The time has come for us to move!
Change can be hard + scary. But fear not. Change invites growth.
And so you can find us here, at our new home >>> http://www.animaldelatierra.com
Stop by on your travels. Rest your feet and take a deep breath. There are many more stories to be shared!
*Que exit music*
This past weekend was the start of the ten-month clinical program in Ayurveda at the dhyana Center. Two full years have passed since I have been a student new to the teachings of Ayurveda, just trying to find my voice. Now I am assisting the teacher and taking part in learning and practicing more advanced body work therapies alongside her. Each day I am blown away by how much has changed in such a small amount of time. And each day I am pleasantly surprised by what I am learning from perfect strangers, who quickly become adored allies.
What has perhaps been the steepest learning curve for me, in my studies of Ayurveda, has hands-down been pulse. To even explain what pulse is to someone who has never had their pulse read by anything but a heart monitor began as a challenge. Fortunately enough, my teacher is one of the few who still teaches pulse. Her explanation of the art and science has been refined over more than twenty years of searching for words to inform students of what they are reading on the blood vessel.
My teacher simply says, pulse is the oldest form of blood cell analysis. If we were to hook up a heart monitor to the patient as we were reading their pulse, we would have a technological avenue backing up our findings. The truths that can be found in reading someone’s blood vessel are much more felt by the person when they are relayed by human hands, hearts and minds. And what I am so giddy about is that when it comes to reading pulse, one can’t just go in, read and monologue the patient’s health history. Pulse requires a real dialogue between practitioner and patient for any real truth to be revealed. It requires the person who is reading to be sensitive and realistic about what core piece of information this person needs to hear to change their story in the place where they are ready for change. And it requires, and this bears repeating, the person receiving the reading to be honest and true to themselves about what sadhana or routine suggested to them that they will go home and do.
People want to change. People seriously know and can distinguish their beneficial routines from a bad habit. And people are eager to hear a core piece of information about their health that could take them one step further in a direction of health. However, people don’t always assimilate and absorb the medicine they are being turned onto. They don’t always take action. Even when they know that doing it is good for them! As students of medicine, practitioners or doctors, it is not our responsibility to force change on them. It is not our place to tell someone what they should be eating, or how they should be living. Firstly, we don’t know what its like to be in their bodies. And secondly, that is a grand expectation that we may be brewing if we ever find ourselves holding onto the perspective that we can actually change a health story for someone.
To refrain from launching into philosophical foundations of the breath and I am, I’ll simply say that our place as students of this medicine is to witness. To observe, through pulse, what conditions someone’s health is in. And from there, to be neutral about what it is in what we are witnessing for us to share with them. If we go in holding any expectation of changing someone because we know what they need, we may hit our own wall as well as theirs, because we have gotten in the way of observing what is. We have formed a belief of what is, and our view has been distorted. Even if what we see is a perfectly happy and healthy person, we are holding ourselves in belief. Not in reality.
Just a few last words on this phenomenon that is pulse; “the bloodsong” as my teacher calls it. The steep learning curve of learning pulse is honestly a wave I’m still riding, but when I first heard about murmuration, all kinds of crazy nonsense began making conceivably-crazy-sense. If you’ve never heard of murmuration, I recommend highly you visit this link:
http://www.wired.com/2011/11/starling-flock/
Best understood by cutting-edge physics, murmuration is the highly misunderstood act of a flock of a starlings thousands strong, creating a beautiful show of unity and unbelievable precision as they move across the sky, as one.
An article I found about murmuration states this:
At the individual level, the rules guiding this are relatively simple. When a neighbor moves, so do you. Depending on the flock’s size and speed and its members’ flight physiologies, the large-scale pattern changes. What’s complicated, or at least unknown, is how criticality is created and maintained.
It’s easy for a starling to turn when its neighbor turns — but what physiological mechanisms allow it to happen almost simultaneously in two birds separated by hundreds of feet and hundreds of other birds? That remains to be discovered, and the implications extend beyond birds. Starlings may simply be the most visible and beautiful example of a biological criticality that also seems to operate in proteins and neurons, hinting at universal principles yet to be understood.
