are our mentor texts for this healing journey. All text will be offered as PDFS and downloadable documents below and throughout each module, because shit adds up. Still you are encouraged to buy the text if you have the financial capacity to honor the labor of the authors, especially Opening to Spirit.
the following week by week flow best reflects the journey for the MONDAY + WEDNESDAY circles. our WEEKEND circle will merge WEEK ONE + WEEK 3 teachings and maintain the same weekly Self-Healing Practice. descriptions for the different components of the journey outlined below apply to all circles.
Week One
Week One of our medicine journey generally take place around the first quarter moon. We gather this week under grandmother moon en route to fullness, to honor ourselves on the route to wholeness through our heartwork of witnessing each other [Talking circle], spiraling into the energetic center of the month [Energetic center meditation + wisdom], and the plant ancestors [Plant meditation + wisdom] who conspire to nourish our spirit + ancestors at this center.
Talking circle
Talking circle is an indigenous technology facilitated to build and nourish collective healing. We only enterTalking circle after Opening the Directions, after the keepers of earth, fire, water, air, above, below + center [the medicine wheel] have been properly acknowledged and the portal themselves opened. It is through their opening that we begin to arrive into the space, arrive into our hearts. It is from this place that we are witnessed and witness in Talking circle. During Talking circle, the speaker is responsible for sharing their heart in the most truthful and honoring ways they know how so that they may be witnessed by the community. The community has the responsibility to honor confidentiality, honor what's being shared, and be present with humility to how our sibling's truth stirs in us. We may acknowledge each other during Talking circle, when it becomes our turn to share, however, we are not in plática or conversation about what was shared.
If there is ever a share that brings up something that you need to process with me, let me know. Talking circle can be incredibly shifting, and triggering. As witnesses to fellow bipoc, trans, queer, immigrant, intersectional folx sh*t can "hit close to home," we may hear our realities opened, dissected, relived, it may hurt, it may be liberating. I am here to support you.
If there is ever a share that brings up something that you need to process with me, let me know. Talking circle can be incredibly shifting, and triggering. As witnesses to fellow bipoc, trans, queer, immigrant, intersectional folx sh*t can "hit close to home," we may hear our realities opened, dissected, relived, it may hurt, it may be liberating. I am here to support you.
Plant meditation + wisdom
Plants, like all of earth’s offerings, are our ancestors. They are the medicine that our two-legged ancestors allied and ally with to support their spiritual and physical wellness alike. We remember their teachings and offerings in our story keeping, our creation myths, and honor them as our divas and gods. We come to them with the reverence that we do our two-legged, finned, and furred ones. Each month I bring you into a plant journey to thin the veil between our Western thinking minds and our black magick, indigenous magick, our Asian magick, our diasporic magick, our queer magick. The more we trust our psyche, the subtle shifts in our bodies, the ripples that open our third eye, the more we indigenize our spirit.
Allow yourself to the best of your shifting abilities to be swept into connection. Be with each plant ancestor as they bring you into the physical and energetic work we are doing at each energetic center and body system. For each plant meditation I recommend that you have a strong tisane/herbal tea with the plant ancestor, instructions on how to be and interact with your tisane will be recorded in each meditation. I encourage you to revisit our meditation tips within Module 1 to build your meditation practice.
Practical info about Distance plant meditations
From my experience this community doesn't get solidified until May, until then I ask that you gather 1oz of fresh or dried plant ancestors from your local botanical, apothecary, friend's, farms, healthcares food stores, cultural food markets, and online [I support Starwest Botanicals, Zach Woods, Mountain Maus]. My intentions are to send you a care package [unless emailed otherwise] with the herbs for the rest of the modules in May. The common names and botanical names of the plants we are working with will be offered in every email I send in preparation for each month and can also be found in the respective Module and gathering week.
**Contraindications [aka "avoid this plant if warning"] will be provided to make sure we all stay healthy! Be on the look out for them!
