UNEDITED TRANSCRIPT: The following transcript is provided in its raw, unedited form and may contain errors. We have not proofread this transcript, so it may include typographical errors or other mistakes due to inconsistencies in audio quality, background noise, or other factors. We cannot guarantee its precision or completeness. We encourage you to use this rough transcript as a supplement to your own notes and recollection of the session.
Tami Simon: Hello, friends. My name’s Tami Simon, and I’m the founder of Sounds True. And I want to welcome you to the Sounds True podcast, Insights at the Edge.
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In this episode of Insights at the Edge, my guest is Dr. Yuria Celidwen. Let me tell you a little bit about Dr. Yuria Celidwen, and then you have the exciting opportunity to hear this very impressive and extraordinary human introduce herself.
Dr. Celdiwen is a researcher, an activist scholar, a teacher, dreamer, and changemaker who has established a new field of study and inquiry bridging Indigenous wisdom and Western science. It’s called Indigenous contemplative sciences, and we’re going to be learning more about that. She’s a native of Indigenous Nahua and Maya descent from the highlands of Chiapas, Mexico. She’s currently conducting postdoctoral research at UC Berkeley and is a senior fellow at UC Berkeley’s Othering & Belonging Institute. With Sounds True, Dr. Yuria Celidwen has written a new book. We’re celebrating this book at Sounds True. It’s called Flourishing Kin: Indigenous Wisdom for Collective Well-Being. Dr. Celidwen has given me the opening with her Sounds True friends to call her Yuria. And with that, Yuria, welcome.
Dr. Yuria Celidwen: [SPEAKING IN MAYAN LANGUAGE] This little glimpse of sound is my Indigenous Maya Bats’i k’op language. The language Bats’i k’op translates to the “true word,” and all the Maya Bats’i k’op peoples are the true bearers. I always try to honor that language when I speak publicly because it is the language of my soul, the language of my heart that speaks directly to honor the lands where I am from. I was introducing myself, and I was honoring the lands of Coelhá Ocosingo Chiapas where I was born and raised, the Maya Tzetal lands of my ancestors of Earth and my ancestors of blood that I will speak about a little later in our conversation.
Thank you so much. It’s exciting to be here. And let me just add, dear Tami, that Flourishing Kin is my very first book, is my very first offering to the world. So it is even more special for me to be here honoring that gift, that very open, fragile, vulnerable, forceful, fierce offering to the world. So I’m happy. I’m happy and really excited to be here with you all.
TS: Yuria, for people who are meeting you for the first time, I promised them they would hear from you a bit. How would you describe this unique journey you’ve made, now being a research scientist in developing this new field of inquiry and study, Indigenous contemplative sciences?
YC: To be able to honor a response, I need to point at the multilayered, multifaceted, true multiplicity that makes all of us, and as I also try to express in the book, this multiplicity has had all kinds of moments of kinds of challenges or kinds of moments of joy and awe, but also grief and fear and anger as I have lived in my own body the consequences of colonial systems. And my journey to get to where I am today, where I’m speaking, as I also want to honor the lands of the [INAUDIBLE] peoples from where I’m speaking right now.
It is a line or a path of awareness. It’s a path of contemplation that, as I was mentioning, this multilayer, nonlinear, maybe path of a spiral in the sense that it may appear that it comes or returns to a familiar place, but always with something that has changed, always with something new or learned that helps us continue in a path of discovery, and discovery not only of the world but of our relationships with the world. So who I am and what has brought me here is a path of contemplation of those relationships, is a path of reverence of those relationships. It’s a path of acknowledging and honoring those relationships, because those are the ones that have allowed me to be in the presence of you who are right now listening and who are also, by your bringing attention, developing a relationship with me and with all the stories that I bring.
