DREAMTIME OR ANCESTRAL HEALING
Disclaimer: This is a deeply personal sharing from my heart to yours; on a level of exposure I am not used to in such an open setting. However, it is timely, and I believe, important that we confront our vulnerabilities in order to fully claim the power that is rightfully ours. I hope by opening myself up in a new way it helps you open up to a part of yourself that is perhaps usually uncomfortable to be laid bare. It is these parts of ourselves that are the most telling to make visible {to ourselves if no-one else}.
I understand and respect that this is solely my perspective of a collective experience and everyones is equally valid.
MY DREAM AFTER THE LAUREL RETREAT
Humming Birds, Glaciers and Sequoia
On the surface this journal post is about a dream I had after attending the Laurel Whole Plant Organics Holistic Esthetic Retreat {LWO Retreat} this time last year. The LWO Retreat was a profound learning experience on many levels and for me it was one that involved many parts. Here I share with you one part; the dream.
Beneath the top soil it was perhaps really a dream about the land, collective acceptance and personal healing.
THE LWO RETREAT WAS HELD AT THE 1440 MULTIVERSITY NESTLED INTO AN ANCIENT REDWOOD FOREST
The LWO Retreat is space for empowered serious learning and sage connections. An all immersive, inspirational place to master effective natural skin care techniques and modalities such as Gua Sha, lymphatic drainage, Tao Te, acupressure, advanced facial anatomy and palpation skills to elevate whole plant holistic facials.*
As Laurel says “…In the clinical skin care world, things like Botox, chemical peels and microdermabrasion are all incredibly common and well known to ‘reverse signs of ageing’. The natural skin care world has treatments equally as effective, but they require additional eduction for estheticians…The holistic aesthetics movement is still small and growing so getting together and learning from each other can be profound.”*
>>> Scroll all the way down to the end to read how the LWO Retreat was one of the most enlightening and healing experiences of my life <<<
But first this.
As a radical, proageing, whole body and tissue focused facialist I am fascinated by how we heal ourselves: How we can facilitate change and - F L O W - at a cellular level.
Specifically, it is fair to say that I obsessed with the physicality of our emotional and spiritual healing and how this alchemy is supported by and through the body: It is how we - E M B O D Y - our own healing which interests me most.
Perhaps it is because my own life has been punctuated with lessons of harsh physical learning, like the bass to my beat. Although I now, very consciously, work hard to ensure I keep pushing forward and my complicated health history does not define who I am nor what I do, it is undoubtedly instrumental in shaping and moulding the person I am, have been and will be.
STORIES > > > DREAMS > > > STORIES
All memories are simply stories; adapted narratives of experiences we have created to understand our worlds and to create new worlds many times over.
The promise of the story is always hope. We talk of dreams in a very real way; we speak of lost dreams, reading our dreams and dreaming people into life. We think of our dreams as stories in their own right.
We make our stories for many reasons; for protection, for self created safety, for remembrance, for comfort, for learning and for love.
All of our stories are held in our body, as well as our mind. The stories we tell to ourselves about our life; our memories the collective unconscious of our ancestors, all of them, are carried in our DNA.
Stories used to be understood as a way for us to know ourselves, each other, the earth and the Universe. Mythologies passed down in a rich tradition, through our tongues and etched into our bones.
“But over the centuries, this old knowledge has been deliberately overwritten. And so we’ve forgotten how to listen to the song the mountain sings. We’ve forgotten how to listen to the voice of the ancestor who comes to show us how to take up the shimmering mythlines of the past and weave them into the tapestry of the present. We’ve fallen out of myth. We need to find our way back. Back to who we once were, and who we can become again.” Sharon Blackie**
Occasionally we fall back into this old knowldege and this is what I experienced at the LWO Retreat; for a moment we were able to remember who we once were, who we are now and who we could be again. We were able to connect, in a very visceral way with our spiritual self held in the physicality of our body. Perhaps it was the power of the land, or the trees, or all of us there to stand as only as ourselves, whatever that may be. Perhaps it was all this and more.
Certainly as whole plant facialists forging our way in an aesthetically dominated world coming together as a collective felt extremely powerful. We temporarily lost any feelings of isolation, exhaustion and despair which can rise up when continually coming against the mass strength of the mainstream every day. By gathering in one place we were able to fuel the fires of our desire to change the skin care industry whilst being individually nurtured, nourished and tended.