Hear that? The phenomena of murmuration also seems to mirror the way proteins and neurons operate in the body. Hmm.
I guess what I’m trying to say here is that what is going on inside the body can seem like a complex equation, but it always adds up. We simply need to remember that common phrase, “as above, so below.” There is always cause for each effect. Our health or lack thereof can be broken down into a series of logical equations the same way the united front of a flock of starlings can be seen and understood by the movement of each individual bird and its neighbor.
But overall, our body is a whole. The movement of one part, affects the next. And on and on.
Posted in Complementary Medicine, Healing
I have a question. I see it all around me. It shows up in my rear view mirror, and it even questions me while I’m listening to the radio. There is no avoiding it. And there absolutely no way I can pretend as if I already know the answer.
Are you curious? I’m sure curious how you’d answer this question:
This question may be a rendition of a Coldplay lyric, but I’m serious. I honestly don’t know. Many years ago, my friend and I were hanging out in our town’s downtown park and we came across a mutual friend with a companion we hadn’t met before. As we made introductions, the stranger asked what me and my friend were all about, and institutionally, my friend answered “animals.” We went on to exchange stories about our affection for animals, and the guy, who still didn’t know jack about us, chimed in saying, “Yeah, I feel so sad to see animals in cages, and how people keep all animals in zoos. They should all be left free-e-e, you know.”
It was a funny thing, because at that point something like instinct was triggered in my friend as she heatedly asked where his belief really came from. Because we all can agree that nobody likes seeing animals in cages, it doesn’t really mean that we can be brash and say we should set them free-e-e-e. Although rather unfortunately, in this encounter, we couldn’t all be nice, listen patiently and nod our heads in unison. Some surprising things were said. Like, “every time you drive a car, you’re killing an animal. Driving at 60 mph means you’re bound to hit and kill an innocent animal. We should outlaw driving!” And then someone said, “every time you take a step, you’re likely stomping on and killing an innocent, adorable bug. Does that mean that we should all stop walking?”
The debate raged on and on. Normally I love a good debate, but the problem with debates is that both sides only end up getting more entrenched in their own narrow perspective. And in this case, my friend and I were left with the memory of watching our friend of a friend march away in his wool sweater, with steam blowing out of his ears. And all I could say was, “if he is so worried about keeping animals in cages, I wonder why he likes wearing wool sweaters.” Oh well.
The more experience I have working with animals and learning from different people who work with animals for a living, the more I come to love this saying I heard a very modest horseman say:
And the more that I study the philosophies of different ancient medical traditions, I more I come to feel incredibly humble about the fact that I may not know much about complementary medicine, but I don’t know anything about anything else.
It seems that so many people want to be an expert in their field. Only they can’t decide what field to tap roots into, so they can grow to be an expert. It seems that so many people grow old without growing wiser. And it seems to me that there is a lot of intelligence out there, but not as much common sense. I never cease to be amazed. Just when I begin to think I know what is really going on…
I’m quite content to not know what I’m talking about. I’m really fine to let life’s processes remain in the feminine realm of intuition and deep transformation. Our senses are much more limited than other animals, like dogs’ whose sense of smell is ten thousand times more acute. Certain things are beyond our limitations of knowing or sensing. And that’s great news, really! None of us should feel responsible for being a master of the universe. And truly, all of the teachers I met who I would certainly call masters, don’t ever proclaim themselves to be. So what does that say?
If we’re a part of the cure, then we must not know it, but sense it like infrasonic rumbles beneath an elephant’s sensitive feet. If we’re a part of the disease, then we’re likely too busy causing harm to notice.
When we can get to this field, which is surely a place within us, I believe what Rumi meant is that we’ll find true connection and pure belonging. This is the place where animals live when they are free to take care of themselves and connect to nature. There is no doubt, although remember, I don’t know ****.
