 So I would like to welcome Chotima. So how I met Chotima and what just kind of energy that brought me to her, that brought her here is the medicine and medicine and how we heal and how we are sort of moving still through this time with all of this stuff happening, politics, like being a student and being engaging and how are we using our space and our energy wisely. So I thought medicine, music, so important for us to continue that healing. So I met Chotima in Oakland, the Bay Area, California. We met at a community center called Gilombo and we had also a garden happening too that was called Africa Town and Africa Town in Oakland was inspired by the Africa Town here in Seattle. So unfortunately Gilombo just recently got shut down, but that's me and her met there and so it's like we meet in these spaces when we're continuing our legacies and we're continuing this action like we still meet each other and we're still connected and the medicine that keeps us connected to continue going and growing together to fight for justice and to get our justice. But yeah, she's a great emcee. That's how I met her was like oh, I want to one day I can maybe write some poetry and some emceeing, but this is Chotima and I'm excited for the workshop that she's going to give. I haven't seen it yet so I'm excited. Buddy, can you hear me? Good afternoon. Buenas tardes. It's really good to be here. It's my first time on this land. So first I just want to acknowledge the Duwamish people, the Duwamish ancestors, the ancestors of this land, the plants, the rocks, the waters, the animals, and all the spirits that are in this land that have protected the Duwamish people and that allow us to be here together with this clean air and with this fresh water. It's because of them. Thank you so much for inviting me. I'm very happy to be here with you. So this space that we are creating together today is focused on the knowledge that I have gained through my grandmother, sort of through the bloodline, but also through my sisters and my teachers and it's based on different indigenous methodologies of healing. So basically, medicina casera, home medicine. And a lot of the concepts that we're going to be looking at today are from teacher Estela Roman. She published a book called Nuestra Medicina that talks about these central concepts that we'll be discussing. So for those of you that are studying Spanish or that are interested in Spanish or that may speak Spanish, does anybody know what apapachando means or apapachar? Anybody? So yeah, Duwamish. So let me get this started. So something that the sister was saying and the work that the Freedom Fighter, Dr. Martin Luther King did was decolonial work. What does it mean? It means to literally take away the different layers that have been imposed on our minds and on our bodies. And from my perspective, that means to decolonize means also to revitalize the indigenous practices. When we talk about indigeneity, as many of you know, all of us at one point were indigenous to some land, to some place, right? So it means connecting back to that bone knowledge, that knowledge that's inside in your blood that's codified in your blood, that knowledge that comes from your grandparents, from your ancestors, from your elders. And so apapachar, the reason that I wanted to start with this word is it's an indigenous, rooted word. It comes from Nahuatl. And it doesn't have a direct translation in other languages, although maybe, I don't know, it might be that some of you might have one, and I'd be happy to know that it does have a cousin somewhere out there. But what it means is literally what it meant in Nahuatl was to soften with the fingers or to give affection. And in Mexico what we have gotten it to be understood by is to love with the soul, to love with the soul, not just with the body, right? But to love with the different levels of the being, to caress the soul. And it's an interesting word because it can be used as a verb, but it's also a noun. So it can mean it's something physical as well as emotional. So something that can be felt and something that is also, can be heard, right? Can be sensed in a variety of ways. So it can mean, like the sister said, a hug, a kiss, a caress, or a healing gesture for a wound, right? And we're going to be talking a lot about wounds today. And then it can also mean to caress, to confer, to pamper, to give affection, to take care of someone else. So why is it that I started with this word, apapachándonos, right? And I think that something that I do in my classes and in the workshops and exchanges that I have is I want to think about the ways in which colonization affected the most intimate practices between each other. So how did it affect our idea and our practice of love? Anybody? I see somebody over here. I feel like you want to talk maybe? Maybe in a little bit? Anybody? How did colonization affect our practice and our idea of love? Yes. And that could be looked at in terms of the construction of race or even the construction of gender, right? Within Indigenous concepts and in different cultures across the world, there's more than two genders. There's genders for each of the directions and everything in between, right? So that is definitely one way. Any other way that people want to share? Not yet? Okay. I want you to think about it, and maybe you can talk to the person next to you. I want you to think about how did it affect self-love? How did it affect partner love, partnerships, then parenting? How did ideas of colonial love affect parenting and communal love? So let's take like five minutes and please talk among each other because I think it's important that we have a dialogue. I'm not just going to talk at you. Okay? So if you could please take a moment and then we can share with each other. We're wrapping up our conversations and getting ready to share. And can we all say mmm? Can we say it one more time? Mmm. Okay. That's yummy because the conversation sounded good. Sounded yummy. And I know y'all have something to say. So I know you're not going to leave me by myself. So anybody that wants to share, maybe one on self-love. Yes. And I'll come give you the mic