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Cave of  Bones

Musings on bone, stone, song and soul...

Feeling “Un-settled" Dropping into the hard work of Decolonizing.

3/9/2018

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So there is this saying, ”When you know better you do better….”

This post is about me working hard to do better, however before I dive into a bit of vulnerable sharing I want to say right up front, my process was specifically about looking at myself and no one else.

So it is my hope that anyone reading this, and perhaps seeing a bit of themselves in it, will understand that I am in no way judging, it is not for me to say what is best for anyone else only that this was my process of walking in integrity with my personal value system.

However, it IS my hope that my process may serve to inspire, and motivate others to make changes should they see fit in their lives and work.

Understanding roots:
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My ancestors came to Canada via Romania, Ireland, Wales and Scotland, and although they all came long after the worst of the colonization happened,  they enjoyed the benefits of that colonization and the displacement of Indigenous peoples from their land.

I also imagine that these ancestors having left their own sacred lands were most likely pretty colonized themselves, because as history has shown us that those who came here to North America learned what they did by having it done to them. And we all know that -Hurt people-hurt people.

I am a fourth generation Canadian who has fond memories of my only living great grandfather at the time of my birth, my grampy Ctzuck who came to Canada from Romania around 1920.

I am also a white woman who grew up in a rural small town in Ontario whose small high school at the time was often half empty at hunting season because most kids went out into the bush with their fathers.  My first spiritual teacher was in indigenous woman who took my troubled soul in and taught me ways to recover and build my health back up.

You see as white woman I was lost from the tender age of 15 , due to being exiled by my family because of a disfellowshipping from the JW religion, and I tumbled down a rocky road of self destruction from that point on.
It was this woman who gave me  healing in the form of helping me to understand that although I had lost a religion I thought supported me, and my spiritual footing, I would never lose my connection to the earth, and this is probably what saved me from even worse self harm all those years ago.

I am eternally grateful that even then I understood that those teachings were not mine, and certainly not somethingI could share, other then to hold inside of me the memory of pine tip baths and the soft leather medicine bags she lovingly made for me filled wit things to help me ground and deal better with the crippling anxiety that was coursing through my body and nervous system at the time.

However fast forward to 30 years later as I begin to self reflect on how informed my spiritual work has been and how I might have potentially crossed the lines without even realising it.

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Dropping into decolonization and indigenization is a difficult path of brutal self reflection, deep listening, solitude, and making connections between long held rationalizations that can often make up a spiritual life that inadvertently hurts others.
Cultural appropriation is also not very hard to find one’s self participating in, especially when the spiritual culture these days has justifications for pretty much everything, and “white washing” is rampant! Selling anything from a workshop to smudge sticks to dream catchers falls under the term appropriation.

So while my own ancient ancestors most likely wore feathers in their hair, and used herbs to cleanse and purify the air, they probably did not use an abalone shell nor did they sell these sacred plant medicines.
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Because I live in Canada,{a first world country}, as a white woman of privilege, and leader in my community it is important that I use my privilege to model how things can be and to support the women that I work with to find their way back to their own ancestral lineages.

As some of you reading this may know most, if not all of my work is deeply informed by what I have referred to as being “shamanic” and how my apprenticeship into a Northern Celtic tradition has brought me into deeper understanding of myself as an animist, human, healer, and one day, an ancestor myself.
I have long been deeply uncomfortable about using the word “shamanic”, but like many others have referred to it for context in the spirit work that I do.

However for me personally, I have come to realise that I need to make a change and that is to be in right alignment with my work and place at this time in history I need to drop the use of the word “Shamanic” from my web-sites and use.

Here is what I have written about my healing work at my Ancestral Pathways site:

Spirit work comes in many forms and has many different names depending on the culture it is from.  My work is what the "modern spiritual overculture" refers to as shamanic healing.
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Working with the spirit realm is the world’s oldest spiritual and ancient healing practice known to humans. Although the word shaman originates from the Tungus-speaking peoples of Siberia, we have come to understand this word universally as describing person who is able to experience an altered state of consciousness, in order to interact with the spirit world to ask for healing or information on behalf of others.

However, sadly we must also understand that the words "shaman and shamanic" are culturally appropriated, and terribly mis-used almost everywhere.
The overuse of the word shaman has come to harm many indigenous people simply due to the fact that this word is being used to describe everything even remotely "spiritual or animist" leaving many, if not all, indigenous people resorting to using the word shaman describe themselves, which is often not accurate, and takes away from the rich use of their own language and culture.  

Because the word shaman does not accurately describe many Indigenous healing practises, using it to explain everything spiritual or animist diminishes cultures that are diverse and rich, for the use of a single word that is specifically Tungus.
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For those of us here in the west unless we have been to Siberia and trained with, or belong to the peoples there, none of us have the right to use the word shaman or shamanic.
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I believe that here in the west we can do better, and that when learning or understanding other cultures we need to stop labelling them all {shamans} and allow them to share with us their approach to healing work or spiritual ceremony including the words in their own language they use, not what we decide they are.

The word shamanic has now been removed from my facebook page, and both of my web-sites, however it will probably take me a bit longer to remove it from my vocabulary, as I have been practising spirit work for well over a decade at this point and need to re-train myself to use other words to describe my work.

Over the next year it is my hope to begin sharing and expanding my work in the ancestral realm, as I work to create bridges with women of colour and expand on how we can be more compassionate with ourselves as we pick up the dismantling of our colonization.

I want to have conversations about how we can heal the ancestral lines and to share about my own experience of doing just that over the past 3 years.

In my healing work I have always seen the ancestors first, they come before I can usually do anything else and as I have learned to navigate the spirit realm for healing, I have also sought out elders to help me be safe in this work and to understand it better.
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And now is the time! Now is the time to to put my actions where my mouth is, and trust that while some may not agree with me, or may choose to step away and out of my realm, others will find me for exactly this reason and perhaps together we can create a new story of how the world can be!  
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What is the next Step:​
Lets start talking about Ancestral Recovery, about looking into bloodlines and stories and all the things that make us up as humans. Recovering our ancestral understanding is vital to the conversation, especially if we are going to be showing up to this problem, and meeting the demands for the creation of a new story.

