Everything is Medicine

Awe-inducing, incredible, transformative, Life.

Grandmother medicine

Everything is medicine.

When I come into intimacy with Life itself, this is how it is.

The deeper the intimacy, the stronger the embodied sense of the Sacred.

Awe-inducing, incredible, transformative, Life.

Every mistake is a lesson. Every curse comes with a gift. Every shadow harbours gold.

Every trauma response is an invitation to heal and grow.

Pain draws our attention to the area of the body that needs healing. Pain is not a bad thing, it is an intelligent evolved signal that the organism uses to communicate with itself.

When we experience an expansion of our being, it can feel blissful and downright orgasmic. But sometimes, too much expansion too soon can cause growing pains and overwhelm.

There is no expansion without contraction.

A wave rushes out onto the shore and then goes back out to sea. The ocean breathes like this, effortlessly, patiently polishing colorful rocks and grinding discarded seashells into a fine powdery sand.

A slime mold too expands and contracts as it grows, gently probing its environment and finding new pathways of where it wants to go.

Slime mold growing

These are the natural rhythms of the Universe. This is the breath of Life.

And so too, my being expands and contracts, breathing in sync with everything that is.

Contraction is not always painful - it can feel like relief too, like a much needed exhale. It can be a good reminder to slow down, to rest and recharge, to re-center.

Sometimes the medicine is gentle, like Mother Earth herself holding me in her blissful embrace, whispering softly into my ear, “Everything is going to be OK, tender one. You are safe and loved.“

My Andean grandmother plant medicine journey started off like this, giving me such a sweet heart opening. Then next night, she kicked my ass ruthlessly, making me contort like a dying snake and purge into my bucket for hours.

Sometimes the medicine is rough like this.

Before the ceremony, we sat around the fire, telling snake stories. One time when I was in Bulgaria at the age of 10 or so, my dad was chopping wood, and there was a snake hiding between the logs. As he lifted a log, the snake slithered over his arm, and he intuitively threw it on the ground and killed it with a shovel, severing its head from its body. I remember watching the snake’s body continue contorting violently into all kids of shapes, all day, even after it was already dead. The current of life is strong with this one.

“A serpent can only travel forwards, it cannot go backwards”, said the shaman woman during the ceremony. The medicine of the snake is potent. Primal, raw, fierce, instinctual.

In the morning after the ceremony, I felt simultaneously wrecked and energized.

I remember reflecting, “I can survive a lot worse than this“.

Visions

Everything in life is its own medicine. Every moment is an opportunity to come into deeper intimacy with everything that is, to surrender to the current of Life that wants to express itself through me.

Everything is medicine, and every person in my life is a teacher.

"We are intelligently drawn to those who can heal us, those who will, knowingly or not, bring up the unmet, unloved, unseen parts of ourselves, inviting the darkness back into the light, calling us to evolve, to feel more fully, to speak out with greater conviction, to draw clearer boundaries, to know ourselves more deeply. To strengthen our relationship with Life."

- Jeff Foster

Sometimes, when the trauma responses send me reeling in pain and dissosiation, and I find myself erecting walls of defensiveness and coping mechanisms, I have to remind myself to just breathe.

Breathe like the ocean, breathe like the slime mold, gently and fiercely, expanding and contracting, like Life itself.

Burning brighly like the sacred Fire, flowing with the currents of Life like Water, being still and spacious like Air, rooting always in the innate capacity to re-generate and bring myself back into wholeness, like Mother Earth.

Continuously moving forward and upward, like the Cosmic serpent.

Medicine serpent