🌕 In My Experience... ALL the Medicines
it's a full moon in aquarius 🌕
Image Description: Photo of blue letter board with white letters spelling out: YOUR NAKED FREEDOM/ IS YOUR SHIELD./ –RUMI
Listen to me read this essay:
Hi Friends
It’s such a self-inflicted odd task to chart the moon in order to write publicly and honestly about my life. Especially because old pains & patterns usually elicit self-protectiveness. And full moons bring on all the feels.
I started working with an Integrative Manual Therapist last month. The other day, she was doing gentle manipulation on and near my heart. It felt tender and I asked her what it was. She said my epicardium (the outer protective layer of the heart) was scarred and thick. I said, “That’s a metaphor.” 🙃 Then she intuitively directed me to work with a memory from when I was twelve years old which mysteriously revealed to me a source of that hardening.
I don't know how most medicines work. 💫
Thank you for being here. How are you feeling? Really – right now. When you check in with your body, what’s the first thing you notice?
I notice the expansion and compression of my torso. These weeks, I’ve welcomed a deep desire to breathe deeply and exhale fully, inviting my heart to stay open. Not “breath work” – although I appreciate that too. Just conscious, slow breaths in. And out. Pema Chodron’s saying (my lifelong koan) has been the rhythm: Feel the feelings. Drop the story. Or as Chani Nicholas says: The courage to feel. The wisdom to heal.
The compulsion to get lost in narrative loops is strong. The longing to get free is too. I practice bravely opening, lovingly releasing. Breath by breath. Feelings are freeing. Also, they pass. All of it is medicine.
Other medicines: Being touched by the light in my apartment. Leaning on my amazing, amazing friends. Lying down meditation. A Forest Hills Stadium show (wtf, why had I never been there?!?) with The Linda Lindas, Japanese Breakfast, and the Yeah,Yeah Yeahs. My mini trampoline. Letting myself cry. The new (final 😢) season of Atlanta. Brooklyn! Solo dance parties. Letting myself not cry. Morning swims at the local rec center. Beeswax candles. Weed.
This In My Experience… about plant and other medicines is below.
Hope you’re enjoying whatever it is you are noticing/practicing.
With love,
Sebene
Have you explored psychedelics in your journey? Particularly in the last couple of years given your health challenges. I really appreciate that you talk about mixing a whole lot of healing modalities and wisdom sources and wonder about plant medicine - what you've explored, what you've learned.
Dear ALL the Medicines,
Thank you for directing this towards my present experience. Until now, I’ve been more comfortable mentioning the psychedelic experiences of my youth. I haven’t spoken much about my later, adult use of different medicines. For years, I even hid this. I’m grateful for your question; it helps me continue the vital (for me) process of coming out of the woo closet.* [And, yes, I am still inviting awareness of the use of “woo-woo” when unconsciously used to dismiss the indigenous ways of knowing from which all wisdom – and many medicines – originate.]
Again, a strong caveat. Nothing I say here is intended as medical or therapeutic advice, nor can it replace direct work with experienced practitioners. Please seek the help of a trained specialist for any physical, emotional, or psychological issues.
In My Experience…there is no single, great medicine and I have benefited from various ones, appearing at different times in my life — when I can welcome every arrival with openness, discernment, & appreciation, I am able to engage those that resonate (for as long as it’s a vibe), let the rest be, and savor the joy & freedom each one invokes.
Mindfulness is sometimes referred to as “the” great medicine. Years ago, there was a strong(er) push-back on its commodification and particularly the extractive way it’s been separated from Buddhist heritage. That’s an important conversation. And, sometimes it seemed like some people did not want mindfulness to be taught at all, unless it was tied to specific forms and contexts. If you’ve been here a while, you know I am repeatedly “some people.” I’m sure, at some point, I espoused that kind of orthodoxy, if only for a season. Now, I believe we collectively need all the medicines, even if we individually don’t need every medicine.
I am using a very broad definition of medicine here – material and energetic (same thing, different frequencies), allopathic and holistic. Medicine is a word that resonates for me. I have dealt with illness much more than the average adult human and experimented with a vast number of healing modalities. I toyed with the idea of calling all of them “tools” but that felt too utilitarian, too pathology of productivity.** I often experience healing as a surrendering more than a doing. Another reason I like the connotation medicine gives: because we need a shit TON of healing in this world. And medicine is not a perfect term (what is?). It can imply that these these methods apply only in times of illness. For me, this can lead to never-ending healing loops where there's little space for feeling the health that's arrived before another medicine is engaged. Can “medicines” also be joyful, playful, pleasurable?