Allow yourself to the best of your shifting abilities to be swept into connection. Be with each plant ancestor as they bring you into the physical and energetic work we are doing at each energetic center and body system. For each plant meditation I recommend that you have a strong tisane/herbal tea with the plant ancestor, instructions on how to be and interact with your tisane will be recorded in each meditation. I encourage you to revisit our meditation tips within Module 1 to build your meditation practice.
Practical info about Distance plant meditations
From my experience this community doesn't get solidified until May, until then I ask that you gather 1oz of fresh or dried plant ancestors from your local botanical, apothecary, friend's, farms, healthcares food stores, cultural food markets, and online [I support Starwest Botanicals, Zach Woods, Mountain Maus]. My intentions are to send you a care package [unless emailed otherwise] with the herbs for the rest of the modules in May. The common names and botanical names of the plants we are working with will be offered in every email I send in preparation for each month and can also be found in the respective Module and gathering week.
**Contraindications [aka "avoid this plant if warning"] will be provided to make sure we all stay healthy! Be on the look out for them!
Introduction to energetic center
During our first gathering session, we will journey to the corresponding energetic center of the month [known to some as chakras] in relationship with our plant meditation. Witnessing with silence, with voice, by listening to what lives in each of our energetic centers helps us tell a more complete story of what the collective is needing. Like our plant meditations, we will work with the drum and other meditation tools to journey to each energetic center to learn about how each of our energetic and body systems has been shaped and carries the medicine of our collective liberation. Our resistance and liberation lies within our spirit, because it is within these different points that ancestor lives. So much juicy sh*t ahead with this. And so much decolonizing and afro-indigenizing work that's gonna get done to decolonize our energy and understanding of the energetic centers known as the chakras.
Self-healing practice
After our distance gathering you are strongly encouraged to offer yourself 1.5-3hrs for self-healing practice, a combination of of daily practices, plant connections, readings, and reflection prompts. More information can be found below in the SELF-HEALING section.
Week Two
As the moon fills out and becomes our nanametzli we are invited to move at our own pace of celebration and holding ourselves with this journey. You are encouraged to honor how your body is moving, to follow the connections that wanna be sparked, and to move through the offered excretes, meditations and reflections. Week Two will generally bring us to another delicious plant meditation + wisdom share, connections between our energetic center and the corresponding body system, and some fierce medicine making rotted in socially conscious brujería.
Plant meditation + wisdom
See above!
Introduction to body system + holistic anatomy
As we travel through the channels of our most dominant energetic centers, we come to their corresponding body systems, we come our bodies. We remember what it means to exist trusting the intuition and knowledge of our physical body. As we awaken to our subtle body through our spirit-led healing practices, our physical body becomes hungry to exist in indigenized ways. Empower yourself to know your body and rhythms better than Western doctors. We disempower the biomedical industry (hospitals, doctors, pharmaceuticals, etc) when we care for ourselves and each other with the medicine around us. During this self-healing practice, we call you to sense where your energetic imbalances lie in your physical body, rename your body parts, and holler for your body’s knowledge to the full moon.
Medicine making + magical practice
During our journey you will be encouraged to create herbal medicine for yourself as a practice of reclaiming the medicine that you are, the medicine that runs through hour veins, and your health from the unHEALTHcare system. During Week Two processes for making an herbal medicine will be shared from beginning to end. We will be learning how to prepare teas [aka tisanes] that offer us the most healing to the body and spirit, tinctures, elixirs, herbal foods, salves, herbal smokes, and more! All medicine making will be shared with a socially conscious brujería lens. This means I commit to sharing from a space that honors as many intersectional realities as I can always. Each month we will be considering what it means to create medicine period. What it means to create for our trans bodies or siblings, what it looks like to harvest in right relationship with the lands + the stewards of the lands, and so much more. Our healing can't come from medicine that isn't intersectional, that doesn't honor the keepers of the medicine, the land, and that our healing is two-spirit, queer, and deviant.
