For The Wild - PAVINI MORAY on Alchemizing Trauma and Ancestral Healing ⌠PART 1⌡ ⧸144

00:00:00.000 For the Wild podcast is brought to you in part by support from our partner, the Calliopeia

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00:00:30.000 hey for the wild community ayana here i want to take a moment to thank the city of bend oregon

00:00:38.740 for generously supporting our work the deschutes river winds through the town of bend and is home

00:00:44.460 to rainbow trout steelhead chinook and sockeye salmon which are being co-restored by the wasco

00:00:50.260 tonino and paiute tribes historically dip netting has been prominent along the deschutes to harvest

00:00:56.320 fish and is a technique still used today. Over millennia, the water draining from the Cascade

00:01:01.880 Range has carved stunning canyons and rock sculptures along the body of this river,

00:01:06.520 renowned for whitewater rafting. If you visit Bend, we invite you to take the time to visit

00:01:12.020 the water and meditate on the stories it holds. At For the Wild, we're passionate about connecting

00:01:17.400 with water, land, and supporting local economies. We're honored to be collaborating with Bend to

00:01:22.800 spread the word about Pledge for the Wild, a group of mountain towns that support responsible

00:01:27.520 tourism through the preservation of land. Consider supporting and visiting one of my

00:01:32.400 favorite destinations, Bend, Oregon, and help protect the land by giving back at pledgewildbend.com.

00:01:38.780 the thing that I always say about this is that there's nothing new under the sun and if you're

00:01:53.740 having an experience you are not the first person in the world to ever have that experience and

00:01:58.660 chances are someone in your own blood lineage had that experience even if it's not recorded

00:02:03.920 even if you can't find them in the genealogy even if you don't know their name in the story

00:02:07.880 there is a memory like in your tissues in your blood in your dna there's a memory of

00:02:13.980 this experience that you can tap for wisdom and support welcome to for the wild podcast

00:02:24.120 i'm ayana young today we are speaking with dr pavani moray pronoun p pavani is a somatic sex

00:02:31.880 therapist and ancestral lineage healing practitioner in private practice in san francisco

00:02:37.960 Pavanee works with individuals and couples who wish to resolve the past,

00:02:41.880 inhabit their bodies and their pleasure, and speak their desires.

00:02:45.920 Pavanee is also the founder of Wellseum,

00:02:48.560 an online sexuality and intimacy school committed to personal and planetary liberation.

00:02:54.280 Pavanee hosts a podcast called Bespoken Bones,

00:02:57.720 Ancestors at the Crossroads of Sex, Magic, and Science.

00:03:01.340 The podcast is released every new and full moon

00:03:04.520 and addresses topics of transgenerational trauma, erotic wellness, and ancestral support. 0.93

00:03:11.320 As a queer trans witch, Pavani walks the glitter path of dancing bones, 0.97

00:03:16.200 ridiculous delight, and old magic. Hello, Pavani, and welcome to the show. 1.00

00:03:22.700 I have been feeling the call to dig deeper into the topics of ancestral healing,

00:03:28.720 embodiment, and pleasure on the podcast, so I'm really excited to share this space with you today.

00:03:34.280 It's such an honor to be here today.

00:03:36.400 Thank you.

00:03:37.000 So just to jump right in, I'd love for you to ground this conversation today by telling

00:03:42.040 us a bit more about your work.

00:03:43.680 How are you weaving together the threads of ancestral connection, embodied wellness, and

00:03:50.220 erotic freedom through your practice and your podcast?

00:03:53.880 I think that it's important to understand that sex is how we all got here, right? 0.99

00:03:59.700 It's through the sex of our ancestors, through thousands and thousands and thousands of folks having sex and fucking and making love and being consensual and non-consensual and all that stuff. 0.99

00:04:11.500 That's how we got here. 0.98

00:04:12.780 And so when I think about erotic wellness, an essential piece of that is tending to just that acknowledgement of the eros of our ancestors.

00:04:27.760 And, you know, I think there's such a taboo about talking about sex in families, but there's something really beautiful when we think about like, oh, the unique expression of each human, right?

00:04:43.700 The unique combination of DNA that combines to create you and you and you comes from this

00:04:51.700 long line of people practicing Eros and that Eros is this current of creation that runs

00:05:04.780 through all life, right?

00:05:06.500 It's the thing that connects us to every other living thing on this planet is Eros

00:05:13.080 And so as I hold that in the work that I do, it's really the coming back to the sense of what is it to inhabit our best erotic selves, our most alive selves, the selves that are the most deeply connected, the intuitive knowing, the attunement with other humans, with other than humans, with the earth.

