When the fires blaze 
my heart lights up
I come back to remembering
our eternal essence is not what we own.

I come back to remembering Jesus who when offered a kingdom
turned and walked barefoot into the desert
Buddha who rejected his wealth to
 sit under a tree

Crackling they endure the heat
and I recall the medicines
and people who sit in jungles
watching the Amazon fall to the ground
and facing extinction everyday they pray
for us

The shamans wife in
the Sierras of Mexico does sell her peyote
to visit doctors who give her medicine
to heal the illness
caused by

 Coca-cola
has found the remote villages
and history repeats itself in Modelo beer
drunken with need for money
that cannot be eaten

 The seed is the kernal that
 gives life to the people

 I pray those speaking medicine remember
we are here to pray for Earth and humanity
and can we step away from our own photos
 to pray
 for the wisdom of the ages
spreads out as land and sky
desert storm clouds
rain down
many waters spilling
blooming sage amid red rocks and scrub brush

The sky is infinity
vastness overhead
 horses etched cliffsides
sound thunderous gallops
pressing forward
lazer sharp
focus center points internal compass
due south
seaside Huichotle sweat lodges
merge
Navajo-Dineh
spirits intertwined
stories unravel
all this land is home:

Long ago a young woman held truth in her heart
preached it from the pulpits
and missed
the miracle of Jesus
working in her and through her 
she walked where she was led
stood at vistas on Cathedrals
pounding a grandfather drum
without a song
opening her heart
 she passed through her fears to run up walls
stood steady on legs 
the Goddess route
altars of tantric love
unionized on rock heads
pelvis vulva clitoris
making love all at once
they touch and pulse life into being
we are all born of this earth
and will return to its
steady still center
everything we have will go
but the love
experiences of service
we give
to those without money

God's divine presence is not for sale
It is ours
grateful to be guided to ancestral lands
whose horror and anger gives way to waves that
rush and pulse
surrender
I will fight no more forever
Aging I wear no costume
play no games for
time now unfolds
the grandmothers said...

None of this was for sale
now I do know what
commerce has taken
our humanity 
our fragility
our vulnerability
to be flawed
to cry
to speak an unpopular truth
we grin and bear
that spiritual sanctuaries
have created more emptiness

Where praises were sung to honor God
we raise ourselves up hierarchically
crushing the little children who need a knee and
sell them hugs for a dollar
to feed coconut cravings
festival addictions
have become highly exaggerated version of self
competing egos for the prize of the
most spiritual
goes no longer to the
crone with rosary beads praying
 privately for her family
but to the
young beautiful and rich
who sell you guru and hold back friendship--
for how can we charge for what used to be free
even elders sell tipi but

I remember when
we came together to
eat-sing-play-dance
I remember when friendship became sales's gimmicks
and struggling for money we
crawled begging our way

Back to the Kings and Queens
of the New Age Movement
Royalty in the making
we have created a parallel structure of
 successfully spiritual and abundant
Flyers, cards, costumes, and websites
Deny God
Claiming self as Creator...
No longer part or particle
I drop to one knee in the desert
Humbly
remember the ones who have come before me and 
pray to know another way
lineage passes on this:

We are now asleep
sitting together and
shining only our bliss
we neglect to use our
privilege, health 
as candles lighting the way

Awaken
in dark places we
look and find
humanity huddled together without fanfare
authentic like the stars remembering it is all about time spent together

Love shared is the presence of God

Sacred commerce has become another rat race
with
flowers of life, crystals, hoola hoops, fire and drugs
lots of them to
elevate the experience and make us believe

We are in ceremony
communion with the Divine Mother
whose breast has run dry and fires rage in
small towns we cry
what is lost

Remember the value of friends when we had nothing
we stood together in embrace
that is free

God is with us all along the way
reminding us that love is the only thing that matters
it is how we are here and the struggle is
the birth canal to our first primal yelp
this existence will be a cycle of emptying and filling
and no matter what comes in
we will all shit it out and cry our hearts out to be
loved--have attention--affection--praise