too. So on self-love, having come from Africa, we were colonized. So I think that's what we were talking about. So I think when we were colonized and we have to live under this oppressive people that used to make us work like slaves in our country, in their tea plantations and the coffee plantations that belong to us. They came and took everything. So I think on self-love, what I'd say that our ancestors felt, they didn't feel like they were worth it. Like there was no self-worth or something like that. Oh, okay. I'm just a weak person who's being mistreated. So you don't take that time. You don't remember who you are as a human being and you don't see any value for yourself because you're being oppressed. I think that's what I think about that. Yeah. And I think that to add to your point, one of the mechanisms was destruction and theft, right? And so we see these big collections and these museums of all these objects, of all the people that they invaded and that they stole from, right? And oftentimes we see, for example, in a lot of the Buddha statues, we see the hands taken away. Why? Because the hands actually symbolize something. And in a lot of different African sculptures, the noses are taken away, right? And Beyonce, JC, talk about that. You will not take off the nose of my pharaoh, right? And so this also adds to that, to precisely your point of what you're talking about, taking away that memory or attempting, I would say, to take away the memory. Because within a lot of indigenous philosophies, particularly the philosophy of the elder Malidoma Somme from Burkina Faso, he talks about the knowledge of the bones, right? The knowledge in the blood, right? Anything else that somebody wants to add, maybe perhaps on partnerships or on self-love, yes? Partnerships, I'm going to take more like a marriage route like my sister here, I'm from Africa. And back in the day, I know they tried to push this idea that there's gender equality like in African nations and Africans, but no, if you actually look deep into the history, African men and women historically used to see themselves as equals. This idea of a man is superior to a woman was brought through colonialism and religion, which we did not have in our society. Everyone knew the role they had to play and the new one without the other would crumble. So it wasn't about who is better than who, they all knew that they were essential. And also, we also had this polygamist marriages where you had one man who would marry four wives and now it's looked down upon because of the ideas that the West is pushing. But if you go back to, if later we go and ask our grandmothers, they didn't mind it because they saw those co-wives as their sisters, as like a team. And in certain societies, you'd have less men compared to women. And you know all these women want their lines and their generations to keep moving forward. And this is something that was villainized by colonialism and now you have this whole idea that it's bad. And what I usually tell most of the people is that our ancestors knew what they were doing. What we are doing today is based on a certain group of people. Our ancestors knew how to survive given the conditions that they were living in and they knew exactly what they were doing. So I feel like what we are doing now goes against, and we are the dumb ones now, for just basing our beliefs on a single group of people other than following back on what our people used to do. And I think from what you said, I think that something important to understand is also the complicity within the creation of patriarchy as a modus operandi, right? To support the colonial projects within African countries, what are now Latin American countries and what will be now called Asian countries, right? And so I think that even the creation of this idea of what it is to be a man, what it is to be a woman, what it is to be masculine, what it is to be feminine, this binary that limits the possibilities of our expressions as people I think is important to think about and also, you know, it reminds me so much of something that I read in a book called Red Medicine by Patricia Gonzales and she talks about, she looks at the writings of the Spaniards that invaded these lands and they say, you know, one thing that they were so concerned about was the power of women, right? And they said, we need to figure out how to displace them with the position in the community, right? And so I think that is a huge part that is detrimental, right? To the way, and furthermore, we also have to talk about the way in which the land was colonized, how those same techniques were applied to women's bodies, right? And so then you begin to have children and I'm one of those descendants of rape, right? And of that violence, right? And then those complications then with all of the colonial impositions on our own self-love. So it creates disharmony, right? And each of us within our community are responsible for our part to maintain the harmony. We're not responsible for everybody's work and that was something that was imposed on women. We're not responsible to fix and tend to everything. We're responsible for our own, but everybody is responsible equally, right? And so this created an unbalance. And so maybe to move along and to think about how did ideas of colonial love affect parenting? And we can even think about how does it affect exchanges like this, right? With the position of the teacher and the students. Because very much it is connected. Anybody that wants to share? How do you think that ideas of colonial love affected ideas of how we parent? How we are parents? Anybody? Yes, thank you. Your question was how does colonialism affect how we parent? So I'm not a parent myself, but I'm hearing the stories of my family. So my grandparents were in Taiwan when Japan took over Taiwan. And my grandparents, they had to learn Japanese. And they had to learn and speak Japanese and their entire education and their entire reflection of self was completely changed. And they had to also teach that to their kids at that time when Japan had taken over Taiwan. And so I think it affects how the parents feel about their own