We combine a deep perspective, incorporating ancestral healing, psychedelic therapy, aromas and a hands-on roadmap of the psyche for transformational healing and growth by getting your ego and shadow to collaborate instead of undermining each other. Remove long-standing blockages and live your best life.
Aromatic Gnosis
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Dear Reader, This past weekend we taught a live online class for practitioners wanting to integrate aromas into psychedelic therapy. As usual we learnt new things about the subject through teaching it. The main thing being that, with or without psychedelics, when we open to our own wounded healer’s journeys of profound inner healing, aromas are amazing allies and on that level have their own psycho-active qualities. It’s just a question of allowing. As is the case in all our classes, the participants had a kit, which we worked with throughout the weekend. The last oil we partnered with touched me so deeply and spoke through me that even now describing this experience is bringing up emotions. As you may already know, we take a long time sourcing the right oils for Cathy’s Attars. For a long time, we didn’t have a frankincense oil and those we’d encountered hadn’t spoken to us. However, six months ago, we had the chance of buying a small batch. We loved the sample and went ahead knowing that this might be a one off, due to the sustainability issues. The journal of Applied Ecology suggest that 90 percent of frankincense trees will be extinct due to a combination of overharvesting, predators and fires. We put some aside in our personal aromatic library and put the rest on our website. I led the last guided journey with frankincense asking it to help guide each of us so we could become aware of the parts of us that needed repair. Frankincense has been used for millennia, an age-old spiritual gum resin mending broken part of our physical, emotional, mental and spiritual bodies. Sometimes repairing means releasing. Sometimes it means reclaiming. Sometimes it just means honoring and feeling. As we continued the journey, Frankincense began to partner with our innate energies and start to regulate the flow in each aspect of the psyche. As I guided the group, I could feel this beautiful plant leading me. I began to sense its smooth, calming energy. It spoke to me of strength, but once again, as so often in the plant world, it reminded me that true strength isn’t combative or forceful, it's composed and unruffled. This way its innate potency and energy can come through and be felt and heard and be an ally in helping bring order to inner chaos. Frankincense has been used throughout history for spiritual practices and promoting a sense of comfort and protection. By the end of the guided journey, I could feel Frankincense speaking through me. As a group we’d been working on deep intentions for the next stage in our lives. Frankincense reminded us that by using this precious, soon to be extinct oil, we had a responsibility to heal our soul wounds and become who we are meant to be, not just for our personal journeys, but for the future of the world ecologically. And it did it in the deepest, smoothest most embalming way. It felt like a warm, buttery, serene alive scent that instead of perfuming the outer body, was perfuming its balm within us. It was a gift that I am extremely grateful for. It is experiences of this nature that add to my ever growing “gnosis" of aromatics. It is experiences of this nature that help me build an inner knowledge of how these scents communicate and what they have to say. It is in these moments that I know my work with healing aromas has become an art form. Many Blessings Cathy P.S Don’t forget that we are offering monthly Aromatic Journeys. We send you an oil and so we can journey together. The next one will be with Angelica seed on July 10. |
Hi we're Cathy Skipper & Florian Birkmayer MD
We combine a deep perspective, incorporating ancestral healing, psychedelic therapy, aromas and a hands-on roadmap of the psyche for transformational healing and growth by getting your ego and shadow to collaborate instead of undermining each other. Remove long-standing blockages and live your best life.
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