Connection to our Mother
in utero we were cared for and magically formed

Into this land
is a beautiful woman and do we plant and water her
until she blooms or bulldoze her
counting money and profits
raping the one who gives unconditionally to
dole out a chunk and dig up
ancestral finds of outer space origins
a knife to stab us in our own hearts

Living this life as if this is all there is
or looking towards eternal bliss in oneness
we are all here now
divided only by our stories
projections entitled blissed 
truly insecure and vulnerable
we are only human and dependent upon this planet

She will go on
the endless sky and stars do tell us
things burn out
civilizations dissolve
water runs out
no plastic bottle can be filled with what has dried
and do we now frack and infect our supplies for moneys and addictions
squandering the future with toxic fumes and GMO strains
cancerous dumps of
fertilizers to feed the masses
who do not plant seeds
who do not have land to grow

Laws are broken with the hope of freedom
and still we are enslaved to serfdom working what is not ours
in due season
we reap what we sow
spraying dandelions and then taking pharmaceuticals
for kidneys-livers-bladders-
passing stones and beverages made with
sugar 
rots our teeth
mercury our brains

We have given our food supply and
organic practices over to corporations who are now
the doorway 
to the apothecaries 
must sell the rights to herbs to be bought and

I remember when the silent scream unfurled inside myself that
the one had become a million
in every far reaches of land
we have sold ourselves and become slaves to our
master brands
bringing 
our talents
our voices
our hearts
our vision
to make others millions and 
trade amongst ourselves
playing cool
kids at 40
competing
ticks of the trade

Trimming
our intrinsic value declining
everyday we sit for chocolate 

All our thoughts and ideas wired into a
handheld device that tracks us to sell us what is already ours
in yoga postures, stretch pants

We forget yogis in loin cloths sat in caves
praying for Universal peace they gave over their egos and served

Our spirits now one with the new god--
money
is energy that propels things
forward we stream
grabbing for that which is temporary and 

Our souls of faith crave
peace that comes only in union with God
who makes the sun to rise
the waves to cycle with Goddess moon

Someday we will
 join the particles of our life to the one now here
and when that essence dissipates into God
will it pray land trees flowers hope children and
God itself back into being or perpetuate
the concrete poison and technology that is our cancer
may we learn to fear the cause more than the disease
and turn our focus back to
health color music dance slow time
dance in the breeze in trees to childrens laughter---and my heart beseeches everyone:

Come together
honor our partners
safegaurd our lineage that is family
forgive the separateness
bring us back to the one realization that can save us
beyond dreaming
beyond  hallucinations
let us be in the world and on the earth
humans reaching out to our grandmothers
slowing down to one breath one look that says
I am here for you and

Yes--young ones--
I am greying despite all my practices,
prayers, travels, medicines, service, love, joy, bliss
willingness to shadow to cry to scream to panic to
not know what to do if
all this beauty love humanity is lost
in a cloud be it fire, peace pipe, or solar flare

The time to break free of our addictons and
escape from behind fences
 to which we have been fleeing
separating people in open spaces

Find freedom
from people who sell you eternal youth and
 your own authenticity 

Walk your truth
in cities
at home
with your aged parents
and true friends
 hold you in times of loss
nurture yourself 
wholey rested
return to the work

You've given your life over to
the work 
is for others
to lift them up
to give hope
where it has left

Pray remembrance
life into death
experience miracles and 

Not to sell people God
but to guide them so that God is
 in them
around them
moving them and
one person 
at a time 

We will
re-fill
be fulfilled.
Reconnect
remember:

 Our human race
healing our Mother
and preserving our children
for generations to come.

I awoke this morning with a sense of joy bubbling up in ways I wasn't expecting.

It started this week after weeks of meandering back in time to where I came from both spirit and ancestral, the deconstruction period back to the original seed I am supposed to carry forward.  Having retrieved the seed, I knew the next phase was following the trail back to my little self, I call her Zoniacita, and helping her bloom the seed.