RETREAT
One definition of what it means to go on a Retreat: A Retreat is a time to pull back and literally retreat within. In this case both within your self and into a group of people who think in the same way as you do about whole plant skin care. It is a safe place to learn, to hear the sound of your own soul and to tap into the wisdom you have within whilst learning new advanced skin care techniques and herbal understandings of plants and the body.
Certainly the LWO Retreat was a chance to feel a belonging of self and a re-enchantment with the earth.
Indeed it was the embodiment of a Retreat in the truest sense of the word; it provided the space for us to retreat into our very core and reconnect with that kernel of self that can be so lost in these modern lives we live.
In Shiatsu we would describe that core of self as our Hara. In Ayurveda it is the Kundalini energy that rises from the sacred, sacral space. In Western anatomy perhaps we could say it was a Vagus activated parasympathetic state of rest, self facilitated inner calm and created space in which the body is able to bring itself back into homeostasis.
ARRIVING
To arrive at the LWO Retreat I had flown over the black beaches of Iceland, looked down onto schools of whales in crystal seas. Seen the all-white lands of glaciers and snow with tears streaming down my face at the beauty of it all. Wondering how we cannot hold this planet in the wonderment, kindness and love it warrants? Of how humankind is unable to respect the earth because of the deep lacks in our own human need. We must ask ‘what is my lack and how can I fill it with love’?
It effected me deeply, seeing this part of the earth that was previously unseen to me. The sheer beauty of it. Unlike anything I had ever seen before, shifted something within me.
The first time I remember consciously feeling a shift of this magnitude through the earth itself was when I first went to India, over 25 years ago. Most recently I felt it again in a profound way in Ireland this year. I am moved by the rolling Downland of my homeland every time I time I return. The land beneath our feet rising up to teach us, if we’ll only let it, if we can only hear its stories of our past, our present and our future in which is held all the possibilities of growth, expansion and love.
OUR BODY
I believe that all the stories that have ever been created are still residual in our bodies, caught in both solid and fluid tissue. That the earth and our body is really part of the same whole. That our memories can be triggered into life, into remembrance and, if we allow, into transformation simply through touch.
One of my favourite ways to experience this kind of deep memory loosening is through Myofascial Release (MFR). This is a technique we use as massage therapists to relieve the stickiness of fascial adhesions with gentle and sustained pressure combined with a listening, flowing touch on the connective tissue (fascia) with an aim to significantly reduce chronic pain and restore improved range of motion. An emotional release often accompanies the physical relief. When hands sink down slowly into the deeper layers of the body and move through this connective web of solid tissue that binds us together memories {our self-told stories} can ping and spring into our mind. Appearing and disappearing sometimes before they have even been fully recognised. Like an old home film reel flickering in a fast yellowed blur. That which we have packed down and forgotten, suddenly remembered, felt once again and released.
The slowness and sensitivity of touch can energetically also take us into a Dreamtime of sorts. An Otherworld in which through feeling profoundly safe we are able to succumb completely to what our body knows it needs. We can float into a reparative state in which our parasympathetic nervous system is triggered and its as if the body breathes releasing sigh of relief as rest, digestion and regeneration at a cellular level are experienced.
This is the innate healing mode of our body.
Given that memory is generally thought to be held in the brain, how can this be possible? In extremely simple terms it is primarily down to the intricate neuro-fascial interactions which take place in the local tissue and communicate with the brain - which we are compressing, soothing, stimulating and triggering as we massage.
Memories, dreams, experiences, interactions and connections form our elusive personal histories. As a whole body, whole plant facialist I believe it is these which etch into our skin, change our features and shape our body. A fluidity of unending transformation. Perhaps the compassionate and intuitive touch of a therapist can create the space within the tissue to reconnect you to that original hope of our present and ancestral stories? For is not that all it comes down to? Hope. And love. Hope and love.
“I read in a book about the adventure of memory. We are 70% water; molecules which cycle into and out of us in a constant flow. We are changing all the time. Cells recycle, bones turn over. Over the course of a decade every atom in our body is replaced. So are we still the same person? Memory is what creates continuity…In a fundamental way we are our memories.” Nanna Hauge Kristensen**
{The links between our stories and our body and cellular healing continue to be the focus of my continued personal research.}
A STORY
THIS IS A MEMORY {OR IS IT A DREAM}
I am a child, perhaps eight or nine years old, and I am holding in my hands a thin, flat, hard backed book of vibrant colours. Vast dark skies of swirling deep blue hues with shining orange stars and animals drawn in lines and dots. I am utterly captivated, drawn into the picture and held to the page, the shapes forming instant stories in my mind. I feel like a part of me has known these stories before even though I have never been told them before.
