Shining Threads of Connection

Written By Alexis Schoppe

Greetings Dear Ones,

In all my years of newsletters, It's rare for me to miss wishing everyone happy Summer Solstice. I hope you've been making the most of these long sunny expansive days of summer, and keeping your cool where there is a heat wave.

So far this summer I have had the joy of traveling to the Big Island of Hawaii and then to the emerald jewel of the Pacific Northwest for backpacking and a meditation and song retreat. Amidst travels and work upon return, newsletters fell by the wayside.

So, happy summer, as we move towards autumn.

Thank you so much for each of your kind and loving responses to my last newsletter. Some of you have been receiving my newsletter for 10 years or more, for some of you, it was your first introduction to my words here, wowza, the first step's a doozy!

I am grateful to say that many folks were bolstered and encouraged by the words I shared and the vulnerability it took to put those words out into the world.

With the recent passing of Sinead O'Connor and the renewed spotlight on abuse, depression, and suicide, it is clear that it continues to be of great import to speak our truths and share with one another to generate awareness and support.

In my last newsletter I shared about my history of abuse and the trauma that stemmed from it, and in this email, I want to offer you some of the many tools and gems I've found that have helped me learn and grow, and to re-member myself, that is, to put myself back together and to return to wholeness.

I love it when you reach out and let me know that my words have inspired or touched you in some way, so please feel free to respond to this email with questions or comments, or book a session with me for massage, Ayurvedic bodywork, private yoga, or Integrative Holistic Health Counseling and share with me in person!

It is through the shining threads of connection we weave that we are nourished and supported. We bolster our capacities by connecting with others, expanding our perspectives, and triangulating our own presence by relationship to 'Other'. In this dissipative structure of self, biodiversity, as always, brings resilience.

Here are some threads that have helped me in weaving beauty and presence into my life. May those that you choose to pick up for your own tapestry serve the highest good of the All One.

Blessings on your journey.

~Liz

 
 

Rudolph Steiner

The image above is of St Michael the Archangel, the ruling saint of our time according to Rudolph Steiner and Anthroposophy. The photo was taken recently in Kailua-Kona on the big island of Hawaii. The teachings of Rudolph Steiner, through Waldorf education, biodynamics, and anthroposophy have profoundly affected, educated, and supported me over the past nine years. Steiner was deeply influenced by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, whose poetry and writings on plants have brought much to my life as well.

There is a local study group in the anthroposophical tradition that is strongly connected to the work of the Waldorf School of Santa Barbara. The community at WSSB, both during my time as a parent of two students there, through my years of teaching in the garden as faculty, has been a huge part of my health, strength, and spiritual and practical evolution.

A film I love about Steiner is called The Challenge of Rudolph Steiner. It's quite long but I watched it over several days. 

Here is a wonderful verse Steiner wrote which hangs in the teacher's lounge at WSSB:

“We must eradicate from the soul
all fear and terror of what
comes towards man
out of the future.
We must acquire serenity
in all feelings and sensations
about the future.

We must look forward
with absolute equanimity
to everything that may come.
And we must think only that
whatever comes is given to us
by a world-directive
full of wisdom.

It is part of what we
must learn in this age,
namely, to live out of pure
trust, without any security
in existence.
Trust in the ever present
help of the spiritual world.

Truly, nothing else will do
if our courage is not to fail us.

And let us seek the awakening
from within ourselves,
every morning
and every evening."

~Rudolph Steiner

“Plants as Mothers and Goddesses, I address you;
May I gain light, erergy, sustenance, your soul, you, who are a conscious being."
~ Rg Veda

As many of you know, the plants have been a powerful healing and guiding force for me over the past nearly 16 years. Through my studies with Chumash healer Cecilia Garcia, through my Ayurvedic studies, through my extensive reading of Stephen Harrod Buhner's work, through the East West School of Planetary Herbology where I studied clinical herbalism at the intersection of TCM, Ayurveda, and western herbalism, and through countless hours with the plants themselves, growing, seed saving, harvesting, preparing, I have worked deeply into the wisdom of plants.

When I dropped into clinical depression during the pandemic, St John's Wort, with it's profusion of light, harvested at the peak of summer solstice, helped me to bring light into the darkness and to heal without pharmaceutical drugs.Every day the plants offer me their medicine as I work in the many gardens I tend, as I hike the foothills and gather their bodies to support myself, my clients, and my family. Each night they support me  as I vision with them in my dreams. I spent five years working at Santa Barbara Natives Nursery, some of the best times of my life, in service to the plants in the majesty of the Gaviota Coast with a handful of my favorite humans. I learned much from mentors in Wilderness Youth Project and Quail Springs Permaculture Farm, Wild Roots Forest Kindergarten, and the wild expanse of pachamama herself, from my home base in California to Peru, Costa Rica, Hawaii, India, and into the great beyond through the plants.