I prayed with tenderness and humor, "Please, God, teach me how to open and heal my cora-zonicita. I just want her to feel whatever she needs to in order to be authentically happy again.  I identify my recurring pattern and do now heal the glitch in my brain that is circling over and over again and giving me a mental disease.  Treat me like I am dumb, Creator, and make it really simple to see and understand....because right now, I think I might be retarded."

Truth was...that lost in the roles I live day in and day out...I hadn't done the one thing I really needed to do.  Cry...It reminded me of the scene in Always with Richard Dreyfuss and Holly Hunter.  She goes by a river...one scene shows her balling her eyes out alone.  The next clip she is happy and smiling.  No one knew but her.  It is cathartic and waters flowing are life cleansing the heart.

Anyways, I cried...a lot...it was pathetic.  I even laughed at myself a bit.

Side effects of crying a lot where people see you...fear.

My parents got upset...

I told them people pay me to cry with them...did you know it is so hard to find a place to cry in the world that people have to pay for it?  If this is my home...please let me cry.  I am not broken.  All tears aren't sadness and they aren't a sign of weakness.  My tenderness is my greatest strength.  

Hold your space.  Don't commiserate.  Just let me heal myself whole and put all my pieces together because it has been so long since I had the time and room to do it.

When I hold space for people.  I reflect to them that I know they are strong.  I reflect to them they will receive whatever they need.  I reflect to them that no matter where they have to go, I will remember them happy.  And magic happens they let themselves feel into their own answers and divine connections.

So, my parents let me.  They let go of the control.  They let go and so did I.  They stopped seeing me as broken and I stopped having to act like feelings are a tragic flaw. 

 I breathed into my heart cords...all of them...felt all the joys, sorrows and sadnesses and pains and laughter and losses and longing and came back to the one thing that mattered....the love.  I wanted to keep my connections to those people and places in times when they were the healthiest.  No matter the outcome.  My focus became the dream and my emotion all gratitude for the many experiences I have imprinted upon my soul...

And then there was the biggest cord of all...the one I heard voices telling me to breathe into as if my life depended on it...because it did.  So I took it seriously and took my deepest breaths day after day into the spot on my chest where my hands rested in peace and I realized the cord was to myself.

The first thought I had was...I like tatoos.  I laughed when I started with that one.  My parents hate tatoos.  I grew up with them pointing at tatooed kids and saying, "Bah...look at that...." And I did.  But with my own eyes...with my ears I heard..."Wow...look at that :)"

It was the best moment of the week, the differentiation phase and the re-experiencing of my individuality. It started me laughing.  I kept repeating it...I like tatoos.  

I dyed my hair...Thank God it washes out...I don't like it...but...I did it because I wanted to and I remembered the many phases I went through growing up...red streaks, bleached bangs.

I woke up this morning..."I'm a rock star." Not only was my hair black, I was aware of my tatoos and realizing that I had a once in a blue moon hangover.  Very funny, Zonia.  I giggled.  Wow...I haven't done that since my 20's and of all places at an Opera fund raiser that was anything but proper with 4 twenty somethings and a couple of 40-50 somethings...all together laughing...It was so fun.  They all had known each other for so long no topic was off limits, feeling intrinsically loved and accepted they giggled at their foibles and as I got folded into my unlikely tribe of artists and musicians, I blossomed.

I love artists and musicians...they get the medicine ways. Live from your heart. Of course you live that free way...I play violin for a living...Isn't it cool to do what you love?

Yeah.  It's cool.  I get to teach yoga and do massage all over.  I get to plant seeds and visit my family all around the world.  I get to spend most of the day praying and practicing...and I always get to say yes when people need someone to talk to...lunch at the park...yes, please...and by the way...thank you...I needed that too.

People ask me what I am going to do when I grow up...I am grown up, that's why I do what I want and, by the way, this is what I do...and for the last time you got sick and I did it for you....you are welcome.

And most importantly...to myself...Its nice to see you again, not in your roles or your practice...but in your heart.  And yes, self...I apologize for trying to change you.  You are perfect exactly as you are.  I promise to stay close to you...because the closer I am to you...the closer I am to God.