00:05:41.780 the erotic is really the place of our it's core it's such a core place and so to to move towards

00:05:49.860 the erotic right and especially in a culture that where it's so sexualized and pathologized and

00:05:56.260 commercialized and we're taught so many messages about it and to come back to it as oh this is an

00:06:04.640 original state of wellness, right? Of free-flowing Eros. When Eros is allowed to move through us,

00:06:12.580 it's an original state of wellness and of being that we all have the possibility to tap back into.

00:06:19.920 That was beautiful. Yeah. It's really interesting and curious to see all the shame that's been

00:06:29.560 built around our bodies and eros and sex when it really is extremely natural it's how we got here

00:06:38.420 and it's something that doesn't have to be capitalistic in nature and so I'm really glad

00:06:45.560 that you're speaking about this topic in this way that's really open and inviting and yeah like I

00:06:52.480 was saying earlier the topic of embodiment is really alive for me right now particularly in

00:06:57.540 how we're showing up for ourselves and our relationships in this time. On an episode of

00:07:03.900 Bespoken Bones, you shared, quote, being embodied gives us more access to all of who we are.

00:07:10.140 When we are not living fully to the full edges of our skin, when we don't have access to all the

00:07:16.580 sensation that's present, we're actually missing out on a huge piece of human being and the human

00:07:21.720 experience, end quote. So first, I want to ask, what holds us back from being present in our

00:07:27.860 bodies? And second, what shifts when we are inhabiting our bodies in a way that is whole,

00:07:36.100 visceral, and pleasurable? I want to be careful in answering this because I also feel like there's

00:07:42.240 a tyranny of embodiment, that it's like every yoga teacher is like, you must be in your body.

00:07:48.800 And so I really want us to not pathologize, not being in our bodies because like you're

00:07:55.480 asking what holds us back and it's that we don't feel safe, right?

00:08:00.040 It doesn't feel safe to be in our skin.

00:08:03.080 It feels safer to put our attention outside of our somatic experience, outside of our

00:08:09.880 emotional experience because the sensations and the emotions are so overwhelming or they're

00:08:16.340 so painful, so unpleasant.

00:08:18.800 so unbearable that the smartest, the most wise thing for our bodies is to learn this

00:08:26.240 skill of taking the attention outside of the experience, outside of the embodied experience,

00:08:31.740 right? And so, and there's, that's a beautiful, beautiful survival strategy. It's, it's one of

00:08:37.940 those, those ones that works until it doesn't. And it has costs and it has benefits, just like,

00:08:44.700 you know, all of our strategies. And so it's really about readiness, right? Of when is someone

00:08:52.600 ready to make the perilous journey back to the flesh, back to feeling, back to sensation,

00:09:00.380 back to intuition? Because when you're in your body in that way, it becomes really impossible

00:09:08.820 to live out of your integrity, right?

00:09:13.000 You have to be in alignment with your true knowing

00:09:18.680 and the true knowing that comes from you being a creature

00:09:23.980 in the world, like in the natural world, yeah?

00:09:27.200 And so many of us, like in order to survive end capitalism

00:09:32.380 are placing our attention elsewhere, right?

00:09:35.480 we're placing it in and sometimes those are in really good places that we're placing it and

00:09:40.040 and sometimes it's just it's more distraction but so the I would say that the the call back to the

00:09:49.080 body of like when you feel ready when you feel like you're ready to experience all of that

00:09:55.280 sensation and emotion and and build your capacity to be with right to be with what is

00:10:02.660 it is revolutionary work and it's in no way supported by our culture so I think of it like

00:10:12.200 oh yeah this is my activism like I am going to be in a non-normative body and I'm going to be

00:10:18.020 feeling it and I'm going to build capacity to feel it all because really I want that and I get to

00:10:23.320 have that and and but that's also like you know that's years of of healing work right and so

00:10:29.840 how do you build embodied safety how do you start to create a sense of safety inside your

00:10:37.280 own experience like how do you know that your resilience is is going to win how do you know

00:10:43.220 that it outmatches you know your fragility or the places that you feel small and so like that

00:10:49.820 capacity building is an intentional choice and it's an intentional practice that you do over and

00:10:53.780 over and over and over again of bringing the attention back to the body for the sake of

00:10:58.580 feeling. And it means that you have to, when I think about it in terms of like race, for folks

00:11:05.780 who are white, like how do we build capacity to be with the truth of the pain and the harm and

00:11:16.400 the suffering that folks of color endure under white supremacy? And how do we build capacity

00:11:21.680 in our bodies to be with it and not turn away from it and not crumple under the shame of it,

00:11:27.980 of what our ancestors have done. And that is deep spiritual work to build that capacity.

