Polish Ancestral Healing Project Website
The Polish Ancestral Healing Project is a part of the non-profit organization, Circle of Ancestors.
The intention of the Polish Ancestral Healing Project is to educate, empower, inspire, and transform those who seek ancestral connection and healing. Our work reaches across religious and secular lines by tapping into our common earth-based spiritual/mystical roots, the sacred elemental energies of the earth and working with these elements as a source of healing.
Please visit our site to find out more about PAHP, see pictures of our ancestors and our trip to Poland, and to download copies of both of our Master’s theses.
Buffalo Going Home
Someone sent this video link to me a few months ago. It documents the return home of a herd of buffalo from Catalina Island to Rosebud South Dakota. I’ve watched it several times and it always brings tears to my eyes.
As the Lakota man speaks in the end of the video, “Tatanka is home now. They feel good already. You can tell by the way they are acting. People can feel it too. They are what kept us alive for a long time. It’s our way of life. Their way of life.”
May we all find our way home!
Global Medicine Review
I want to give a shout out to one of my favorite podcasts, Global Medicine Review, which comes to us from Pacifica station WBAI 99.5 FM in New York City. Global Medicine Review is hosted by Dr. Kamau Kokayi and Faybiene Miranda. Dr. Kokayi is a medical doctor who honors and promotes wholistic and indigenous healing perspectives. Faybien Miranda is a poet, performer and community activist who adds her creative beauty and spiritual perspective to the mix. They explore many topics in health and healing and often from an indigenous perspective. They also share with their listeners important information on health issues, such as diabetes, detoxification, nutrition and HIV/AIDS. They recently interviewed Dr. Malidoma Some for their fundraiser show. You can find their podcast on ITunes or download shows from their website.
Flower Healing Part 2
In March I made a journey to the Anza Borrego Desert, outside of San Diego. The desert wildflowers were in full bloom. I was joyful to be around the plants of my desert dwelling ancestors. Here is one of the important flowering plants that I encountered:
Chaparral is one of the oldest living plants on Mother Earth. Some chaparral plants living in the California desert are over 9,000 years old. Chaparral, which is also called Greasewood, was considered a panacea for the native people that lived around it. As an herb, chaparral is powerfully cleansing to the body and it has been used for many illnesses, including cancer.
As a flower essence, chaparral is a powerful emotional cleanser. It helps us to release old, toxic emotions that we have stored deep in our body. Once, when I was sitting in meditation with a chaparral plant, she showed me how my emotions vibrated in the cells of my body. Later, when I took the flower essence, I went through a healing phase where for many days I released old feelings of sadness and anger. Chaparral also helps to connect us to our own ancestors. In this way, it helps to root ourselves into our own genealogy. Connection to ancestors has always been an integral part of indigenous cultures. Many modern people suffer from disconnection to their ancestors. This creates many other issues, including loneliness and a sense of not belonging. If you wish to connect to your ancestors, begin by making a prayer and offering to let them know your request. Then take the flower essence of chaparral, or take a small piece of the plant and put in on your altar or carry it on your body.
Flower Healing Past and Present
This is a good time of year to learn about the healing power of flowers. Flowers have been and continue to be a significant medicine for all traditional peoples. Flowers are used for spiritual cleansing, for blessings, for celebration, and for mourning. Flowers are an important part of ceremonies all throughout the cycle of life, from birth to death.
In modern times, flowers have been incorporated into a system of healing called flower essence therapy. Flower essences are a subtle, yet profound system of healing. As a form of vibrational healing, flower essences do not work directly on the physical body or issues of physical disharmony. Instead, they work on our energetic or etheric bodies. As the flower essences help shift our energy fields, they reach the emotional and spiritual roots of physical illness. In this way, flower essences can be a catalyst for deep healing within our mind, body and spirit.
More on the Sacred Fire
Apela has uploaded another video to youtube of her talking about the Sacred Fire Ceremony on March 21st. The lighting is a little eerie, it’s like she is talking from the Spirit World. She says some very important things about the meaning of the ceremony:
“40,000 years ago, the ancestors built the sacred fire. They built this fire with great power & great purpose. They built it in such a way that we, their descendants would awaken in the right time and reignite the sacred fire to remember our relationships with each other and to remember our sacred relationship with the Earth.”