Self-healing practice
After you complete the facilitated pre-created exercises videos and connection work for Week Two you will find that Week Two Self-healing practice will generally be lighter than that of Week One and Week Three. There will be a lot more optional activities and resources here. The main ask is to continue our plant connections outlined in each Self-Healing practice for the month.
Week Three
This is a delicious ass week, because we gather in ceremony! Okay, so maybe every gathering is ceremonial, perrrrroooooo this gathering weaves together ritual, song, and prayer the entiteeee gathering in session. We will still geek out about plants, and the main language we are communicating in is presence and ritual.
Plant meditation + wisdom
See above!
Ancestor connections
We come to ceremony with reflections and questions prompted from Week Three Self-Healing practice that help root and amplify our connection with ancestors. This ask is probably one of the most intimate and harsh one for many of us. Many of us come from the diaspora, communities who've either survived by forgetting, denying, and suppressing, folx who were taken from their lands, folx who are struggling to keep their lands, and struggling to keep their customs. Connecting to our ancestors is absolutely necessary on our medicine journeys and connections the plants, for the plants themselves are our ancestors. I believe that they are our ancestors themselves. Where ever we are in relation to our ancestors, this journey is meant to bring your closer to them, hear them, and bear witness to wha they have to offer to you. For more on what I mean here by ANCESTOR CONNECTIONS read in the next section.
Ceremony!
Ceremony for resistance
Ritual is indigenous technology, carrying OURstories, magick, and collective liberation. Our sacred container will birth many rituals during all our gatherings, even the pre-recorded one, and once a month we will be in ceremony together. Ceremony is resistance. It is within this technology that we meet the soul's that we were born with. That soul that was put on this earth to do the good work that late capitalism and colonization make it their mission to suck from us. Ceremony in community will help us get back to this soul, to our deeper truths, to our purpose.
Week Four
This is a special ass week, some times two depending on the Gregorian calendar [some months have 5 weeks]! Week Four can be summed up by rest, embody, integrate. Rest is necessary for healing to take place [I adore the medicine that @thenapministry on Instagram offers on rest]. Our neurological pathways get rewired, our nervous system begins to repair itself, and our memory, adrenals + hearts gets rejuvenated with the act of rest. It's easier to integrate and embody [practice what we believe, believe what we practice, and feel it in our every breathe] when we rest. Rest is a revolutionary experience for our bodies, spirits, and for our collective, particularly as beings with BIPOC realities. Rest looks like many different ways of beings for you and for each other. Notice how over the 9 months your relationship to rest and the kinds of rest you experience shift. Rest is easy. We've been conditioned for over 500 years to thrive off of colonial structures that say we are worthless if we are not servicing the status quo. This week requires gentleness. Sh*t this whole journey requires a lot of gentleness. You are offered a lot! You will always have access to this information, move as you need to more. This might be the week you play gentle catch up, or you choose to dig a little deeper using the resources provided, or get all introverted and take some space from our threads! It's all beautiful its all important. You are beautiful, and your rest, what ever it looks like right now is important.
Self-healing is a practice of remembering ourselves whole as black, indigenous, Asian, diasporic, queer, trans*, immigrant, survivors, and intersectional children of our ancestors. Our healing journey brings us closer to the home within ourselves, our multiple realities, each other, and creates the many homes our hearts can hold. After each gathering you are encouraged to deepen with plant ancestors, with your breathe, with your wholeness practices through the self-healing practice. Wanna remind you that your self-healing practice is just that, a “practice.” We are practicing how to relate to ourselves, our bodies, our bloods, and chosen families in more compassionate and whole-istic ways. We are practicing what it looks, feels, and sounds like to be in right and consensual relationship with plantitas, and all of earth’s sacred offerings. We ask that you enter this work with humility, curiosity, and with as much surrender as you can in this moment in your healing journey. This isn't homework, this won't be graded. This is for you.
