Journey Back to New Mexico

“Just like Love, Medicine is a force. ”

Deep medicine is almost always unexpected. It shakes you from your expectations and desire to control. It asks you to surrender the things that may have made you sick to begin with. To surrender doubt, fear and limited notions of self and others.

Last month, I found myself in New Mexico, the place I received Native medicine a year ago. It was a medicine that cured me of my persistent belief in my sense of separation. Since then, I can barely remember what it was like to have believed that I am separate and alone, like trying to remember the feeling of believing in Santa Claus.

This time, I returned to support a friend with an advanced cancer diagnosis. Along with her daughter, we arrived to New Mexico in search of deep medicine and healing. At midday, we were summoned to the ceremony. The medicine man and his wife arrived in overalls, dusty from working in the fields. He explained they were busy and could only fit us between moving cattle and running errands. I was taken aback. The container I expected was something akin to my last journey--a blanket of ancient darkness, a community of medicine holders, instruments, food, formal dress, ritual. By comparison, this seemed more like a hasty lunch break.

I felt my doubt and concern rise up. I glanced over at my friend, wondering how she was taking everything in. We had been informed that each ceremony was unique and tailored to the needs of the patient, but this was so far from the experience I had described to my friend-- literally and figuratively  the difference between night and day.

The sun was shining and the wind was blowing hard. We held on to our skirts as we entered the hogan. After we settled down into our seats, the medicine man began to speak. I could feel a change in my awareness, as if I’d stepped through a portal to another dimension. A healing dimension that is always accessible, but can only be summoned by one who understands its power and who inhabits it with reverence and sincerity. The dimension of Sacred present time, Nature, Truth, Love and the honoring of invisible Forces.

In that Sacred place, I experienced the unraveling of my friend’s story. The medicine man helped her search for the right thread to tug on so the story of the cancer was revealed and laid bare, a thread that connected her ancestors, her mother, her daughter and herself. Sitting next to her daughter, I could feel the power of the medicine man’s words enter her and leave her through tears--connecting dots, turning on lights, affirming and supporting. I felt his words reach back to my own stories of my own life and realized deep medicine connects all of us in healing.

I know enough about Medicine to know it comes in many different forms. But until then, I didn’t really understand Medicine is not a form. Just like Love, Medicine is a force. And like Love, the best response to such a force is to take it in and let it nourish us. The form that the force of medicine takes reflects the culture. In a society that is disconnected from Nature, from Spirit, from Femininity, from Ancestors, medicine will be disconnected, sterile, aggressive, perfunctory and robotic. In a culture that honors all of Life, Nature and the Feminine, Medicine will call upon these powerful forces to reconnect us to Wholeness in a seemingly mysterious way.

In Health and Community, 

You are a miracle!

“As for me, I know nothing else but miracles”

— Walt Whitman

Do you know what a miracle you are? What a phenomenally sophisticated apparatus your sentient being is? Your ability to translate these squiggles into something meaningful involves a highly complex orchestration of brain activity. And the extracted meaning affects your entire body - producing chemical reactions, sensations, emotions, activating memories and connecting thoughts. As you read this your body intelligence is aware of your surrounding environment, filtering out the unimportant while keeping partial attention to what is relevant. Your body continues its ceaseless functions, digesting foods, pumping blood, breathing, regulating your body temperature and filtering out toxins. Your body is doing all these things and sending feedback back to your brain, guiding with messages about how to care for
yourself.
 

Perhaps you’ve forgotten or did you never realize what a miracle you are? I hear how you talk about yourself when you come see me. You don’t like how your body feels or how it looks and you are struggling to get to some remembered or imagined state of being. In that struggle, you have left yourself and can no longer hear the messages from your body. You just want your body to behave, but you don’t realize what you view as “misbehavior” are compassionate, intelligent messages sent from you... to you.
 