00:11:36.580 It feels so important to name the origins of our greater cultural disconnection and

00:11:41.940 dishonoring of the human body and the earth as body. This idea of mind over matter and severance

00:11:49.760 with the body is central to projects of colonialism and white supremacy and remains deeply rooted in

00:11:57.040 dominant Western culture. So I'm wondering how is this fracturing felt on an embodied level

00:12:03.840 and carried through the generations? Yeah. I mean, I think it's, it's not felt

00:12:10.460 like that's the problem of like, that's the problem of using disembodiment as the continual

00:12:16.460 strategy is it's the absence of feeling, right? It's the like when you can other someone else's

00:12:22.500 suffering right because you can't you can't bear to be with it you can't bear to feel it

00:12:26.840 and um and it just perpetuates like generationally i think you know if children aren't aren't

00:12:34.160 experiencing parents who are who have the skills to to be empathic empathetic to feel as well as to

00:12:44.760 to not take it on to not bear witness right to not collapse under it um if they're not getting

00:12:52.160 that modeling, then it just increases of like, oh yeah, this is, this is a good way to be with

00:12:57.080 this disconnect, right. Of just like, just don't notice it, pretend it's not there, pretend it's

00:13:01.240 not happening. Right. But I think we're at kind of at a, at a point where it's like, it's harder,

00:13:06.640 it's harder and harder for more people to just like pretend that it's not there. More people

00:13:12.480 are like, oh wait, actually. And we feel it through belonging, right. We've earned this

00:13:15.800 belonging. We feel it through like, oh, actually I don't, I don't feel connected. I don't feel

00:13:19.600 like I have community. I feel alone. I feel alienated. And so it shows up like that. Yeah.

00:13:24.360 As you've touched on, being alive in our bodies also means being present with the pain and grief

00:13:31.440 that we not only carry in our psyche, but also within our flesh and bones. When we talk about

00:13:38.120 healing, I think there is an impulse to reject our or bind our trauma in that process, disavow

00:13:47.600 our bodies as vessels of great wisdom and information. And as a healing practitioner,

00:13:53.480 how do you approach trauma in your practice and help people feel at home in the complexity of

00:13:58.820 their bodies? Yeah. I mean, I think about trauma a lot as an altered state of consciousness.

00:14:06.820 Like most people just really want to avoid being triggered, right? They don't want to feel their

00:14:10.160 trauma. They don't want to feel their freeze or their shutdown or their fright, their fight or

00:14:14.080 they're whatever they don't want to feel that stuff and so but it if you think about it as

00:14:18.980 that the the trauma is an opportunity right that it's like an invitation into getting really good

00:14:28.540 at walking in an altered state in your body right because like trauma can be super psychedelic

00:14:34.300 you know the uh like the walls start bending and time gets all weird and the floor drops so you

00:14:41.400 know like all that stuff that happens on a somatic level all the trauma responses that can happen

00:14:45.760 when we're really triggered it's like oh like what's it like to to be someone who is good at

00:14:53.840 navigating those altered states of reality for the sake of really being able to access the the gifts

00:15:02.200 of the trauma and this is kind of a hard sell right because like you're like what are the gifts

00:15:06.640 of the trauma and and it's I would say it's it's an advanced project it's not like kind of like

00:15:11.480 trauma 101 right but like I am somebody who has a lot of sexual trauma and um being able to be with

00:15:19.240 my own body when that's happening and and allow like when it's really intense it's there's no way

00:15:28.220 you can hold that much energy in your own body and so you have to let life hold it right you have

00:15:34.500 it's like you have to let the ocean hold it you have to let the earth hold it with you

00:15:37.900 right because it's the intensity the enormity of the intensity of the sensation is just

00:15:42.360 you know and so if you if you can do that and you get good at it then they're the things that we

00:15:49.840 gain out of trauma like exquisite sensitivity for example the flip side of it is hyper vigilance

00:15:56.800 right and but like that sensitivity is such a boon to like if we can learn to be skillful with it

00:16:05.740 right and not just be fragile with it if we can learn to like oh how do I use my sensitivity that

00:16:11.940 I've gained through trauma to like deeply feel into what is this land calling right now what is

00:16:18.340 life asking of me right now what is this river asking what does this mountain need what does

00:16:24.180 this project call forth you know it's like we can start to to fine-tune those sensitivities

00:16:29.280 that we've gained from trauma and so I feel like there's like this tremendous value in

00:16:33.500 in getting fluent with it and not just shying away from it but it takes it takes a lot of

00:16:39.840 dedicated effort it takes a commitment to doing it and it also takes community support of like

00:16:45.080 having good people around you or good animals around you who are like going to help you

00:16:50.340 navigate those territories because it's like a magical reality right of like okay how do I

00:16:54.160 How do I move through this?

