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Vision Cafe
Creating New Healing Traditions
by Kiva Rose Hardin
“Clothe yourself in your authority. You speak not only as yourself or for yourself. You will speak and act with the courage and endurance that has been yours through the long, beautiful aeons of your life story.” – Joanna Macy
A tradition is the transmission of customs, practices and knowledge passed from one generation to another, an unbroken thread of wisdom that evolves and yet remains intrinsically true to itself as it moves from mother to child, teacher to student, and earth to human.
From the Latin tradere, meaning to pass or hand over, a tradition is not a static dogma or dictated method, but rather a living web of knowledge and practice that can both unite and inform those who choose to participate in its dance. They are not simply the ragged remnants of the past, but a vital aspect of today’s music, healing modalities, art, gardening, and nearly every aspect of the human journey.
We may most clearly understand the blending of traditions in the folk music passed from one generation, people and place to another. The melodies shift and align themselves to the musician and the audience with the current context of place and time. Over years of adaptation, the lilting tunes of Ireland and the driving rhythms of Africa have twined together in the ancient hills to become the familiar, yet completely unique tradition of Appalachian music.
Likewise, the skill to mend wounds, heal hurts and facilitate bodily and spiritual wholeness has traveled across every continent, changing with the needs and affinities of every new generation and evolving with the plants that grow in each location. The experience and wisdom of our teachers and those who’ve come before lay the groundwork for each student’s understanding of tradition. Much of what an herbalist learns, for example, are not simple facts or memorized methods but subtle techniques that are best passed from one individual to another, tailored to suit the situation and the person.
It is for this very reason that my partner Jesse Wolf Hardin and I have concentrated our healing and herbal knowledge into a cohesive practice for current students and future generations. The Anima Tradition of Herbalism is a way of perceiving and acting that is specifically designed for those seeking the perceptual and practical skills necessary for personal, interpersonal, and global healing. It is grounded in common sense principles and skills, rather than complicated or artificial structures.
“The Anima Tradition is a contemporary herbal and lifeways practice rooted in the lessons of the natural world, and manifest in intuitive ways of healing. At the core of this comprehensive practice is personal response-ability, trusting our intuition and instincts, feeling empowered to act on what we know, believing in our calling and power to help heal ourselves, each other and our world.” – Jesse Wolf Hardin
In the Anima Tradition of Herbalism, to be truly healthy is to be whole, and medicine is anything that contributes to that wholeness. The Anima Tradition provides a unique collection of tools and insights that contribute meaningfully to that wholeness of self, of our loved ones and community, and of the living land we’re each a part of. It teaches the use of whole plants rather than isolated constituents. It sees the healing of the body, emotions, psyche, family and ecology as inseparable, interrelated and interdependent, providing a combined lifeways and healing practice that encourages not only physical wellbeing but the fullest experiencing of conscious existence—not only curing illness but heeding a calling and fulfilling our dreams.
The Anima Tradition takes a vitalist approach to all living and healing, tapping the power of the anima: the animate essence and motivational force impelling all life—from the unfurling vine tendril to the wheeling ravens overhead and the herbalist gathering her special plants, inspiring and providing our body’s innate ability to heal itself. It manifests in our conscious creativity, as well as in the unconscious call for healing focus when we’re hurt, in the instinctual urge to either run from or confront a threatening situation, and through expenditures of will such as when we respond to an urgent need with renewed vigor no matter how tired we thought we were.
The vitalist perspective leads the Anima herbalist to facilitate healing through nourishing the body’s natural processes and triggering gentle shifts, rather than forceful suppression or other heroic methods. Like the land we gather herbs from, the Anima practitioner knows that the human body is also a complex ecology that thrives upon diversity. Viruses and bacteria are seen not as enemies or “bugs” to be automatically eliminated, but as cohabitants to be kept in balance.
In the Anima Tradition, every moment is considered decisive, every choice pivotal, and every action of significant consequence. Individuals are indeed response-able, able to respond to the shifting balance of themselves, as well as their relationships, surroundings and world. Like the medicine women and shamans, grannywives and curanderas that came before, the Anima Herbal practitioner rallies when there are things to be done and contributes to wholeness every day in their individual ways. We have created a contemporary tradition, true to our times, one that empowers the conscious co-creation of our world and our lives.