I think this is important to talk about, because if we have a feeling of where we belong, then we must be with our tribe. I am always seeking connection to nature and place, but a place feels like home when my tribe inhabits it. I can’t explain how it works, but I think the mystics do a pretty good job. I have faith in knowing, and I have faith in cultural traditions. But I feel like there is a disease running rampant in the many communities where the belief that the human mind has the unique ability out of all species to explain everything, is allowed to cement its’ tent stakes. And I do consider one of my most beloved writers, Elizabeth Gilbert, to be a true mystic when she says,
There’s a reason we refer to “leaps of faith” – because the decision to consent to any notion of divinity is a mighty jump from the rational over to the unknowable, and I don’t care how diligently scholars of every religion will try to sit you down with their stacks of books and prove to you through scripture that their faith is indeed rational; it isn’t. If faith were rational, it wouldn’t be – by definition – faith.
Faith is belief in what you cannot see or prove or touch. Faith is walking face-first and full-speed into the dark. If we truly knew all the answers in advance as to the meaning of life and the nature of God and the destiny of our souls, our belief would not be a leap of faith and it would not be a courageous act of humanity; it would just be… a prudent insurance policy.
Photo Courtesy La Abeja Herbs
When you cross that threshold, you’ll see very clearly what side you’re a part of. Whether you live in the dark and gaze at the sun, or you live in the light and gaze at the moon, you are living on the great divide. And what you need is not a prudent insurance policy, but a faith in your own courageous act of humanity.
In the Ayurvedic clinical program, during the body work portion of class we practiced massage on everyone in class. Since we had about 28 people in our class, each massage wound up being worked by five to seven people. That is ten to fourteen hands on each body. Suffice to say, it was perhaps the best massage of my life. I felt nourished, held, witnessed and not judged or pushed past my boundaries in any way. It was lovely. Mid-way through the massage, as my tissues were all warmed up and ready for deeper work, I erupted into laughter. Yes, what a great way to release! However then, suddenly my breath caught and my giggles stopped cold. Tears then started streaming down my cheeks and my breathing labored. The strokes slowed and became simple, sweet rocking. I wondered about containing my tears, but I didn’t see that as being appropriate. After all, my release was the affect of having bottled and sealed up many difficult emotions that I didn’t want to feel. So I just let go. And when I did, a voice rang loud and clear in my head. That voice said, I don’t want to be here.
It wasn’t that I didn’t want to be “here”, being worked on and held with assurance and trust by so many talented, trustworthy practitioners. I definitely wanted to be there! But the voice I heard came from a much deeper place. It was speaking from a sincerely scared place. My reaction to this voice was sadness, because I knew it spoke the truth. But I didn’t want to feel that way anymore. Instead, I wanted to honor the scared, sad voice I heard that day, by convincing it to want to be here. From then on I told myself each day, and many times a day, like a lovers reassurance at every goodbye saying I love you, that I was so happy to be here. And what do you know, I soon became very happy to be here. On this planet. In this home. In my body. The reason I share this story with you is because I recently came across an article from The Sun Magazine, April 2013, Issue 448, that read like someone came to speak for me. And I can’t get it across any better than the original writers. The article is an interview of Philip Shepherd by Amnon Buchbinder. So here you go, I hope you’re happy to be here too.
Buchbinder: You’ve said that we have a misguided cultural story about what it means to be human. What does that story tell us?
Shepherd: It tells us that the head should be in charge, because it knows the answers, and the body is little more than a vehicle for transporting the head to its next engagement. It tells us thatdoing is the primary value, while being is secondary. It shapes our perceptions, actions, and experiences of life. It separates us from the sensations of the body and alienates us from the world. And there is no escaping this story; it’s embedded in our language, our architecture, our customs, and our hierarchies. It’s like the ocean, and we are like fish who swim in it and barely notice it because we’ve lived with it since infancy. By interpreting reality for us, stories frame and give meaning to our actions. But there’s a danger to living by a story that you can’t question, because you start to mistake the story for reality. And that’s where my work starts — in formulating questions that can expose that story and hold it to account.
