Tag: Ancestors

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Spirituality Divine I Am Education Existence

Music as Medicine

Music as Medicine

The Singing the Bones class with Lydia Violet, and Leah Song from Rising Appalachia, was a deep dive into the history, stories, songs, and cosmology that came before me…. that made me who I am.

Music as Medicine

They guided us in exploring the cultural inheritance of one of our ancestries through researching myths, folktales, archetypes, musical instrumentation, and song. By the end of the 6 week course, I had a deeper understanding of the cosmologies/myths/stories held within my cultural lineage. I saw so many connections to my Annishinabe heritage and my Scottish Celtic heritage. I was also able to redefine what having a relationship with my ancestors means for me. 

Music as Medicine

The Music As Medicine Project (MAM) was created by Lydia Violet Harutoonian, M.A, lifetime musician and dedicated student of Joanna Macy’s. While pursuing her Masters in Philosophy, Cosmology, and Consciousness at the California Institute of Integral Studies, Lydia entered an in-depth study of some of the history and perspectives that have generated our current planetary crisis. For the past 9 years she has studied closely with deep ecology elder and Buddhist scholar Joanna Macy, learning how we can metabolize our pain and care for the world into profound resilience and energy for action. She is also an accomplished musician who is deeply inspired by folk, blues, and protest music traditions. 

We are a collection of all the actions, thoughts, and experiences of those who came before us.

I decided to research my fathers heritage, Scottish Irish German, as I have been very much involved with digging deeply into my mothers heritage, Ojibwe. I have always felt like the magic in me comes from my native heritage. Though I have learned a lot through researching Scottish Irish and German heritages… the Celtic people were very magickal.

Uncovering more information about the cosmology of the Celtic people, I found so many similarities to Ojibwe teachings. From drums, rattles, turtles, and ceremonies. It was a huge realization again, that we are all connected and everything comes from within.

Thank you to everyone who participated in the class, it was so amazing hearing everyone’s journey and being inspired by everything that was uncovered.

“People do meditation to find psychic alignment. That’s why people do psychotherapy and analysis. That’s why people analyze their dreams and make art. That is why some contemplate tarot cards, cast I Ching, dance, drum, make theater, pry out a poem, and fire up their prayers. That’s why we do all the things we do. It is the work of gatherings all the bones together. Then we must sit at the fire and think about which song we will use to sing over the bones, which creation hymn, which re-creation hymn. And the truths we tell will make the song…

…The old woman sings over the bones, and as she sings, the bones flesh out. We too ‘become’ as we pour soul over the bones we have found. As we pour our yearning and our heartbreaks over the bones of what used to be when we were young, of what we used to know in the centuries past, and over the quickening we sense in the future, we stand on all fours, four-square. As we pour soul, we are revivified. We are no longer a thin solution, a dissolving frail thing. No. We are in the ‘becoming’ stage of transformation.”

– Clarissa Pinkola Estes, Women Who Run With the Wolves

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Earth Existence Green Lifestyle Most Popular

Harvesting Mountain Mint

Today Eli ArtSparkle and I harvested mountain mint, which will be used in our summer solstice event! The sun was HOT, but we gathered a lot. I would get flashes of how my ancestors might have felt, harvesting all day to eat and to store for the winter. I felt at home, squatting and cutting the mint quickly. Tomorrow we will harvest valerian, comfrey, and mullen! <3

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Astrological Insights Divine I Am Existence Most Popular

Find your center

Today I released a lot… I let go of old memories, and stories…I started rewriting my mental story.

Today I mourned and grieved… for situations I wish I had, and relationships I have never experienced.

Today was a heavy day. Energetically speaking. I felt it heavy in my chest, which made it hard to focus on any task. As soon as I arrived home I got a migraine.  I had already decided that I was going to do yoga this evening so I chose Yoga for Migraines.  It was exactly what I needed… and as I lay in shivasana massaging the base of my neck, an explosion tears occurred… emotions and memories… all based around fear.

As I continued to rub my neck, I was experiencing the memories emotionally and physically again…as if I was there in that moment.  Realizing that I was releasing old patterns.  The fear I felt in each memory told me I have been programmed to be scared. Scared of being hurt… physically, mentally and emotionally. Fear of being hurt… and causing someone else to react in a manner that would hurt me.

Being the reason for my own pain.

It was a lot…. I cried and replayed the memory and felt the experience and cried more… the crying was almost as automatic as my breath…it was as if my body was physically releasing the energy and old patterns.

After a few breaths in each memory, the fear subsided and I was no longer scared of that outcome because I knew that in this moment I Am that I Am.

Releasing the fear lead me to mourning the absence of an experience that the majority of people have in their lifetime… the opportunity to meet my mother’s parents, and to grow up with active grandparents. Which makes me wonder… is there a statistic on the number of people who grow up without one or both sets of grandparents?

