Healing the feminine: moving from extractive to regenerative systems
Guest Post by Krisztina Samu, Acupuncturist
I recently had the good fortune of attending a womb healing ceremony in San Marcos La Laguna.
Throughout the ceremony we shared affirmations to heal out wombs, and the ceremony leader Pam Ng said something that stayed with me:
We are leaving an extractive patriarchal system and moving into a regenerative feminine system.
How could we not? Without it, we die. Nature simply cannot be extracted to the point of exhaustion without consequences.
In todays’s crowded, asphalt-covered cities, nature was sacrificed for commerce. Homeless encampments are growing in size and numbers, the human misery there increasing.
By contrast, I’ve lived in places where nature is still dominant. For 14 years I lived in Hawaii, where the abundant plant life breathes vitality into its inhabitants. Now, I’m at Lake Atitlan, also surrounded by nature; where birds, bugs and critters all share a space that I call my home. Here I rise with the sun and go to bed when it sets. I take things more slowly and move with more mindfulness.
Living out of sync with nature’s rhythm takes a toll on everyone.
In modern life, we can stay up and work or play as late as we want; we can be warm in cold places and cold in warm places. We can eat strawberries in December due to artificially controlled environments. We can use chemicals to make ourselves happy if the pace and rhythm of life does not allow us to forge supportive relationships.
In modern life, holistic family or group relationships are no longer needed; they’ve been dissected into their most useful parts and commercialized. Of course, this leads to addictions and maladaptive coping patterns with more and more need for mental health services. Just look around. This system is crumbling.
How do we heal from this?
We find or create a little habitat that supports human life. We help nature, not just take from her. We help make her whole by planting a tree or a small garden, as getting our hands in the earth gets us back to the basics.
We take the time to rest because we’ve realized that by pushing ourselves past our limits in this fiercely competitive society will only leave us with a big bill we have to pay later. The bill can be a spiritual debt, or a cost for the harm to our physical health.
I lived in suburban New Jersey for many years. There, housing developments were called bedroom communities. It was expected that the residents would simply sleep there, spending their days at their nearby corporate jobs. Many such towns had no sidewalks and were named by the animal habitat that was destroyed to build the housing. Fox Run had no foxes; Deer Pass had no deer; in Rabbit Hollow, of course, rabbits were absent.
Getting back to the rhythms of nature gets us back to health.
Appreciating the life-giving sun, working with life-giving earth, and using water the way it was intended helps us harmonize. Yet these simple acts are a challenge. Women especially often have the responsibilities of work, home and children to juggle with inadequate support, leaving many of them in a state of exhaustion.
To regenerate and renew takes rest and healing. Quiet contemplation that cannot be rushed. When was the last time you sat down and evaluated your life? Is the pace of it working for you? Have the demands of life been so prioritized that the promptings of your body have been suppressed? This always has consequences.
I’ve learned throughout my life that we often push now and pay later. If you are sensing that a debt to your own wellbeing has accrued, it is time to pay this by focusing on what has been neglected. As an acupuncturist who has served many groups on retreat, I can tell you that retreats are life-changing. Today, I feel that taking time for a yearly retreat would create happier, more focused and balanced humans worldwide.
We’d like to invite you to take this precious time for yourself at our upcoming Moon Medicine: Women’s Deep Healing Retreat at magical Lake Atitlan, in Guatemala from August 17 to 24.
Krisztina Samu is an acupuncturist who studied traditional Chinese medicine on the Big Island of Hawaii. She is also trained in a Japanese lineage called Seitai Shinpo, a deeply therapeutic style of acupuncture that activates and harmonizes the body’s major organ systems. She has a special area of interest in healing the typical deep traumas that often affect women. Krisztina is a lover of animals and enjoys helping dogs around Lake Atitlan. She has lived at Lake Atitlan for six years and regularly offers healing services at Villa Sumaya.