Buchbinder: Where did this story come from?
Shepherd: It dates back to the Neolithic Revolution, which was underway in most of Europe by 6,000 BC and gave us a new way of living: agriculture, permanent settlements, domesticated animals. We started taking charge of our environment. When you domesticate an animal, you become like a god to it. You determine with whom it will mate, and you own its babies. You choose what it will eat and when. And you determine the moment of its death. So at the start of the Neolithic Era humankind was radically altering its relationship with the world. The unforeseen consequence of that, which our culture hasn’t yet begun to appreciate, is that we also began to take control of the self in ways that created within us the same divisions we were creating in our relationship with the world. If you go back to the Indo-European roots of the English language, which date from the Neolithic, you find that the word for the hub of a wheel came from the word for navel. The hub is the center around which the wheel revolves. The metaphor suggests that the center of the self was located in the belly. The idea of being centered in the belly shows up in many cultures — Incan, Maya. There is a Chinese word for belly that means “mind palace.” Japanese culture rests on a foundation of hara, which means “belly” and represents the seat of understanding. The Japanese have a host of expressions that use hara where we use head. We say, “He’s hotheaded.” They say, “His belly rises easily.” We say, “He has a good head on his shoulders.” They say, “He has a well-developed belly.”
Buchbinder: This isn’t just a semantic issue, is it?
Shepherd: No, it’s deeper. These cultural differences point out that we have lost some choice in how we experience ourselves. Our culture doesn’t recognize that hub in the belly, and most of us don’t trust it enough to come to rest there. Our story insists that our thinking happens exclusively in the head. And so we are stuck in the cranium, unable to open the door to the body and join its thinking. The best we can do is put our ear to the imaginary wall separating us from it and “listen to the body,” a phrase that means well but actually keeps us in the head, gathering information from the outside. But the body is not outside. The body is you. We are missing the experience of our own being. To get a sense of what we have lost, it helps to appreciate the forces that carried us into the head. The Neolithic Revolution spawned two major changes in our story: the experiential center of the self, which had been located in the belly, began to migrate upward to the head; and the spiritual center of our culture began to migrate from the earth goddess up to the sky god. In mythological ways of thinking, the body and the world of nature generally are associated with the feminine, while the head and the realm of abstract ideas are associated with the masculine. By around 700 bc, we find the Greek poet Homer making frequent use of the word phren, which translates as both “mind” and “diaphragm.” So by Homer’s day the migration of our thinking was about halfway to the head, balanced between male and female. Some rich developments came out of that ancient Greek culture: the birth of Western science, philosophy, literature, theater. But by 350 bc or so the philosopher Plato locates the center of our thinking in the head. In his dialogue Timaeus the title character explains that the gods made us by fashioning the soul into a divine sphere, the cranium, and then gave it a vehicle, the body, to carry it around. So the head has the spark of divinity, and the body is a machine. That’s been our metaphor ever since. Our culture has been intolerant of attempts to reclaim this lost center of consciousness. In the early 1900s a Chicago anatomist named Byron Robinson wrote a book called The Abdominal and Pelvic Brain in which he describes the neurology of an independent brain in the gut. His work was quickly forgotten — it had no relevance to our cultural story. Then, in the late 1920s, Johannis Langley mapped out the autonomic nervous system. He said there were three divisions: the sympathetic, the parasympathetic, and the enteric. The enteric nervous system, which governs the gastrointestinal functions, is exactly what Robinson called the “abdominal brain.” Langley’s book became a classic, but the enteric nervous system was widely ignored, and students were taught that the autonomic nervous system has just two divisions. Finally, in the 1960s, Dr. Michael Gershon rediscovered the brain in the gut. In his book The Second Brain he describes how it took him fifteen years of presenting his research and answering refutations before his fellow neuroscientists capitulated and agreed that the neuromass in the belly is indeed an independent brain. [Gershon is a professor of pathology and cell biology at ColumbiaUniversity. — Ed.] Robinson, who first discovered the pelvic brain, was much freer in his assessment of its importance than scientists are today. He talked about it as the “center of life.” I completely agree with that. It is the center of one’s being.