Maybe you’ve forgotten the language that your body uses to communicate with you. The language that we translate as pain and pleasure. These are intelligent communications. Pain, discomfort and agitation signals us to change our situation and move towards ease. Are you uncomfortable? Is there strain on your wrists, back, shoulders? Maybe you need a pillow, a drink of water, a walk or a nap. Are you distracted? Is your head or heart moving towards conflict at work or the bleak state of the nation or the endless things on your list you feel incapable of completing? Maybe you need to sit still and listen to what your heart is telling you. Cry, ask for help, let something go, apologize. Pain and discomfort are not punishments. They nudge us to feel for another direction, urging us to find the places with more space and ease. And this miraculous guidance never leaves you, gets louder if needed and guides you back to yourself!
 

Likewise, pleasure, joy, ease and delight are also messengers. Are you sitting with a warm cup of tea right now? Was breakfast nourishing? Did you get a hug from your child today? Can you feel the warm sun on your face? Did a compliment make you smile? Did you enjoy listening to music? Then do more of these things, but more importantly, take them in when they are happening. Let them soak into the core of your being. Don’t deflect or overlook them. These pleasures are ambrosia for the miracle that is you. But don’t mistake the pleasure for the miracle or you might create pain chasing after those small moments.
 

The miracle is that you feel pain or pleasure at all, that your guidance works ceaselessly and effortlessly.  Whatever you are doing. your entire being is automatically operating in an incomprehensible and divinely complex way. When you remember, understand, accept this, you won’t reflexively run away from pain or towards pleasure. You will naturally respond to the language of your body with sensitivity and respect. You will move towards ease and joy. What an amazing miracle you are!

In Health and Community, 

Coming Apart at the Seams

“ We feel vulnerable and raw, unable to feel truly safe with our invisible garments. Why is this happening? It happens when the core of who we are, our identity and what we love are threatened.”

At the DMV this morning, I had some time to reflect on my musings and why I haven’t been able to write one recently. Last month, I didn’t turn one in for the first time and this month’s musing is already running late. Writer’s block? Burn out? Lack of inspiration?

The truth is, I’ve started many musings since July but I couldn’t maintain the momentum because I felt things were happening so fast and furious that when I had time to continue, edit or craft my writing, it no longer felt relevant. Big aha moments, deep reflections and urgent thoughts I wanted to share became stale and lifeless after only a few days as something new and more urgent came to the forefront. Things have been happening like this for many weeks and judging from what my patients have to tell me and what I am observing in the world, I’m not alone.

It feels we are collectively coming apart at the seams. As I pondered the ramifications of this, I realized that what is coming apart are the seams of the emperor’s new clothes. We can take this in a straightforward way, as in the emperor of our nation and his lies and false promises. But broader and deeper than that, our collective and personal garments, the ones we put on and rely for safety and protection, the ones that make us feel important or special, the ones that become our identity, are coming apart at the seams. We feel vulnerable and raw, unable to feel truly safe with our invisible garments.

Why is this happening? It happens when the core of who we are, our identity and what we love are threatened. It happens when we are forced to consider losing what we have. It happens in intense times, be it politically, environmentally, globally or personally. It’s happening on many fronts for most of us. The urgency of situations, as in war time, requires we live in the present moment and discard any notions superfluous to the moment and survival. Burnout is when all that feels overwhelming and the notion of so much sacrifice sends us into paralysis and hiding.

And that is why I have not been in the mood to muse. No time to craft and develop a thought to the expectation I have set for myself. Those expectations are parts of my invisible garment. And rather than showing up naked, I withheld. The interesting thing about an emperor’s garment coming apart at the seams is that it doesn’t really matter. The garment doesn’t exist.

At the DMV of all places -not Portugal or New Mexico- I became determined to show up just as I am. Today that is some amalgamation of so many things. A sudden gratitude for this unexpected gift of time for reflection, a feeling of joy and re-connection through words with you all - my community,  gratitude for my eldest child (whose birthday is today!) who often points out my invisible garments, the acceptance of my humanness, a feeling of breakthrough, a stack of work and personal tasks piled up before me that are not invisible, and a true vulnerability where fear and aliveness and gratitude come together. What happens when we are naked. We are alive and innocent.

 In Health and Community,