So it is quite difficult to pinpoint or to define in just a single word, but perhaps I would venture to say that it has been a path of contemplation precisely in Flourishing Kin. The very first chapter is precisely contemplating, and I use contemplation as the art of truth, the art of having the courage to take gently the veil of dilution that has conditioned our sense of being to try to have direct experiences with life, as is this path of contemplation is about realizing, recognizing, and reverencing the relationships that make us. These relationships, of course, are constantly being made, constantly offering themselves to us, and also we become participants of those relationships and of those flourishing ways that we create our world. So allow me to bring these three jewels of insights that are part of the book. That is that this path that has brought me to this place is the path of contemplation as truth, flourishing as connection, and reverence as action. And of course we can unpack that with longer explanation, but this I will allow the audience to just taste, stay, sit with those glimpses and allow themselves to be immersed into them.
TS: And I’d like to read something from Flourishing Kin that got my attention right towards the beginning of the book. Yuria, you write, “Flourishing is a gradual unfolding of aesthetic arrest, a succession of awe-induced palpitations of stillness of the mind and embodied effervescence.” So that was a moment for me, reading that sentence: “a gradual unfolding of aesthetic arrest.” I was like, I’ve never heard anybody say that. I think when people talk about we’re flourishing, it means we’re getting up early and doing some breathing exercises or something. So I would love to hear your commentary on that: “a gradual unfolding of aesthetic arrest.”
YC: Thank you so much for noting that passage, dear Tami, and as I was listening to the texture of the velvets, of the texture of your voice read the passage, I started feeling chills in my spine. That’s what I felt when I read that sentence. Yes. So it is precisely that that moment I try to use words as these glimpses of opportunity that allows us to point to an experience, but they are not the experience itself, but they may allow for opening a path to really feel in our bodies the connection to others. And so this moment of effervescence, this moment of arrest or aesthetic arrest that may happen when we truly connect with another relationship, not only human, of course. As I mentioned in my introduction as we connect with our ancestors of Earth and blood and with this—I mean with our ancestors of water, with our ancestors of skies, of fire, of elements, and also our ancestors of blood, all of our fauna and all of our human relatives that allow for this connection, this relationship to unveil, as I was saying, the stillness of the mind, to stop getting trapped with rumination of rationalizations, perhaps, or getting trapped in the realm of ideas, to really feel, to really embody that connection, to really embody that relationship and allow that to really open, to really open and flourish. And flourish, as somebody was asking in the chat, to flourish this sense of kin, this sense of relationship, this sense of relationship with everything that is at the moment that we are living it, so that we are not lost in possibilities, perhaps, but we are actually taking the courage of being in the right opportunity of connection.
I wanted to bring that possibility with that passage of really allowing ourselves to enter into the marvel, into the beauty, into the mystery of existence that completely disarms us of all these layers or armors of identity even, and then really open us to connect, to relate, to be right there right at the moment in the presence of life.
TS: One of the big points you make early on in Flourishing Kin, which is something that I really want us to talk about and I’m quite curious about it, is how in the world of Western contemplative science, the way I understand it, there’s been this emphasis on individual subjective experience. What’s happening inside the meditator’s mind? Oh, they’re aware of awareness. Can we understand what that means in terms of the neuroscience of that state, et cetera?
It’s all very individualistic and what you’re describing in Flourishing Kin, and it seems like this is a very important part of this new field that you’ve established—and I just want to underscore that it’s a really big deal to create a new field of research and study. I feel so proud of you for doing that. I just want to say I just feel a flush with a sense of wanting to celebrate that. But Indigenous contemplative sciences, there’s an emphasis on the shared experience of contemplative immersion, not just the inside of the singular meditator. So I wonder if you can talk about that distinction.
YC: Yeah, very important point and that would maybe require a little to talk of the beginnings of the field of contemplative studies, which was really innovative. It’s a field that may have been already developing for probably 30 years or so, and it was actually very groundbreaking in the beginnings because as we also learn a little in Flourishing Kin, as I define the differences between the general sciences in plural and Western science, in Western science, there used to be that the methodology for knowledge or for learning about the world histologies was to observe as objectively as possible a phenomenon, a unique phenomenon, and then create narratives in the form hypothesis that then could be tested and then repeated to create a sort of universal story about this phenomenon. And contemplative studies for the first time actually validated and brought into Western science the first-person experience, the critical first-person approach to research, which entails to observe our own experience and then make sense of it to go through a reflective sense-making process to understand how that creates ideas, identities, narratives, et cetera.