Lets stop justifying our actions and simple make a change no matter how small, to step away from the ways we were taught.
That is to say, lets us break out of the patriarchal paradigm that says it has to be one way or another and begin to carve new ways of being!

If you live in Vancouver--come out to an event I am sponsoring on April 27th to learn more about Canadian Indigenous History-The Blanket Excercise.

We are all humans, and we all share this one earth, so the sooner we can stop dividing ourselves and start getting back to what is important, the sooner we can begin to repair some of the damage done to our earth mother.

I for one am excited about re-wilding myself even further, to visiting the lands of my ancestors, and deepening my connection to the land I live on here in Canada and learning new ways of being in right relationship to my ancestors.

I leave you with this quote by Carolyn Hillyer:

"What is the story of our forgotten people?
It is story of return. It is a story of hearthstones and home; of amber from oceans and copper from earth; of men who soar with buzzards and women who weave heron feathers in their hair.

It is also however, the story of ourselves; in a landscape where time spirals rather then runs ahead of us in rigid lines, we look to our forgotten people to remember something about our own lives.
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Remembering our own people, those who are connected to us by blood or clan, or land or any other bond that serves to entwine our hearts and souls, is part of rooting ourselves in our landscape and shaping the road along which we choose to travel. We learn from our ancestors in order to understand the ancestors we might become. "
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Footnotes:
Here are a few links to resources for those interested in diving into this more:

https://lemonhound.com/2017/11/03/lee-maracle-on-appropriation​
Awakening The Horse- Decolonization and ancestral recovery
White Awake-Awakening ourselves for the benefit of all

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If you live in Vancouver--come out to an event I am sponsoring on April 27th to learn more about Canadian Indigenous History-The Blanket Ceremony.
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Unwinding, Re-wilding and Walking between......

8/4/2017

4 Comments

 
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Somewhere around day five of our stay on a small island off the shore of south Vancouver I realized that the hold of the internet on me had somehow lessened and that I had not opened up my computer in days, and my phone was serving only as my camera..

My entertainment had officially become the local otters, herons, bald eagles, a small weasel that routinely raided the otters fish stash, a stack of books, and endless cups of chai and rounds of family cards and discussions on about every subject possible, learning new things about our teenage children and generally drifting into afternoon naps, dreamtime memories.

One of the side effects of these times for me, is a deepening of my connection to my own spirit guides and inner work, in a way no amount of disciplined spiritual practice can provide. There is something about retreating mind, body and soul that allows for other things to flow through from the spirit world.

As a spirit worker, I am constantly straddling both the spirit world and the mundane, being pulled into one or the other, and truthfully it is my family and the fact that I live in a busy city that more of then then not brings me back from some of the places I navigate on behalf of my clients.
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​Out here though my senses are filled with a riot of beauty and stillness that no city can recreate, no matter now peaceful one tries to make it.
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​It reminds me of a few different passages in the book Unlearn, Rewild by Miles Olson where he says:
"Every new technology brings a new dependancy, making us trapped.... and 'the internet gives people a toxic imitation of real-life connection.
He also says that "everything on this Earth is inherently wild. If it lives and dies it is a part of the wildness that is life. The keyboard I type these words on comes from different parts of this wild earth, tortured and mangled together into an image of this keyboard."
And this brings us to domestication...
"Domestication is the root of the giant chasm between humans and the non-human world, it is the engine that propels us towards killing the planet. Yet, some-how, it has completely snuck under the radar of the ongoing discussion on "Going Green", probably because it is a much more ancient and deeply rooted problem then burning fossil fuels."                               

And while I imagine that that most of us won't be leaving our communication devices at home anytime soon, nor stop driving our cars, and other forms of our own self imposed domestications, we can take refuge from time to time from our own self imposed domestic life and enter into what I like to call  Wild Unstructured Time,  for within this, we just may find that suddenly there is more room for the stories to flow...
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You see in ancient times people did not have to "plan" for deep rest and unstructured time away from daily living. Once the chores were done, the day was done, and in the wintertime, stories flowed like water as elders and children sat around the fire to stay warm and entertained each other with stories from the warmer months of hunting, and other adventures.
In modern times we have leagues of ways to entertain ourselves, Netflix, Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, heck the internet as a whole could keep one person occupied for an entire lifetime without the risk of boredom, or would it?
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​As humans we seek deeper connections with each other, and for myself my connection with my children, the spirit world, and my ancestors are all fundamental to my reason for being here on this planet at this time.

However, if I cannot hear them for all of the distractions and noise around me, then I put myself at risk for illness to take hold as my connection breaks down and my soul wonders what it is here for if I am not going to fulfill my end of the bargain.

We need to enter into a conversation not only with each other, as humans, but also with the land we live on. We need to open ourselves up to hear what is is saying to us, or rather screaming to us about what is going on right now and it is not pretty.

Perhaps this is why we tend to stay away from wild unstructured time, true time away with no technology.

I myself have not yet mastered this idea, as I periodically check in on e-mails while away on vacation with my family, even though I have my "Out of office" reply on. So I am not claiming to have any answers here, only thoughts and ideas on how I can do better next time.

​​The one thing I took away from my time away this summer was just how easily dreams, ideas and stories came to me after a few days away from media, and just how important it is to my soul that I do this more often.    Yes, Wild places are indeed medicine for the soul...
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Plans are now in the making for more time spent out in nature and more unstructured time for the spirits to talk to me, for my ancestors, dreams and soul to guide me in what needs to come next... but is it enough?

As I reflect now on how much longer it took me to reconnect this year, I also realized that during this past long winter I had unconsciously tried to convince myself  that since I was too busy to get out as much as I used to that media could be a good source for inspiration. I now laugh now at the absurdity of that hypothesis.
There is NO substitute for a hike in the mountains, a walk along the ocean, or a meander deep into the forest...none!

