Healing and remembering

Sometimes when I work on people as a bodyworker, when I'm physically touching their bodies, I feel within them the histories of colonization. I feel the traumas of their ancestors. I feel the trauma of being forcibly separated from land and rivers, and waters. It sits uneasily in the body.

The history of colonization is generally taught as existing at institutional and policy levels. The colonization of a country. The genocide of a people. Pulling out natural resources from one place to increase wealth and privilege somewhere else.

But that is not the full story. History lives in people's bodies today, as well as in institutions, property systems, and general legal structures that shape our daily lives.

Sometimes when I work with people, I see how much they need to heal their relationship with Jesus. This is not about becoming a Christian or even a disciple of Christ. Sometimes that occurs. Sometimes that is part of the process. But I am speaking instead of healing the relationship with one of the greatest mythical figures in the western imagination and in whose name so much distraction has been rot. Perhaps a person becomes a Buddhist, a Hindu, a witch, or just their own spiritual seeking process unfolds. But healing from his core wounds of the western world, which necessitates seeing the western world for what it is, provincialized hang it: that is necessary for the healing journey. I would say that is necessary for most people who grow up within a context other than the western world, especially those for whom the relationship with Jesus continues to nag at the edge of their consciousness. Which I dare say is hardly everybody. But for those for whom it is there, that gentle tug at the corner of their imagination can be very powerful. To engage in a non-colonial Christ. New pair to be wild the rabbi as my neighbor here in the Hudson Valley, Sophie Strand, likes to say. All of us need to help heal the wounded masculine.

Indeed the healing between the masculine and the feminine, between sky and earth, between the rational and the flow and the emergence and the vision… All of those are key parts of the healing journey. For many healers out there, this is an essential aspect. In an era of increased aspects of gender fluid hoodies and recognition of nonbinary dimensions, there are many ways of approaching this healing dimension. Period remembering is part of that.

I feel at this point, most people I speak with understand the micro and macro are connected. But the world is fractal. This is not to say that the individual is the same as a whole, which is not to say that what happens here is the same as what happens there or that one can overly extrapolate from the menu to the macro. But to say that self and collective healing is deeply connected.

Some people come to my remembering work who are primarily outwardly focused. Others come who are primarily inwardly focused. The work of remembering connects the N-word and the outward in the contacts of history and ancestors. And that really is important.

I do Healing work with people I like to work with space… Whenever possible, I like to go to people's sacred sites, take them outside, or find ways to bring the outside in. Sometimes it's through the use of aromatherapy. Or laying a pinecone on the chest, or a crystal in hand, or something of value to everyone to them. I actually work with space itself. I don't do this because it looks good or because it's fun, although it is. I do this because our energies in the spaces in which we live are influencing us. We are flows of energy, not just stable stones.

Sometimes as humans, we can be like rocks around which water flows. And sometimes we can be like water, which flows around the rocks.

To heal our relationship store sells is to heal our relationships with others. Sunrise is the same thing as sometimes it is not. But part of what I mean when I say this is that the other is in ourselves in so many ways. We are perpetuated. Most of us have ancestors who are both perpetrators and victims. I certainly do. My ancestors perpetuated many grave crimes while being upheld by a society that thought that what they did applaud their actions as being righteous, good, and enabling prosperity. Prosperity was able only for very few. It was a form of externalizing the cost. It was done at an interpersonal level. It was done at the macro level. It has become part of our group's runaway growth economy and the inability to value things appropriately.

Where does remembering fit into the healing journey?

A potential student asked me. She herself has had quite the healing journey and is beginning to offer healing for others. This is what I told her.