So the importance, I want to emphasize how important it was that this field came, because it allowed for them, for the first time, really value subjective experience. But then, of course, we all are in these realms of ideas and knowledge and knowledge as being from Indigenous perspectives. We are interested in advancing a little bit where we are at, right, advancing for the benefit of all of us that exist in the world. So when I started engaging with this field—I was born and raised in Maya village in Mexico, so I wasn’t familiar with ways of Western training, even though of course I very early got into colonial systems of education, first learning Spanish, then learning English and having attempts to assimilate myself or not myself, but pushed. I was pushed or attempted to push to assimilate me into these systems. But because my upbringing was so ingrained in my way of being in the world, I had a perspective that was really different.
It was a perspective that was first and foremost immersed in a very responsive system that is alive and that is made of relationships. So when I entered into academic studies, I noticed that where I felt more familiar was in contemplative studies, because it was the one single opening that was looking for ways, sophisticated systems that can transform our sense of identity and therefore also transform the society’s problems to benefit all. But then I started also noticing exactly what you’re pointing, that once these systems in contemplative studies was mostly based on Buddhist traditions, mostly Tibetan Buddhist traditions, some Theravada traditions, some Hindu traditions, and very slightly conversing with some Abrahamic traditions, mainly Christian contemplative prayer and things like that. But there was absolutely no representation of Indigenous traditions. Of course, me being from the Maya tradition and knowing the sophisticated ways that we understand calendars and that we do rituals and that we engage in our communication with these ancestors of Earth and blood, then I knew that something was profoundly missing and that there was a huge misunderstanding as well in how the West was translating these systems of wisdom into ways that were unfortunately taking the same personality, I guess, of the West, which is also—I explain it in Flourishing Kin—that it was based in exploitation or domination and unfortunately perhaps even patriarchal systems of coloniality.
So my push was to maybe even kindly demand the field to wake up to these misperceptions even of these practices, because what was at stake was not only these powerful systems, contemplative systems, but the whole planetary health system. As we see right now with the climate disaster, what we are really facing is the disastrous, massive extinction of biodiversity and cultural diversity in the world. So my push when aiming for creating this field of Indigenous contemplative sciences was precisely to push for the ways that not only validate subjective experience, but push for this second-person dialectical way of understanding and being in the world that is at the core, honoring relationships that is at the core, honoring these constant interaction that we have in the world, and that honors what Indigenous peoples of the world create in their place-based identities, very contextual, very honoring those lands that nourish their systems, their traditions, their understanding of the world, acutely diverse, 5,000 Indigenous peoples in the world, living in around 90 countries.
So impossible to define just with one single way, which is another way that Indigenous sciences really helps to break these ideas, these valuable ideas of one single narrative or one single truth, because these different voices explain of the huge possibilities, the huge multiplicities that exist in the world and that we would need to listen to, that multiplicity of solutions to address the challenges that we are now living today created mostly, unfortunately, because of the misunderstanding of hierarchical systems that put human beings beyond others and some human beings even above others, right? Other human beings. So my push in this field is to wake up to the reverential aspect of relationships of kin that then is at the core of the truth of contemplation, of seeing each other as relatives.
TS: I want to underscore something. You’re answering a question that I’ve had for more than two decades, and that question has been how come so many Westerners who discover the depths of meditation and have insights into how we’re all connected while we’re sitting on the cushion—tremendous insight, tremendous sense of there being an interconnected web of all of life. I feel it—then go back about, when they’re off the cushion, their separate lives, often with great separation from people who are suffering, and not necessarily being engaged in an activist sense. And then this is a lot of the criticism that is levied against the supposed “navel gazers.” And there’s actually some truth in it, because this great realization hasn’t translated. It’s been taken over by cultural norms of the Western hierarchical world. So what I’m curious about is you look at this and you look at the correction that your work can bring. Tell me more about that, to that meditator who says, “Yeah, I get it, but I still am going to go back to my life in its comfort and separation.”