Plant connections
A thick part of our journey is YOUR journey with the plant ancestors. We practice, practice, practice what it feels like to experience deep connection with our plant ancestors by inviting them as a vital part of our days. We invite them to begin our day in the form of blessing smoke, we invite them to adorn our body’s with the abundance and energies our specific body’s are needing as tisanes, infusions, and sacred body movement. We put into practice what it means to live in reverence to ancestor, building altars, and ritualizing the connection. There will be several real-time practices you can invite into your life to support you in nourishing rituals and discipline around plant connections. My intentions are that each practice helps you embody the sensate. sensitive, all knowing being that you are. Like the plants, we are are sacred, important, and parts of spirit, i.e. all knowing.
Energetic center reflections
Our energetic center reflection are ways to be guided by the ancient wisdom of our spirit expressed in each center. Gift yourself the moments to lay, sit, or dance into the offerings of revisiting our energetic center meditations before you enter your reflections. Notice what they awaken in you, and where the medicine they hold, and the stories they wish to tell. When we allow those stories to be told, heard, witnessed we set a part of ourselves free.
Ancestor connections
This isn't an herbal apprenticeship It's more of an ancestor-remembership. Our work together is in service of reconnecting, healing, and liberating our ancestors. We cannot heal ourselves, or each other without meeting, listening, and releasing the spirits of our resilient ones, our medicine keepers, our mamas, our papas, our queer ones, our survivors, our murdered ones, our colonized ones. Our ancestor connection is a mutual, open, and flowing process that you might already be in. We offer you reflections and research prompts to deep and widen your ancestry recovery work. This isn't easy work. Many of our lineages are disrupted by the violences of colonization, the transatlantic slave trade, and forced migration. Some of us are estranged from blood family, or live our lives loved by chosen family. Our ancestor work can be what you need it to be. When living or blood family are not around to connect with you on reflection questions, seek the music, art, stories, creation myths, texts, and the recipes around you to bring your ancestors near. Allow yourself to sink into the oldest and clearest ancestor messages we can possibly receive: our intuition. Sit with your plant comrade [more on this in Module 1] in a comfortable seat or resting your back upon the earth. With gentle inhales and exhales as your ancestors the questions you seek. They are here. Can you hear them?
Rooted in the community: community partner research [optional]
We commit to the liberation of our ancestors, their technologies, and our freedom fighters in our healing journeys. As we seed self-healing, we acknowledge that individual self-care is a capitalist construct, our self-healing is dependent on the collective’s healing. Our community's healing is nurtured by the social justice and liberation work taking place in our local communities. Our rites of passage begins here, the local. The practices that will liberate already exist and are being practiced. Our healing is already in motion.
In our 9 month journey, you are being called to remember and document these practices. You will bring the magick, resilience, and social justice knowledges of all present in your local community into our journey together, but also into the medicine of your own journey. Our journeys are not meant to be walked alone, this is a way to remember that and to walk a journey that is rooted in social justice.
In our 9 month journey, you are being called to remember and document these practices. You will bring the magick, resilience, and social justice knowledges of all present in your local community into our journey together, but also into the medicine of your own journey. Our journeys are not meant to be walked alone, this is a way to remember that and to walk a journey that is rooted in social justice.
Submission |
Self-healing practice is for you. You aren't gonna get any grades from me, or notes on your journey [unless you send things to me directly or our group]. You are gonna get uplifted, loved, witnessed, and affirmation when you share to our WhatsApp/email thread: MONDAY, WEDNESDAY, or WEEKEND. This is also a tender opportunity to build vulnerability and intimacy with each other.There might be some reflections that you wanna keep private, or keep between me and you, that's OKAY!