In our animist tradition we talk about the walker between, the one who walked with two feet in the ocean and two feet on the land {yes he was a wolf} and how hard it is to be a person who straddles both of the these worlds all of the time. As a Ceann-Iul, or walker between/shamanic spirit healer I often feel this divide deeply at times, and it is a constant discipline to stay grounded in and between both worlds.
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For those of us living in the heart of big cities, working and relating to both the spirit world and the modern world it is a hard task to straddle both with any sort of balance, and perhaps that is not really the point of it all, because at the end of the day city living will never be one of balance.

All we can do is make good with the spirits of the land we live on, honour them and do right by them in good integrity.

Many times I have received comments from folks about some of the images I show on social media about my back yard, and often they assume that I live in the country surrounded by woods and streams, but this is not so. I live in the heart of a large and quickly growing city, and I do the best I can with my small piece of land...
Part of this allows me to keep my sanity and the other fills my soul-gardening and beekeeping.

Here are two images, one showing just my small bee yard, and another showing just how close I live to other homes, in fact I have four homes on all sides of our small home here in Vancouver, and all but one are rentals, so it gets loud easily!​

Perhaps this honest sharing will inspire someone else to make their small pice of city land more wild and beautiful too... Heck if you do please share it with me!
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I guess what all this musing has done is brings me back full circle to the quote by Mr Olsen, where he says "Everything on this Earth is inherently wild."
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Just like the earth does not take very long to re-wild herself in places where humans once were, it also does not take us long to tap into the wildness of our soul that is inherent, we just need to give ourselves more unstructured time and space for it....
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The Bee and the Ballast ......

5/25/2017

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In my healing and personal life I often reach out for what I call my ballast stones to ground me and bring me back to centre.
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The story however, of how these sacred stones came into my life and work is interesting, and I often find myself sharing their simple wisdom with students and friends.
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To do this though I must start at the beginning with a friend of the bees....
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Many years ago in the spring of 2013 my dear friend Laura Fergusson the founder of the Collage of the Melissae called me up to share her most recent adventure with her bees. 
In this story she shares that she was caught out in a lightning and thunder storm while trying to gather up a swarm of bees.
The swarm as successfully gathered and allowed to rest for a few days before being placed into their new hive. At this time she noticed many tiny pebbles at the bottom of the hive and intrigued she gently gathered them up using small tweezers and took them back home.

Suspecting these were precious and rare, she began to do some research and found that when bees are caught in bad weather, such as rain and wind, and most especially if they have just swarmed they will pick up tiny stones and use them as ballasts to weight them down so they can make it back to the hive!
This is not common information, and really only gleaned from old books on the subject written by old time beekeepers.

To my delight a small parcel arrived in the mail some time after and inside I found the tiniest pebble wrapped in a small pice of cloth and placed lovingly in a vial. The stone was last touched by a bee and carried back to the hive, as Laura only used tweezers to touch it, thus keeping the powerful bee medicine intact.
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I sat with this medicine for some time before deciding to journey with it, as the moment I had it in my hands it felt like a powerful shamanic tool.

What I needed to do was to ask what I was to use it for, and as always with bee medicine the answer was as simple as it was complicated....

Of course what I am sharing here is the short version of what took over a year from the time I first received the ballast stone gift in my hands, as these things sometimes require time to settle and speak...

The ballast is about balance, simple and yet hard to achieve especially when the winds and storms of life batter us around.
I was told simply to find my own ballast stone, and to hold it whenever I needed grounding and balancing.

What the heck are Ballast stones anyways, you may ask?

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Ballast stones were used as foundation in sailing ships, as the weight stabilized them and stopped them from tipping over as they began to unload the cargo into port.
River cobble stones of all different shapes and sizes were stored in the ship's hold near the keel to enhance stability, as the tall masts made them extremely top-heavy.
These Ballast stones were added or removed as the weight of cargo, supplies, changed and gave balance to the ship.
This process as I mentioned above took some time, and when I first saw the image of a ballast stone in journey it was tiny like the one sent me, so if course my first inclination was delight and surprise when I found the most perfectly round stone in my shoe one day and felt it was a perfect synchronicity and perhaps it was, but in a short amount of time I realized that it was simply too small for my big hands to give me balance of any kind, and so the search continued for something that would actually work for big human me.
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My first small, and second larger ballast stones.
To my delight the effect was instant and grounding as I sat with a bigger stone in my hands carrying it as I had see the bees in my journey do.

Over the years I have worked with my ballast stone and even added a second so that I have have one in each hand to hold, as I am not a bee I am human.
This story along with the wisdom has been shared around a few times with students and clients who all have said that the effects were instant and that they now too keep ballast stones on their altars for tough un-grounding times.

This year now a new medicine has come forward, an elixir that will combine the medicine of the stone with honey and other plant medicines that will serve to support the balancing and integration needed while journeying through changing the landscapes of our lives, both our spiritual lives as well as our external, busy changing lives....
​This process has only just begun, but I imagine that it will be ready to use by the fall!

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Following Ancestral Pathways....

2/14/2017

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I come from a long line of prostitutes.
This is a sentence I am often heard sharing within the circles of women I work with, and startling as it sounds, it is the truth, a part of my personal ancestral truth and pathway.
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My ancestors were also warriors and farmers, herbalists, midwives, beekeepers and so on, but to date some of the deepest most painful ancestral healing that I have been tasked with in this lifetime has been healing the wounds in my mother-line from prostitution, rape and the destruction of sex as a holy act.

Imagine it like a long line of matryoshka dolls running down through an ancestral line, each one fitting into the next, each ancestor affecting the one after, all the way down the line-like ripples on water....
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However, contrary to the kindly concept of matryoshka dolls, when a former ancestor does not cross over into the land of the dead taking their rightful place with the rest of our ancestors, they stay here trying to reconcile their lives through us--thus in a way encapsulating us much like a matryoshka doll.
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How does this happen you may ask?
Well in the most simple terms, this can happen when someone dies a sudden, tragic or otherwise unreconciled, and the ways this can happen are too numerous to list here.