self-worth and their own ethnic identity and other intersecting identities. And then also they pass that on to their kids and say this is what you need to learn to survive so that you can fit into this new dominant. Anybody else? For me I understand it as the way a parent brings up their child. So back in the day if you look, I like giving an example with Africa, specifically Kenya, because that's what I am. So I did not grow up when my mom was beating me. Like you know spanking, not really spanking but anyways. But my mother grew up when her mother would do that to her. You know there's some sort of like punishment that is not accepted now. I have an example when a friend of mine, she's a mom and their daughter, well they live here in the United States and the daughter like went to school and said my mom punished me. And so it was a case and the social worker had to come and investigate and she told them you know I won't let this thing tell me how I can raise up my children because I was raised up that way. The way I was raised up is how I'm raising up my kids. And she actually told the social worker well you know you can call my other daughters, ask them how I've raised them up. And because she was born here in America that cannot be an excuse that I cannot raise up in the way that my parents raised me up. Because I believe that there are some things that are changing now with parenthood. I'm not saying beat up your children but I definitely if my child is making a mistake I will surely beat them up. I mean not like really beat them up but I will punish them. So I think it has sort of changed things because even in terms of respect nowadays children are being very disrespectful and I see that and I'm like oh my God I don't know what I will do to my children I don't have any right now but well I will have some. But I am saying how I respect my mom and how she respects her mother that is also different. There are some points that this colonialism especially in terms of in Africa how it has changed things and there are things that you are supposed to do like if your dad cannot serve his food he has to be actually served food but it's changing now. Oh the dad can cook. It's also good but it's also a way that it has affected the parenting system I believe. Anybody else? On parenting the first thing it comes to self-love. You can love yourself then the next step is parenting. Like example like when you get the babies for the parents they have to make sure they love themselves. On that time you have to use the alphabet joy because it comes from your soul you have to love them. And I have to tell you about all the women in the world like I had seen on the Arab country or some Asian country during that time like more than 30 or 40 years ago if there was a kid if the girl kid was born on that time there is a killer because they want a male kid. That's not called parenting. Parenting is like a responsibility it's not about when they're going to get born and even just showing your parenting only that time you know you have to do parenting until you're dead. Even in the now of the society a lot of the state a lot of different countries girls get more the state but the parents don't take action because they feel like oh no like I'm going to be like on the society I'm going to be down. That's not called parenting. Parenting is all the situation on the action from your soul from your heart. So I'm going to say for men as for the women parenting comes together like the parenting should be because of both of the situations not only about the men but separate from the women. So that's it. Just real quick we are doing live captioning for people of hard of hearing even though we can hear you find the person doing the captioning can't so we need people to use the microphone. Thank you for that and our sister over here and then I'll talk about it. My frame of thinking was more colonizers were from European countries so it's more individualistic culture so more you know thinking about your own self and a lot of the countries across the world that were colonized they started out being community culture so everybody you know everyone group together the whole it takes a village to raise a child thing it was very true for a lot of countries that were colonized and so that kind of took away our us grouping together and raising our kids together as a team versus just being only the mom's job or only the father's job one person to raise however many kids you have Number two question oh thank you it's also what happened to for those of us that and you know just for people to think about what happened to those of us that come from colonized places what became of birthing it became look to look upon as a product as a product we need people to be laborers that was the mentality of the colonizer right so it was looked upon as we need more people to do this work for us right so there's a lot of trauma in that right and then I think simultaneously the dynamics the collective dynamics like you have mentioned were distorted right and were cut into pieces and like the African proverb says it takes a village to raise a child those types of mechanisms were challenged right those practices that we had held were challenged and it we and now a day is even looked down upon right is looked down upon if you are a certain age to live with your parents were in fact we have always had a collectivity right so and I think on another level there was part of the mentality of the fear tactics that the colonizer utilized on oppressed peoples also seeped into our psyche and so a lot of the parenting ends up being a punishment based right instead of dialogue based right so I think that is something else that we have to think about and then that in turn affects the way that we understand the communal love the love that we should have for each other as a community anybody that wants to add to that to the theme of communal love anybody I think that one of the first things that a sister said over here was the creation of these different categories right and so to move right along with the the presentation colonization in the perspective of a person like myself we