Buchbinder: How does it meet the criteria for being a brain?
Shepherd: We shouldn’t imagine it as a lump of gray matter. The enteric brain is a web of neurons lining the gut. But it perceives, thinks, learns, decides, acts, and remembers all on its own. You can sever the vagus nerve, which is the main conduit between the two brains, and the brain in the gut just carries on doing its job. So they are both brains, but they are radically different. The enteric brain exists as a network that suffuses the viscera as a whole — which mirrors the way the female aspect of our consciousness feels the world around us as a whole, enabling us to exist in the present. The cranial brain, by contrast, is enclosed in the skull. And that mirrors the way the male aspect of our consciousness can separate itself from the world and create a subject-object relationship, enabling us to think abstractly. These two ways of engaging our intelligence reveal two different versions of the same world.
Buchbinder: Why bring “male” and “female” into it? Why associate “doing” with the male and “being” with the female?
Shepherd: The terms are imperfect, certainly, because people will tend to hear “men” and “women” — but I’m not talking about men and women. I’m talking about the complementary opposites that exist in each of us. Whether you are a man or a woman, there is both a masculine aspect to your consciousness and a feminine aspect. To come into wholeness is to realize the indivisible unity of these parts. At this point in our culture the male aspect has eclipsed the female aspect. I see this in both men and women. We have been taught to mistrust our bodies, to mistrust our intuition, to mistrust any information that is not analytical. This head-based, masculine perspective gives rise to three serious misunderstandings that drive our culture: we misunderstand what intelligence is, what information is, and what thinking is. Take our understanding of intelligence. We think it’s the ability to reason in an abstract fashion, something you can measure with an IQ test. So we remain blind to the impotence of reason in areas of vital concern to us. You cannot reason your way into being present. You cannot reason your way into love. You cannot reason your way into fulfillment. If you wish to be present, you need to submit to the present, and suddenly you find yourself at one with it. You submit to love. There’s that great quote from the Persian mystic Rumi: “Your task is not to seek love, but merely to seek and find all the barriers within yourself that you have built against it.”
Buchbinder: If intelligence isn’t abstract reasoning, what is it?
Shepherd: It’s sensitivity — specifically a grounded sensitivity, because a reactive sensitivity isn’t able to integrate information. A sensitivity to music, to the flight of a swallow, to arithmetic relationship, to a child’s tears — all of these are forms of intelligence. And your sensitivity isn’t a static, permanent condition. Anything that increases it increases your ability to live more intelligently. Conversely, the constant noise and distractions of modern life have the opposite effect. The jackhammer you walk past on the street diminishes your intelligence by blunting your sensitivity.
Buchbinder: If this focus on the head began in the Neolithic, are you saying that we need to go back to the Mesolithic? What if the rise of consciousness to the cranial brain was an important part of our development as humans?