YC: Yeah, and thank you so much for sharing with me about your inquiry into this question and then you having some glimpses, maybe, of insights with our dialogue right now. And I feel that one of the key parts that was lost with the contemplative inquiry that was focusing solely in the individual benefit, individual, individual well-being, as you know, the mindfulness movement that has pretty much now become mainstream, but to the point that it has lost that collective part that even the military uses mindful practice for aiming better, right, at hurting others. So how absurd is that? Right? When originally in traditions of origin these practices, most times, were about helping others, right? About serving others. And my push bringing Indigenous forms of contemplation was precisely to return to the reverential sacredness of life.
And please allow me to distinguish a little bit or give a little bit more of the nuance that when I speak about the reverential aspect, I do not speak of a really Jesus aspect of reverence, but rather in the spiritual aspect that honors spirit. And I define “spirit” as the animating principle of life—not necessarily based on an institutional way of organization, perhaps even, unfortunately, manipulating forms of practice—but rather one that returns to serving the well-being of all those relationships that we interact, that honors, that acknowledges from the very beginning that what we enjoy is not just given in such abundance without us having some responsibility, some role in returning, reciprocating, caring, ensuring that this well-being really is a collective one that is not only for the one individual that is sitting to look for better sleep or better concentration or better cardiovascular health or a digestive health or what have you, but rather an individual that realizes that there is no human flourishing without Mother Earth flourishing first.
That the idea of health, human health, that to this day the WHO continues to use definition of “health” of 1948 that says that health is just the absence of disease, and we’ve gone too far to really continue to use such limited definition and understand that health is involved and depends on the health and the environment, on the health of all those relationships that we interact with. So just being in the cushion, complacent or escaping the chaos of the world, is not really going to benefit that environment. It’s just going to keep perpetrating it, because the well-being, the complacency of privilege in which we imagine that we live in a paradise that will be untouched by what the world lives is nothing but diluted, because I see it in when I return home and I see the chaos that our peoples live every day, and I see it when I go on fieldwork and the challenges that the majority of communities are living in the world because of climate change, because of systems of oppression and domination.
So if we don’t realize that we must participate in the well-being of others and in the change that we’re looking to see in the world, the practice then is not really doing the challenge that it is contemplation as truth. We are not really seeing how important it is that we become responsible and that we become culturally humble to the presence of other systems, of understanding the world, of their systems of wisdom, and that we build bridges so that we can really wake to this flourishing as connection and act in that reverential way. That reverence service, the sense of sacredness, entails necessarily being in action, being participating in the change we need in the world.
TS: Yuria, when you describe contemplation as seeing or intuiting the truth, I think that’s very interesting. I think sometimes when people hear a word, even “contemplation,” what comes up is, “Oh, I’m going to think about something or other. I guess I’ll think about that. I’m going to contemplate on that. I’m going to think about it.” What’s that moment when you go, oh, this is true. I get it, I sense it, I feel it. All of life has to flourish for an individual to flourish. I get the connection. That’s the contemplation. What’s that moment like internally for you?
YC: I would challenge a little what you’re saying, Tami.
TS: Please, please. I want that, please.
YC: Because the moment when “the I” says, “I get it,” then that’s the moment when contemplation is broken. What we were talking earlier about these aesthetic arrests that allows for collective effervescence to rise, it’s precisely because there is that transcendence of identity, that that idea of who I socially am that has been conditioned culturally is actually post. Post, so that then the experience of relating is there in our bodies and the mind process of labeling, of defining, of sense-making even also, perhaps, is paused for a moment so that the connection is established. And then the moment of seeing that connection is the moment of truth, is the moment of really being, not knowing, not making sense of, but being the connection in Indigenous ways of knowing—and allow me, unfortunately, we don’t really have too much time to be very subtle in the definition of “Indigeneity,” the diversity of ways that Indigenous peoples of the world see and are in the world, but in many of these consensus ways that Indigenous traditions relate, we do see ourselves as part of a system.