Kiva Rose is cofounder of the Animá Lifeways and Herbal Traditions and a practicing Medicine Woman. She and her partners tend a riverside sanctuary and ancient place of power in the enchanted Southwest, offering correspondence courses and healing consultations, wilderness retreats, workshops and the September 2010 Traditions in Western Herbalism Conference. Learn more at traditionsinwesternherbalism.org, bearmedicineherbals.com, and animacenter.org.
Conscious Life Expo: Opening Doors to Enlightenment
by Elyssa Paige
“All religions, arts and sciences are branches of the same tree.” – Albert Einstein
The year was 1975. A new age was emerging from the haze of the hippie days. People were coming together with a focused intention of raising the consciousness of the planet. They were on a quest to become the co-creators of a new world.
At the core of this movement was a universal embrace of myriad concepts of health, values and traditions. Ideas that may have at one time been at odds with each other were coming together, like science and religion turning the ideological battlefield into a celebration of peace and common respect. During this transformational period, alternative models of science, spirituality, and healing were coming to the forefront of American culture—and they needed a place for expression.
The Whole Earth Company answered the call by producing the Whole Earth Expo to provide a haven of knowledge from new age thought to natural products and alternative lifestyles. This first expo of its kind was thriving by the mid-70s and more shows focused on body, mind and spirit began popping up as the movement gained momentum. In the early 80s, the National Health Federation began producing expos and by 1983, the Whole Life Expo, produced by Whole Life Times, provided New York, Los Angeles and San Francisco with a gathering for exploration and enlightenment. The late-80s brought an outburst of Whole Life Expos to cities all over the country. A national community was born.
Fast forward to 2001, when the Whole Life Expos became a notion of the past after 9/11. Robert Quicksilver stepped up to fill the void. Recognizing the need for a large expo in the Los Angeles area that would be a creative gathering to cultivate community and celebrate diversity, he produced the first Conscious Life Expo in 2003. And it was a hit.
Today, the Conscious Life Expo continues to honor the tradition of creating a progressive community, bringing cutting edge speakers and exhibitors to Los Angeles every year. Taking place February 12-14, 2010 at the LAX Hilton, the eighth annual show promises to be a revolutionary experience, marking a new decade and our place within it as we unite to create a turning point in human history.
Quicksilver explains what the Conscious Life Expo is all about: “The primary intention is simple: to participate in the conscious co-creation of a new world, a world based on new paradigms in science, spirituality, longevity, local and global community, relationships, health and wellbeing. And while we co-create this new holistic model through our authentic self-expression, we also participate in a powerful and passionate celebration of life and love.”
The 2010 expo will be a three-day extravaganza where thousands of people from all walks of life will join to celebrate, network and learn from each other through lectures, workshops, post-conference intensives and live entertainment. The amazing lineup of speakers features Marianne Williamson, Debbie Ford, Gregg Braden, Jean Houston, Zecharia Sitchin, Judith Orloff, and a live video conference with Ram Dass, to name a few.
There will be hundreds of exhibitors sharing an incredible range of products and services to heal and inspire, from the latest health technologies to ancient healing modalities, from superfood to spiritual books and music, from massage to aura photography—there is something for everyone at this visionary gathering.
Just when you thought the expo couldn’t get any better, the Conscious Life Film Festival features three days of alternative feature length and short films. This is the place to see up and coming films that focus on spirituality, social justice, beauty and more.
The Conscious Life Expo is abundant with opportunity for inspiration, empowerment, creativity, and perhaps most importantly, community. As Quicksilver puts it, “The purpose is to bring us all together. [The Conscious Life Expo] is a three-day gathering of the tribes, a three-day celebration of evolution and consciousness and a three-day brainstorming session on who we are, where we are and where we are going.”
The eighth annual Conscious Life Expo will be held February 12-14 at the LAX Hilton in Los Angeles. Tickets go on sale December 15. For more information, visit consciouslifeexpo.com or call 800.367.5777.
Danish Christmas Traditions Lost and Found
by Bente Mirow
It wasn’t until I couldn’t see it anymore that I really saw it. The light, the intentions and the mood around Christmas in Denmark was a marathon of festivities spreading over the entire month of December and culminating in four Christmas-pregnant days, each uniquely filled with their own set of rituals, traditions and food.
By far, this is the greatest celebration of the year in Denmark. Like everyone else, I took the whole package for granted as a child and enjoyed it with a mixture of endless impatience and a deep warm fuzzy feeling inside that enveloped me and made me feel safe and enchanted. I watched the food, the drink and the people with awe and fascination.