Shepherd: Our task at this point isn’t to go back. It’s not a matter of giving up the ability to think consciously or abstractly; it’s a matter of coordinating the two brains. Picture the first astronaut who went into orbit and took a photo of our planet. He brought that unprecedented perspective back home and showed it to people. Suddenly they were newly sensitized to what it means to be a citizen of the planet. They became slightly more intelligent about their relationship with it. I think that new sensitivity contributed to the range of environmental initiatives, such as the Earth Day movement and Friends of the Earth, that sprang forth in the years following that first photo of the earth from space. That story of the astronaut stands as a metaphor for the evolution of our consciousness, but we are only halfway through the journey. We have left our home in the belly and are now “in orbit” in the head, viewing the world from a new, somewhat remote vantage point. Just as the astronaut gains perspective by separating from the earth, we gain perspective by stepping back from the body, separating our consciousness from its sensations and dulling our awareness of them. The problem is, we don’t know how to bring those perspectives back home so they can be integrated. Without that integration our abstract perspectives can’t sensitize us to the world. They merely abet our ability to assert control over it. Our culture has a tacit assumption that if we can just gather enough information on ourselves and our world, it will add up to a whole. But when you stand back to look at something, there are always details that are hidden from you. The integration of multiple perspectives into a whole can happen only when, like the astronaut bringing the photo back to earth, we bring this information back to our pelvic bowl, back to the ground of our being, back to the integrating genius of the female consciousness. The pelvic bowl is the original beggar’s bowl: it receives the gifts of the world — of the male perspective — and it integrates them. As you bring ideas down to the belly and let them settle there, they sensitize you to who you are and eventually give birth to insight. Our task is to learn to trust that process. The central theme of my work is that our relationship with the body shapes our perceptions, which in turn direct the actions we take and guide the theories we generate. The atomic theory began as a philosophical concept that was first expounded by Democritus around the same time Plato declared the head to be the soul’s container and the body its vehicle. Having individuated ourselves from the world, we saw a reality made of individuated bits, a shattered universe of random pieces that have no real relationship with each other. And we still see it that way, because we live in the head. But that’s an alienating impoverishment of reality. Quantum mechanics has revealed that not even an electron exists as an individuated bit. It exists as part of a web of relationships. Our relationship with the body has similarly affected our politics, our corporate culture, our language, our cultural values — all of human history. Language tells us explicitly that the head should rule. You’d better have a good head on your shoulders. You need to get ahead. The bosses work in corporate headquarters and head up committees. Chief, captain, and capital all come from the Latin word for head, so Washington, DC, is literally the “head” of the U.S. We call the pope the “head” of the Roman Catholic Church. We could call him the “heart” of the Church, to emphasize that it’s an institution based on faith. Or we could call him the “lungs” of the Church, because spirit means “breath.” The Church might look to its original model, Jesus, who did not live from the head. Instead it’s organized as a top-down tyranny, with the pope as its “head.”
You can read more of The Sun here or subscribe at The Sun Magazine, here. The Sun is, after all one of the many reasons we ought to be so happy to be here.
Ancient folklore describes the horse as being created from the ocean.
From Juliette de Bairacli Levy’s Herbal Handbook for Farm and Stable, she writes “Legend tells that the horse, stallion and mare were created from the sea waves and emerged white as sea-foam…further legend from Greece tells of Chiron the centaur (half horse, half man) who, long ago, was so wise in knowledge of medicinal herbs that heroes and demi-gods went to him worshipfully to be his pupils.” If you’ve ever experienced the fortune of running with horses on the beach or in gentle waves, you may have already gotten the feeling that they belong on the seaside. Juliette, the famed grandmother of herbal medicine for animals who was one of the biggest influences in bringing herbal medicine to the states, writes that “the horse flourishes when raised by the sea or within reach of sea winds… and certainly benefits greatly from the addition to the daily food of iodine and general minerals-rich seaweed (of most types, though deep-sea kelp is the preferred one).”
The reason I write this is because, first of all I haven’t written in a while. And second, the reason is because of an ocean of emotions in my life that has me learning to breathe under water…again. While it seems most of my existence on this planet has been time spent around horses and their magnetic hearts, because that’s where I gravitate to now, in truth the first few years of my life were spent in the water. When I was young, I could swim better than I could run. I could say that by the first time I rode a horse I gave up my sea legs for the saddle, but I never really gave them up. Water is in my blood, not just in my physical body, but in my family tree. My Grandfather was a passionate fisherman and raised every one of his children by the sea. My Dad has likely spent the greater part of his life in water, whether surfing, diving for treasure or swimming just for the hell of it. And I amazingly enough got to grow up exploring California’s coast line with my father, in search for the perfect wave.
My family tree, if I was to illustrate it, would look like deep-sea kelp because we are inextricably linked to an ancient ocean of wisdom. We all learned to swim before we could walk. We, like horses thrive on sea breezes and make our roots close to the coast, our homes sprawling up and down the California and Baja California Coast. Knowing the roots and listening to the stories that are dug into the roots of my family tree warm me deeply. And when grieving needs to happen or when we let go of some of our losses, I believe we can ease our pain by looking to our oceans.
