Welcome! You are listening to our mindful nature, formerly titled The Mindful Minute. I'm your host, Meryl Arnett, and this podcast explores the deep connection between land and self, through nature-based meditations and meditative experiences that invite us back into belonging to each other, to our ancestors, to the earth, and to all beings that make up this universe.
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Welcome, friends, to another episode of Our Mindful Nature. Today, my dear friend, colleague and teacher, Dr. Chanti Tacoronte-Perez, is joining us to talk about divination, somatic wisdom, and the magic of birds. Dr. Chanti is a Cuban-American artist, author, ritualist, and non-clinical depth psychologist. She believes that images speak a profound language. Her life's work is translated of the unseen and an advocate for the imaginal.
She holds two master's degrees in engaged humanities and depth psychology from Pacifica Graduate Institute. In 2023, she completed her doctoral dissertation in the work of translating the image of the wound. Her work and her teaching follows and welcomes imagination, creativity, dreaming, and deep rest. Today, we're exploring a new somatic oracle created by Dr. Chanti, titled Birdsong.
So together, we're going to talk about divination and oracle cards, my favorite things. We're going to talk about what it means to be a somatic oracle deck, and what happens when we tune into the body rather than the guidebooks. We explore deep listening, trusting, translating the wisdom of our bodies and the natural world. We talk about migration, birds, landlessness, and the meaning of home.
And at the end, Dr. Chanti guides us through a gorgeous bird meditation. I'm so excited for you guys to hear and participate in that experience. So grab a comfy seat outside if you can do it. Make sure you've got a little bit of space around you. You've got a journal and a pen nearby. And let's tune in for today's episode.
Chanti, welcome back. I'm so glad to have you here under the auspice of our mindful nature. Thanks for joining me. Thanks for having me back. Yeah, it was so fun to have a little surprise cameo appearance from you a couple of weeks ago when I announced the name. Thank you for that little bit of grace and allowing me to clip that segment. And I really appreciate it.
We are here to talk about bird song, brand new, somatic oracle deck from you. And I thought maybe we would start with like the broader more general oracle divination in general. I know you and I've had many conversations about this.
What is what is that to you? Why do you use it? Why do you like it as a tool? What does it mean to you? Oh, well, that's a big question. You know, usually when I do or practice my divination, it's almost like a right now I'll say it. I'm in the season of having divination be a kind of doorway or portal for my day.
My in a sense like my day starts really early, but then it like has these like little sections and when I come to this place where I'm sitting at now, which is where I do a lot of my creative work. It's kind of the first thing that I do before like I have a lot of journals and I have a lot of to do lists. And I think what it what it helps to it helps me just to like shift from taking my dog out or making the breakfast foods. And it allows me to come into my practice in a more.
I want to say in a rich old way and also with like a different kind of story, you know, whether and I just don't I only I don't go to like one specific deck. I honestly don't ever read the books, but I think it's a nice kind of collage to set like an image to set motion my creative practice. And sometimes I do divination as divining like what card am I going to get or what image is going to appear.
And sometimes I feel it's really helpful to like look through the cards. And if I'm doing something that feels really difficult or I don't want to do it necessarily. Those images for me act as like, come on, you can or here's some support or it just helps me to just shift my perspective a little bit and to kind of move into this morning my morning.
And then there are other times that I do other divinations like I'm upstairs now and then I have like a downstairs. And when I do my like pelvic steam, I have like a whole other divinatory practice that is down there. And again, it's just helpful to kind of transition into a space and time for what is being done or cared for or thought about in that in that moment. I used to also do it like before going to sleep ahead.
And I love them because it's almost like having a little museum in palm of your hands, you know, and it could be anything could be, you know, things that you create or oracles or tarot or sometimes just words. And it is it's it's almost like a threshold. I think that's what I'm saying it's a threshold for me. The actual pictures or images or colors or words that come in combination. There are like many thresholds and super handy can take them anywhere.
Just my love. I love that I love the imagery of like a museum in your hands that's so lovely. I'm going to think of that from now on. And I have my little collage, you know, I do my collage that you taught me. Yeah, which has become a really incredible tool. I think it's one of my favorite tools and all honesty is a practice around creating this Oracle collage at the start of the month or the new moon or whenever you choose to do it.
