Community Medicine

Years ago, right before my initiation as a healer, during a VERY dynamic time of change... I had a dream.
In this dream the home of my birth was an Animist village of people living close to the earth. On top of the well box in the middle of my backyard a man appeared dressed in black buck skins and bone jewelry. The man was holding a sack and everyone in the village turned to see him speak. "I have stolen the collective medicine of your tribe. If you do not all give me your own personal medicine I will destroy the collective medicine of your people, dooming you all. You have until sun down." The people knew what to do they went and gathered up their personal medicine and dressed in their finest regalia and set out to give this man in black their medicine. I was outraged that my people would just surrender to this mans demands! I went into the house painted my face and picked up my ceremonial knife, took it from its sheath and ritually stalked the man. As I walked around the out side of my house I saw that every one was preparing to give their medicine or had already done so. This fueled my rage, not only was I enraged at the man who saw it fit to threaten my people, but I was enraged that they had allowed him to do so. I was met at the back side of the house by a member of my own people sitting at a small table covered in cards. He was busy cataloging peoples personal medicine. Behind him was a room with another man in it, and the room was filled with boxes of people’s medicine. "Come to drop off your medicine?" the man asked. "Yes...." I said, lying to him. "What is it?" he asked. This stopped me dead in my tracks. "I... I don't know." "Oh well life is run by chance, so just pick one of these cards and that's your medicine." I gave him a skeptical look and picked up a random card turning it over. On the back side was a picture of a wild rose. "OH wild rose! That's a lot like hawk medicine, wild rose medicine is wild love, that's a good one! Go ahead and drop it off inside." The rage drained out of me completely... If my personal medicine was wild love then how could I kill this man in black? I walked into the room full of medicine in a daze, I was confused. Before me stood the man in black but now he was in a tie-dye T-shirt arranging boxes. He said to me while piling them up happily, "Oh just set it any where I will get to it in a minute..." "I can not harm this man," I thought, "my medicine is wild love..." I walked out of the room, muttering my medicine is wild love over and over again to myself, and out of my dream into a half waking dream, where information about what medicine was and its relationship to man and nature filled my now lucid mind. I was shown what medicine is, and how one finds it within their self through ones relationship with nature. I was shown that we all have a medicine to help heal all of the sickness in the world. I am currently in a college program about growing community. I took this course as a way to further my community development skills so that I could further assist in the development of bioregional animist communities. The night after my first class I could not sleep... the memory of the dream entered into my head and I could not stop thinking about it... I was exhausted but the memory would not leave me alone to sleep. I had always felt the dream would make a wonderful community ritual there was so much meaning in it. I saw that the dream could be made as a ceremony to teach about the collective medicine of a community. The man in black represented adversity and how adversity can threaten community. Every one had to give of their personal medicine to protect the community. Those that did not know what their medicine was would not understand this and would have to find out what their medicine is. We all have medicine and our personal medicine is to be given away for the benefit of the community, not just for the human community but the other-than-human community as well. Because all other-than-human-persons benefit from the authentic wellness of another, the other-than-human-persons community gives its medicine to the larger community as well including human-persons, it does so in such a way that shows us that our personal medicine also lays in nature, that what is within us is also outside of us in the natural world, and it show us this so that we can give of our medicine wisely to aid the whole of life. As I lay awake trying to sleep fitfully I saw how small communities of human persons could enact this dream, and how it could teach them bioregional animism as well as about their responsibility to give back to life as life for the benefit of the community. I saw how it could teach about how communities can work WITH adversity, and the things that threaten community, and I saw how they could learn how ways of doing this could come from trans-rational ways of knowing, learning and problem solving, in ways that lead them to a deeper understanding of themselves through relationship with their larger community of human and other-than-human-persons. As an example, if I was to do this with my class I would take a bag of stones for every member of the class and I would pass the stones out asking them to have an intention for the wellness of the community they are a part of in that class ( just as an example) and then blow their intention into the stone as a way of symbiotically putting their life force, their breath into the intention, animating it the intention, Giving it a life of its own... Then I would ask the community leader to hold onto the pouch of stones and put it some where safe. At some point much latter down the line I would call the class together for a community "event" in which I or some one unknown to the class, to arrive dressed in black holding the pouch of stones. What would happen next would be an enactment of the dream. Many of the participants may not know their own personal medicine and the actual concept of "medicine" might be out side of their world view. For ease, and to go along with the dream, cards could be made covered with plants animals and forces of nature as well as types of places in ecological systems (streams, lakes, ponds & mountains etc..) with their symbolic attributes added to them. Sources for making these symbolic cards could be taken from both Ted Andrews’s books as well as Jamie Sams’s.
Though I don't fully approve of other-than-human-persons being viewed strictly as symbolic vehicles for human experience, other-than-human-persons can be related to symbolically, which does not make them symbols themselves. Something about this could be placed on the table with the cards. The participants could then give their cards the man in black who is now wearing colorful non-threatening colors and style. After the last participant has given their personal medicine the community could gather and talk about their experience. After the discussion the dream as well as my interpretation of the dream and the foundation of the event could be shared to further show the importance of trans-rational cognition in the process of learning and growing and maintaining health in community as well as within ones sense of self.This community ceremony empowers its members to find the medicine within themselves through the natural world, through trans-rational means, showing people that they were all born with medicine to heal the sickness in the world, to mend that which is broken. If participants were interested in pursuing this concept of personal medicine and community medicine deeper they could be encouraged to go out into nature and develop relationships with the other-than-human-persons in their larger bioregional community, and seek out their personal medicine or medicines through their relationships with the ecological world. Through this relationship dynamic they could utilize various trans-rational methods comfortable to them to discover that the medicine is within as well as out side of themselves, seeing how trans-rational forms of cognition dissipate dualistic notions of inner and outer reality as well as self and other, cultivating altruistic action in the process as well as deeply grounded and centered personal growth based on place and the physical world. I might add that the process of finding ones personal medicine as well as giving it to the community is an act of self healing as well as personal discovery, it can be painful as well as liberating and joyous, ultimately life changingand requiring deep commitment and is not to be done with a half hearted attempt. This work I call a medicine quest, or medicine seeking. Often times one finds that the medicine they are seeking is in some way connected to the pain they hold within themselves and is one with adversity itself, that they might find it to be the poisonous parts of themselves or the world around them, and that they must actively transmute that poison into medicine before they can give it away... this can be a path of deep personal healing and growth, thus requiring a deep commitment to wanting to help. Actively seeking this medicine themselves could be encouraged after the public event.

