With much humility and reverence, ancestor and I invite you to this journey, your first rites of passage. Over the next 9 months we will put up a mirror to the spaces ruptures, severed, and forgotten due to colonization, modern systems of oppression, and most radically to our sacred. ximopanolti/welcome to Seed Root + Bloom’s Rites of Passage: Self-Healer.
Our in-person gatherings are comprised of 10a-5p Saturday + Sunday on the 1st or 2nd weekend of the month.
Our gathering calendar
Every 1st or 2nd weekend of the month from 10a-5p [unless communicated otherwise]
April 6 + 7
May 4 + 5
June 1 + 2 *camping weekend at Soul Fire Farm in Petersburg, NY
July 5 + 6
August 3 + 4
September 7 + 8
October 5 + 6
November 2 + 3* (possibility of changing to 11/8-11/9, depends if I am summoned by elders to Mexico)
December 7 + 8
April 6 + 7
May 4 + 5
June 1 + 2 *camping weekend at Soul Fire Farm in Petersburg, NY
July 5 + 6
August 3 + 4
September 7 + 8
October 5 + 6
November 2 + 3* (possibility of changing to 11/8-11/9, depends if I am summoned by elders to Mexico)
December 7 + 8
* We will send you a google calendar invite for our gathering sessions, please accept the recurring reminder by clicking “Yes.”
As part of our first gathering weekend collective we will add, build + reflect on these commitments.
We commit to the liberation of our ancestors, their technologies,
and our freedom fighters in our own healing journeys
More on this during our first gathering weekend.
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.
We embrace multiple perspectives
No one is RIGHT. No one is WRONG. Even if your every cell feels in disagreement with that perspective, right and wrong binaries rarely build connection and understanding. People who feel judged and attacked often only become further entrenched in their ideas
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 the goal of all our dialogue
Our desire for human beings present in our oneness is remembering that we are love. is a desire born out of love. Activist 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.” The Body is Not An Apology is a community guided by the primary principle of love.
Our Rites of Passage is grounded in a self-healing is a practice of remembering ourselves whole as black, indigenous, Asian, diasporic, queer, immigrant, survivors, and intersectional children of our ancestors. Our healing journeys bring us closer home within ourselves, our multiple realities, each other, and create the many homes our hearts can hold. Each month 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 holistic 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. Our self-healing practice is incorporated into our weekend gatherings
Introduction to chakra + chakra meditation
Our chakra introduction + meditation are the ways we begin our relationship with these all knowing energetic centers. We offer guidance from ancient and modern wisdom on these tools of mutual awakening. Each weekend we gift ourselves the moments to lay, sit, or dance into the offerings of these meditations. We notice what they awaken in us, and where they are centered in their awakening. We will deepen our awakening during our journey.
Plant meditation
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 we 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. 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 be swept into connection. During our gathering weekends you will be 2-4 plant ancestors We will be with each plant ancestor as they bring you into the physical and energetic work we are doing at each chakra and body system. Outside of our time together you are asked to come to your sacred plant meditation time. For each plant meditation we recommend that you have a strong tisane/herbal tea with the plant ancestor. We encourage you to revisit our meditation tips within Module 1 to build your meditation practice. We will facilitate an additional plant meditation during our in-person gathering.
Allow yourself to be swept into connection. During our gathering weekends you will be 2-4 plant ancestors We will be with each plant ancestor as they bring you into the physical and energetic work we are doing at each chakra and body system. Outside of our time together you are asked to come to your sacred plant meditation time. For each plant meditation we recommend that you have a strong tisane/herbal tea with the plant ancestor. We encourage you to revisit our meditation tips within Module 1 to build your meditation practice. We will facilitate an additional plant meditation during our in-person gathering.
Introduction to body system + physiology
As we travel through the channels of the chakras, 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, because you do! We disempower the biomedical industry (hospitals, doctors, pharmaceuticals, etc) when we care for ourselves and each other with the medicine around us. Each month 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. We will learn about the different body systems, functions + what they need to be nourished, as well as connect with the reality that each of our bodies requires different inputs!
Ancestor connections
We are an ancestor remembrance apprenticeship. 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. We affirm that this is not 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
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 tribe’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, we call you to remember and bring you be with these practices. We will be visit and be visited by some magick makers in our community. These are community members who are helping us reimagine a just world.
In our 9 month journey, we call you to remember and bring you be with these practices. We will be visit and be visited by some magick makers in our community. These are community members who are helping us reimagine a just world.
Home practice is an extension of our gathering weekends. We practice, practice, practice what it feels like to experience deep connection with our 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. Home practice is our opportunity to connect with others in these healing journeys, affirm the work of community partners, and be accountable.
Our home practice will include plant meditations, readings + reflections.
Our home practice will include plant meditations, readings + reflections.
Submission |
Home practice is submitted monthly to your personal google folder to support all facilitators in staying close to your healing journey as well as prepare content that is specific to what you are needing. When home practice indicates a share via email or a social post cc or tag @seedrootandbloom to receive recognition of your labor!
Title each document/photo/video with your name, assignment + corresponding module within your folder to support our organization, ex: name_homepractice_1 or if more than one file is created: name__section_homepractice_1. |
We acknowledge that our self-healing journeys are specific and do not have closure, rather they spiral. We are a multi-year ancestor wisdom and herbal apprenticeship. Each year we build our resilience, our connection, and our intimate bond with plant ancestors. To be considered for our subsequent rites of passages we consider the following:
Home practice
Home practice is an opportunity to deep your self-healing practice and nourish our community!
- All home practice is submitted before our December 2019 gathering weekend
Complete home practice before each month’s gathering to the best of your ability
-It is important to be active in our online community, posting your reflections and photos used in your home practice is a lovely opportunity to make your self-healing journey, a community journey. - Culminating projects:
-Prepare 1 herbal medicine per system of the body or chakra
-Prepare a medicine from your lineage [food dish, medicine bag, potion, ritual, prayer, altar, etc]
-Medicines will be shared on our final weekend
Attendance |
We 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 these journeys. We are here to support you, and also keep you committed to your liberation through self-healing.
For every content hour missed apprenticeship are asked for make-up work, you will be granted access to the online student portal for two months. We ask that your work is made up during that time. We find after that time, one has a difficult time catching up. An apprentice that misses more than 2 gathering weekends/4 days total will not be asked for further study if they wish to continue on to our year 2, though can complete year 1 for their own learning + healing. There will be an absent sign up sheet present at each weekend so that we can prepare you and our community for your absence. |
- :Read Self-healing practice overview
- Read Home practice overview
- Accept our recurring google calendar invitation
- Read the Culmination requirements
- Questions on our Welcome section? Fill out this form!
- Sign + return my Energetic exchange form
- Move onto Module 1 Home practice