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Our distance learning is comprised of two distance gathering sessions on Zoom video and 1 pre-created practice with ritual, experiences + exercises to be completed at your own pace. Our sessions range from 2-3.5hrs, a time frame that is released 1-2 weeks before we gather along with details about how to prepare your sacred space, which plant ancestors to have present, how to prepare them, and Zoom log in information. Review the OUR FLOW section to learn more about how these gatherings weave together and generally what happens in each. All virtual gatherings will be: 1) have closed captioning accessible [note this will not be a true translation, as we speak English, Spanish, Spanglish, Nahuatl, and many more languages among us]; 2) recorded and shared within 36 hours of our gathering date for your review with the live captions offered to the best of our abilities.
Please set reminders for all of our gathering sessions, and pay close attention to monthly emails that share our gathering days and times [in case anything has shifted].
Virtual Gathering Calendar
MONDAY
[QTBIPOC circle] *generally* Every 2nd + 4th MONDAY of the month Session 1 7-10p EST; Session 2 7-9:30 EST April 12 + 26 May 10 +24 June 7 +21 July 5 + 12* August 9 + 23 September 13 + 27 October 11** + 25 November 8 + 20/21*** December 6 + 13 *Note these are 2 back to back gathering weeks **Tenative, will be confirmed within a month of gathering **All circles will gather for our annual WE ARE SPIRIT joint gathering! |
WEDNESDAY
*generally* Every 2nd + 4th WEDNESDAY of the month Session 1 7:30-10:30p EST; Session 2 7:30-10p EST April 14 + 28 May 12 +26 June 9 + 23 July 7 + 14 August 11 + 25 September 15 +29 October 13+ 27 November 10 + 20/21** December 8 + 15 **All circles will gather for our annual WE ARE SPIRIT joint gathering |
WEEKEND
*generally* Every 2nd SATURDAY or SUNDAY of the month for 4-5.5hrs April 17 6-10:30p EST* May 15/16 June 12/13 July 10/11 August 14/15 September 18/19 October 16/17 November 2/13 + 20/21** December 11/12 *We will hold a vote before/during our first gathering to determine our gathering day + time moving forward **All circles will gather for our annual WE ARE SPIRIT joint gathering |
We commit to the liberation of our ancestors, their technologies,
and our freedom fighters as integral energies 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:
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!
After our first gathering your offerings will be reflected here!
We engage in curiosity-driven DIALOGUE, not debate or arguing
Our community values the sharing and holding of multiple perspectives, though we unapologetically center the perspectives and experience of black, indigenous, API, and racially oppressed communities in the diaspora. We come to dialogue to offer and receive deeper connection into the human experience.
We embrace multiple perspectives
No one is RIGHT. No one is WRONG. There are only multiple truths within our specific journeys. We are all on healing journeys. Where ever we are on those journeys we deserve to be treated with compassion. Compassion births PATIENCE.
We expect and accept discomfort
Conversations, meditations, and our healing journeys will speak to and often call the wounds of the oppressions experience due to racism, sexism, transphobia, and more are painful. We honor that we all have been socialized into systems of oppression that we must all unlearn. Unlearning is stretching and can be wound opening. Breathe into these uncomfortable moments, they get easier when they happen in a space of love.
We take breaks for self-care
This is your healing journey. We trust that you will empower yourself to take breaks during and in between our gatherings to care for your needs the best that you can. During our sessions, feel free to move around the space, drink water, and take any physical break from the space as you need. SELF-CARE as a tool of radical self love! Do what you need to do to navigate your mental, emotional, and physical well-being always!
We work to keep radical unapologetic LOVE + radical ACCEPTANCE the goal of all our dialogue
Our community remembers our oneness and our first form: love. Che Guevara once said, “At the risk of seeming ridiculous, let me say that the true revolutionary is guided by a great feeling of love.” This container is guided by love. Love in how we speak, think, treat each other and treat ourselves.