To me this is important because it has to do with the knowledge of self, so to speak. Our energy is made up of our ancestors’ choices and experiences, and our children’s children will be made up of our choices and experiences. Knowing oneself is vital to growth and evolution. So being able to spend time with your grandparents and learn from them more about who you are, is very important.

So I mourned my mother’s parents. I mourned the absence of an authentic relationship with my fathers parents. I grieved for not being able to speak to them, and ask them questions about their lives and their parents lives. I grieved for never being able to hug them and feel their presence in the physical realm. I allowed myself to feel what I was feeling.

And then I felt their presence…. in the space my breath had created… and for the first time I realized what this season was truly about. What our ancestors acknowledged and celebrated…. when the energy of the world is aligned and the veil is thin… this is when we can communicate with our ancestors and this is when we can learn from them.

Of course this is the perfect timing for releasing. Aside from the fact that there are major astrological events happening… It is almost all hallows eve, Samhain, and Dia de la Muertos.  This is the perfect time for us to get in touch with who we are through our painful memories… to release the fears surrounding those experiences and fill ourselves with love and gratitude.

Who you are encompasses all of your relatives.

To connect with our ancestors and dig deeper into who we are, we can meditatively let go and release what we “know” of our ancestors experiences through mourning, grieving and celebrating the life experiences that lead them to be who they were… filling those memories in with golden light of peace, love, and gratitude.  Then celebrate them throughout the week by remembering their light… perhaps light candles for them.

Do what you feel in your heart you should do…as you have all the answers within.

“My love is just a reminder”~Trevor Hall

Migwetch and Gi’zaagi’in <3

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Most Popular Existence Revealing Treasures in your Own Backyard

Turtle Mountain Chippewa

Its been a week since I got home from Turtle Mountain Reservation, North Dakota. It feels like I was there yesterday. My heart misses the learning, the deep immersion in the knowledge of my people, the love of my new teachers and friends, the land full of space.

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This past week has been a rollercoaster emotionally.

I am happy to be home with my family. Happy to have time to rest and process all that I’ve learned and the things I’ve been through. Excited to have time to clean out things that no longer serve me in my emotional and physical space.

But all of this comes with a longing to be back in the immersion of the knowledge, surrounded by the land that my ancestors and family call home.

Realizing who I am and where I come from is huge. I mean, I thought I knew myself…but I was only skimming the surface. I am realizing that you do not know yourself until you dive deep into where you’ve come from and the lineage that your connected to.

turtle-mountain-reservation

The events and situations my mother has gone through…
The events and situations my grandmother and grandfather went through…
The events and situations my great mothers and great grandfathers went through…
all of these things have built the foundation for me to be who I am.

And again thats only skimming the surface, I still have my fathers side to learn.

Its interesting the difference I feel when I think of learning about my mothers side versus my fathers side.

My father is German…we have a family tree and written history…the Germans have integrated into American culture almost so completely.  When I ask people their ethnicity, a lot of people say German. When I want to look into the history, I find a lot of it in textbooks, many written accounts, as well as stories from my fathers relatives.

Though as I sit here and write this I think there must surely be something I do not know about my German heritage as well. I feel in my heart it is just as important and valuable to learn about my fathers side, however there is something about being Turtle Mountain Chippewa that is calling me and drawing me to know more. Something about my Ojibwe lineage that feels close to my being.

I learned so much about the ancient traditions, ceremonies, legends, and stories of my people. I learned so much about life on the reservation, yet I still only know very little.

Turtle Mountain

The Turtle Mountain Chippewa Reservation is only 6 miles by 12 miles wide. Only a small percentage of people practice our traditional Ojibwe ways. Only a small percentage of people know the traditions of their people.

The most eye opening thing to me is how little people know about themselves even though we might think we know who we are because we know where are parents are from, and we know our favorite people, places and things…we know how we feel about certain issues, and what we think about certain topics… but it wasn’t until my trip that I realized most of us know nothing of our true selves.

We are all connected to a lineage of people who have gained and sacrificed things which have allowed us to become who we are and to have what we have today. Our lineage is an important aspect of ourselves that we don’t always think about, nor have an opportunity to know.  There are many cultures that have lost the knowledge of their ancestors, due to natural disasters, diseases, as well as colonization. Its sad that colonization plays a major role in the lost of knowledge, when we are taught that colonization is about gaining knowledge.

Imagine if people would have celebrated each others differences and learned from one another in brotherhood… how much more prosperous and thriving the human race would be. If we could see each other through eyes of love and curiosity instead of fear, we would know all the mysteries of the universe.

I am home from being fully immersed in the tradition and culture of my Ojibwe lineage, to reintegrate into the culture which comes more from my German lineage. I will to walk the middle way, realizing that both are important to making me who I am and receive all the universe has in store for me.

As I learn more about myself… I realize the magnitude of what I have to share. I realize what I am called to do. I see now the importance of deeply knowing ourselves.

Boozhoo!
Raining in the Dawn Woman
Turtle Mountain Chippewa