And God, thank you for all my lessons.  Thank you for everything I was asked to give up and sit in a room by myself with no distractions for the past two months  praying and doing yoga to look at myself and take responsibility for the ways I had to come back into alignment with my center in order to gain my fluidity...kinda like doing yoga on my friend's pirate ship in Sausalito...but only in life...like living from the still center, but dancing with the flow...

Thank you God for my cousins, nephews, brother, parents, and friends....for taking me to do things I would never have chosen to do myself.  Turns out I can shoot a bull's eye with a pistol...just call me Annie Oakley and with ear plugs...I don't mind screamo that much....I also like throwing a baseball.

Thank you for all the crazy radio stations I have been browsing.  Interesting to note,  I have just realized I  I actually like Christian Rock, Rap and Techno, and Spanish ballads and...yes, those genres have really awful renditions...so bad they are funny.

Thank you for integrating me whole so that I realize I am complete.  That I like my company and that love is everywhere....partnership can wait...I am falling in love with myself again.

Self, in practice of loving my next partner as a whole integrated self-directed connected to God soulful being, I allow myself to treat me with the same kind of respect I should give another being.  I give myself the space to unfold, blossom  and become everyday.  I don't judge myself, I forgive myself, and I trust my desires will be in right relation to the direction of Source energy, Mother Earth, and the Medicine of my Heart.

I am not just a healer, I am also healing and I can take my own medicine.  Right now, the medicine I need for balance is to love myself and remember who little "I am" is.  I am sure that along the road I will also need the medicine of "collective it isn't all about me" too, so I will remember to take my medicine then too.  For now, I practice this..."whatever the hell I damn want"...medicine.

I give myself permission to listen to my body and eat whatever I want and sometimes not eat at all...because I trust myself and know that I love to be healthy...I am not going to make a bad choice.  I give myself permission to go outside barefoot and get dirt all over me because I like it....and if I don't want to take a shower everyday...I won't. And if a totally dorky dance song comes on that makes me happy, I am going to turn it up and dance in the car in traffic because the today when I did it...the people in the cars around me got happy and laughed, waving at me and saying, "It's nice to see someone happy."  

Yeah!  Because I like the way it feels.  I don't need to change.  I am as perfect today as the day I was born and I was born to do this....it's easy...I was born to be me.  Isn't that Lady Gaga?  Bless her song writing soul...so true.

Two weeks ago I began not only performing newly channeled ceremonies on others, but also on myself.  Not sure how they would affect me or my life, I began anyways.  First with The Roses, a ceremony designed to heal ancestral connections and sexual wounds.  I then proceeded on to The Sun, a ceremony designed to help tap into personal strength...then The Forest, which connects us like children to our place as a collective whole on Earth...and finally, The Moon, a ceremony to connect with the Divine Mother and be guided by unseen forces. 

 Though I would not have performed all these ceremonies on any ONE person and certainly not all in one week,  I did perform them one right after another on myself.  Each day I performed it on myself...the next couple of days someone would come along who needed that exact ceremony.  

And so I proceeded, allowing the energy to increase and all the while watching with an observing mind.  

As my ceremonies transitioned, so did my yoga practice.  At times I had the insatiable need to run and at times the energy ran through the night, I would awaken with the thought "I am dying" and I would assure myself..."it's ok, you agreed to it." 

 I continued to reaffirm that I was willing to let all patterns and belief systems that were blocking me to genuine connection and guidance from the highest source to die away from me.  I wasn't sure where my practice was going but I was determined to change...I kept moving and my backbends were deeper, my lunges stronger, my practice seemed never ending...continuously I was drawn back to my mat. 

One fine day, just before performing The Moon, I received a message of pain that rang through my back like a bolt of lightening...slow down...it said.  It was so powerful a lesson that I had no choice but to listen immediately.  I dropped to my knees and asked to put my awareness on the place of my greatest pain. When I did, I realized that I had actually been moving so fast and letting go of so much that I was not in healing mode...I was in a healing crisis. 