In ancient times this was understood at a basic level, and there were people in each village or area to deal with these kinds of deaths, a sin eater or healer who was known to work with the spirit world, a shaman or curandera who would work to reconcile the person and support them in their crossing over  process should it become a problem.

Over time, as these people died out, the ways were lost, or in many cases they had to go into hiding for fear of their lives. The memory of how to work with the living and the dead became something to be feared, something that was avoided because of it being too painful or because those who were called to do the work were unsure of how to do it anymore.....

What happens when our ancestors do not cross over can become a problem for us the living, and in many cases we just simply assume it is a part of who we are, part of our familial make up.
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For some of us, our family stories may sound as bit like this: All the men leave us, or drink too much all the women in our line are infertile, or suffer menstrual problems, or have gallbladder issues, they yell too much/ or are verbally abusive, physically abusive, they can never keep a job etc....

Over time these patterns begin to show up in our own behaviour, they come  out in how we in how we treat ourselves and those we care for, and do not really reflect who we actually are.

The unresolved life of our ancestors and the pattern that their death caused it in the first place basically  gets passed down as baggage for us, the future generation to lug around, and this can affect our lives, deeply.

I​n some ways, what it feels like is similar to the matryoshka doll, we feel as though we are covered in something we can't explain, something we can't break free from, like we are inside an invisible force, stuck.

For all the therapy and work we do on ourselves we just can't break free of the pattern, and over time this can cause sickness and disharmony in our lives.

These patterns are a tricky bunch though because they can feel as normal as breathing, they often feel like such a part of us, we no longer can even sense them, we assume this IS who we are.
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This is because when it is an ancestral issue, we are literally born with it, so when it comes to sensing into the pattern we often can't see it, because we literally know no other way!

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In my shamanic practise, ancestral patterns​ often come to the forefront of what I see first when the spirits begin showing me where the pain first started in a client.

When I first started out in my shamanic work, I was surprised by this, but now I see it as a natural part of the flow between the living and the dead, and a part of what my personal gifts are in the shamanic realm.
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My understanding of how important it is to find reconciliation and clearing for the living and dead has become a big part of what I do.

Of course this could never have happened if I were not who I was, coming from a long line of farmers, beekeepers, herbalists and yes prostitutes and having worked hard to see that my own ancestral loved ones were cared for so that they could become helping ancestors, not ones that hold me or my children back.

My work as both a birth and death midwife has also shown me the beauty, and pain, that both life and death has to offer us, and it is because of having seen both doorways opening and closing that I feel so close to this work as a pat of my ancestral pathway.....

I played the powerless
in too many dark scenes,

​I was blessed with
a  birth and a death,

and I guess I just want some say in between...

​Ani Defranco
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This work is something that I will be expanding into more in the next year or so, as both a workshop offering for those who are experienced shamanic journeyer's, and as small writing pieces such as this post.
Locally for those who come to see me in my shamanic practise ancestral healing is something that often comes through.
​ If you are interested in what shamanic healing looks like THIS LINK is a good starting place.

May all your ancestors be helping ones.
In spirit and love
Nikiah
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On Travel and Privilege

7/12/2016

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I am standing in line to get our anti-Malaria prescriptions filled for our Africa trip, and when it is my turn I am served by a young black woman, and I hand over my prescription watching her as she eyes it quickly.
She looks at the prescription and then then back at me, clearly a white woman going to Africa—it says so on the paper.
Professionally she does little more then eye it for a moment, and then continue on with her job.
On my side of the counter though, I am filled with white guilt for the injustice of what others are suffering right now on this planet, and the privilege I have been given for being white, born in Canada and with the means to travel to Africa this summer with my family. 

I feel uneasy in the fact that I am travelling to a country I have never wanted to visit, and that my privilege allows me the discomfort of pushing outside of my comfort zone in a safe and supported way, while there are so many who have no choice in this world but to live outside of any comforts at all.

The planning of this entire trip has challenged me on many fronts, and not just the fact that I do not like to fly.
Airports are being bombed, aircrafts are being shot down for being in the wrong place at the wrong time, and people are being shot in general due to the underlying anger and racism happening in the world right now. 

Our children are mixed-race kids, and over the years we have often joked about my how husband who is Indian looks like a terrorist when his beard has grown out too much—which is really not funny at all, as it speaks to a frightening truth.

For years I have been the one to hold the passports as we go through border crossings and at the airport because of my whiteness and it always worked, we got through no questions asked every-time, and I imagine that this time will be no exception.
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Sohrab's brown hands on my pregnant belly 1998.
To me there are a thousand reasons for staying home this summer, but for my family there are a thousand and one reasons not to, and I suspect in my heart that they are right.

We can’t let terrorists stop us from living, we can’t let the one million to one chances of our plane crashing stop us from getting on it, and we can’t not let our children experience the world when they clearly want to.

For as long as I can remember fear and I have been battling it out, sometimes fear wins, and sometimes I do, it really depends on the day and how my nervous system is doing at the time.

In my spiritual work trust is everything, and for me this trip is one big leap of faith based on trust that whatever happens will be exactly what is meant to, but it also was a push by the spirit helpers to get me even more out of my head and deeper into my heart, and I suspect that all the reasons that Africa has not called me to visit are exactly all of the reasons why I am being called to go.

I already know this will be the first and last time I ever go there in this lifetime, but I am also deeply aware that I am visiting the cradle of humanity, and the birth place of my ancestors, no matter how long ago they left.

This trip is also a pilgrimage for my husband his family, and our children, as his father was born in Uganda and he still has many relatives living in Mombasa and Nairobi who are eager to see us once again. 

Not only that but there is a special part of the trip to go back to the home that his family lost when Idi Amin ordered the ethnic cleansing of all Indians to leave Africa with only 90 days warning. They left behind all they had worked for and owned, homes clothing, photos—everything!