00:17:24.160 Transcription by CastingWords

00:17:54.160 He is teasing me or asking to stay from the summit to the hell is where dad's who foes there.

00:18:19.480 He's passed since the end

00:18:25.160 We're sleeping out to the sky

00:18:44.480 I was humming in the barrenness

00:18:49.120 He's barely standing upright on the ledge

00:18:54.840 Smiles ringing out of the book

00:19:03.440 It's working dry in the place

00:19:08.300 Help us, help us, to its words

00:19:17.500 I knew the picture went

00:19:22.460 He says, can you turn this stone to bread

00:19:32.080 I'll see you living in front of a memory

00:19:47.500 from the body keeps the score bessel von der cloak shares quote traumatized people chronically feel

00:19:57.080 unsafe inside their bodies the past is alive in the form of gnawing interior discomfort

00:20:02.740 their bodies are constantly bombarded by visceral warning signs and in an attempt to control these

00:20:08.740 processes they often become expert at ignoring their gut feelings and a numbing awareness

00:20:14.540 of what is played out inside. They learn to hide from themselves, end quote. And I just wanted to

00:20:21.600 read that as a response to some of the things that you've mentioned. And I think part of

00:20:28.380 what you're speaking to is our cultural inclination towards shame, denial, and dismissal,

00:20:35.320 perhaps. And although trauma is encoded in the self, I wonder about the necessity of

00:20:41.940 healing relationally. One of our greatest powers being to witness one another in our

00:20:48.160 incompleteness and hold a container of safety for our unsettling. So I'm wondering how does

00:20:55.760 intentional, well-boundaried reciprocity and care for others figure into your paradigm of healing?

00:21:03.740 I feel so soft to my heart hearing that question. Yeah. Something that I notice,

00:21:09.580 especially in queer culture and i'm not the first to notice as other people talk about it it's just 0.99

00:21:14.940 the the lateral violence we do to each other because of our trauma you know and and also like

00:21:21.880 the weird trauma bonding that we do right we we say oh trauma bonding that if i'm sharing my trauma

00:21:27.320 with you like that's intimacy like and i'm like no that's not intimacy that's intensity and those

00:21:32.600 things are different, right? And knowing your capacity, honoring your capacity, like to be able

00:21:41.360 to play, dance, move in these realms of trauma, like you have to be aware of what your capacity

00:21:49.400 is. And you have to be willing to acknowledge that you have a capacity, right? Like you don't

00:21:55.160 have to be capacity-less. I don't even know if that's a word. You don't have to be able to be

00:22:00.400 with everything. You can only do that work insofar as you can be with what's presenting.

00:22:07.840 So for example, I work with deeply traumatized folks around sexual trauma all the time, right?

00:22:13.840 And my capacity to be with that has built over the years that I've been doing the work.

00:22:19.800 Initially, when I started, it was devastating to be with it and really hard, especially like

00:22:26.080 my own stuff would come up and I would get triggered in session, you know, and so how

00:22:30.080 to navigate that and how to do it in a way that you're not minimizing the impact of the

00:22:35.600 stories that you're hearing, right?

00:22:37.300 How to like, how to deeply acknowledge it and hold it.

00:22:40.440 And like, sometimes you have a limit, right?

00:22:43.140 Or sometimes you need support.

00:22:44.540 And so I think that's the first thing is, is really being aware of, of your capacity

00:22:49.860 and being willing to be honest about that.

00:22:52.740 And sometimes we don't know that we've hit our capacity until we do like, oh, 0.99

00:22:56.080 shit, there was my boundary. Great. Okay. Lesson learned. I think the piece about reciprocity, 0.99

00:23:04.120 you know, I'm in long-term partnership and my partner also has sexual trauma. It's been so

00:23:11.480 comforting, right? To be in relationship with somebody who like gets it on a body level,

00:23:18.100 right? You know, that stuff happens during sex and one of us will get triggered. And that's just

00:23:23.300 part of it. Like that's just part of being a trauma survivor. And, and so that deep comfort

00:23:27.640 of knowing like, oh, you, you have gone through things too, that are challenging for you. I don't

