ALUNA TEMPLE MAGAZINE EDITION No4 'BRIDGES' | Page 54

It took years for me to unwind the golden thread that had
wrapped itself around my heart. I was never exactly sure how it
would unfold or where it would lead…
I just knew this. I am not a Native American. I am European. Our European
shamanic roots were viciously and consistently attacked over many
generations and the connection we had always enjoyed with the nature we are
was left hanging by a thread. But like the song we used to sing on the many
nonviolent political demonstrations we loved so much says:

You can’t kill the spirit
She is like a mountain
Old and strong
She goes on
And on and on
When our new body of work landed so forcefully over a period of years that
was heralded by two dreams, one that brought me the mandala we work with,
and the other that brought the name Movement Medicine to Susannah, that
golden thread had found some form.
Having been a pipe carrier in the Native American tradition, I was always
certain I was being leant a means through which to remember what we as a
culture had forgotten.

‘Through that pipe, I remembered
how to pray, directly from the
embodied
heart,
in
intimate
conversation with the spirits, the
elementals and the Yin and the Yang
of the Great Mystery.’
SACRED PIPE © www.thepipemaker.com

And once I had remembered, with deep gratitude, I returned the
pipe to a full blood Native American Medicine Woman who had
dreamed of it.
I knew, and I really cannot remember from where I knew this, that one of my
creative challenges was to build a bridge across the cultural graveyard where
our European traditions used to thrive and bring together the ancient wisdom
of the land and the ancestors with the contemporary cutting edge wisdom that
is mapping our intelligence and how it works.