Food was a big deal. There was “Little Christmas Eve” on the 23rd with aebleskiver (traditional Danish pancakes) and glogg (heated spiced wine). There was Christmas Eve on the 24th with the special rice dessert with the hidden almond game, and on the 25th and the 26th, there were the all-day “luncheons,” food orgies with no beginning and no end. Endless culinary delights covered a very large table and hot dishes were placed on an odd arrangement lifting them up from the table. I imagined that they had taken the elevator up to the second floor to see the food. In reality, of course, it was because one very large table was not big enough to hold all the food my family was intent on eating.
As I grew older, I started to question the bombastic proportions of it all. In addition, my interests and longings now tended towards exotic places where the sun shone more. I would now willingly give up what December in Denmark had to offer me in exchange for being somewhere else.
As I established myself as a temporary (I thought) immigrant in a new country, I slowly came to realize the extent of how the climate, culture, history and social context under which we start our lives affect how we see and meet the world. Moving away and facing another set of values can cause a strange form of confusion.
Where was the calendar candle on December 1, divided into 24 small sections to be burned each day until the candle showed Christmas was here? How were endless candles going to create the atmosphere of Christmas when it wasn’t even cold or dark? How could electric lights on the Christmas tree possibly substitute the real candles and the bucket of water below the tree? Worst of all, marzipan was nowhere to be found in this country of too much, but too little of the right things.
And so it wasn’t until that light, those intentions and that mood of Christmas was not available to me, that I started to understand the effort and meaning behind what it had been.
But it really sank in when I became a mother.
Suddenly the traditions of comfort and familiarity became the bond to bridge the gap between the past and future, to honor where we came from and to connect the old with the new. It became my responsibility to pass along the pieces of the Christmas I had known growing up, almost as if I was recording important family information. I found myself going far beyond overboard in incorporating every single little feature I could possibly muster. Christmas was indeed a serious matter.
For my kids, it was different from how the other children celebrated. My daughter talks about being torn between feeling like an outsider for not having the same traditions as everyone else and feeling special because of those very differences.
“I always felt that our traditions had so much more meaning and it was difficult to relate to the traditions of others. I had this feeling that we were celebrating different holidays and yet using the same name for them. Whenever I would go and visit friends and their families for a holiday get-together, I felt nervous and out of the loop because I wasn’t familiar with their traditions. Making gingerbread houses, opening presents in the morning, eggnog—all of these things were completely foreign to me and my friends thought I was odd for not understanding. In spite of that, ultimately it gave me a sense of pride in being different and rooted in something,” she says.
As my kids grew up, it became necessary to distill the package down to a more reasonable version. I started to feel ridiculous in my sentimental attempts at keeping it all up and my kids started to feel it was too much unhealthy eating, too much money, and too much trying too hard. So together we weeded out and created our own family’s version from the pieces we found most significant. As we cut and reshaped, we questioned what it all means and how it matters.
Julie, now 23, explains: “There will always be the sense of nostalgia for the elaborate traditions and the magic of Christmas as a child, but I feel that I have reached a place within myself where all those traditions can be expressed in smaller ways and passed on.”
Even though she can’t pick any favorite tradition over another, as there were just too many, she muses, ”Imagine a family of Danes bursting at the buttons and shoveling rice pudding into their mouths in the search for the one almond and an extra little gift. It was just too much fun.”
Having been part of the Danish traditions from the beginning of their lives with their grandparents, my kids feel that even when it is not possible to be with their grandparents for Christmas, celebrating those traditions honors them and holds them in their hearts.
Since Julie has become a grownup, she has embraced the traditions and adapted them to her own world. She now shares them with the people who are close to her, the same people who never understood her traditions as children, and for whom she has now turned certain parts into much anticipated and loved traditions as well.
Julie plans to revive many of the more elaborate customs once she has her own children. “Every tradition I pass on will be in the hopes that a little bit of my family and my childhood can live on with them,” she says.
For myself, after nearly 28 years under the California sun, I treasure the Danish holiday traditions more than ever.
In spite of now living and thinking in English, when Christmas comes around, the English words don’t work—they don’t match, and they don’t measure up to how I feel and what we do. My kids and I continue to stoke the fire of our shared traditions, keeping the core while building new twists and going a little lighter on the endurance test.
Bente Mirow is a freelance writer and editor living in San Rafael, CA. Visit her at writes-of-fancy.com or contact her at laumedreams@gmail.com.