Rattling the Bones

Love: One of the Twelve Elements on the Medicine Wheel. Growth, Trust and Love. Southern Elements of the Medicine Wheel.  When I first started studying the Medicine Wheel close to 30 years ago, I was surprised to find “love” as one of the twelve elements.   It seemed so much unlike ·        Clarity, knowledge, and illumination (east). ·        Growth and trust (south). ·        Experience, introspection and strength (west). ·        Renewal, purification and wisdom (north). Where most people refer to love as an emotion, something that we should feel for our family members and closest friends; the Medicine Wheel speaks of it as a kaleidoscope of sensations:   Something we feel by being an integrated part of a whole.   As Westerners we believe that all emotions stem from our individual thoughts and perspectives.  ...

I get a lot of questions about totems from individuals who struggle in their relationships. It makes sense since the word itself "totem" implies "relations." There are no better teachers than animals, plants and stones when it comes to understanding "how to live together." Just a few weeks ago my husband and I took a weekend trip to the country. On the way there we noticed a few areas where there had been rockslides. As we drove around the stones we were pretty amazed at the size of them. Both my husband and I pulled different lessons and wisdom from the incident. He said: "I wouldn't want to be in the way when one of those cliffs let's go of something major." 
 It brought us to discuss the relationships of a few couples in our lives. The kind of individuals who need to constantly vent about their mates but don't have the courage to be forward and clear with them. They often argue and put a damper on those evenings we wer...

FINALLY! SPRING IS HERE!!!! At least the snow is all gone and the grass is beginning to turn green. With Summer Solstice just around the corner, the trees are just beginning to show their buds in this part of the world. It's that in-between tim e of year. The wind is blowing fiercly right now, as it changes from hot to cold one more time. ... It's been one of the longest, coldest hardest winters that I can remember. Maybe it just seems that way, but with the Cosmological Forces i.e. the Dark Moon phenomena, Supermoons, Earth polar shifts and more happening all at once... its taking its toll on all of us, not to mention Mother Earth. She seems to not have the energy to bring forth new life. It's as if she just wants to go back to sleep and pull the blanket of snow over her head. I guess we all know how that is. When you don't have anything great to look forward to except more abuse, neglect and exploitation, why would you want to wake up?   We are...

It’s difficult for people to believe in past lives.   The concept of reincarnation would have to be proven scientifically for the people-of-today to actually commit to it.    I think that many open-minded individuals think that it’s possible and will even admit: “It makes sense.”   Yet, rare are those who actually live their personal story considering what is outside their present day box.   For years I remember telling my elders and teachers that I couldn’t wrap my mind around something that I wasn’t sure of.   It took years to figure out that my issue wasn’t in my inability to prove that past lives exists; but actually rather in attempting to “wrap my mind around it.”   In fact all it took in the end was for me to trust the process of remembering. Every day I get at least one email from a dreamer who wants to know why he or she can’t remember his or her dreams.   After I’ve gone through the list of potential reasons why someone may n...