I acknowledge that our self-healing journeys are specific and do not have closure, rather they spiral. teomauistli is intended to be a multi-year ancestral wisdom and herbal journey. Each year we build our resilience, our connection, and our intimate bond with plant ancestors, the lands that we are on, and the medicine that we’ve inherited from our ancestors. To be considered for teomauistli year 2: neluatl/root I look at:
Self healing practice
Self-healing practice is an opportunity to deepen and nourish your heart, mind, and soul, literally with the plant magick you are encouraged to create and spiritually with exercises, journal prompts, and resources!
- There is evidence that self-healing practice was taking place throughout the journey, specifically through participant shares in our whatsapp thread or their participant folder. Shares being photos, written, sung, video-taped, drawn reflections and any other expression that communicates how the work is impacting you.
Culminating projects
- Prepare 1 herbal medicine per system of the body or energetic system
- Prepare a medicine from your lineage [food dish, medicine bag, potion, ritual, prayer, altar, etc]
- If resources permit, medicines will be mailed to another participant in your circle + shared during our final medicine shares gathering in December. More instructions and support on this will be shared at a later date
Attendance
I acknowledge that you are a creator and a spirit of many communities. You may not always be able to offer your physical or spiritual presence on this journey. I honor you. I honor your movements. I am here to support you, and keep you moving into your liberation through this self-healing journey. Show up as much as you can, not for me, but for you and your ancestors. The journey will transform your life if you let it. A participant that misses more than 6 distance gathering may not be considered for year 2, though can continue year 1 for their own learning + healing.
Let me know about your absences as soon as you can. I also understand life happens, work schedules get shifted, etc and that capacities to show up on our agreed day + time will shit over these next 9 months, if you need to continue the journey on your own, viewing the recordings, doing the tasks, and connecting with us on our thread that’s a possibility!
Let me know about your absences as soon as you can. I also understand life happens, work schedules get shifted, etc and that capacities to show up on our agreed day + time will shit over these next 9 months, if you need to continue the journey on your own, viewing the recordings, doing the tasks, and connecting with us on our thread that’s a possibility!
Communication
I am committed to your journey and your ancestors. Within months, WE, the collective circle you are in, becomes committed to YOU. We miss you when you don’t communicate; communicate with your presence in our distance gatherings or on our whatsapp thread. We feel you when you’re not there. AND we accept you when you can’t be fully present. I am not always fully present myself. I commit to communicating with you to the best of my abilities, honoring my humanity and yours. I ask that you do the same. I appreciate communication, over not.
Download WhatsApp
Choose your circle by accepting the invitation to the respective WhatsApp thread MONDAY [QTBIPOC], WEDNESDAY, or WEEKEND
Create a password for our online portal, follow the steps in the email subject line: WELCOME TO www.lamalaybera.com [needs to happen before the next step]
Log on to our online portal to read the WELCOME section [take your time, it's thick!
Set your monthly reminders for: our virtual gatherings AND your contributions to your energetic exchange
Begin BEFORE WE GATHER section
Gather the plant ancestors for our first month:
Week 1: Linden leaf + flower [Tila spp]
Week 2: Nettles leaf [Urtica dioica]
Week 3: Oatstraw [Avena sativa]
OPTIONAL: Red clover blossoms [Trifolium pratense]
Choose your circle by accepting the invitation to the respective WhatsApp thread MONDAY [QTBIPOC], WEDNESDAY, or WEEKEND
Create a password for our online portal, follow the steps in the email subject line: WELCOME TO www.lamalaybera.com [needs to happen before the next step]
Log on to our online portal to read the WELCOME section [take your time, it's thick!
Set your monthly reminders for: our virtual gatherings AND your contributions to your energetic exchange
Begin BEFORE WE GATHER section
Gather the plant ancestors for our first month:
Week 1: Linden leaf + flower [Tila spp]
Week 2: Nettles leaf [Urtica dioica]
Week 3: Oatstraw [Avena sativa]
OPTIONAL: Red clover blossoms [Trifolium pratense]