Building your body from the land up... You are what you eat.

Cellular Regeneration
From wellnessadvocate.com
"Every minute of every day your body is renewing itself. Humans bodies have about 100 trillion cells. Each day, millions of cells in our bodies die and new ones replace them. The quality of the new cells determines our health in the future. Your cells are affected by the foods you eat, the water you drink, the air you breathe, sunshine and anything that gets into your body through the skin. Exercise, rest, your environment and stress can also affect the quality of these cells and the health and strength of your body.

The frequency at which these cells are replaced differs in various types of bodily tissues. Some tissues regenerate very quickly and some take years. Except for our brain and certain parts of the nervous system, we actually regenerate a new body every seven years. Most of our cells are replaced within that time.

When you were seven years old, you had a very different body from when you were first born. When you were fourteen, you were in another new body. Hormones influenced you and helped you to grow taller and more like a young adult than a child. By the time you were 21 you were in an adult body. This body was totally different from the one you were born with or the one you will have when you are 70 years old.

Just as hormones influence the changes in your body, so does everything else that you do. Foods that you eat are the materials that form the body's building blocks. When you eat an unhealthy food you are affecting more than your waistline. You are having an effect on the health of the new body that you will have seven years from now. Every time you exercise you are increasing your potential for a stronger body in the future. Each time you smoke a cigarette, drink a glass of alcohol or take a harmful drug you are poisoning your body and increasing your chances of developing diseased cells. Excess stress can prevent the cells from forming perfectly. The life force is continually regenerating you and you can directly influence your health and the body that you have in the future. By incorporating certain wellness practices you can get your body to build stronger, healthier cells as it replaces the old ones.

When your body regenerates new cells do you want them to be healthy cells or diseased cells? Your actions can make the difference! You have the power to create illness or health in your own body. With active prevention you take action to encourage your body to be healthy. There are many techniques for this such as proper nutrition, regular exercise, fresh air and sunshine and abstaining from poisons such as alcohol, cigarettes and drugs. Anti-stress techniques such as deep breathing and meditation can also create wellness in your body and can help you to ward off disease."
To read more on this subject please read this article from the New Scientist.


