This is my idea of Bliss! Being held in hugs and smiles and laughter by a group of diverse people who connect through a shared desire to know themselves more deeply; through their bodies, through their emotions, through their spirit, surrounded by beautiful nature, bathed in sunlight...playfully wondering what this crazy world is about and how we can help raise the collective vibration together.
This is my dream- to create a Centre for the Healing Arts and Conscious Dying, where people can come to retreat, to heal, to take time in nature, in their bodies and voices, in ritual and ceremony- be it for an afternoon or a month, or for the last days of their lives...a sanctuary, a community of like-minded yet diverse souls who are committed to co-creating the better world our hearts know is possible...
Re-wind...I had the dream for "Rainbow Moon" (the centre for the healing arts and conscious dying) about 24 years ago when I was 16 at college in India studying at a United World College surrounded by beautiful, idealistic young souls from around the world (and definitely smoking too much weed!) Back then the dream was still a community living project- but centred more around creating community theatre touring shows, and creating a space for neuro-diverse people to come and explore themselves in nature- I knew from a young age that the Arts and Nature had the power to transform people, and I abandoned my dreams of becoming a doctor (putting a plaster on the world) to pursue creating transformative theatre experiences that empowered people to connect with themselves and each other, to understand who they were and to access their unique powers (truly healing the world).
When you ask what makes humans unique in the mammalian pantheon, I'd say our ability to create Art-
not as a commodity to be sold or reviewed for its artistic merit, but as a way to express ourselves deeply through our bodies and voices, as a way to process what and who we are and what we are feeling, and as a way to praise the natural world and create rituals of Joy and Wonder. (In her book "Braiding Sweetgrass" Robin Wall Kimmerer of the Potawatomi native American tribe talks about how it is known indiginous wisdom that it is the human responsibility to praise nature, and in so doing find respect and reciprocity- it is our vital role in the healthy symbiosis of the earth).
I would say that one of the things that makes us sick and at war is our neglect of being in the liminal space of the Artist- that we have been gifted this amazing instrument of a body- which takes a lifetime to master- and the notes we play are our emotions (e-motions: energy in motion) through our vocal and physical expressions- and therein lies our power and our magic and our capacity to connect, to know ourselves as Spirit and to transcend our base reality into the gold of enlightenment. So I believe the Healing Arts are KEY to our well-being, our mental health and our capacity for peace, freedom and evolution...
So flash forward from being a bright eyed and bushy tailed theatre maker- which took me to South Africa (to study theatre and performance at UCT), back to London (my birth place) for an MA in Applied Theatre at RCSSD, back to India to run multiple Embodied Arts projects and again back to London (to nurse my mother through her death- relevant for the centre for conscious dying!) where I set up my own theatre company BeautifulMess working in public spaces with both professional and community groups to create transformative interactive shows and projects to shift the collective consciousness...i employed ritual, ceremony, play, clowning, body & voice activation and community collaboration....
And then I burnt out!
I returned to Cape Town with my daughter, who was born there, to give her exposure to her African heritage and me a place to recuperate in nature and take stock of what to do- I didn't have a plan....i just knew that singlehandedly running a theatre company in London was not sustainable and my health both physical and mental was suffering.
I had always been interested in psychedelics- I was a child who had longed that the 90's were the 60's and wore flaired corduroys and flowers in my hair, listening to the Beatles and Bowie...
and so I found myself drinking Ayahuasca with Peruvian shaman in Cape Town and THEN receiving the message that "this is my path"- affirmed by the shaman when I asked for some clarity in my total astonishment! This felt like a homecoming- and a rebirth- and a "what the fuck do I do now?" moment. The answer to which is long and messy and a story for another time, because let's be honest, these "aha" moments are never really moments, but many combined moments of difficulty and risk and epiphanets and deep knowing and much doubt and scratching in the dark and glimmers of light....
But to cut a long story a little shorter over the next 5 years I followed this calling- I learned the mushrooms were my medexine to serve, I learned my voice was what would hold the space (with various acquired instruments), I learned I didn't have to have powers of prophecy or capacity to talk to the dead, but that I had to be dedicated to my path and stay true to my desire to open peoples hearts to their full power and potential and to continue to learn how to listen to the magic that is within us all...
I also realised that ALL of the work I had been doing over the previous 20 years in community facilitation and arts practice was all super ninja training for this space of healing and that just as before- even more so in the plant medexine space, the Healing Arts are vital to integrate the deep lessons of the medexine.
And so I began to adapt all of my training and experience in the Arts into different healing modalities to assist people to integrate their medexine experiences: I began to use the healing music from ceremony as a healing modality in it's own right,
I developed movement and voice practices to open hearts to joy and deep expression, I began to offer people the support to co-create their own rituals and ceremonies in their own lives,
I began to develop Emotion Yoga- a unique modality to encourage us all to access all the 'notes on the keyboard' of our divinely gifted instruments-
all part of finding ways to weave magic and wonder into the everyday, to live more consciously, to live in greater connection to self, others and Spirit, and to find a stronger feeling of community between others on the same path.
And so the dream to create a conscious community and to live at Rainbow Moon still exists (more about the centre for conscious dying in another post), and I trust that within the next ?? years the right place and the right constellations of people and conditions will appear to create this centre- a vortex of energy where we can come together to share in these practices as a daily way of life-
But for now I am still a butterfly travelling the world, bringing the wonder of these modalities to different communities, strengthening the mycelial network and exploring different energies, possibilities, connections and co-creations- my gypsy roots run deep- maybe the dream to belong in one place will never come to fruition- but the community is still growing and for now, this website is it's home, gathering like-minded souls and practitioners, reaching out across the multiverse like a beacon of light, calling others to join in co-creating the world of wonder our hearts know is possible.
I can't wait for the community to grow and root and detour and find her home!
Love Always Tārā Love