think of it as asusto so asusto doesn't necessarily have a translation either but asusto what are the symptoms of asusto it's like fear but it's not fear it's like a mixture of fear and shock in the western sort of medical term for specific people it's called post-traumatic stress disorder that is the terminology that is utilized in the United States but this idea of a shock of a big fear we had for thousands of years before we understood that so colonization was asusto and so what are the repercussions of having asusto over generations your body tenses right what else does your body do when you're afraid you tense it's harder to digest you and so we have been in a flight or fight mode for 527 years and so if we think about what is the repercussion of 527 years of generational susto right and although we were colonized in different ways the same techniques were applied to our people right plantations were here as they were in different African countries as they were in different Latin American countries right and so now we begin to know this something that I talk about a lot is bone knowledge and self-awareness and this is really important and central in decolonizing and in what I call apapachad and apapachad donos right to love yourself with your soul and to love other people and love the work you do with your soul and so we have to begin to talk about the 13 so in indigenous 13 is a very important number 13 is the 13 heirs of the soul which we will talk about in a moment the 13 heirs that affect each human being right to different extent each one also the 13 dreams in the Cosmovision of the Mexica people each time that you go to sleep you are in the dream world in the spirit world and in this place you have 13 dreams you can't really remember one or maybe some of you are like oh my god that makes so much sense I have so many dreams it's the 13 levels of the dreams and then we have also the 13 cycle count so in the western world that we are living in now we count all now is the new Gregorian year which they got this information from our calendar systems even the Gregorian calendar it really came from indigenous knowledges but we think of life in 13 and we think of life also in 7 in cycles of 7 if we look at it in cycles of 13 by the time that a young girl or a young boy is 13 they are becoming a little a small adult sexually they are developing their room is changing 13 plus that that's 26 you are in this time in a different position in your life and we keep adding those 13 year cycles you know up until 52 which in Mexica philosophy is when if you have done the right work your community will acknowledge you as an elder at 52 years of age right and then we have even in your body we have 13 articulations you have the articulation of your neck your hips the different doors within your body that we have to awaken through different that's why we love to dance that's why we love to move our body and that's what colonization try to do to keep us afraid to keep us in shock to keep us still and stiff and cold so we have to activate the body we have to activate the bone knowledge right and so these are the image of the articulations and the reason I want to show you this is also because these points are very important to understand also this next part so the 13 heirs of the soul it's an indigenous concept it's ancient most recently it has been written about by teacher Estela Roman she's from Guerrero here are the 13 heirs of the soul so we have susto fright sadness, worry, anxiety anger, shame resentment, grief envy, jealousy guilt, fear and egotism and so what I want you to do is I want you to think about three heirs that you are being challenged by now so think about it and maybe share with the person next to you and I will bring the list back so another 5 minutes thank you I love that y'all are really active it's great this is the only way so anybody that would want to share I know it's something that is sensitive so I'll go first within my family I think a woman and being from Mexico I think that there is a lot of shame I think that there is a lot of shame of just being a woman and then there is a lot of shame of being light skin because that means that we are the product of the rape and then there is a lot of shame in being poor even though we are super creative and we figure things out the poverty actually created like a pressure of creativity but for me personally I have been working one of the ones I have been working on is shame and talking to that air and to be able to not be controlled by it anybody else would like to share I'm ashamed for me I believe I care about myself I'm ashamed for things like that I didn't resent them like this whole week even though the killings and the slavery have been so long ago it's still history though so it still lives today so I resent you about that because those people are helpless they still are helpless in all types of ways and then my brother he had a good point too so I'm going to share it too that's right because when my dad told me these stories about my modern life country in Somalia and how the colonialism effects in my country I feel fear because there is no way that I can make a hope for those kind of communities and how I can help and I feel sad because as a young like there is no way that I can know where the problems come out as a colonialism for my country so that's right and I think something that I want to before other people share something that I want to ask you to think about is if you think about one of these heirs that is really present or has been present in your life and maybe even in your family line in your bloodline I want you to think about specifically for yourself when is the first time you felt sad the earliest time you felt guilty and go back to that memory and go back to that part of yourself and talk to that part and work through that there is a way for us to work through these because these are essentially teachers you know and sometimes we become really angry at them I would be so angry at my shame then I would just elevate the other heir so I think we have to have a dialogue with that because ultimately within indigenous philosophy