And it's as you named it's not divination like what card am I going to get. But it maybe you want to describe that practice really quick just for a moment. Yeah, I almost want to call it a synchronicity. You can't necessarily make it happen. But sometimes it feels like it's a mini form of like you're almost like inviting or welcoming a synchronicity.
Sometimes it's difficult to or we're not sure how we're feeling or what our internal weather report might be and sometimes having a mirror that's not reflecting our, you know, our actual face and body and eyes and nose. And then you're looking at a different kind of mirror, then that might help us to take the next step or to adjust or to shift. And so when you take an Oracle deck and you look at, you know, you look at the, you look at the image.
And then you're almost, and this is the practice that you know we do in the beginning of the month. Again, this is a threshold right the beginning of the month, the beginning of a new moon. And you're just kind of looking through and waiting for a moment of recognition.
And then you can see the reflection, repellent, you know, just something that says, like it's taking it all. It's just speaking out to you in a different way. And then you can, you know, you can put that card to the side of the, like, okay, I'm going to wait and, and I go through the, like, I can go through many decks in that way and then kind of like
a little bit and see or sometimes you have like five cards and it's, they're not individual. They create something more whole. It's almost like you have a small mirror, like a pocket mirror and you can only see like your eye lips.
And then you have like a bigger mirror and you can see like your head and shoulders and then if you have a few more cards, you're like at the full length. And it's still the same thing you're looking at, you're looking at one image, but you're seeing it from maybe a different point. And so we don't have to only choose like one card or two cards and they don't have to act as separate entities. They can weave together and work together and you can see it more as like a whole collage.
And I like doing that because it's it's helpful sometimes to notice what sometimes you I don't I'm not everybody but sometimes I just don't like today I woke up and I was like I was just feeling good. But when you get word like, okay, good, bad, you know, happy. And sometimes when you put those cards or you look at, oh, what is this sensation of feeling in a different way, then you get like a texture and color and you don't necessarily have to name it.
You just see that reflection or that kind of invitation of having a synchronous synchronistic moment and say, oh, that's interesting. I keep saying that it's my life. It makes it like this more interesting and there's another word. Anyway, I would have to pick a card to find that word.
For me that word is joyful. I don't know if that's your word, but it I find it to be an incredibly joyful way to help me interact with what is happening inside that maybe I can't quite grasp without a little added tool, a little added nudge. I want to talk about your deck specifically bird song. I'm so excited. I've gotten a little over a week to play with it to work with it in my own practice.
Do you want to talk a little bit about maybe the origin story of bird song to get us started. And then I want to go into specifically the somatic aspect of the deck. We last talked about doing this podcast and talking about bird song. I did a kind of nerdy. I don't know if anybody's ever done this before you do like a really geeky nerdy deep dive into your own journals.
Yes, you know, to look back at the origin story because it's been a while now and I want this deck this practice, this project, this gift came at a time where I was it came at like a parallel time where I was in my I think it was a first year of a five year journey. I went to the 2018 now because I went I like at the dates.
In 2018, I was in a dream class at school and we were working with dreams. And then I think it was the next year we were working with I was in a somatic class, which also we also worked with dreams. And so I started to track my menstrual cycle with my dreams. And so I went back and I looked at when this actually started to birth in the way that I feel like, oh, this is kind of manifesting into the world now as these kind of paper images. And so it was the summer of 2018 kind of July.
And I wrote I wrote the dreams down. And so if you like, I can share them. I love that. So there were three dreams. And then there was a thread pool to a dream that I had many, many, many years ago almost like I want to say like 20 years ago now, which if you've been to any of my dream practices or dream groups, you've heard the dream.
And then the dream was a very simple tiny dream. And it was of a little mouse. And the little mouse had overalls. And it said, there's something real inside of you and this huge voice. And I worked with that dream forever. I'm still working with that dream. And then there were there was two other dreams. And I'm just going to weave this web. So just bear with me. All right. So here's wondering.