THESE STORIES feel like home.
I roll the words - DREAM - TIME - round on in my mouth. I wonder, does it mean that it is time to dream or that our dreams are our time? I can’t quite grasp the meaning so I allow myself to just sink into their magic.****
Stories of a distant culture from distant lands and gifted by a distant and missed relative yet somehow it permeated right into my heart and psyche. Like a memory I had forgotten.
It is a book about the Aboriginal Dreamtime given to me on a rare visit to the UK by my Auntie Gill. Auntie Gill had moved to Australia in the 1960s. Taken on a ten pound ticket as part of the Australian immigration scheme after World War II. As a small child it seemed incomprehensible to me that she had chosen to go and live so far away. So far away from her family, from us. To me Australia was on a fast spin, on the other side of the round globe that I spun faster and faster, a blur of colour. In this vast expanse of bright blue stood isolated and distant an irregular pink {the colonial reach visible still}.
Why move so far away? Why move from your home land? As it turns out this is a question I will ask myself many times over.
As here I sit, in my home in Spain, part of my heart left forever in India and my soul remaining rooted in rich English soils I recognise that the seed has not fallen far from the tree.
That although my heart yearns for home my feet itch for different lands. The heart will find many homes.
This book was a true gift.
It triggered a deep stirring within me. Igniting feelings which I could not understand at the time but which I have come to believe to be ancestral memories stretching across space in a non-linear trajectory of time. The Shaman can call in many ways, it is more a case of whether we are listening. {This book specifically is part of the reason I chose to study Anthropology at SOAS {School of Oriental and African Studies, London University in my early twenties}.
DREAMTIME {OR THE DREAMING}
Aboriginal mythology tells stories of how the world {this physical earth} was dreamed into life by the ancestors. The ancestors are spirits who dwell in Dreamtime. There are many Dreamtimes, just as there are many cultures.
“Ancestor beings rose and roamed the initially barren land, fought and loved, and created the land’s features as we see them today. After creating the ‘sacred world’ the spiritual beings turned into rocks and trees or a part of the landscape. These became sacred places, to be seen only by initiated men.”*****
Rituals and songs retell the stories from the early times and bring back the power of the dreaming to the present.
The stories of creation rise up from the land itself.
“We are all visitor to this time, this place. We are just passing through. Our purpose here is to observe, to learn, to grow, to love…and then we return home.” Aboriginal Proverb
A STORY
THIS IS A DREAM {OR IS IT A MEMORY}
MY DREAM AFTER THE LWO RETREAT
{Can be read as a stand alone piece}
⁃ Deep diving into R E L E A S E - The journey from being unseen, misunderstood and unheard to be being fully seen, heard & received -
Context: Last October I had the immense joy to be invited to talk at the LWO Retreat at the 1440 Multiversity, California. From fire pits and early coffee in the mist of a rising dawn to walking to the communal spaces with smoke on the air, humming birds and deer roaming outside the classrooms to the cleanest, most delicious food I’ve ever eaten it was itself dream-like.
Dreamtime: The night after the LWO Retreat, when I was back in the airport hotel, I dreamt of all those who I had allowed to bully me from an early age. An active, lucid dream I was fully present and awake in it.
All those who had unseen, misunderstood, taken advantage and mistaken me stretching back years and years came hunting me down in this life now.
All those who had misinterpreted my pain and suffering as madness; seen my weakness and vulnerability as opportunity hounded me.
An intimidating gang baying for my metaphorical blood. They wanted to expose my flaws, to expose all my failings, mistakes, falls and falsities created to somehow survive the darkness descended frequently in my early life.
All the parts of myself that I didn’t love, in their sharp spotlight.
I was being hubted by those seeking to destroy the life that I have created by crawling out of the pit self loathing, loneliness and despair and accepting the darkness, whilst moving into the light.
I felt a terror deep to my bones which is as clear in recollection now as it was during sleep.
In the dream I felt an overwhelming sense of deep, dark shame. Chased. Along the way friends from other parts of the journey that has been my life so far stepped in to try and support me against this crowd of bullies, but all those who tried to rescue me ended up having to leave, unable to find a way to stay and stick it out the strength of the baying throng.
Then, right at the point I felt all hope had been lost, that everyone had deserted me to the demons, that I was corned naked and alone, I turned to see another group stepping in to save me. I saw that they were all those with whom I had shared the LWO Retreat. They gathered around me in protection.