In 1992 my husband Shorab’s family were told that they would be given their home back and that a well known charity who had since took it over, was willing to buy it from them. Our children will get to see that home!

I could go on and one about all of the reasons to go and not to go, in fact I have been doing just that for the past year as this trip was being planned, and at one point had even decided firmly that I would not go, only to change my mind once I realized that our son would be turning 18 on the trip and my heart could not bear seeing him enjoy such a big birthday in Africa surrounded by family.

As so it has come to be that in less then a week I board an airplane that will begin our trip as we fly first to London and then another aircraft that will take us to Nairobi and then yet a third that will take us to Zanzibar for the first of many leg’s of the trip.

My heart is nervous, my body is nervous and reacting, and my mind is requiring much discipline right now to keep still and calm and trusting.

It is my greatest hope that I discover deeper reasons for why this trip is happening right now, if not for me, then for our children who will be going in the trip of a lifetime at ages that are perfect for taking it all in…..

My plan is to blog more on this, but first I have to get there--so wish me luck!
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Wild Roses for Healing a Broken Heart....

5/25/2016

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It has been two weeks since I arrived back home from the shamanic conference/gathering where we worked with the theme of breaking our hearts open and remembering that love is not something we "do" but rather it is who we are.
And so it came to be that my heart is soft from a week of gathering with community, but also with the news that swirls around us regardless of how much we "retreat", we can't avoid friends passing on, tears for those who lost their homes in the most recent fires here in Canada, the heartbreaking stories of loss, and the inner knowing that the road ahead is long and much tender heart healing will be needed.
During this time I had an inspiring conversation with TerraSoul and we were singing the praises of using and working with some of our favourite plant medicines Hawthorn and Rose as a tincture for the heart and soul, so it was not surprising that later that day she shared an inspiring photo of her city foraged findings of hawthorn flowers and wild roses, and I myself stepped out and into my garden to realize just how grand my own wild rose bush had grown during the incredibly lush spring we have been having.
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Rose medicine and I have been developing a gentle and healing relationship with each other for a few years now, and often I mix Hawthorn into the medicine I am working with for an even deeper heart healing tincture.

One of the beautiful lessons that was given to me from my years of working with the honey bee in my shamanic practise is the dichotomy of the sweet and the sting, and how to work with both in a healing way for myself and my clients.
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The simplest form has been to use honey, as I do not take much form my bees each year, instead placing the focus on only taking the smallest amounts so that I do not have to feed them sugar water before the winter, which allows them to eat their own honey over the long winter months.
What this means for me is that the honey I am gifted by my bees is medicine and treated as such.

The honey is brought to ceremonies and given to clients in need and used by myself and my family over the long winter months.

This medicine when mixed with plant medicines such as Wild Roses and Hawthorn Berries becomes a divine alchemical mixture that is healing to both the spirit and the body.


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 ​And so began my biggest harvest of Wild Roses yet some from my bush outside and some from the wild fragrant roses that my "mother-in-love" has in her own yard on the island and some bright pink ones from my front yard. Between all of this rose harvesting I settled on 2 medicines, one being a tincture and the other sweet wild rose jam.

For the tincture I mixed with dried hawthorn and rowen berries soaked in brandy with sweet Honey from my bees, rose quartz and a lot of sun soaked love.
My intent is to create a healing tincture that I can share with clients and friends in need of some soothing for their troubled and weary hearts.....

The jam recipe is a mixture of three recipes and the batch is tripled so I really was crossing all my fingers and toes that it would set, and fortunately it did! One of those recipe's can be found here.

This medicine will not be up at the shop, but sometime in the next few months it will be found tucked into the hands of those in need, mailed across the country, and shared sweet drop by sweet drop to those I come across in my travels in need of soothing for their tattered hearts, that you can be sure of!
If you would like to get your hands on a bottle of heart soothing bliss to have for your own, TerraSoulHerbs herbs will have hers ready in about 6 weeks or so too, so watch for it!
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​Wild Roses:
 Roses are used the world over from rose jam in sweets, to ground rose petals rolled and dried into beads and strung onto prayer rosaries. Roses have captured the heart and soul of many spiritual traditions the world over, as a symbol of love and miracles.
It is often said that smelling the scent of rose where there are none, is the song of a spiritual miracle or massage from the spirit world, and many people have reported smelling the fragrance of roses after praying to their saints.


Rose is used to cure apathy for people who have given up, and have started to believe that it does not matter what they do, or that their fate can not be changed. These people are often stuck on the thorns in their life path, and this remedy is great to turn these feelings around.

Rose buds and hips for healing are used in teas, syrups and jams to prevent or cure colds because they contain much vitamin C.
Rose tea can also be used as gargle in case of inflammation in the mouth and the throat, and is great in the treatment of  stress, depression, sinus congestion, colds, digestive ailments, constipation, sore throats, coughs, swollen eyes, puffiness, broken capillaries, insomnia
, and on and on!!

Hawthorn:“Hawthorn has long been used as a herbal remedy that is beneficial to the heart. The etheric signature of the Hawthorn is said to have a pulsation that is similar to that of the human heartbeat. Hawthorn has long been prized as a heart tonic, and the leaves, the flowers and the berries can all be used medicinally. The berries especially are the most effective. They act in a normalizing way upon the heart by either stimulating or depressing its activity, depending on the need, gently moving the heart to normal function. Hawthorn berries may be used safely as a long-term treatment for heart weakness, palpitations, high blood pressure and angina." Glennie Kindred

Rowen Berries: "In the past Rowan was valued for its ability to provide us with forewarnings and foreknowledge. It brings an increased awareness of outside influences, which may be affecting us, which we may have been unaware of. This is why it is such an important tree to communicate with. It brings a quickening of awareness of all our senses and abilities, on many different levels of our existence. If you are working with the Rowan, the messages which are constantly passed to us from the Spirit Realms become more obvious, as we become more open to receiving and interpreting these signs in our everyday lives." Glennie Kindred