So many of the practices that I share in Flourishing Kin and that are available to also be listened to in audio, these are practices of connection, of being right there at the moment or attempting to be right there at the moment and allowing for that aesthetic arrest to happen so that the moment of truth reveals itself by being in it. It is true that that moment of awareness then allows for sense-making posterior to the moment of direct experience, to become or to arise a sense of identity that is one of belonging. So that is not one that separates or that is complacent, but that actually notices what privilege there may be in our own positions and then tries to alleviate those moments of grief or suffering that others are feeling. So doesn’t get trapped with the sufferings of oneself that keep perpetuating this idea of individuality and isolation and separateness, and maybe, maybe no, it’s like, “Oh, I’m the only one that suffers,” but rather that arises for this shared humanity that then makes us aware that there are many more that are suffering and that we want to make a difference to change those conditions so that there is a possibility of well-being for the collective.
TS: That was so helpful, Yuria. I actually think I have a much deeper understanding now of what you’re pointing to, and I think it’s with the introduction of this word “transcendent” and that as you were talking, it was almost like, for me, this pop-pop open and utter openness that was all-embracing in that moment pointing to something like that.
Now, in Flourishing Kin you offer a set of principles, and with those principles you offer various practices that people can explore and experiment with. And we’re not going to have a chance to go into all of the principles, but I thought we could maybe dive deep into one of them. And then if we have time and you’re willing, you could introduce us to a short practice that might bring it more alive for us. And the practice and the principle that really got my attention of the seven the most—maybe because I’d just never heard it before, first time it was ever introduced to it—this notion of Senshine. Senshine, a way that we can reclaim the brightness of our senses. And I’d love to know how you came upon this, what this means to you, and then let’s explore it together.
YC: Thank you. Thank you so much, Tami. I rejoice at your very keen sensitivity and the careful attention that you gave at reading Flourishing Kin. I feel really humbled and honored that you read this offering with such care and that our conversation is really way much more nourished because of that caring attention.
And as I dive into Senshine, I will also weave a little bit the comment on transcendence that you just made, because another innovative thing, I guess, that I brought to this field was the Indigenous perspectives on transcendence. And generally in religious studies and then later contemplative studies, transcendence was usually understood as perhaps an experience of unity with a sense of the divine or a sense of—it has been named in so many different ways by different traditions—but a moment that takes us away from the mysteries, I guess, of being human. In many traditions, it’s also understood as some sort of liberation of the confusion of the mind. And within Indigenous perspectives, I claim or I invite people to think of transcendence as what is transcendent is this narrow view of identity that keeps us separated. So it’s not rather the liberation, but rather the weaving of ourselves into a larger system that connects us right away. By the mere fact that we exist, we are already in a system that weaves us within it. So we transcend the narrow idea of self, and we awaken, perhaps, or we enter or we realize or acknowledge our very deep familial bonds with everything that is, with everything, all phenomena around us.
That is what Flourishing Kin is at the very core, the realization that we are related with everything that is. So the moment that we open to that, we transcend the narrow-mindedness or the navel gazing-ness into, “Oh, I am part. I am already embraced. I belong.” And because of that mere fact, then I need to respond. I become aware of the impact that I have in the world, because the world is as well impacting me. So how do I ensure that I treat the world with the same kindness and care, reverence, service, sense of sacredness that one may feel at the moment of deep connection with life?
And then this brings us into this idea of Senshine. It’s one of the seeds, I guess, of awareness that I bring in Flourishing Kin. And I love playing with language. I’ve been doing that since I was a kid. So Senshine, I just put the two together. I thought of the brightness of the sun and then the marvel of the senses and put them together: sunshine is sun-shine, and sense is sense-shine. I mean, once I explain it, then it kind of loses a little bit of the magic, I guess.
But the way it is in the book also is that it expands what we understand as senses. In my community of origin, for the Maya Bats’i k’op peoples, as I was telling you that we are the truth bearers, we see the senses not only as the most commonly known in the West, or perhaps this is a generalized idea in the world that these five senses, but we also see the sense of imagination as a sense. We also see a sense of place also as another sense, a sense of belonging as it as well. So these different aspects of being in the world, dreaming, memory, imagination, they’re all also part of the senses.