One figure was cloaked, face covered by a heavy hood. It was Laurel and she was leading a deep chant, like the low sound of the earth itself. Hummm hum hummm hum hummm hum. Laurel had a staff that she was beating onto the ground with rhythm and the earth which was vibrating under our feet. There was smoke rising and we were suddently deep, deep in the sacred Sequoia woods. The trees rising above us merging into the black sky.
Next to the fire, embedded into the pitch soil, there were bones laid out in formation. I knew they were meant for me and I placed my hands on them. I felt their smoothness against the cold, damp earth and could feel their wisdom being absorbed into my own living bone.
I knew I was to simply sink into the unconditional love of this circle - the very air felt unlike anything I have ever experienced. It was a feeling of the warmth of the fire and the sweet, deep relief of finally { f i n a l l y} feeling completely safe, metaphorically both held and found in a way which so authentic, profound and beautiful it was unfamiliar to me. Laurel came and sat down next to me and one by one everyone who had participated in the Retreat also came and sat. We all held hands, low humming together; a large, linked circle looking into the fire, past the flames and into each other, recognizing we are all one.
It is vibration of the earth I can still feel when I close my eyes and concentrate. It is the earth teaching me many things, which I am still processing, but above all it is reminding me I am safe, I am, already, home.
I woke in a tight ball, shaking uncontrollably and sobbing in a floodgate of powerful release. My hotel bed was drenched in tears and as I rose to make tea and wipe salt crystals from my cheeks I realised that all those bullies were me. All along it was me shaming my self.
Ultimately we are our own demons. We all just do what need to do to survive. All I have ever done was simply for survival.
Just as we are our demons we are our own saviours.
In my hotel room shaken and shaking I rose and ran a hot bath. I poured in the salt soak Laurel had made for us at the Retreat. Redwood needles infused the water with a fragrant, fresh, uplifting and clearing pine and as I sunk in slowly a feeling of great lightness came over me. It was as if an overwhelming heaviness I hadn’t even been aware I was carrying had been lifted.
I wrapped myself in warm towels and sat for a long while watching the early morning darkness ease, waiting for the light to lift and rise over San Francisco Bay. I felt changed, this was a new version of me. Something powerful and sincere had happened. I had shed a skin.
I realised I was ravenous and went down to hotel breakfast room as soon as it opened. I nourished my body as it suddenly felt it needed to catch up with my soul.
I believe in part this dream came as a gift to me directly from the earth, the Redwood trees and the group of people I had shared the Retreat with; mainly because I have never experienced this profound level of immediate acceptance, safety and community that I felt at the LWO Retreat. I have never in my whole life experienced this level of collective acceptance and been seen so fully and completely; this was true kindred kinship. It was tribal.
It was the Dreamtime. A rebirth. It was healing.
On reflection, and with distance, I can’t be sure if the Retreat was a dream or the dream was the Retreat. What I really believe is that they are one of the same. The LWO Retreat itself was a uniquely supportive and space which was a true gift-telling.
I am also coming to understand that my treatments themselves can offer a level of safety in which a healing, regenerative and connective Dreamtime can be found and held by my clients themselves.
The learning is on-going.
Thank you for sharing this experience with me.
If you wish to share your own below, the comments are open.
🌲🖤⚔️⚡️🌓
Every single person in the Retreat is important but special mention to those who facilitated its creation,
Laurel
Eric
The entire Laurel Whole Plant Organics team especially (at that time) Kevin and Julie
Angela
Jade
Cecily
Britta (who was the first therapist to ever work, albiet briefly, on the three scars on my neck and which in itself was also an instrumental part of the jigsaw of this deep healing I experienced)
Kana (who was perhaps the very first holistic facialist I connected with on social media all those years ago and whose warmth and connection I am truly thankful)
Sadie (who offered heartfelt support in my classes I was so grateful for)
And every single person who was present at the Retreat. I learnt so much for each one and I am wholeheartedly grateful to know.
References
*Laurel Shaffer, Founder and Owner of Laurel Whole Plant Organics quoted in https://parvatimagazine.com/2019/07/how-sommelier-laurel-shaffer-became-a-skin-care-expert/
**https://sharonblackie.net/a-psyche-the-size-of-earth/
***Nanna Hauge Kristensen: The Forgetting Podcast BBC Radio 4 26 February 2019
****I speak of the Aboriginal Dreamtime from only a place of humbleness and respect. I understand mine is a limited and western filtered perspective, even as a young child when was first transported by the Dreamtime drawings.
*****https://www.creativespirits.info/aboriginalculture/spirituality/what-is-the-dreamtime-or-the-dreamin
Aboriginal Dreamtime artwork from Pinterest