" Our cells are literally flushed out, and rebuilt with new cells.
Depending on what source you read (from Dr. Deepak Chopra, MD to Gray’s Anatomy), our body replace its tissues and cells every 1 to 7 years.
- Muscles get replaced every 6 months to 3 years
- The pancreas replaces every 5-12 months
- Our bones replace every 8 months to 4 years
- Red blood cells replace every 90-120 days
- The intestinal lining replaces every 5-30 days
Realize, we have been doing this regeneration every day since the day we were first conceived."

- By Scott Ohlgren

click the link on this photo for more on the science of "you are what you eat"

This topic has been a source of inspiration for me for a long time...
When you look at this information and you look at the fact that you literally are what you eat, then the perception that if one was to move to a new bioregion or ecoregion then one would literally be composed of this ecoregion within a seven year period.
We are composed of our ecoregions and bioregions... our cells are designed by place, even our DNA is composed of the foods we eat.
Eating bioregionaly helps to adapt one to ones bioregion, because you are literally building your body out of it. Feeding your children a bioregional diet also helps with this process...
So much of the foods we eat are from other places this is such an ecologically and socially destructive practice, but it also confuses our very being! One example... Eating local Bee pollen can help one defend against pollen allergies... but only if the Bee pollen is from local bees.
If one only wanted to look at this from a purely metaphorical level, just knowing that you are composed of the foods from the bioregion you live as a part of... just looking at your own body would help remind you that you are one with the land and sky and waters of your land. The actual act of obtaining food bioregionaly to build your body from the land up actually facilitates the maintaining and developing of relationships, which as we all know is the basis of animist ontology.
Eating locally also helps us reconcile our sense of not belong to a place of not being native to place, as well as our sense of loss as to a identity based on regionality, and BEING native to place. If we know that our body is composed of the land helps to foster being native again, just knowing that our cells die and are reborn only to be built from what we put in it, puts a new spin on the word native, which in its most literal definition means to be born of a place... to be of a place, or to be from a place... and if one is eating foods from ones life place and ones cells are deign and being reborn... after seven years of living in a place you are that place... literally!
You really are what you EAT, and if you eat Bioregionaly, go our side look around and say to your self with pride, I AM THAT! I am the land talking and thinking and reading this about its self right now! How wondrous!
The simple act of eating can facilitate a ecological sense of self and identity based on place... to me this breaks down concepts of race, ethnicity, cultural identity and brings it down to the earth...LITERALLY! And is a basis for bioregional animist based identity and cultural.
So become a localvour! Think globally eat locally!

