Rattling the Bones

Have you ever heard of auras? I’ll be honest as much as I can see and interact with the dead, I’m hugely sceptical about lots of what is discussed within the New Age movement. It doesn’t mean I don’t believe in many of the concepts but I often draw the line when information is being shared as fact and isn’t connected to anything remotely empirical. Strangely enough I like the “supernatural or paranormal reality” to be something logical, rational and practical. I like it to make sense. I see no reason to explore an ability that I can’t use in my daily living or that doesn’t in some shape or form enhance my understanding of life. Earlier on in my journey, I was not attracted to the idea of auras mostly because information on the topic focused on definition (colors emanating from the chakra system of the human body) or it centered on interpreting colors. I’ve always found that interpretations are highly subjective and aside from contributing some confirmation and sometimes even ...

I recently spent some time with an elder friend who loves dogs as much as I do. She lives in a remote wilderness area of the Province of Quebec. In the last decade she’s spent a lot of time helping in rehabilitating wounded animals especially those who have been hit by motorists. She’s contributed to the healing of deer, caribou, coyote, wolf, owl, eagle, raccoon and so much more… BP often calls on ME to help when the animals are struggling with recuperation. She always says: “I can see wounds, I can see pain, I can see healing but I can’t see death lingering over people and animals.” I love spending time with BP because her perspectives always get me thinking. BP has been a successful psycho-therapist for over 30 years. She is now retired. I’ve often given workshops up in Northern Quebec where BP lives. She has always been interested in the idea of vision quests, soul retrieval and totemic guidance. Before G and I started working together I often traveled to BP and handled...

I’ve been sitting with our Golden workshop for over a week. I knew that I would eventually write a blog on “our” experience but wanted to take some time to integrate. I was telling G before the workshop that even though we’ve been teaching for over 15 years, I always come out of these experiences learning more… Every workshop is different despite the fact that we’re always exploring the Medicine Wheel and Indigenous Dreaming. How do we describes what goes on at one of our workshops? This particular workshop started off with the title: Northern Star. The objective was to help people find their path and purpose. Yet as the week got underway we noticed that more and more the workshop was about inter-relations. As it turned out most of the participants were hoping to work on their couple relationships and even those single individuals found themselves unexpectedly exploring different forms of love-relationships. The whole idea of “relationships” is a great topic to bring to t...

On June 16th, 2011 – it was my birthday. Like anyone else I get lots of attention on this day: Good wishes, phone calls, cards and gifts. I even get news from people I haven’t talked to or seen in ages. There’s something about that day that makes me wish we could do this every day. Our western perspective is that on our birthday we should celebrate the passing of time. I assume the cake and gifts imply that everyone around us is happy that we are alive and part of their life story. I don’t know about everyone else but a part of me enjoys this attention and another part of me feels uncomfortable with it. 21 years ago when my children were born I realized that birthdays were a connection between parent and child. Every child birth is different and tells a story about the child and his/her parents. CT for example was born premature during a snowstorm by emergency cesarean. The morning of his birth I woke up from a dream, which literally told me: “Go to the hospital today is th...