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.
Doing what we can't do for ourselves
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Dear Reader, I don’t usually write an email on a Thursday, but I just had to share today. Last night we guided an Aromatic Journey with rose geranium. As I’ve mentioned in a previous email, geranium hasn’t been my favorite oil. I was excited to change my preconceptions and so have been working with it for the past month. However, it wasn’t until we journeyed with it as a group and really spent two hours giving it and us the time to explore and build relationship with collectively that the full impact of this oil hit me. This morning as I write this, I can still feel its effects. After listening to people’s experiences and really dialing into my own on-going inner adventure with it, I said to Florian, “It gives us what we can’t give ourselves.” We all have engrained survival strategies that are deep ruts carved into the Default Mode Network. Like water, our behaviors and reactions to life take the easiest, deepest rut, which is why it is often very difficult to get out of these behaviors even when we really want to change. Studies have shown that rose geranium is a deep metabolic regulator and restorative for the physical body, affecting us on a chemical and hormonal level. I believe this action carries forth in the whole psyche. In my experience, rose geranium helps to bypass the deep ruts of the default mode network and create new pathways on a profound level. Let me explain, how this has happened for me. My personal survival strategy that I’ve been trying to change for years is that in response to trauma I flee. This rut has dug itself deeply and now even though I am not being traumatized, I still feel that I have to run, to do things as fast as possible, to flee form the present moment. However hard I try, I come back to this reaction in some form or another. I run from relationships into work, I run from enjoying work into thinking. I can’t stop and I have to get it all done. So, when I say rose geranium gives us what we can’t give ourselves, I mean that depending on our survival strategy, it gives us what we need to transcend it. Rose geranium has been the one ally that has helped me to stop, to breathe, to enjoy the moment, and to feel safe in the present moment. On the other hand, one of the Aromatic Journey participant’s survival strategy was to freeze. She communicated that the rose geranium finally allowed her to let go, to relax, to just be. As I reflect on all this, I see once again how aromas work in very similar ways to psychedelics, i.e disrupt the Default Mode Network. Dare I say, they work better and more safely than psychedelics? By this I mean, they are subtler, they take more learning to listen to and to feel, but they can be used long-term, and daily. I personally cannot imagine teaching, sitting for people, or coaching without aromas. It would be like walking in the forest without smelling the plants and the trees. So whatever we do, bringing our sense of smell and the deep, ancient spiritual and psychological use of aromas to the forefront in the healing arts and creativity is urgent. “Smell is the primordial sense, more powerfully connected to our essence, to our soul and our emotions than any of our other senses. Aromas unedited by the thalamus reach the most profound layers of our being triggering profound healing and inner shifts on our journey towards wholeness.” --Cathy Skipper You can join the monthly Aromatic Journeys by clicking on the link. The next one is July 10 and the oil will be angelica seed. There are still a few places left on our upcoming live-online class, next weekend June 22-23: Essential Oils for Psychedelic Therapy. Aromatic Blessings, Cathy, Florian, Sasha, Jah |
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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