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THE MOTHER TREE

THE MOTHER TREE
By Bioregional Animist Nanci

Birch bark...an exhausted looking slice of tree that is somehow speaking of times long past. It seems as though this tree has shed or somehow discarded this layer of itself, to be left as proof of its existence.
She’s tired, worn, grey with age, yet comfortable with the journey she has taken. Her skin is brittled with age, like the sinewy hands of a 1,000 year old Grandmother, knotted and twisted from ages of work, yet her energy seemed infinite, almost fluid like time.
She is marked with many lines, pathways, fissures and wrinkles, perhaps a testament to her long journey. She feels unassuming and practical, comfortable, if you will. She holds the coolness of the forest and the warmth of the sun at the same time.
She beckons me to come closer, to see and to listen. I struggle to understand what she wants me to know. Peering into her face, she seems to be looking back at me with eyes everywhere and she seems to possess the wisdom of a million ancient souls.
There is a feeling of transcendency as she shows me the tale of the universe.
Endless, open, wide and expansive! Every moment of it written on her aged, layered exterior. My eyes roam from picture to picture, my mind amazed at the striking, yet intricate photographs of her life’s journey.
An eagle, perched in its watchful repose, looking down, as if protecting its world. Below, groves of trees reaching up toward the sky. There are roads, paths, rivers, and waterfalls.
Even the knots take on a curious appearance. One shows me a canyon, rich with layers of time, as if trying to show me the rhythm of life, like water passing by.
Another knot reveals the stars, wrapped up neatly within what appears to be a nebula,circular lines adding a sense of movement to their portrait. It briefly reminds me of Van Gogh’s “Starry Night”.
My eyes drift further to yet another knot. Within this knot is a tiny hole that invites me to follow it through, much like a winding road from outside to inside. Following the road, I turn her over to behold yet more of her well traveled soul.
There are gritty layers combined with a soft brown, velvety interior;; an illustration of her essence of spirit. It is almost as though she has weathered the ups and downs of life, yet has not lost her softness, her innocence, her ability to comfort and nurture.
There are fine grains of sand here, even finer bits of sparkling glass mixed in. Earthy, aged and wise, yet preserved as if young like a child. She has drunk from the cup of life and ingested the joy of living, in all its entirety. She certainly has a story to tell.
She has brought to mind such wonderful images, from Van Gogh’s “Starry Night to that familiar stretch of road just south of our sacred mountain, Mt. Katahdin on route 95 North in Maine, where there is a sudden break in the tree line amidst the repetitiousness of the pine.
There in the clearing is a grove of tall rather stately looking silver birch trees, leaves dancing in the sunlight. It is a small but welcome diversion on an endless drive. The birch trees offer a welcome respite from the tediousness of the trip. I always take my rest in that oasis; my face caressed by the wind and my own weary spirit welcomed home by the birches. A very feminine contrast to the maleness of Katahdin. There the world seems in perfect balance, if only for a brief moment.
No other tree can make the sun dance so playfully and make the whole forest come alive with joyous, golden twinkles. No other tree reflects the moon-light so magically from its silver bark.
The ancient people called the birch ‘the Mother Tree’, because after the ice age it gave birth to a new habitat for all the trees and plants which did not have the same powers of endurance.
They sometimes called the tree “the shining one” Maybe this nickname was given because of the bright silvery bark, or the way the sunlight dances in the leaves, or perhaps simply because of her radiating spirit.
She is a spirit of the universe, the sun, moon, and stars and she has told a million stories. Somehow I think she has a million more to tell.
Birch bark lives for years, long after it is separated from the tree. As I place her shed skin back on the forest floor, I wonder if someone else will pick her up again one day and she will tell the story again.
The story of an enduring spirit for all time.

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Reconciliation

In the history of European people there has been a lot of conquest and a lot of colonization that have subjugated the expression of the land and the first-people of that land. In deep history we find the Indo-European expanding from the Euro Mountains into Europe, Northern Middle-East, Persia, and the northern Indian Peninsula between 4000 B.C.E. to 1000 B.C.E. splintering into many linguistic and culture groups with unique expressions in how they related to the environments they have now inhabitant for thousands of years.

Then they began to encroach on other indo-European territory and subjugating those Indo-European cultures with their own. We see this with the expansion of Russia, into Eastern Europe, the Germanic invasion into Celtic territory and most prominent in our historical awareness are the Greeks, then the Romans. Not only that these Indo-European cultures amalgamated, through many methods of expansion into Europe itself. Little is known about the alpine races of Europe that pre-dated the explosion of Celtic and Germanic migrations.

In more modern history the age of exploration saw the Spanish, Dutch, and English expand great territories around the world. Somewhere in-between all of this, these cultures lost their own Bio-Regional identities with the state religion of Rome, later superseded by the expansion of Christianity. Christianity being of Semitic origin in the Middle East beginning as a faction of Judaism. At large the Indo-European had adopted a foreign mythos with stories centered around middle-eastern Bio-Regions and introducing the concept of Monotheism (one god/divine force of an anthropmophic figure over all creation) severing the Indo-European expression even further from Bio-Regional awareness and subjugating nature to natural resources to be consumed to fuel the economic and religious expansion into distant lands.

Not a single part of the world can claim to be untouched by this expansion. The expansion saw the subjugation of many first peoples and their animist perspectives to the authority of the European world view which belonged to the Europeans as much as it did these first people. This expansion spread plague and deceases desecrating many populations and obliterating entire civilizations, along side large scale economic exploitation of the remaining populations which is still going on today.

