What if the water is listening? What would this mean for you? Would this change your relationship to the world around you? Would this change your relationship to yourself?
These are the questions we held and pondered together in our first Conversations with Metsa last Friday (July 7th, 2023). My husband and I have begun an open dialogue conversation about the psychedelic renaissance, indigenous wisdom and medicine ways. We had an awe-some first call - many of you joined us, and many of you have reached out with deep reflections and gratitude. If you missed that first invitation, click here to find out more.
Our next call is July 21st. You're invited.
Bring a friend - this is an open house.
We're talking about what no one else talking about. For me, this is the first time in 15 years that I'm sharing publicly about my own involvement with entheogens, psychedelics (a term I don't prefer) and traditional/indigenous ceremonial ways. I described this in my last letter to you as a coming out, a term that feels quite apt for this moment.
There are many reasons I haven't felt comfortable sharing until now. For one, these practices are sacred to me, traditional medicine ways that I hold close. They inform everything that I do, how I see and relate to healing and to the world around me. There is so much misunderstanding about these traditional medicines and indigenous wisdom ways that it can seem easier just to keep it private.
Many of these medicines, while acknowledged and honored as a cultural heritage and sacrament in other cultures and nations (see Peruvian national cultural heritage and Ayahuasca and the American Indian Religious Freedom Act providing federal legislative protection for the use of peyote in the Native American Church) are still considered illegal and classified as Schedule One drugs in the United States. This makes sharing even more complicated as a licensed healthcare practitioner. One patient asked me after my last letter - did the laws change? Why are you sharing this now?
Why am I sharing this now? After sitting on the sidelines for the last several years, observing the exponential explosions in conversation, investments and research in the psychedelic field, with barely a peep in comparison about the traditions and indigenous medicine ways that have sustained these medicines, I feel a growing sense of alarm and a need to speak up and out.
Who's going to stand on behalf of these medicine elders? Who's going to stand for the Sacred? Who's going to make sure these traditional ways are not marginalized in the mainstream conversation yet again while we medicalize the spiritual experience?
If not me and you, then who?
Join us in a continuing series of conversations led by myself and my husband, a person who's given his life to understanding and being immersed in indigenous medicine ways. From the Shipibo-Conibo, Quechua Lamista and Aguaruna in the Peruvian Amazon, the Bwiti traditions of Gabon, the Mazatec traditions of Oaxaca, the Dinè traditions of the Native American Church, he has cultivated an incredible capacity to understand these disparate and not dissimilar cosmovisions and their respective ceremonies. He offers an incredible wealth of wisdom and information.
I invite you to join us in dialogue, a live Q&A, and information about what we're feeling excited about, what to be full of care about, and other fun topics.......
Our next call is July 21st from 4-5:30 PM EST. Join us.
(Dignity: A 50 foot tall statue by Dale Lamphere representing Courage, Perserverance and Wisdom, honoring the cultures of the Lakota and Dakota people)