Herbalism as a Radical Act
I had a conversation with someone tonight about why I am an herbalist. Many reasons- like it’s cool to be able to recognize the plants that grow around me and to be able to make my own medicine from roots, leaves, seeds and barks. And I love to touch, smell and taste the herbs. There is also a very radical reason I love being an herbalist. I am learning how to rely on nature as my medicine chest and breaking the American dependence on the pharmaceutical industrial complex. Drugs are a big business. On the other hand, Mother Earth gives freely & generously of her medicines (as long as we take care of the plants & the earth, but that’s another story). Herbs can never be patented and made into a big profit. Herbal remedies are non-toxic to the environment and to our bodies. On the other hand, the manufacturing of pharmaceuticals is very toxic to our environment. After you take a medication, your body metabolizes it; then you pee out the waste into the toilet. Water from your toilet flows into the groundwater and pollutes it.
Also, 90% of pharmaceutical drugs are composed of petrochemicals. That means our dependence on/ addiction to oil extends into our systems of health care. What happens to the prices of drugs when we don’t have enough oil? They go up and up and up; and these medications become too expensive and completely inaccessible to most people. Already, the cost of drugs is too expensive for many.
Plants have been here on planet earth for 370 million years. Our human ancestors only arrived on the scene 367 millions of years later. As long as humans have walked on earth, they have relied upon plants, our ancestors for food, shelter, and medicine. All of our ancestors have rich traditions of healing with herbs. The way our culture is today, so heavily reliant on chemical based drug therapies, is a result of a calculated effort by the AMA and the pharmaceutical industries. We are taught to fear plants, not to trust their efficacy. People in the US don’t want to try to use an herb unless it has been proven in a scientific study. For some reason, hundreds of years of traditional use by our grandmothers doesn’t count. If you visit another country where herbal medicine is still part of the fabric of the culture, you may realize, as I did, that we are brainwashed here in the US.
When we learn about herbal medicine, we learn to take health care into our own hands. When we learn to grow our own medicine, we feel empowered. We learn that we can be responsible for our own health. We reconnect to the traditions of our ancestors who used plants for food, medicine, ceremonies and celebrations.
Also, this close relationship with plants brings us back into a connection with the earth. As we grow our herbs we learn to take care of the Earth, who so graciously provides these medicines.
One dictionary definition of radical is: “or from the root or roots; going to the foundation or source of something”. Herbal medicine not only brings us back to the literal roots of the plants; it brings us back to the root of our real nature as human beings. Our true human nature which is aware of its interconnectedness to the web of life and lives with reverence and respect for all living things.
Link to Sacred Fire Website
Apela Colorado now has a website dedicated to the Sacred Fire on March 21st. Check it out:
OneSacredFire.org
Healers from all over the world will be joining together in this ceremony, including Zulu High Sanusi, Baba Credo Mutwa in South Africa, and Tata Yawanawa from Brazil.
Here’s an excerpt from the site:
An Invitation to Light Your Sacred Fire and
Renew the Earth March 22, 2008
“In reigniting this fire in Kyrgyzstan, its leaders will stand in the last location that the people of the earth stood together as a single community of humanity, 40,000 years ago. By supporting this ceremony with your simultaneous global fires, this event will powerfully re-create the single community of humanity.
The ceremony’s ability to spark remembrance is exponentially enhanced through global participation; the more of us participate, the more fuel is created to feed this sacred fire.”
Buffalo Messenger- Restoring Peoples and Earth to Health
I was excited to find a video by an Aleut elder and spiritual teacher of mine, Ilarion Mercuelieff on YouTube. He talks about the epidemic of diabetes in the Native American communities and how it can be addressed through natural methods. I think the most important thing he says is at the end of the video, where he talks about the prophecies of these times and what is happening to Mother Earth, and to our own bodies:
Iliaron says, during these times, “Mother Earth is waking up from a great, deep sleep. And as She does, her vibration goes up. And for those who cannot maintain in their bodies a mirror of what Mother Earth is doing and waking up themselves, they are not going to be here very much longer…..
……and the Elders say we can’t give the world anything we don’t have ourselves, and so if we’re here to restore our cultures, restore our way of life, restore our communities back to health and restore Mother Earth back to health, we’ve got to start first with ourselves.”
Sacred Fire on March 21st for Ancestral Remembrance
Apela Colorado, my elder & mentor, recently came back from her travels with a message from spiritual elders in Central Asia. Circle of Ancestors sponsored an evening lecture with Dr. Colorado last November. We taped her talk and have posted part of it on youtube so the word can get out about the Sacred Fire ceremonies to take place this year on March 21st.
Circle of Ancestors
onesacredfire.org