We all have an ocean within us, in Ayurveda it is related to the kidneys and our lymphatic system. One of my anatomy teachers goes as far to say that our bodies, as a whole, are one big ocean. Every one of our cells is bathed in water, and within every one of those cells there is more water. When we look deeply, we see that the macrocosm and microcosm of the environment to the body and the body to the internal environment keeps on scaling down until our microscopes can no longer scale down. Life, in its full field of vision is one amazing spiral which shows us time and again that what it outside of ourselves is within ourselves too.
Photo Courtesy La Abeja Herbs
During clinic this past week at the Ayurvedic healing center where I am working on my residency, the lead practitioner in my group was speaking to the importance of staying hydrated to begin to change anything in our health. They way she explained hydration has stayed with me, as she said that when our bodies are well hydrated and we are stressed, we are able to bend. But when we are dehydrated and we become stressed, we don’t just bend, we break. So what is the lesson here that the ocean, horses, our families and trees especially have to teach us? The lesson is wonderfully simple enough: when we take care of our oceans, (not just kidneys, lymphatic system but our WHOLE BODY) we will be better able to bend with stress, not break apart from it.
The Ancient’s may have believed that horses were created in the ocean, but I recently learned from a friend a new perspective on what it means to believe. Of course, no matter what we believe the truth will remain true, to believe could be seen sometimes as “being in the lie”. I cannot accept that to believe is to be caught in a lie, though sometimes it can be that stubborn beliefs can blind people to the real truth. I’m sure we’ve all come across what holding onto these kinds of belief can do. However, because my father is a fisherman I was raised on stories of what treasures and mysteries the ocean held, and see belief as an essential tool to have in our lives, (especially on the open sea). Each story my dad shared was incredible and unbelievable in its own way, but the lessons I caught onto in each story of the sea was that absence of belief in a story of shipwreck and encircling sharks may be the difference between life and death. As a fisherman, you may be taught emergency procedures and possess the knowledge of survival in such circumstances, but without a strong belief that you will survive, what will keep you looking for reassurances from lighthouses?
Our emotions are governed by the intuitive waters within ourselves. It’s been shown that we share with all living creatures in varying degrees these emotions, but I do believe that no one has ventured as far to say that all other creatures, in addition to having senses capable of feeling, are capable of belief. Whose to say something so daring anyway! Since belief in itself is a tool very similar to the mind in that we only know its existence because it tells us so. Therefore let me be as bold as to say that if belief works mysteriously in our process of making discoveries about ourselves, then other living creatures undoubtedly can believe, although maybe they have no use for it.
Since beliefs have the power to focus us on reassurances we are seeking, and blind us altogether if we are unwilling to give up that which no longer allows us to grow, I find it more useful myself to use beliefs only until they get me to a place of knowing. Indeed, knowledge can change and researchers and scientists discover new information all the time that changes the paradigm as we once knew it. However knowledge as a tool seems to me to be more flexible a structure than a belief as a system. The two are equally powerful when used properly and with finesse, however they can both trap us in shells if we aren’t careful to shed them once we are ripe to grow beyond them.
To clear this matter up requires some water. Where there is water, there is life, change, flow, growth and regeneration. Knowing and believing are tools that allow us to come to conclusions. But the truth is, no one cares what you believe or what you know until they know how much you care. To conclude, the best way to use knowledge and beliefs is to share them in such a way that demonstrates effectiveness and promotes experimentation. Find for yourself what is true. Let go to the deep tide that moves your stream of consciousness ever onward, keeping a healthy circulation going between knowing, believing and living so that your well of wisdom may never run dry. Strive for balance in your lifestyle, truth in your knowledge and forgiveness in your beliefs. As Sarah Crowell said and Sacred Ecology Films later wrote about, “The way we’ll hold it together is to hold it – together.”