​Sweet  Wild Honey: Humans have been harvesting the sweet comb and honey from the bee for millennia, drawn to the sweet taste, and how it makes us feel when fermented into mead as well as the healing properties that honey carries makes a prize worthy of the goddess.
Honey can heal not just surface wounds and burns like no other due to it's anti-bacterial properties, but is also heals a broken heart like no other can as well.
I have used honey for many, many clients over the years but I have to say that one of the most profound experiences was when I was able to give jars of it to a dear friend while she was dying.
The sweetness and texture of thick sweet honey really lifts the spirits no matter what is happening and I found myself filling the jar up over and over again. After she passed I went to visit her partner and he offered me the empty jar back, but all I could do was stutter that now he needed it, and that I would be back with a full jar.
Both of us needed sweet tea with honey that day and I was thankful for it's gentle healing ways.
If we can treat honey as a precious gift and medicine as it should be then both humans and bees can live together, sadly right now honey has become a harsh commodity that is killing our bee population, alongside the mass pesticides and other disasters that we humans have made.
Honey is precious and healing, as is the sting of the bee if we open our minds to more then meets the eye.
 

Rose Quartz:The fair and lovely Rose Quartz, with its gentle pink essence, is a stone of the heart, a Crystal of Unconditional Love. It carries a soft feminine energy of compassion and peace, tenderness and healing, nourishment and comfort. It speaks directly to the Heart Chakra, dissolving emotional wounds, fears and resentments, and circulates a Divine loving energy throughout the entire aura. Reawakening the heart to its own innate love, it provides a deep sense of personal fulfillment and contentment, allowing one the capacity to truly give and receive love from others. [Raphaell, 82-85][Simmons, 331][Hall, 236]
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The Creation of Grandmother Womb Drum

3/1/2016

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As a sacred drum-maker it is not often that I am called to make drums for myself much these days, after all I already have close to 10 personal drums, so unless I am really called by spirit, all of the drums my hands make are going out into the world for others.
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But then, just before the change of the new year I began to feel an inkling of what 2016 was to bring and part of it was an inner knowing that now is the time for me to get out and into my local community more. To create more in person drum workshops, more ceremonies and more offerings in general.
Some of these inspirations will take some time, while others such as my Red Drum Workshops were as easy as setting a date and booking them.

During this time I was out and about at my local suppliers when across the room I spotted a large, no make that giant handmade drum frame, the kind that some of our first nations people might use to make pow-wow drums.

As I stood there looking at this frame, spirit began speaking to me, whispering into my ear that I must build a community drum--a womb drum to be specific!

And so it was that the frame came home with me, followed by a series of wonderful synchronicities that not only brought me the most perfect piece of Elk hide from a dear friend, who cut it for a drum similar to the one I was making, but also many small confirmations that I was on the right track that came by way of my community.

And so I began, first by honoring the beautiful cedar drum frame and spending some time getting to know it's spirit, which is very gentle and loving, and her medicine is that of healing.
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Of course these things take their own sweet time and although I already had the hide, it too needed to be honoured and the time perfect for the creation of such a sacred healing drum. This is why the frame sat with me for close to 2 months before anything more was done.

And then finally, the day came when everything felt right to make the drum, and when I looked up into the night sky and realized that the moon was making her way into fullness I knew why! The February full moon was one of the most powerful moons in a long time, and each night that she was full the skies here were clear and bright with her light.

The first step was to stain the beautiful frame, or rather the bones of the drum with natural water-based wood stain made by a company called Saman that I use for everything. The colour of course was a deep burgundy red and instantly transformed the bones of the drum. next I drilled holes into the sides and made four handles for her so that she could be held on all sides, as well as making sure that she would fit the frame that a friend is making for her to hang on.
​And then she was ready to come into form!
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I made lots of rookie mistakes because I have never made a double sided drum this big before, so she is perfect is the most imperfect way, kind of like most of us, wouldn't you say?
Once she was made I was so overcome with joy, honestly there was nothing to say or do but admire her and slowly get to know her.
She dried in my kitchen surrounded by the sounds of our family life, as she say perched in the kitchen window with the eastern facing sun shining on her for days and days as she dried.
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During this time I  began dreaming of hall the ways she could join us in our community, and how she might be able to heal women in her work, and she whispered stories to me, and inspirations came in from friends who told me stories of other healing drums, and so as I prepared for two big ceremonies I knew that she would come along and that we would consecrate and bless her and her work in our community.

This past week-end I was joined by many, many wonderful women whose hands and stories blessed our grandmother drum. She held us in circle as we birthed more red drums out into the community, and as the women from our Red Moon Mystery school were initiated, and were held by each other is a full day of ceremony and spirit work.
We sprinkled libations of sweet honey mead onto her, we smudged her, and adorned her with cedar, sprigs of Heather, and our ancestral spirit bundles, and she held us as we touched her and welcomed her into our community. 
It was a full week-end, but she is now ready for the next piece in her creation.....
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I know there is so much more about her yet to come through, and I have seen how she might help to heal women if they could somehow slide under her frame as we drum her, so that their wombs can feel the vibrations of her healing heartbeat.
​And so the unfolding of Grandmother Womb drum continues.....
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Rose Petal Honey Rose Petal Jam