00:23:33.420 have to justify my experience. And I, so I feel like that's a real place that we can offer that

00:23:38.600 witness and acknowledgement to each other and community is, is really by like allowing each

00:23:43.100 other to be just how we are and not, not having to fix each other and not having to. Yeah. I think

00:23:49.040 it also helps with the white supremacy piece, right? Of like, we don't have to be perfect

00:23:55.860 to be in relationship. It's going to be messy. Are we committed to repair, right? Are we committed

00:24:03.200 to repair with each other when it gets messy? Yeah. So knowing your capacity and being honest

00:24:08.340 about it, being able to share with other people without, without fixing. The last piece is

00:24:16.200 really about do you really want to to change the experience of what's happening in your body

00:24:27.600 like what percentage of you is willing and what percentage of you is resistance like because

00:24:33.420 trauma is sticky and it can be kind of like compulsive or addictive and so we can be like

00:24:39.720 working on our our trauma and therapy and then we can be like acting out our trauma in our

00:24:43.640 communities, right? And so just I think that being in that question with oneself about where am I on

00:24:51.920 that spectrum, right? Not am I willing to work through my trauma so that I can be a good community

00:24:57.820 member, but like how responsible am I? Because I don't think that trauma excuses you, right? Like

00:25:05.240 this is the sucky part that just because somebody has trauma, it's like the person who has it is

00:25:11.180 left holding the bag with it and it's so super unfair yeah it just sucks it's not fair that like

00:25:17.740 this person who is who has been victimized by this thing that now has to like figure out how to heal

00:25:22.100 it and how to like be in community and how to not project it on other people but but that's the deal

00:25:26.760 right like let's just be honest about it if we want to have healthy communities if we want to

00:25:32.320 have healthy reciprocal relationships we have to start taking responsibility for our wounding and

00:25:39.220 our capacity to do harm because of that wounding intimacy is built with time and it's trust it's

00:25:46.360 you've heard what adrian marie brown has said about it right of like moving at the speed of

00:25:50.480 trust and and that's intimacy long-term relationship uh rupture and repair rupture and repair rupture

00:25:58.680 and repair and being committed to one another and um intensity is just that it's just like

00:26:04.380 it makes you feel really alive like the way adrenaline makes you feel really alive but

00:26:08.880 it's not a nervous system state that is sustainable, right? And we just tend to our

00:26:16.720 collective nervous system of like, oh, what is it to start to settle? What's it to start to root

00:26:21.940 again in groundedness and goodness? That is so helpful to hear about trauma bonding,

00:26:28.800 which is a term I'd never heard before, and intimacy versus intensity. And I know because

00:26:35.700 of this loneliness that so many of us feel we desperately want to have that connection of

00:26:42.360 intimacy but really realizing and remembering trust takes time and we need to build our capacity

00:26:51.620 to hold ourselves as we build trust and it's such an amazing lesson and thank you for speaking to

00:26:58.520 that and there's this question that's been coming up for me a lot recently in relation to movement

00:27:04.460 spaces and how we approach building collective power. And I think so many of us have focused

00:27:10.940 our energies on the deep urgent issues that connect us without nurturing each other and

00:27:17.460 our relationships. And to me, this means caring about people's shadow sides, their complexities

00:27:23.120 and showing up for their unraveling and undoing. And I'm really sitting in this question of

00:27:29.080 how creating relational space is part of the way we will be strong earth defenders.

00:27:34.980 I feel like there's so many people who are really connected on the deep issues,

00:27:40.440 but they're not connected in depth to each other.

00:27:43.920 Yeah. So a lot of us have strained relationships with family of origin. A lot of us, especially

00:27:53.200 white folks have deep shame around acts that their ancestors might have perpetrated. And so

00:28:01.100 the idea of connecting ancestrally, it's like, well, those people were fucked up. Why would I 0.99

00:28:07.200 want to connect with those people? Because I don't approve. It's not what I would have done.

00:28:15.560 And, and so we're cut off from a possible resource of blessing and support. And, you know, how I hold it is that the, the dead are not all equally well, just because someone dies doesn't give them any special status, right? They're just no longer in a human form.

00:28:35.740 And when we think about connecting with the unseen worlds, the energies, at least that I want to be connecting with, just like I want to have like friends and community that I trust their capacity to self-reflect.

00:28:50.700 I trust their capacity to choose love.

00:28:55.540 The energies in the unseen world, I want to make sure that that is also happening, that I'm not, you know, just because something is unseen doesn't mean it's like super spiritual.

00:29:04.280 It just means it's unseen.