Posted in Complementary Medicine, Healing
Tagged ayurveda, culture, faith, family, folklore, herbalism, horses, intuition, juliette de bairacli levy, nourish, ocean, sacred ecology films
I like to see magic all around me.
I was born and raised in Sonoma County in Northern California, a very magical place. My family transplanted itself here because my Dad was a Sea Urchin diver, and the market for Sea Urchins was booming in this region. Coming from a picturesque Southern California town, my Mom initially saw the place that would come to be my hometown and said, “I wouldn’t be caught dead living here.” Today, here we are caught dead living in a small bohemian town in Northern California, a short drive from the Ocean, the City and the Mountains; pinch me. Having lived here my whole life, sometimes I see this place as a sleep-inducing field of lotus’ and want so badly to wake up. Traveling to foreign places is surely a wake up call. The things I take for granted in this place are luxuries in other places. If for nothing else, we should travel to remain humble that life is a gift. Sometimes I drive out to the Ocean and plunge into the cold salty depths nearly naked, and let my whole body become numb and I never feel more alive. And every chance I get I drive out to a horse ranch on top of a great hill where my two horses live and I run and muse about life with them. They are great listeners, but above all they are great communicators. I will share their stories, do not worry.
Animal as Medicine is a seed. It is years old in being dreamed, and still at this time I do not know what it will grow into, (though still, I dream). Looking back, it seems its creation began when my relationship with horses began. My journey with horses began when I was six, and finally at age eleven, I embarked on a deeply connected journey with a sweet mare called Jasmine. At the time my Mom had remarried and my Sisters and I moved to our new home in the country, which had a yard built to house horses. An utter fairytale. My hands have also cared for many wild horses, who have come into my life either as a companion for Jasmine or a teaching project for me, and have set wildfire to my dreams urging me to study in depth the true nature of horses and wild creatures.
I’ve heard a powerful healer say that we can believe what we want to believe, but the truth will always be the truth. Horses are a strong medicine for us; my favorite Ayurvedic herb that I use for regenerating the tissues and strengthen the reproductive system is Ashawaganda, literally meaning Strong like Horse. The incredible healer who taught me all about this herb, DeAnna Batdorff, is the reason why Animal as Medicine was rooted and given life through Ayurveda. I actually learned what Ashawaganda translated to mean at an introduction to Ayurveda class at the dhyana Center in the Summer of 2012. And right then and there, I gave up my plans and scholarship to study Natural Horsemanship at the University of Montana Western, and signed up to study in the Clinical Program in Ayurveda taught at the dhyana Center that Fall.
My life has been blessed with so many healing influences. I feel so deeply connected to the animals I take care of, my wild and beautiful friends and family, and Ayurveda as a lifestyle and a lifelong study, that I can’t honestly draw a line between where their influences end and mine begins. Of course, life is never without it’s trials and tests of character, and I hit walls and run into boundaries at times. Early this morning, my dear friend left a message for me to encourage me through a hard time I am facing and I want to share it with you in hopes that it may medicate your day too. I feel the need to share it not only with you but with all the animals around me. I always want to give them some sort of explanation as to why the whole process of domestication was beneficial to both the human and animal side of the equation, but I also feel they need now more than ever to be given permission to be wild again. It doesn’t mean that we will care for them any less than we do now, but that perhaps we will take better care because they will be in tune with who they truly are: wild beautiful creatures.
My wild and beautiful human friend spoke these words of advice that I love so much because they apply not only to me as she was intending, but to all the magical animals who I call medicine:
“I just want you to know that you can define yourself. It’s so important to support what you have, you’re so lucky to have family. But make sure that you nourish yourself and that you take care of yourself because after all what you’ve got is your own two feet, and your head and your beautiful mind. So don’t let your soul get mangled by what’s going on right now. Just stay grounded and be strong, because you are so much stronger than you might think you are. I know you can do this, I know you can get through it.” – A Wild and Beautiful Creature
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