I’m learning not to judge the medicine choices of others, whether they're for healing sickness or inspiring joy.
As I mention in You Belong, when I was first diagnosed with breast cancer at the age of 34, I chose to pursue only “alternative” medicine. I was already a grown woman, but I felt pressure from my mother and some of her friends to eschew allopathic medicine. But immersing myself in the world/cult of natural remedies (including the power of thought) created a lot of internal conflict. The fact that I wasn’t getting better felt like personal failure. Turning to chemotherapy, radiation and surgery, like sleeping with the enemy. Again: I believe we collectively need ALL the medicines, even if we individually don’t need every medicine. I am incredibly thankful for all the doctors and nurses with whom I've worked over the years and especially my current team at Memorial Sloane Kettering and the interventions they’ve provided. I am grateful for all the energy healers that have so profoundly affected me. And, I am appreciative to the many plants (and potions) I've encountered.
In my teens and twenties, I engaged with what we simply called “drugs” purely as recreation. The deeper benefits they produced were secondary to me at the time, yet they sparked some of my earliest spiritual insights – including that the nature of reality is much more profound than what I witness with my ordinary senses. AND, I have said this before… I’m convinced I unwittingly healed some top layers of trauma through all those trips with mushrooms, LSD, mescaline, and ecstasy. Of course, now, all of these “drugs” and more are being studied scientifically and cleared for clinical psychological treatments.
I continued to explore psychedelics (and other plant/medicines) including mushrooms (micro and macro dosing), MDMA, ayahuasca, San Pedro, LSD, and the aforementioned weed… Not all at once. 😜 Many of my recent journeys have been facilitated by individuals with training to do so (e.g. both ayhausca ceremonies I’ve attended). Some have been my own self-guided processes (e.g. mushrooms). A few, “only” in the context of enjoying time with friends (e.g. mini doses of LSD). Smoking weed greatly eased the pain after hip replacement surgery. Every instance with these medicines involves a spiritual dimension because I intend it to be so. I recognize and honor the sacred power of these trips. I recognize and honor the sacred power of all medicines.
I like the word “trip.” Even more than journey. Trip connotes the accidental, unexpected, even trickster nature of what it means to commune with diverse medicines. Be it a different meditation technique or an ancient plant, I open up to possible shifts and transformations, to challenges and delights.
There's so much to say… about the appropriation of indigenous ceremonies, the incredible social secrecy around the use of plant medicines (I bet a LOT of people you know or know of are doing them even if you don't know they're doing them), the addictions/traumas many medicines (including meditation) can mask, the bypassing medicines can encourage, as well as other issues... I plan to share more about the variety of medicines I’ve experienced on my path.
I really appreciate this question as an opening, thank you again.
May we all discover medicines that invite freedom & joy.
Image description: Meme illustration depicting a scene of what appear to be prehistoric humans with one being in foreground with one hand holding a tube to their nose over a small plate in the other hand with a pile of a brown ground substance.Words over the image say: Shoutout to all the early humans that died trying to figure out which plants would get us high.
*Coming out of the woo closet comes from Jessa Reed whose story is fascinating and whose various podcasts are incrediblly wise and outrageously hilarious. I recommend starting with season one here.
I barely drink these days, but this recent article from the Sun Magazine about humanity's relationship to alcohol (maybe the most ubiquitious “plant medicine”) was fascinating.
There's now a Netflix docuseries of Michael Pollan's book How to Change Your Mind – the first of two books he wrote about plant and pyschedelic medicines.
**Pathology of productivity comes from the amazing Chela Davison. She has a new offering that I highly recommend (I participated in the last iteration of the Creative Cauldron and it was beautiful container to work on my collages, writing, dreams and heart).
My dear friend, Jocelyn Glei, also has a new offering. It's called Tender Discipline (the name alone!) and it's a six-week course to help you embody and advocate for a more tender, compassionate approach to work & life. I know it's going to be amazing!!
I'm going to my first book fair! 🥳 On November 20th, I will be on a panel at the Miami Book Fair. If you're in Miami, please come by and say hey. I'll have more info here and on my website soon.