10/14/2014

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This past week-end while visiting my “in-loves” for Thanksgiving, Azra brought in some of the last of her prize roses for the table, and instantly the whole living room filled with their heavenly fragrance.  Honestly I wish each of you reading could smell their divine fragrance, for these are not any fragrant roses, because they smell like sweet rose honeyed candy!
All week-end I Zahra and I buried our noes into the lush roses that graced the tables, and were already feeling sad to leave them before the week-end was even over. Then just as we were sipping tea and enjoying the last that the evening has to offer the suggestion was raised that perhaps I might take one or two, and then I jumped up for joy because I have been wanting for years now to find untreated organic roses with this kind of fragrance to make sweet rose honey and rose petal jam.  And just like that a plan was set in motion, for I was gifted with the best thing–I was allowed to take ALL of the last of the large blooms from the garden home!
I was so excited, that almost as soon as we walked through the door I was pulling out one of my favourite cookbooks and stuffing my nose into the bag of roses to take the last few deep inhale of that sweet ambrosia.
In the end I decided to make infused honey–of course! and some simple rose petal jam, but really it is more like a paste.
The honey was easy, I set a small pot of last years crystallized honey on the lowest setting it would go, so as not to spoil the natural enzymes, and then added two big handfuls of rose petals and mixed them all in. I left the pot for a very short time, maybe 5-6 min’s not even really enough time to get warm, but the crystals broke down and made the honey runny again, and then I quickly poured it into my waiting bottle. This bottle will become sweet medicine elixir, and I will take small spoonfuls of it all winter long. This stuff really helps the deep winter blues let me tell you! I might even share some….
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Next I decided to make a simple rose petal paste recipe from my book Rose Petal Jam, and I have to say this is now at the top of my “most favourite things to do” list. The process is simple, you take sugar and a pestle and grind the rose petals into the sugar until they make a paste. This paste will keep for up to 2 years in a sterilized jar! But ohhhh the process of pounding and scraping the pestle into the soft rose petals and watching them transform into deep burgundy paste and the smell that they release is a powerful meditation and the smell stayed in the air and on my hands long after I was done my task.
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This honey paste will be used specifically for ceremonies, as roses are deep healers of the divine feminine. I often use roses and honey in my healing work with women who are tending to deep healing deep healing with their womb’s, and with their spirit. The sweetness of the honey and the distillation of the sweet roses are like the most soothing balm I could offer a women who is hurting. Both of these creations will become my offering in my winter healing work, for both myself and my clients.
In the meantime I offer you this poem by Mary Oliver…for she captures the bees and the roses with her words so well……
Hum
What is this dark hum among the roses?
The bees have gone simple, sipping, that’s all. What did you expect? Sophistication?
They’re small creatures and they are filling their bodies with sweetness, how could they not moan in happiness?
The little worker bee lives, I have read, about three weeks.
Is that long? Long enough, I suppose, to understand that life is a blessing.
I have found them — haven’t you? — stopped in the very cups of the flowers, their wings a little tattered — so much flying about, to the hive,then out into the world, then back, and perhaps dancing, should the task be to be a scout-sweet, dancing bee.
I think there isn’t anything in this world I don’t admire.
If there is, I don’t know what it is.
I haven’t met it yet. Nor expect to.
The bee is small, and since I wear glasses, so I can see the traffic and read books, I have to take them off and bend close to study and understand what is happening.
It’s not hard, it’s in fact as instructive as anything I have ever studied.
Plus, too, it’s love almost too fierce to endure, the bee nuzzling like that into the blouse of the rose. And the fragrance, and the honey, and of course the sun, the purely pure sun, shining, all the while, over all of us.

- 
Mary Oliver

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Empowerment for our Girls...

2/26/2014

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There was once a time, long, long ago, but not so long ago that it has been completely lost in the mists of time, that our young daughters were invited to sit at the feet of the elder women in the community.  There would be much laughter and “woman talk” and it was in this safe place that our girls would learn the secrets and mysteries of womanhood, eventually joining them in their rightful place as their minds and bodies turned from maidens to women and eventually, for some of them, into mothers.
As a young girl myself, I longed for this place, I always wanted to listen in on the conversations my mother and her friends were having, and if I sat still enough they would sometimes forget that I was there and go on talking about all the most interesting things….
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When my first moon blood came I was the usual age of 13 and by then all of my friends had or were close to getting their periods as well. It was a rite of passage, a much anticipated event, and for me and my friends at the time, it was almost a race to see who got it first, heaven forbid if your best friend got hers first!  My mother like many mom’s of the 70’s and 80’s handed me a box of pads and told me to make sure I hid them from my father because he did not want to see “those things” around the bathroom. She did not shame me, but she also made it clear that it was to be hidden from men because it was probably a bit unclean
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Fast forward 25 years I now have my own daughter and I like all mothers want the best for her. I desire for her to love her body, to have a deep spiritual understanding of how precious it is, and how deserving she is of all love.  I want her to feel empowered around her menstrual cycle, around being a woman, and how strong her body and soul can be if she gives them a little attention.
Here are a few hard and sad facts that our girls face daily: Girls between 11 and 14 see on average 500 ads a day. Canada has the 9th highest rate of bullying in the 13 year-olds category on a scale of 35 countries. (Canadian Institute of Health)By the age of 14 more than half (55%) of Canadian girls already feel pressure to be beautiful. Nearly half (47%) of Canadian girls between the ages of 10 and 17 have avoided social activities like going to the beach, participating in physical activities, going to school or giving an opinion because they feel badly about the way they look. (Dove) While 13% of Canadian girls (ages 10-14) are comfortable calling themselves ‘beautiful’, this number slides to 6% for girls ages 15-17 and to only 3% for women (ages 18-64); the percentage of girls who claim to be confident declines from 76% of girls 10-14 to only 56% of girls 15-17.
Given these sad statistics it is no wonder that supporting women and girls to change things is my life’s work! I desire BIG changes not only for my own daughter but also for the women that I work with, for the women who read our book and also for myself!
I owe it to myself and to my daughter to cherish her, and to show her how to have a healthy body and mind. This takes work, a LOT of work, because most our generation was not taught the old ways of honouring our daughters. For most of us it was a stiff upper lip as we were swept up in the wake of the early feminist era, as our mothers strived to show men, that we as women could do it all.  Many of our mothers held jobs and ignored their soft emotional post-partum bodies in favour of going back to work as soon as possible, menstrual pain was ignored or medicated in an attempt to show men that it would not slow us down! Wearing white jeans during our “heavy days” was a thing  to be proud of, and stuffing tampons into our vagina’s  so we could go swimming and generally participate in all the things that boys could do all the time something to aspire to.
As important as many of these efforts were in empowering ourselves as women, much was also lost and left behind in favour of this new way. We as women lost our connection to our bodies and to the ancient connection of sisterhood. We lost our elders and gatherings, and the initiations for our daughters to mark the transition from girls into amazing young women. These rites of passage are important markers, and it is my passion and desire to never allow any of them to pass my daughter by!
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This is one of the many reasons I am so excited to be participating in, and bringing my daughter to, an upcoming event here in Vancouver called G-day.
“G Day celebrates this rite of passage by tapping into our collective sense of curiosity and bravery. G Day is more than a one-day event, it is a global movement that reminds us all of the journeys we take as women. We want to honour the secrets and wisdom that have been passed down from generation to generation, only to now find its way to you.
We are a sisterhood of girls and women. Together, we create a circle of common experiences and we see each other for who we really are. Our goal is to create a space where girls can come together and celebrate what makes them unique and also what connects them to each other.
When asked how we would transform a city, our answer was simple. Give us more space to laugh and to cry together, to share stories and rituals, to sit and to talk. Bring us together and the world will magically transform. And so we invite you to explore all of the wonders of womanhood on this adventure called G DAY. We guarantee you will come away feeling empowered, accepted and ready for the journey ahead.”
It is an honour to join my dear friends Madeleine Shaw one of the owners of Lunapads in this day long exploration of what it means to be a girl, how amazing and beautiful this can be, and how to navigate the often turbulent waters of puberty, peer pressure, and the messiness that life can bring a girl in 2014.
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In the Quiet Hush, Chai.......