So in this Senshine experience—and one of the parts that I mention in Flourishing Kin—is right before spring comes, the new season comes, the season of reemergence and awakening, the very early showers that come into the soil, as the water enters the soil, it starts mixing with the different minerals and oils that the soil has, and they started to be released in the air. This is known as petrichor. Actually, petrichor, the meaning of it is “the perfume of the rock.” And this metaphor I want to invite in the way that the senses also suddenly open to the most ancient wisdom of the lands that then get released into our breath, into the air, into the minute molecules that we see shining with the rays of sunshine as they fall into the ground. And that connect also the realms of spirit to the realms of matter in these different metaphorical ways. And that’s what Senshine was all about.
Then, again, returning in a spiral to the beginning of our conversation is to bring the aesthetic arrest that allows us to just fall in awe at the marvel of life and our keen sense of realization that we are right in the middle of it, that we actually contribute to that beauty and that we could contribute even more if we are caring and careful and kind and compassionate. Reverential service to the truth of our relationships.
TS: Now, Yuria, before we get to Senshine taste of a practice, I have to have a serious aha moment, which is: OK, I have five senses and maybe I have a sixth sense, like my intuition. I’ve heard that before, but I’ve never thought of the sense of place as one of the senses, let alone dreaming, imagination. And these are things that are so informing, so penetrating of my porous nature, places in me. I’m in place. I mean, it’s such a big deal, and yet I never thought of it as one of the senses. That’s tremendously illuminating. I just want to thank you for that.
YC: Thank you so much, Tami. I once again rejoice at your sensitivity, because I may bring all these invitations and maybe some could just say like, “Oh my goodness, that just—I don’t know what she’s saying,” but you are allowing yourself to really get involved with things.
TS: Well, this is so important to me. This is so important to me, and I’ll tell you why. I’m in a different place now than I used to be, and I’m living in a different part of the world, and what I’m noticing is that I’m different in this different place. And I’ve been trying to understand it, like, wow, I moved geographically and am a different expression of life now. And of course if you said to me, “Well, it’s one of your senses. You’re smelling something all day long that’s different.” You’d say, “Of course you’re smelling something. You didn’t smell that in the—” but I never thought of it as one of the senses. So I’m just saying I think it’s extraordinarily important and intuitive. I think people can get this very easily.
YC: Absolutely.
TS: And they get how our imagination is. Just like our sense of smell is informing us when we walk into a room, our imagination is giving us—these different images are flashing by and occurring to us and metaphors and fantasies. And oh, that’s a sense too. So it’s just an example, I think, of you bringing one of the Indigenous worldview into the conversation about our interior experience. That’s so illuminating. So I just want to thank you.
YC: Yeah, that relates to what I was mentioning earlier at the core of Indigeneity, right? That sense of place, that place-based identity. But let me also please bring this very important part of understanding Indigeneity to our Sounds True family, because I very often am asked, “Oh, but aren’t we all Indigenous from somewhere?” And that’s one of the most unfortunate misunderstandings around. And no, Indigeneity is actually in the international framework, is used as—at the United Nations, there was as the workings to create the declaration of the rights of Indigenous peoples that the UN brought forward in 2007.
Before that, in the ‘60s, ‘70s, and ‘80s, there was a large survey around the world to define what “Indigenous” meant. And the survey went around to Indigenous representatives, because one of the core rights of Indigenous peoples is self-determination, which is that we decide how we want to be named, how we are called, to be really seen as full nations as we relate politically with the systems of colonization and coloniality that continue to this day. And the definition, the working definition, because it’s not, then again, it’s not set. It’s a working definition because it allows to be transformed as things start changing in the political arena. But the working definition is “Indigenous peoples” are those that have direct relationships with their lands before invasion and colonial processes and that are determined to continue in preserving and transmitting their habits, systems, customs, jurisprudence, spiritual traditions to future generations.
And then another question that I’m frequently asked is, well, but invasion has also been part of the human world. And that is also painfully true, but the way the world is at this moment divided in wealth, social and environmental inequalities, racial inequalities, this comes from the colonial process that started in the 14th century with the age of exploration that unfortunately ended up with just a handful of powers in Europe, went around the world and divided the world. And then all these systems of genocide and extraction and exploitation that has created the world that we live today. And it was, it’s very important for me that our audience understands these important ways of relating to Indigeneity, because nowadays as more and more interest comes with Indigenous traditions, there is also unfortunate ways of extraction and exploitation that continue to violate Indigenous rights to our tangible and intangible heritage. So thank you so much, dear Tami, for allowing me to bring that important forward.