It was at this moment that I decided to video tape myself doing yoga.  Viewing myself as a student and now taking the teacher role, I saw that my feet and hands were not activated on the mat, my hips were out of alignment, my right leg shorter than my left, my right shoulder was twisting forward, I was lifting my hip into side bends, and, yes, voice in my head...I was not breathing my spine slowly to its full extent, I was using my muscle and power to create change.  Somehow I had moved from co-creator to creator and I was not allowing myself to be guided to the greatest places of healing by the breath of life that knows me more intimately than my mind ever could.  Thank goodness for the divine reflection, a mirror to me of what was happening inside reflected on the outside on video.

I performed The Moon directly after this and was rewarded with a deep stillness and peace that pervaded my every cell.  It came to me in the night like sparkle dust on my chest and ignited love memories of all the moments for which I am grateful.  They floated through me and returned me to my breath.  The thoughts and voices that had been driving me for weeks to push harder, faster now encouraged me to lay still and just breathe.

I started over again, the same way I started doing yoga 10 years ago after my accident.  I focused on my feet.  I spread my toes and felt into my hastabhanda,  RE-membering what it symbolizes I breathed my awareness into the center of my joined feet and said, "I choose to live a life in right relation to the Earth.  Please, guide my feet."  I stepped one step and took a deep breath through my pain.  I came down to my knees and bowed down saying, "I give myself over to the divine consciousness and allow myself to be moved to the greatest place of my healing."  I came up onto my hands and knees and breathed into my hands and said, "I give my hands over to you for the healing of others.  Please teach me how to give and receive in balance."  I sat with my legs extended in front of me and focused on my heels.  I felt the right leg lengthen and I breathed into my right side.  "Please, help me to balance the male and female within myself.  I forgive all relationships and take responsibility for the way they have turned out.  I allow myself now to be guided to understand what right relation is."  I took a seated side bend and opened my chest, now attentive to my sits bones instead of depth, I felt my torso lengthen and lift out of my hip.  "Surrendering myself to the medicine of my heart." And I felt the throbbing of my uterus...and breathed healing energy into my own sacred space.

Twice a day I did 6 postures.  It took me 2 hours.  

In the meantime, my life unfolded in visions of the El Paso landscapes, the place of my birth, I started painting, teaching  yoga as slowly as I performed it, doing healing work, aware of my feet and letting go of my muscles so  the energy flowed through me, not to me and, finally, the week ended at the gravesites of my grandparents...all of them...5 generations back...and I let go of dreams associated with paradigms I do not believe in from my core.

As my body came back into alignment, my heart came back to the center.  From the center of my core I felt the medicine of my heart and know that though I am not my grandmother and will not live in a kitchen passing salt, there are other ways of giving in little ways that all day long say "I love you."  Though I am not everyday walking the small steps with my grandmother to the bathroom, I do know that I get to through my aunts and uncles who are serving their mother in the same ways she served them.  I am also not the same woman, who I love and admire for her strength, who gave 50 years to a man who came and went when he pleased had other children with other women and left her to care for 7.  

I see the trials and tribulations of the women of my family who gave their power over life and their sacred space to men who didn't appreciate or love them until they were gone.  My grandfather who kept my grandmother's memory alive 20 years after she passed, never loved and appreciated her so much as when she was gone.  I honor the women of my lineage for their strength and I add my freedom from religious doctrines that bound them to situations they would not leave.  I honor the women of my lineage for the forgiving hearts, and add to it the example of my father, who has never strayed, who has loved my mother since they were in high school, and who everyday teaches me what a man of honor is.

To be sure, I do not know where my practice of the last two weeks will lead me, but I am grateful that it has returned me to center and aligned me with my path as a medicine woman., who sits in the strength of her sacred space, holds ceremony, and realizes the power she receives is from the Earth, and even the Mother Earth knows she needs the sun to give life, and life, it is a gift to us from the dead, and they watch over us in the stillness of dreams uttered by children yet unborn but remembering us as their grandmother who stood for the medicine that we pass forward.  

I am grateful to yoga, for the union of my mind-heart with my body.  Thank you for the connection of the present with the past and future.  May I ever acknowledge all the stories that created me and slowly learn to unwind the wounds of the past so I can soar into the unknown blessed future.