The Joyful Lament: on Pain for the World

Posted on by Deep.Earth.Dreaming

In the face of relentless ecological crisis and existential threat, there pervades a profound sense of shared grief. It is a grief born out of witnessing our forests burn, our ice melt, our sacred sites desecrated, our fellow species perish in exponential curves of diminishment. It is a collective fracture in the human mindscape, an anguish echoed in the rising inequality, rampant pollution and existential uncertainty of this moment.  Yet, this grief is not merely a personal emotional response. It speaks to our deeply entrenched ties to the world, an intimate sense of belonging that anchors us within this interwoven matrix of life. Growing the capacity to be with and metabolise our sorrows, in community, is how we come back to life, and remember how to tend to it again.

Living the Sacred – Weaving the Wisdom of Plant Medicines into our Modern World

Posted on by Deep.Earth.Dreaming

Miraz and I recently had a beautiful conversation with Jaime K Lehner of Wankawi Wisdom of the Earth for her upcoming Summit "Living the Sacred". We spoke about our Curanderismo apprenticeship in the jungle with our Shipibo maestros and our many years facilitating Ayahausca retreats, about our past and current relationship with the plants, about our journey of integrating that profound depth experience into our current context, some of the ways that we have woven Deep Ecology and Plant Medicine together and some of our views on the unfolding Psychedelic Psychotherapy movement

The Elder Tree Podcast: Animism, Ayahuasca and Healthy Context

Posted on by Deep.Earth.Dreaming

"Stephanie Hazel interviews Folk Herbalist, Deep Ecologist and traditionally trained Shipibo Curandera Skye Cielita Flor. In this episode, we explore questions such as: What does it mean to take a plant out of context? What do we leave behind when we extract a single active chemical from a medicinal plant? What do we lose when we take a single aspect of Shipibo culture, like ayahuasca ceremonies, but leave all of the cultural nest of animistic relationships with plants and land behind?

PLANT MEDICINES, PSYCHEDELIC-ASSISTED THERAPY and the GLOBAL PSYCHEDELIC MOVEMENT

Posted on by Deep.Earth.Dreaming

Feeling to add my two cents about some of the big shifts currently unfolding in the global psychedelic movement. Particularly the legislation of certain substances for use within the context of Psychedelic Assisted Therapy. I'll say off the bat, that I'm ultimately for full legislation within all contexts and generally prefer an atmosphere of trusting adults to make their own decisions about what they do and don't ingest for whatever reasons they choose. A healthy ecology has diversity, and a diversity of approaches feels more necessary now than ever in my opinion. However, with the exception of a handful of countries like Peru, that is not our reality at this moment. Instead, we are seeing mostly only psychiatrists and in some places, psychotherapists being given the green light to administer these medicines and only within the therapeutic context. Having a background as a traditionally trained Ayahuasca ceremonialist within the Shipibo tradition, part of me has felt quite ambivalent about this sudden enthusiasm around psychedelic plant medicines and the ways they are now being embraced by mainstream psychology (I'm speaking specifically to plant medicines, not MDMA, Ketamine etc. which I think is fantastic!). Until very recently, these institutions have demonised and pathologized these medicines and the altered states they engender (of course there have always been certain individuals who are/were exceptions, Stan Grof being one of the many who comes to mind), so it seems a little bizarre to me that they are now the only legal keepers of these medicines.

REMEMBERING THE DREAM OF THE EARTH

Posted on by Deep.Earth.Dreaming

"Because they did not know God, therefore, in their error, they worshipped every creature as divine, namely the Sun, the Moon and stars, thunder, birds, even four-legged animals, even the toad. They also had forests, fields and bodies of water, which they held so sacred that they neither chopped wood nor dared to cultivate fields or fish in them." ~ Peter of Dusburg, Chronicon Terrae Prussiae, iii, 5, 53.

The Embodiment Conference: Maps to Connected Perception; Deep Ecology, Plant Medicine and Animism as Gateways into the Wider Body of Earth

Posted on by Deep.Earth.Dreaming

THE EMBODIMENT CONFERENCE We are delighted to be part of The Embodiment Conference. It will be a rich opportunity to come home to your body, in our chaotic world. Many of the planet’s best teachers will be there, and it costs nothing to be a part of. It’s free to all, online, and boasts keynote speakers such as Charles Eisenstein, Philip Shepherd, Judith Blackstone, David Abram, Bayo Akamolofe and many more.