I recommend all books by Stephen Harrod Buhner on the plants, especially Plant Intelligence and the Imaginal Realm, Becoming Vegetalista, The Lost Language of the Plants. 

One of my all time favorite herb books is The Yoga of Herbs by Dr.'s David Frawley and Vasant Lad.

I have also profoundly benefited from the wisdom of the Amazonian people and the power of the botanical brew known as Ayahuasca, a combination of the vine Ayahuasca (Banisteriopsis caapi) and Chacruna (Psychotria viridis). The traditional ceremonial practice of Icaros (healing medicinal songs learned from the plants themselves), and a strong safely held community container have profoundly changed the course of my life for the better. I uncovered repressed childhood memories of abuse that had been haunting me since my late teens. Through my almost nine years with this holy sacrament, I have experienced soul retrievals, integrated parts of myself that had been left behind due to trauma, and a returned to a greater felt sense of safety and wholeness. Here are some books I would suggest if you are interested in learning more:

Singing

Singing has been a huge part of my joy, spiritual growth, and healing over the past 9+ years. Many of you who have come to me for massage have received the gift of some of the medicine songs I've learned through my singing communities. Here are a few resources on that note:

Laurence Cole
Lisa Littlebird
Britta Greenviolet

Here is an example of one of my favorite songs, originally written as a poem  by the late Vietnamese Buddhist monk, Thich Naht Hanh, my first Buddhist teacher in this life. This version is sung here by Lisa Littlebird: Call me by My True Names.

Learning and singing songs like this help to to remember myself and change my vibration when I'm in a space of forgetting my wholeness. They help me to stay connected to my teachers, my community members, and myself.

I often start my morning with asana, a song or two, sadhana/meditation, then a song or two to close. It is a great way to calibrate the energies of my day.

Laurence Cole is a community song leader based in Port Townsend Washington who is one of the grandfather's of the community song movement.

Lisa Littlebird leads the Wholehearted community choir and offers 'Flight Training' in an online program for community song leaders.

Britta Greenviolet has ben a community song leader with her husband Ben and also offers voice coaching and a beautiful podcast called the Sage and the Song. 

These are just a handful of the many jewels of music medicine that have been a lifeline to me in times of joy and sadness both.

Singing is an integral part of the Waldorf community as well, and I sing every day I'm on campus with every class and often with faculty and community as well. 

Singing is good medicine.

 
 

Nature/Prakriti

My connection to nature has been a lifeline since my early 20's when I began to explore the Olympic National Forest and hot springs in my home in the Pacific Northwest. Even before that, as a child growing up in a rural are where I played in creeks catching crawdads, built forts for hours in the woods without any adult knowing where I was, and spent a lot of time outdoors, nature was my solace. As an adult I have always loved hiking, backpacking, spending time at the beach, and of course, working in the many gardens I tend. Nature and her cycles teach me about myself and the world, about the lemniscate-like nature of things, about the power of seeds, about sacred geometry, about beauty, about love and devotion, about sacred reciprocity and so much more. I've often said the foothills of Santa Barbara are my ‘anti-depressant'.

Get outside. Look closely. Breathe deep. Listen.

Yoga

Part of my life almost every day for the past 30 years; Yoga.

My practice of yoga is part of a continuum of practices in meditation, mindfulness through movement and breath, bodywork that circulates energy, heals, and witnesses the depth of wisdom and trauma stored in the body.  

I love to be alive and present in my body, I love to be strong, upright, to squat, which is our ancient birthright as humans, to dance, and to carry tools to heal myself and others through the wisdom stream of yoga. I love to share the healing energies I cultivate, the prana, the Chi, through my teaching and through my Ayurvedic therapies, craniosacral therapy, and therapeutic bodywork.

You can always reach out to me for support with private yoga instruction here in Carpinteria or online on Zoom.

These are my main yoga teachers over the past 30 years:

One of my favorite local hubs for great community and yoga teachers is Yoga Soup here in Santa Barbara, owned by the incomparable Eddie Ellner.

Spiritual Practice/Sadhana

The Tantric Dance of Feminine Power and Sri Vidya Tantra wisdom streams through my beloved teacher of 17+ years, Nita Rubio support me in this lifetime and in all the realms. Jai Ma!

 
 

Laslty but not leastly, a list of just a handful of my favorite authors and thinkers and podcast hosts that help me keep my head and heart on straight:

green
is my heart
i am a student of stones
a lover of bones
a mother of birds
a keeper of seeds
green
is my heart

~liz 

Alexis Schoppe
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