you know there is it functions like eggs right you have your body and your body has the spirit and the spirit is so uniquely you nobody else has a spirit like you and then you have your soul which is uniquely eternal connected to everything right but if you have so much air so many airs inside you your spirit and your soul don't have enough space and sometimes if it happens in a traumatic event in an accident a little part of you might leave it doesn't feel at home in your body right so you have to call back those parts and that's the work of remembering that's the work of decolonization we have to call back okay anybody else want to share yes as I mentioned earlier I'm from Africa my life in Africa would be what you guys would call privilege you know like my mom works for the United Nations I always have food on my table I have a nice bed to sleep in and just like how it's like you live in this sheltered life where everything is going so okay and everything is perfect you have television you have a playstation and all this stuff and then you walk out and your neighbor is struggling to keep like a fire warm like you're seeing I remember I used to go to this really expensive school and sometimes on my way to school I would see these small kids with like tattered like uniforms walking school that they were going to and their schools were terrible and I used to feel guilt because I was like what did I even do to deserve the life that I'm living like I didn't work for it I was born into this and these are people who look like me who are struggling and I wake up in the morning and I don't even have to struggle for anything so there's that sense of guilt you know and then they worry that I feel like I can I'm given all the tools to maybe change to work so that I can make their lives better but then I'm worried that what if I can't make it what if I can't end up achieving that so there's always that constant worry in the back of my mind Thank you for sharing I think to say something to that I think what I would ask for everybody here to think about is what happens with this emotion over time and how does it affect different parts of your body like the heart the liver the kidneys the stomach the worry creating that acidity that vile or the sadness or the shame pushing your shoulders down literally changing your physicality internally and externally so thinking about first acknowledging acknowledging these errors and then I think the second part is thinking where is it in your body where do you see it expressed I want you to think about that for another 5 minutes where do you see these errors expressed in your own body and is there a pattern in your family right so another 5 minutes and maybe if you can do it in pairs another thing that I would suggest is if you have a piece of paper drawing a small diagram of your body you're thinking about it even so 5 minutes can we say one more time you know that's how in Spanish we say ah when we understand something ah that is one way ok so if people want to share maybe where in your body is this air expressed when we think about indigenous medicine we understand that it affects on three levels on the mental level which connects also to emotions on a spiritual level and on a physical level and simultaneously healing those three parts of yourself as a being but as you're healing you're affecting the dynamics in your group that would be in your family group and that also changes has repercussions in your ancestral line because sometimes you may be like I have this sadness that I can't explain is that what y'all were talking about and it's like it might not be yours but you are the one that they chose to work through that do you want to talk about that a little bit no ok anybody that would like to share yes I've come to realize that myself feeling shame from expectations of the world it's not good enough or not what people want or to hear so I thought that was cool to come to and to know that I should just let it go and if we think also about it what is here physically is the thyroid it also is responsible for the hormonal balance of the body in Mexica philosophy we think about it as the butterfly right and so you have to be able the butterfly has to be able to transform so it can move its wings otherwise it cannot do its job and then you have a knot and that knot can become cancer later or it can become phlegm first it's phlegm first it's just like a little ache then it's phlegm and then it could be cancer later on if you don't work through that yes or here in the back but whatever is happening right now the example I want to tell on my last evening I told on Louisville 70 person people are uneducated government are trying to build a wall it doesn't make sense to me like honestly you can put that money to a lot of people in the state they're suffering you should put that money on that part as well as I feel shame and anger on the race the way people treat it as an example I'm going to tell everyone if you get a chance just watch a documentary of Colin Browder about criminal justice how that guy suffered a lot of problems it shouldn't be suffering like that it makes me also anger, shame and as well as sadness too for that shame I decided myself as a human being when I was watching the documentary I couldn't stop my tears it's important to let it out it's important to let it out you're in a good space you're in the right space you don't have to apologize I feel shame that that's why I decided myself that I'm going to start your criminal justice it doesn't matter what location I'm going to be working for for the police officer department is full I'm going to put him on the court anyone is wrong I'm going to put the justice system work on that time so that's my that's my calmness so I keep this study and make me come and work for it thank you very much can we give him a round of applause the brother thank you for being brave and radically vulnerable I want to remind us that these errors are not problems and teachers and I think you showed us two ways to work through them one is through releasing and there's a poet, her name is I don't know if you know her she wrote Salt, it's