00:29:05.740 And how do we start to vet? How do we start to have discernment practices around what and who we connect with? And so the idea of ancestral healing is really that the dead can change, right? And that possibly they want to change and they want to be in a more well or elevated state.

00:29:26.640 And I've definitely in my own ancestry had this experience of relating with dead people in my lineage who were deeply committed to writing, to repairing, right?

00:29:39.700 So this kind of goes back to our conversation about relationality and repair of like that they want that.

00:29:46.820 I'm guessing, I don't know, I'm not dead, but I'm imagining that you have a different perspective

00:29:52.480 once you're dead and that things that maybe you were practicing or committed to while you were

00:29:58.160 in body just are, you have different priorities and you can see things in a different way and

00:30:02.700 you might really want a chance to make things right. So that can happen, right? We can do this

00:30:08.140 work through ritual. There's lots of different ancestral healing technologies. Some of them

00:30:14.320 you're doing the work yourself some of them somebody else is doing that work for you

00:30:18.260 you know i don't have i'm not judgmental about kind of like how it happens but i think the

00:30:23.500 the idea of like establishing relationship with ancestors is important a and making sure that they

00:30:30.820 are in a good way just like we say prayers for our descendants we say prayers for those who come

00:30:36.520 after us like we also say those prayers back in time of like oh i want you to be well because i

00:30:42.680 want to be able to lean back and trust that you're in a good way and that you've got me and that

00:30:48.360 this line is thriving right that this line that I'm the living face of right now I'm the right now

00:30:55.440 that the ones before me and the ones after me there's just there's goodness and that there's

00:31:01.120 love that's flowing and so yeah how do you do that and so that the you know there's the technologies

00:31:06.660 that exist to do that a lot of them are indigenous technologies and does that answer the question

00:31:11.320 yeah do they miss any parts no no and it's yeah it's a deep question and it's it's really

00:31:17.960 yeah i feel like we need to be expansive to be able to take it all in and feel it in our bodies

00:31:24.200 when you're speaking about this because it's not something that feels linear or like there's some

00:31:29.880 reductionist model of how to do it and so yeah i really feel you and i'd really love to also hear

00:31:37.280 more about your practice of transcestral healing and experience in supporting LGBTQ clients in

00:31:46.920 ancestral lineage exploration and repair. And I'm wondering how does this process conjure

00:31:54.120 different paradigms of gender and sexuality beyond the Western binary that may be connective or

00:31:59.980 healing for queer and trans folks? Right. Yeah. The thing that I always say about this is that

00:32:05.600 there's nothing new under the sun. And if you're having an experience, you are not the first person

00:32:10.280 in the world to ever have that experience. And chances are someone in your own blood lineage

00:32:15.580 had that experience, even if it's not recorded, even if you can't find them in the genealogy,

00:32:20.340 even if you don't know their name in the story, there's a memory, like in your tissues, in your

00:32:25.800 blood, in your DNA, there's a memory of this experience that you can tap for wisdom and

00:32:30.920 support right and because folks with other identities like queer folks and trans folks

00:32:38.460 you know so often feel disconnected from their families of origin it's like

00:32:42.400 well what if we went back in time like what if you could build a time machine and go back and like

00:32:49.480 be with this really really beloved elder who like totally gets you and it's like oh child yeah of

00:32:58.260 course you're having this experience it's there's no words for it like they want you to be in this

00:33:03.220 side of the fence or on this side of the fence but you don't you're not and your love is beautiful

00:33:07.480 and the way you are is beautiful like what if we could do that right and so we can i i believe we

00:33:13.440 can and i think it's deeply nourishing and healing to to lean in there and rewrite the orphan

00:33:21.800 narratives, right? Of like, oh yeah, I deeply belong in my queer lineage, you know, and they

00:33:28.580 can really get my struggles and they can, and maybe they use different language and maybe they

00:33:32.160 had different words for it or maybe they didn't even have words for it, but they get it. And I'm

00:33:37.740 not alone and I didn't come from nowhere. Like this experience that I'm having that is challenging,

00:33:43.300 painful struggle beautiful like that it's a blessing from my lineage yeah and uh yeah and

00:33:52.080 so like when I think about like trans sisters I'm thinking about both the ones in our blood 0.99

00:33:57.140 those people who had varied gender experiences as well as the mighty trans dead the the dead

00:34:07.100 like Sylvia Rivera, Marsha P. Johnson, Lou Sullivan, the ones who worked in their lives

00:34:14.300 really intensely for liberation and who have provided these like role models and paths that