TS: Thank you for doing so. I think it’s important when we use the word like “Indigenous” and “Indigeneity” that we know what we’re talking about, so I appreciate that.
Now, Yuria, I want to make sure we don’t lose this thread of brightening our senses, because I think this increases our aliveness. It increases our sensitivity and our ability to feel and intuit the kinship we have, that we are. So I wonder if you could give us just a taste of how to do that.
YC: Yes. And just also the importance, just to wave the reason why I brought in Indigeneity, is that that direct sense of identity with place, as we start allowing ourselves to enter into the aesthetic arrest and to see the truth of our presence in the world, we also need to face and reckon with the horrors that have been brought by the systems of power. So Senshine is not only about just pursuing bliss and pursuing joy without really recognizing that some have more possibilities for that than others. And in order to really establish the possibility of flourishing for the collective well-being, we need to also look at these shadows in the eye so that these senses really shine, because we have been able to purify those horrors and allow us to work with them in a way that brings well-being to all others. And with that, then I move into this: What does it really, how could we start engaging with these practices in a way that open for these possibilities of aesthetic arrest?
And let me also explain a little that Flourishing Kin offers or opens these seeds of awareness, and they are intended to be practiced a certain in this certain order of the journey in the book, so that there is a more gentle understanding of our process of opening or the process of connection or relationality.
But as we are bringing our audience, our Sounds True family, to taste a little maybe, to invite their curiosity for what they may find in Flourishing Kin, I would like to then bring a little bit of the taste of these practices and also to remind the audience that the practices are not only in Flourishing Kin, but as a gesture of coming closer we also decided to make them available in audio. And they can find the practices in my website as they can listen to them and in my voice as I guide the practices.
So if it’s OK, we can engage with a little bit of a practice at this moment. The idea of these practices is not just to find the perfect place all the time, but rather to be able to access these possibilities anywhere, anywhere, at any moment.
Ideally, your daily routine in these practices would be able to access them at any time. And let your body, of course, as we prepare, rest in a way that helps you stay relaxed, but not too much that you may lose awareness, but rather to stay attentive. And of course, needless to say, that please treat yourself with kindness. And for now, observe what feels comfortable and stay within the boundaries that your body and your senses allow for all the practices that you encounter in Flourishing Kin.
This is really general practice that you take a gradual path. As you move from imagination to experience, we are looking to form this collective sense of contemplation, that we realize or that we open to our community in all phenomena in us, around us, to whom, to which we all belong. And we want to establish, first, the container of the web of relationships that Mother Earth open to us and invite these relationships into the body. And these opening glimpses, these pathways to the body, are precisely our senses. We start with the relational aspect that embraces all that is as our kin, as our family, as being part of this large responsive system of beings. All these relationships that move gradually, observing our experience. We are aiming to approach this very moment as the very source of experience, as if all times I just here, just here right now, connecting with us in this very present precious moment of openness. This animating principle of life, spirit, is manifesting through experience. Allow spirit to reveal the lands, our ancestors, our kin. And now open. How readily the breath aligns to the crisp clarity of the senses. Piercing senses make the breath more pause. The breath responds, becoming natural, as if riding the waves of coming and going. Expanding and contracting. All the flow of life, the vastness of space, of plains, and the regions that envelops the senses. Stretch with the breath, making it flexible, finding its ground, its presence, its place. Very gently allow that breath to return to place and body and ground. Thank you for meeting us here, for relating.
TS: Dr. Yuria Celidwen has brought us right into the heart moment of Flourishing Kin—her new book with Sounds True—Indigenous Wisdom for Collective Well-Being. I so appreciate the nuance of having this kind of conversation with you and your willingness to put our words under a microscope so we can really find that place where we are together. Flourishing Kin. What a great, great joy. Sounds True: waking up the world. Thanks for being with us.
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