In this interview, I sit with Rachel Blackman, fellow animist, somatic practitioner, and devotee to the work of grounding the sacred in the body, for a rich conversation about how animism can completely change one's life, from the inside out. Spending time with Rachel is always a delight, as she embodies the fresh, curious, and grounded perspective of one who has become a channel for what she calls "the generative principle," such that even as we share about things we each teach regularly about, the conversation can be emergent, alive, and ever-in-tune with the Mystery as it calls us to evolve our consciousness in ever-wider circles. It's so important as we collectively awaken (a.k.a. reground in our original knowing) to hear stories of metamorphosis from those who have experienced the alchemy of "dying before you die," and perhaps even more importantly, to experience the radiant energy that is transmitted on the other side of saying "yes" to being remade. If you'd like to be guided in returning to coherence and awakening your own connection to the bio-intelligent field, reach out to me directly for a Metamorphosis Session. 🦋 Or check our Rachel's work here: https://www.rachelablackman.com/

The time with you all this morning felt full. There were several of you planning to come who ended up not making it live last minute. Know that you were with us, and your flowers were placed in the ritual bowl. <3 I will report back when the flowers (and our old skins) are set free down the river, handed over to Mother Gaia and the Cosmic Flow. Here are the replays: on the left, my presentation and the meditation on the right: our group ritual xoxo PS here's the poem I read at the end: SEED I was buried for so long I forgot I could speak. Now, as drops of rain like shining jewels warmed in the soil reach my frozen skin something in me softens like a fist trembling open and I listen for the far off sounds of starry streams arriving. Then the hunger rises into my heart, like the memory of a flower, a flower yearning to know in smell, in taste, in touch, and with her many stamen eyes the splendor of sunshine beckoning from beyond the dark and heavy sky. And then something, something in the base of my spine gathers itself like a muscled serpent for the climb knowing there is nothing nothing else to do but this for every moment of every day: to unfurl in an ecstasy of green, shooting petal-wings toward that inevitable heaven. 🦋 @Crystallynn Light @Shannon Wills@Yana Sebaali @Danella Durieux @Denise Weinberger @Sammy S @Leslee McCoy @Patricia Zukas@Lorraine Cannatta

Dear fellow transmuters! I've just finished working on the slides for our summer solstice ritual and setting my altar for the experience. It feels potent, and I'm so grateful to be here in this moment with you all stepping into the next layer of alchemy. We will be deepening our capacity to receive through the many layers of the "cosmic cocoon," and fully committing to the alchemy in store for us during this next cycle in the chrysalis. We will drink from the sacred well together, share our voices, and be witnessed in community. We will bless and thank the old for where it has brought us thus far, and make a ritual gesture to release it, making space for the incoming height of the light as it crests above us at this moment in the season. If you feel called to take part beside your personal altar, that might increase the experience (but is not required). If you feel called to bring along any dried flowers, bones, papers, or objects that represent something beautiful that is no longer fresh, something ready to be released to make space for something new, bring those too. If you feel called to bring a sacred item from your altar, consider whether it still feels like a true representation of your soul on its path, right now. If so, it can receive the blessing of our ritual time. If not, it can be recycled for something new. We begin at 8:30 AM Pacific Time, and go for 90 minutes! See you soon, in sacred space! Warmly, Elizabeth @Amanda Ramirez @Kathleen Nora Bower @Brooke W@Crystallynn Light @Lorraine Cannatta @Lyndsay Conklin @Denise Weinberger @Danella Durieux @Jess Delfino Funston @Jim Wells @Jo Soen @Jen Lundstrom @Janna Sublett @Kim Queen @Klairity Marie @Samanthia Kingsley @Breon Michel @Megan Brians @Melissa Rain @Leslee McCoy @Nina Pullella @Nancy Green @Patricia Zukas @Pippa Galea @Julia Roibal @Rita Skeeter @Sammy S @Shannon Wills @Yana Sebaali @Zackoree Harrison @Cookie Schwarzinger And everyone else! I just tagged a few here.

This is a hub to dip your toe into the water of the metamorphosis work we do in the Body & Soul Sanctuary membership program (a program for sensitives, seekers, and trauma survivors struggling with reclaiming their bodies, health, relationships, and deep soul purpose to choose an empowered and vital life). In the Sanctuary, we take you on a journey through the twelves stages of the Regenerative Wheel to restore every step of the path and set you firmly on course with your unique heroine's story as told through the blueprint of your own body-psyche, weaving somatic skills, meditation, nature's medicine, ritual initiations and practical life coaching in a mythical, accessible, inspiring road map to amplify your evolutionary trajectory. Here in the Village, you can keep up to date with occasional offerings that are open to the public at our quarterly solstices & equinox ritual gatherings (see the calendar tab to access these), and I will be dropping some gifts and resources here and there. WHERE TO START: CLICK THE CLASSROOM TAB at the top of the page to begin watching videos about what the Sanctuary is about. If you like what you see, you may book a call with me to discuss enrollment in our intimate circle of initiation. Metamorphosis is real. You can change your life from the inside out. 🦋

Awakening is not a single moment. It is a cycle of seeing, forgetting, remembering, being angry, grieving, and choosing differently. Once you truly see the structures shaping your life, you may be tempted to turn away. To go back to sleep. To pretend the hole, the matrix, isn’t there. ​ But there is power in staying awake. Power in naming the hole you fall into, refusing the script, and building restorative community. Living the solution is not perfection. It is practice. ~Julie Schmidt 🦋 🦋 🦋 There is the act of planting a seed, the act of choosing to say YES to our soul and our authentic, whole self, and then there is the act of SUSTAINING that path, which requires a kind of devotion, through everything that would distract us from that holy ground. I think of Siddhartha sitting on the earth at the foot of the bodhi tree, being cajoled by Maya, who tried to find every potential loophole in his psyche that might lead him off center. This is how it can feel when we have said YES to our dharma, our soul calling, and to coming home to ourselves fully. Everything that is NOT THAT can scream louder, shake the house, put on a show, have a hissy fit, a major tantrum! This does NOT mean we're failing. It means, we're entering more expansive territory and the old structure is having its last hurrah: "Are you SURE you can survive without me?" Siddhartha put his hand on the earth and felt the solidity of something greater than all of his ego and identity structures, holding him so he could let go into the Mystery and say: "Yes, I can." What the earth did for Siddhartha is what our cocoon can do for us as we enter alchemical territory. In the Sanctuary we are approaching cocoon territory, which is that holy chamber, like that patch of dirt Siddhartha put his hand upon, where we can ground ourselves in something beyond what has stabilized us thus far, where we can surrender to something even more beautiful taking place than what we could have imagined, and safely let go of the old skin, the old shell that was holding us in place.