00:34:22.100 we can follow and lineages that we can build on. And so it's like both, it's both the blood and

00:34:27.480 the ancestors of heart is what I'm talking about when I'm talking about ancestors. And

00:34:32.180 yeah I think that this that that recognition that these things are actually blessings and

00:34:40.560 that you know we are in a time of deep ecological crisis and here nature is responding by providing 0.74

00:34:49.080 all these trans folks and like what are trans folks good at trans folks are good at shape 0.94

00:34:54.780 shifting trans folks are good at holding complexity trans folks are good at walking the edges like

00:34:59.700 these are like built-in skill sets that you just like when you get your trans card they just like

00:35:03.660 hand these out right they're like okay get your gift bag here with all these skills right and

00:35:07.800 they're needed skills they're like really important skills for this time but because

00:35:12.540 transphobia is so prevalent like that that gets internalized and people aren't like oh look at

00:35:17.260 this bag of superpowers i just got you know it's they're not really aware of it they're they don't

00:35:21.500 know the power i mean i i think we know we feel it but um it's so pathologized and it's so hated

00:35:27.280 so my sense of it is

00:35:29.440 it's just like a

00:35:30.220 it's an ecological corrective

00:35:31.680 for humanity

00:35:32.780 and that over the course of evolution

00:35:34.880 over the course of time

00:35:35.980 when we look back

00:35:36.860 this moment will be a great pivot

00:35:38.320 will be a great turning

00:35:39.400 like Joanna Macy says

00:35:40.400 and trans folks play a huge role in that 0.99

00:35:57.280 Down to the garden 1.00

00:36:10.980 And you won't turn back

00:36:15.800 You are just a traveling

00:36:20.280 And you do not know you're home

00:36:27.280 Sweetness in the grass

00:36:31.400 When it rains to hold you

00:36:35.560 And your time seems far now

00:36:40.240 And you want to make your own end

00:36:45.420 Was there standing me in the grave

00:36:50.780 Don't you want to know then

00:36:54.500 How far you might go now

00:37:04.100 If you had that whispering in fear

00:37:10.480 But in the sunset dusk now

00:37:15.200 Medicine's you're lost now

00:37:19.160 And you can't bear

00:37:23.280 Your way back

00:37:27.560 No steps are just forgotten

00:37:53.280 In a dream you held the key, a window to a straw heap.

00:38:02.520 There's good shade of dirties, and no one to owe it to.

00:38:09.500 Wonder if I'm from home 0.99

00:38:18.940 Only traveler on the dark

00:38:26.080 Bedtime has just forgotten

00:38:39.500 Does it turn you away?

00:39:09.500 I'm really thinking into this ancestral healing and especially for white settlers who 0.59

00:39:24.660 carry both privilege of oppression and privilege in our bloodlines. I'll speak about myself within 0.55

00:39:31.960 that. And I was really moved by your conversation on Bespoke and Bones with Tata Hazumi, in which

00:39:40.020 they raised the point that many white people turn towards practices like yoga that resource their

00:39:46.620 healing power from POC spiritual traditions. So I'm really sitting with this big question of

00:39:52.280 how do we ensure that white folks are not replicating the same colonial patterns of 0.94

00:39:58.240 extraction within our quest for self-care and wellness, and maybe even adding on to white folks,

00:40:04.420 but also white cisgendered folks as well. In particular about ancestral healing or

00:40:10.920 just in general? Well, yeah, I would say in ancestral healing, there's this question of

00:40:16.720 whether it's white settlers or kind of this dominant mentality. What I find is it seems 0.88

00:40:23.340 like probably everybody needs healing on multiple levels, but how we go about that healing and not

00:40:30.020 bring in that dominant narrative that takes and consumes something from outside of us to make it

00:40:36.340 our own in order for us to heal. And so I definitely see it with white settlers taking 0.79

00:40:41.480 POC and indigenous ways of healing and trying to consciously or unconsciously make it their own 0.67

00:40:50.300 without proper acknowledgements. But I'd also imagine that that's probably happening in queer

00:40:55.980 spaces as well, taking from the work of queer and trans folks and coming in and reaching for

00:41:03.980 something that feels genuine, feels like it's a healing modality and not really giving proper

00:41:11.000 acknowledgement, but also taking the healing and just perpetuating the type of oppressions that

00:41:18.820 are. So I know that seems like a really, maybe too spread out of a question, but yeah, I just

00:41:24.680 want to speak to that because when we're talking about ancestral healing and healing of these

00:41:28.760 wounds, I want to make sure that we're all being aware of how to do it in a good way and not