a great book and she says if you don't allow your own water to heal you how can we connect we have our own mechanism of water if you cannot release your water to heal you and so I applaud you for being open and for allowing that to come out and on another level I think that in connection to what the sister said earlier we might not have been able to be there on this occasion when Dr. Martin Luther King was assassinated or in all of the other injustices that have happened and that have created the history as we know it today but we are present now and we see different things happen in different moments it can be in the metro it can be in your own house it can be in a classroom and what do we have to do we have to activate the throat we have to activate the words we have to challenge that silence so already you shared with us two communal remedies of how to learn from these teachers that we call the heirs anybody else that would like to share anybody else that feels compelled to share anybody yes thank you, thank you for being open this single story so I remember last quarter my friend asked me so where you come from I'm from Congo and she told me what do you do to come here I was like I get a visa to come here and ask him to use the God to work or something like that I was like what do you think in Africa we don't have because in Congo people die every day so it's just like the area that I have people just have the thing of story and just see Africa see Congo in the bad country in what you just shared this is another remedy storytelling because I don't know if anybody here has read women who run with the wolves by Clarissa Pincola Estes she talks about how stories are medicine so stories can be poison and for example the stories told by Trump or certain these types of stories of an Africa that is very existent that is poison but we also have our own stories and that is medicine so it's also we are capable of activating our words to create that medicine and to share that medicine that's why oral tradition in a lot of our communities has always been so important and so central to us as a people and to in the way that we respect elders and the way that we respect the word like hip hop for example or now the development of trap but it comes from storytelling from articulating your experience so that's another remedy in terms of how we would apply this to create collectivity I would want you to think about it in a multifaceted way what would this collectivity of loving with the soul look like what would it taste like what would it feel like what does it sound like right and I want you to think about that one more time with the people around you if you want and you're brave enough and you want to go talk to somebody else I also encourage that and then we will close the discussion with questions so another 5 minutes to think about how does applying this knowledge how could it create collectivity and how can it be expressed in a multifaceted way beautiful anybody would like to share if not I'm going to come and pick I'm going to come and pick okay I really want to talk over here yes thank you I think that's a huge thing to think about work through those teachings those challenges will in turn affect the way that we socialize that we share ourselves with the world right I see you over here I don't know you have a lot to say and you know I'm only here for today and I want to hear people's voices thank you tears of joy and tears of love let it flow and I just moved here about a year and a half ago so I'm working on two years Pacific Northwest a decision I made but my goal for myself was to find my voice so I'm using it right now thank you a really awesome friend of mine who shared with me that you know vulnerability is bravery and that I am brave and so a lasting collective starts with you and with me I was race Catholic and my parents you know a value of mine a core value of mine is charity starts at home and my parents really instilled loving each other whether you're in my family or not you are my brother you are my sister and that's how I view each and every one of you and you know I don't have a lot of money but I have a lot of love I can do what I can do and hope to God and the universe that that will affect you to do nice things for others and you know show by example I just have a lot of love and respect to give to people because we don't have enough of it and it's part of that that resentment, that anxiety all of those negative feelings and stuff that was listed on the board there as my fire to offset every single one of those things and to just you know compensate for all the ickiness in the world because there's enough of it and I'm not going to contribute to any of those errors and I'm going to work through mine so thank you thank you for being brave I appreciate you somebody else I know a lot of you anybody else okay I was sharing with Sam earlier that for me what lasting collectivity means that I can still be an individual within my community and for me what that looks like is my art is different the way I create is different it's not going to be the same as the next person and what it looks like or I would say what it sounds like is me being able to share and articulate what I make and why I created this or what I felt when I was creating this and it's kind of like speaking that truth and what it looks like or I would say what it feels like it feels free, it feels like I can be autonomously me and not having this voice or like this this oppression that's telling me you can't create that you can't do that you can't taste it that way you can't make it that way for me that's not what a lasting collectivity looks like for me it looks very free and it feels like liberating it feels like the Africa town garden it feels like fresh dirt, fresh earth it smells like fresh earth and working together and you're working on your garden bed over there you can come help me work on my garden bed over here that's to me what lasting collectivity looks like anybody else any of the men that have an intense sight that's been talking to me with their eyes but haven't spoken yet sometimes y'all be shy no, nobody else