1/23/2014

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In the quiet hush of the early morning while the children are asleep, I keep company with ancient poets and wild mystics. The smells of their ancient lands full of exotic spices emanates from each page, while a pot bubbles on the stove making my imagination into a reality.  In the pot is chai tea, and to say I love it would be an understatement!
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If I am lucky, and plan well, this alone time ritual happens maybe 2 times a month and mostly on the week-ends. I shuffle out of bed before anyone else and my first thought goes to tea and a good book. Making chai became a daily and sacred morning ritual about six years ago, after too much coffee, a bad stomach and nerves, and the result has been miraculous for me. No more anxious jittery feelings, no more tummy troubles, or problems sleeping. I have one sometimes two cups of black tea during the day, it is always chai and I feel great.
The spices alone  contain many medicinal properties, most of the being good for digestion, and the ritual of making it is also very meditative and calming.
The ritual of making chai is one I learned from my mother in law about 16 years ago. I was young and pregnant with our son Zubin and her chai was the greatest thing I have ever tasted!
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 Lately I have mentioned drinking chai on facebook and here on my blog and I always get folks and friends asking for the recipe, but I never know how to answer that question due to the  fact that I do it a little differently each time I make a pot.
However…..I was taught how to make a proper cup of chai, so I know I can pass that much on, as  my mother in law Azra, is a phenomenal Indian cook and chai maker, not to mention artist and yogi.

Over the years I have received many bags of ground chai powder from Sohrab’s aunties made to suit their individual tastes, some super spicy, and some full of lots of cinnamon or ginger etc…. I have tried many store bought brands, mixing them to suit my taste, but since the powder does not get used up very fast I never had to actually grind my own, so I thought I had better make some just to assure myself that I could.
So without further ado, here is the Indian/Pakistani chai recipe as taught to me by my sweet mother-in-love Azra, including how to make your own homemade chai spice powder.
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​Chai Masala Powder Recipe
Ingredients:
1/2 cup cinnamon pieces
1/8 cup cloves
1/4 cup black or white peppercorns-more if you like spicy!
1/4 cup green cardamon pods
1 tsp grated nutmeg
6-8 Anice flowers
3/4 cup dried ginger powder-more if you love ginger.
Dry roast all ingredients except the dried ginger powder and the nutmeg in a pan, preferably cast iron on low heat until you can smell the spices heating up and releasing their oils, about 5 mins. Remove them to a plate and allow them to cool down. Once they are cool to the touch grind into very fine powder in coffee or spice grinder. Now add the grated nutmeg  and the dried ginger powder  Mix well and store in airtight jar.
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Masala Chai Tea Recipe

Once you have your powder you can make the perfect cup of chai tea anytime.
This recipe makes four cups.
Take a large pot and add 3 cups of water to it and one cup of milk. If you like a milkier chai try making it equal parts, any type, dairy, soy almond etc….
Think of how much milk you like to add to a typical cup of tea.
1/2 teaspoon chai spice powder that you just made-or more depending on how spicy you like it!

Plus some extra spices to make it even spicier, and infused. This is the traditional way
Add 2-3 crushed cardamon pods
1-2 small sticks of cinnamon
3-4 black pepper corns
3-4 cloves
1-3 slices of fresh ginger depending on how spicy you like it
2-3 tablespoons of sugar or Jaggery.
My mother-in-love Azra swears by adding this much sugar, if not more, and it is surprising how it mixes into the chai after it has boiled, making it almost caramelized.
Now wait for the pot to come to the boil and then turn down the burner, then bring it back up again, doing this for a total of 3 times.
Now you may add your tea bags 4 total. We like to use India tea or failing that Tetley BOLD, as it makes a good strong pot.
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It is said that giving your guests of honour a cardamon pod  or anice pod in their chai  is a gesture of respect, and I believe it, as both of my in-laws/in-loves like to chew on the pods and enjoy them very much. Of course they are always guests of honour in our house!
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Now enjoy your Chai!!

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© Copyright 2016. By Nikiah Seeds. Drums, Ceremonies, Mystery School. Vancouver, BC.

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Living and working on the unceded Indigenous land belonging to the Coast Salish peoples, including the territories of the xʷməθkwəy̓əm (Musqueam), Skwxwú7mesh (Squamish), Stó:lō and Səl̓ílwətaʔ/Selilwitulh (Tsleil-Waututh) Nations. 
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