00:41:33.560 stripping people who are already oppressed of their connections and modalities. Yeah, that's

00:41:39.060 great. I appreciate it. You know, what comes to mind is, so I went on an ancestral pilgrimage

00:41:45.320 in 2016 and to Scotland where my people are from. And, um, I did a lot of research ahead of time,

00:41:53.480 you know, the places that I wanted to go, I had conversations like the people who had been on

00:41:56.640 pilgrimages, you know, just did a lot of probably six or eight months of prep. And, um, in a

00:42:01.700 conversation that I had with one person, what they told me was, you know, Hey, like all of the

00:42:09.160 things, all the things that you want to know about your people, all the things that you want to know

00:42:13.780 about the traditions and the rituals and the prayers and the songs and the

00:42:17.980 spiritual practices, like they actually encoded it all in the land.

00:42:21.560 It's actually all there because of when the Christians came,

00:42:26.360 the Druids were like, they saw what was happening. 0.98

00:42:29.680 They saw the erasure that was happening of traditional culture there.

00:42:33.660 And so they used magical practices and spiritual technologies to encode it

00:42:39.580 into the land into the place names into the um the standing stones and the stone circles

00:42:45.080 and so if you go there you can figure out how to unlock some of that and whatever i was like

00:42:52.320 oh my god that's the hippiest thing i've ever heard you know like okay um but it actually was

00:42:59.420 my experience and of of going and like again this is it comes from the embodiment though

00:43:06.220 right from the the willingness to attune was able to go and to listen with my body and like I could

00:43:16.560 feel when I was making a misstep or I could feel when I was doing something incorrectly and so like

00:43:21.660 it just was like kind of like a exploration of like okay how like for example how do you approach

00:43:27.560 a sacred site right what's the right way oh it's not the same for every sacred site it's different

00:43:32.720 for each one each one has its own specific keys and so you have to figure those out how do you

00:43:38.320 figure those out well you have to get quiet and you have to listen then when you think you know

00:43:43.520 like oh i should i should sing this song to this beautiful stone and see if that works you know and

00:43:48.700 then just like track like did that work am i allowed to come in yet like you know what's the

00:43:54.020 way of your people pavani and so and really having but like that that entrainment and that attunement

00:43:58.660 is available, we just have to listen to it. Right. And so it's not speaking directly to your

00:44:04.480 question, but you know, we don't need to, we don't need to use other people's technologies

00:44:10.320 if they're not freely given, like some people freely give their technologies and that's a

00:44:16.540 beautiful thing to receive, but if it's not freely given, then we don't need to do that because

00:44:22.100 white folks have their own beautiful technologies that, you know, and not everybody can

00:44:27.840 take a bunch of time off work and go on a pilgrimage and you know I think that that was

00:44:32.580 that made it exquisitely accessible to do it like that for me because I've been able to do it here

00:44:38.920 too of just like listening and waiting and that patient waiting and being willing to be with the

00:44:44.480 not knowing of like what's the right way to make an offering to this tree okay well I don't know

00:44:51.780 I'm not just gonna like do it I'm gonna like wait until I think I know and then I'm gonna

00:44:57.320 do it i'm gonna check in with my body i'm gonna kind of like listen to the tree like oh that that

00:45:02.440 went well that's the way to make the offering to that tree today great you know but it's that it's

00:45:06.600 that willing to be with the not knowing to not have to know which i think is part of white fragility

00:45:10.960 is this having to know peace yeah well i think you answered that really wonderfully because i agree

00:45:19.000 how to not bring settler mentality into healing spaces or or ancestral healing is i think

00:45:26.560 yeah being able to sit with the unknown being able to sit with this discomfort and humbling

00:45:32.240 ourselves to take the time whether or not we go on a pilgrimage or not it could be our backyards

00:45:38.040 it could be the street that we walk on every day I mean I think that the land everywhere has this

00:45:44.460 magic and this knowing whether it's concreted or not but that type of patience and humility

00:45:50.700 I think really is the not maybe not the key but definitely on the key chain of how we of how we

00:45:58.640 begin that healing. The music you heard today was from Itasca. Their record Spring came out

00:46:20.240 on November 1st and they're a big supporter of the podcast so please support them by going to

00:46:26.640 wherever you get your music and download. I would like to take this moment and thank our team

00:46:44.380 Tune in next week for part two of my interview with Dr. Pavni Murray.

00:47:14.380 Thank you.

For The Wild - November 08, 2019

PAVINI MORAY on Alchemizing Trauma and Ancestral Healing ⌠PART 1⌡ ⧸144

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