oh, the sister yeah thank you for waiting and letting other people also share I appreciate that I think that is what lasting collectivity looks like it's vulnerability from everybody and lack of judgment on other people and on ourselves too because I think one thing that has happened with all this colonization is taking away our power and taking away our love for each other and people lifting each other up instead of comparing and judging and I'm better than you for this reason we're both great for individual different reasons and you know women supporting women, men supporting women women supporting men just more interacting between those who normally would push each other down because I feel like a lot of our country is built on competition and you have to work really hard to show your worth I don't think that's really accurate I think being soft and gentle and being a caretaker or sometimes just doing nothing is great too so just a lack of judgment and more vulnerability from people so we can just see each other more yeah you know in one way that in Mexico we say I think we actually say yo siento que I feel that you know functioning with this brain the stomach right that's the second brain and it looks similar it's a structure that looks similar right it has a lot of pathways and yeah and they're connected they're connected to each other okay so I feel like now is a good moment to open up for questions so I think that if you have that question that you're like I just want to ask but I don't know but maybe I want to ask if you have something specifically related to one air or if you have something specifically related to something that was shared that you want some clarification or a little bit more information on now is the time any questions yes patience? lasting collectivity looks like patience and I was wondering if you could differentiate between them yeah that's a great question so okay so fear let's think about it fear you could be I could be afraid you know I got a bad grade let's say right let's say I'm a seven year old right myself a seven year old and I got a bad grade I am afraid of the whooping I get when I get home right now fright I was in two car accidents that's fright something sudden something that happened quickly right and on a physical level now susto because there's actually three different types of fear susto goes even deeper right so you can even think about it as the different levels of the skin fear is like the little hairs right and when you're afraid sometimes the little hair stand up because they're sensing because our hair actually helps us to sense right when you're like when you have fright oh maybe your body gets tense you know the temperature changes in your body you feel some type of weight when you have susto is almost like a paralyzation of us of sorts right and if it's not treated it can really affect the soul and it can really and it could be like this the symptoms of susto are like this you don't quite feel like yourself you don't have as much energy as before the things that you love to do you can't do them anymore the food doesn't taste the same and you keep thinking about something that happened in the past that's because you had a susto and you stayed there a part of your soul stayed there doesn't mean that you don't have your soul the soul is very complex a little part stayed there or it didn't feel comfortable to be inside your body because you yourself are not comfortable inside your body right so those are the different ones thank you for that question that's a great question any other question and maybe to talk a little bit more about that actually because now I'm feeling it my ancestors like no girl you need to tell them a little bit more with susto we have different ways of treating fear right so for example let's say one level of fear is when a little girl let's say there's a little girl and she's your little cousin or your little niece you know and she was running and she was doing all these types of things exploring the world really excited really the way we should act as humans right something happens to us in the educational system that fucks us up right and something happened she did not see something on the floor and boom she falls she has a little bit of fear right she starts crying and crying something that we do for that a little bit of something bitter something bitter brings you back to the body so chocolate bitter chocolate and if you have plants if you're into plants we call it rue or ruda those are good for fear now if you have fright you have to further activate the body right you have to bring back the body so we do what we do for fright and for susto we do limpias what we call limpias and that's a whole other lecture but limpias essentially what it is it's a cleansing and I want you to think for those of you that have had the privilege of being in a village of being in a rural place you know people have really bad misconceptions about the village but the village is a clean place extremely impeccable the villages I visit in Mexico are clean there's not one leaf in the patio everything is clean why because it maintains the harmony of the space right so always always always if you look at ancient pre-colonial paintings or pre-colonial art of the Americas you see women or femmes maybe there were a different gender you see the broom and then the broom got absorbed and colonized and then it became the instrument of the witch right but the broom is essential for cleaning for taking out the energy for recreating the space so a huge part is cleaning and that is also part of like this work when we're working with these heirs we're cleaning ourselves we're cleaning our mind because the mind will play so many tricks on you the mind will have you think all these crazy things you know because of the way it was conditioned it's not the fault of the mind it's replicating a pattern and it's letting you know something it's putting something on alert but at the same time you know the mind is so controlled by egotism so you have to you need a little bit of your ego but you can't let the ego take the place of the soul and that is the problem in western