As an American of European heritage this is a very hard history to swallow and digest. Not that this kind of history cannot be found in China, and the Muslim expansion in the Middle East and Northern Africa. Or with the genocides between tribal civilizations in today’s world. But it is a the history of my people, but in many ways I have to question how much of it applies to me personally? After all I never owned slaves, I never raped and pillaged native villages, and I never demanded my religion be adopted over another. So, I do not see the use of feeling guilt about this history; however my concern is this history places me in undeserved privilege where the entire world has unjustly been bent towards these advantages. This does concern me greatly! How do post-colonial Europeans reconcile with the land and people they have colonized?
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UH OH THE FEDS!!!!!!!!!!!

Nanci is a member of the bioregional animsit tribe at tribe.net,
she recently emailed me about her day at work... I got such joy out of what she told me, I asked her to write it up and post it on the tribe. This is what she shared with us....
What really cracked me up was that she told them to google it... I have resorted to that over and over again as well!
Enjoy!



Educating the Talking Heads!~

So how about I am at a staff meeting/training/federal audit…oooooppps! sorry (MONITORING) for my Night Owl Programming today.
The very looong morning has turned into a mid-day, monotonous, droning… on and on about programming, staffing, goals, etc. The discussion turns into an impromptu training, in which everyone has to say what three gifts they bring to the team. One of the staff conveys that one of her gifts is appreciating and getting to know where she is and being one with nature. I’m having a little trouble grasping the concept but anyway…
I have had enough of this monotone madness and my smart ass self couldn’t help it…I blurted out quite suddenly…”Yeah that’s bioregional animism!” The room now goes entirely quiet…you could have heard and leaf drop at that very moment…or at least an acorn!
OMG!~ now I have really done it...put myself out there, for sure; as I have just recently grasped the concept myself! My head full of useless knowledge has come head to head with the talking heads…and now I have to explain what I just said. I can bullshit my way through a lot of stuff but whoa…bioregional animism?!?!? If ever a foot was in a mouth…now was the time!
The entire room now has to know what this is, so I go onto explain the concept to an eagerly awaiting audience; speaking about balance, harmony, and sustainable living through a oneness with the environment you live in. They are all on the edge of
their proverbial seats, asking many questions and looking like the biggest beeswax candle just illuminated their tiny, talking head world!~ The Fed is looking at me as if he is thinking “Oh we got a loon here!”…sizing up my mental health. (And by the way I saw a loon on my way home) He asks me to repeat the word, which I certainly do. He quickly acts astonished and says he’s never heard of it.
At this point I go on to tell him that certainly he has experienced this concept on some level , as most cultures were animistic at one time. In our zeal to remain a superpower and a dominant force in the global arena, we have wandered away from the natural order and rhythm of things. Bigger, better, and modern convenience has now replaced a workable and sustainable way of living. It is part of the reason that human beings are so stressed out all the time. They have become engaged in linear time and
forgotten how to coexist with their environment and let things happen organically.
The fed was speechless and merely stared at me for a moment. “What was that word again?” ROFLMAO…”BIOREGIONAL ANIMISM….google it!”
Tonight, twelve people will be googling bioregional animism and getting a concept of exactly what that is; and what fun it was to fuck with the fed!~
And on my way home..I was at peace with the beautiful l fall landscape, the loon, the blue heron in the river, and the eagle that flew up over the ridge as I topped the crest in the road~

Peace.
Little Shield
(nanci)

earth regenerator

by Desert Spider

i am indian tobacco. jupiter's rod. candlestick. mullein.
i grow where earth has been burned.
i grow in vacant parking lots.
i grow in places you'd least expect it.
they poison me with chemicals.
they misunderstand me.

for one year i am a rosette.
and then my masculine stalk grows tall. i grow taller than you, if you allow me to.
i am good for your lungs.
when your air becomes too polluted, you will look for me.
you will feel bad that you have poisoned me.
i will be in those places you abandoned or left as forgotten.
my roots help the earth to regenerate.

i don't ask for much.
you do.
and when you come to me again
afraid, helpless and wondering...what the hell do i do
i will stand with you.
i will remind you that you too can grow new roots
in unexpected and forgotten places.
i will remind you that you too can be a jupiter rod, a candlestick growing tall

i'll give you my leaves and i'll listen to you cry as you breathe and drink them again.
i will help your lungs to grieve in fall so that you can give birth to something new in spring.