culture that the ego has displaced the soul right any other question that you may have for example something is telling me to and maybe as we get to you yeah yeah yeah I can share this one thing for some reason it's telling me to tell you this but when you have when you have sadness right or what people call depression something that we used to do in back in the day and still to this day is we put chiles on the fire why because chemically the compound in the chile it activates spices activate activate the stomach and activate the energy if we look at it energetically and an active stomach and an active body is an active mind and a happy soul so actually putting chiles on the fire and smelling that helps with depression helps with sadness that's like one small trick I won't be as intense this time I think I let it out I'm curious do you have any like as the true librarian that I am do you have any resources that you could maybe offer up like you know I don't know one on one level kind of stuff so we can start growing our minds and our hearts so one of the books is that this one is called the writer is Stella Roman and the book is called Our Medicine unfortunately or maybe fortunately is in Spanish so you have to learn Spanish to read it or you have to have a Spanish Bay or a Spanish speaking bay and will you translate this chapter for me? maybe you take them out on dates and you get one chapter translated each day or you just learn Spanish you know it's spoken in 22 countries at least 22 countries so you know it's spoken in a lot of places another book that I've mentioned is so I am really influenced by these writers Stella Roman Malidoma Patricio Me he is an elder from Burkina Faso from the Dagara people and his book is called Ritual it's from the 1990s it's a really good book it's small and powerful another book Red Medicine talks a lot about birth birthing, the womb the ceremony of birth and even how that became traumatic and how that gave a lot of us airs those of us that were born in a violent way or with a lot of obstruction you know and then I would also recommend The Wolves by Clarissa Pincola Estes and if you want to get that list later I'm going to be here but those are some of them that will help yes and I think another one that is not a book per se is talking to if you are able to right depending on the dynamics and what you need but if you're able to talk to your elders and that could be the ones who have bloodlines that have some sense or because there are some that oh man I love them but from far away boundaries are important or the elders that chose you and you have chosen because those are we have all different types of family we have blood family we have chosen family so I think that's the foundation the elders the intuition that's the foundation there like do what your stomach is telling you to do right another thing that helps with sadness is actually and this sounds like a very simple thing and my grandma would always tell me this she was like what it means is you need to eat at your hours you know it's so simple but for some people can be so difficult you know it might be 1pm and you haven't eaten anything maybe you haven't even had water you know or you only had a bitter cup of coffee how are you going to sustain your body like this so eating at your hours eating when you're hungry paying attention to your bodily fluids letting your bodily fluids flow don't hold things in the bathroom go to the bathroom it's a weird thing but the education system is so creepy because they're like no you cannot go to the bathroom you have to hold it you're 5 and you have to hold it or you're 21 and you have to hold it or you're 17 you have to hold it no no no no you have to let things flow out retaining fluids or retaining your bowel movements is also indicative of retaining emotions because at long term it affects other parts of your stomach other parts of your organ and it can poison you literally urinary infections all types of things or colon cancer even if it gets to that level but that means releasing things when they need to be released if you feel like you're burnt out and you need a break don't keep burning yourself out take a break don't put things I'll get to it later in the summer when I have more time or when that happens in the next week or in the weekend you're making an excuse you have time for Instagram you have time for your health you know any other questions for anybody the sister's coming to you maybe raise your hand again thank you brother they're not necessarily negative or positive it's a teacher we might not like it but it's not necessary it's a reaction it's a part of the processes now the thing is not the thing is here learning from the teacher without thinking that you are that because I think something that ends up happening is people get attached so they're like oh and then there's also consequences of the poisonous stories right for example one of them is the angry black woman or the angry brown woman right oh they're just angry and that is what it is that is not what it is so I think it is also more than anything is being in a dialogue because the positivity or the other side of this would be living in an equilibrium with them right it's not necessarily that they're bad it's how we deal with them that can create more negativity right does that answer it a little bit anybody else have another question okay so what I'm going to ask y'all to do now is I'm going to ask y'all and this is going to be hard because I have to hold the mic but I want you to go like this generate some good warmth yes I called you out continue to generate that good energy and I want to I want to ask you to hug yourself so we're going to do like this is it the first hug you have had today maybe I don't know I have a good hug and then another thing that I learned one more time let's do I learned this when I went to Ghana with my little students does somebody have the time okay well I was going to sing like some songs to you so I'll just do one little tiny one because I'm a musician but you know I think it was important the conversations we had so I'm happy that we share that but we have this one