And I'm just going to read it to you. There's a bathhouse of people who can't bathe themselves all women, summer and wheelchairs, some just can't move in certain ways. I helped them take a bath, shower, wash their hair, massage your shoulders and scalp. They are not expecting such care. They just want to soap and leave. I give them care, wash hair, make sure water is warm enough. It's like a water park for women. I take honor and pride in my work.
The very next day is another dream. I'm looking for a voice. It's not one but many. The voice is a chain of hands, women linked at the heart. I drew a little picture of like hands together. The message comes through the wound is a doorway, a portal wounding happens to open. In this case, a spiral or a chain of those hands coming together. And then about a week later, I'm working on a dream with this old dream about the mouse having the overall. So I'm doing some dream work.
And this is what comes through in like a relaxed day, a different state of consciousness, like restful laying down practice and working with dreams. And then the mouse lady shows up, no overalls. She doesn't need overalls in this circle. She feels protected. Overalls are only necessary outside. She shows me how to make a doll. So or hot glue ahead of a stuffed animal to the top. And then I drew a little picture of like a body at the bottom.
And then the collective many linked as a web. And then she shows me carpenteria, which is a beach in on the west coast. She shows me carpenteria beach go there this morning. So those are kind of. So after I had the first dream of the women bathing and the very next day I had that dream of that voice and the collective I looked back and that's when I started to make these.
There were just where's my flamingo. There were images of more like bodies of women. And then I had all these cut out. I just collaged. Yes, a wolf, a flamingo, a bear, a dog. And it was almost, and I see this with a lot of love, it was a very kind of obsessed feeling like they had to come out. And I, and I remember the feeling, I don't remember the dream. I don't remember any of this for a very long time.
I just remember the feeling of cutting out these images and having my whole room lined with them. Then I would sit in the middle and I would just sing. I would just hum and sing. Looking at all these these. I don't know. I was a bird headed animal headed body body part peoples. And when I started kind of, I'm just going to use the word working with them being with them in space.
And I realized that something was happening to me. I realized that. And we've talked about this before, but I'm someone who, who's, it's hard for me to articulate what I feel, what I want to say, how I want to say it. I like loop around and don't feel like I make sense. But when it comes to creating images, it's almost like it's so helpful to translate that for myself as an image as a picture as a durable. And then it just feels like whatever was inside has a place to be and has a place to land.
And then over time, I realized that, oh, this is not helpful for me. It can be really helpful for things that are difficult to express. And what I didn't realize, this was also the origin of the thesis of like my whole thesis because on when was it? Let's see July 17th. This is probably one, well, it's one of the oldest times that I actually write about the wound. The wound is a doorway, a portal wounding happens to open.
So it makes so much sense to me now because this deck in this project was a parallel like sister friend, pal guide, confidant to that whole huge doctoral work that was all on wounding. And I almost like I could navigate that place of pain and hurt and this idea of like where do I belong? Where am I from?
And this is what actually held I actually took a whole chapter out of my dissertation about this deck because or these at that point was more like just the images because it did hold a lot of space for me. And I just held that web of like now this can be your voice. We don't have to speak. You don't have to speak by yourself. You can speak through us. You can have like a dialogue with us.
And it can be a place for your voice to kind of echo or for you to find your voice or for you to test drive, but it might feel like, you know, through the voice of the flamingo or through the voice of the bear or through the voice of all. And then eventually became all of these different emotions and feelings and and getting that out somatically.
And then I was like, oh, there's so many threads. I want to pull on that. I'm like, where do I? Where do I go next? Thank you. I'm going to go with thank you for sharing like the real actual origin story, which is so lovely to hear. Right. Is that I think it's so easy to frame things is like, I had this idea and I sat down and I did it over. I know that's not you, but that's me.
I like, it's so lovely to hear about the web underneath the finished product, right, because it's not this linear clear cut. It was just beautiful evolving and like co creative almost experience. It sounds like and I love hearing that. And listeners, I'm going to link to Chante's interview on dream work because we did an interview on the podcast, handful of years ago about dream work. And I cannot recommend dream stuff more. But let's stay focused on the deck.
Let's go with the somatic thread because you said something at the beginning and I'll pull it in here. You said, you almost never look at the book. You work with an Oracle deck. And I was like, what the heck when you said that to me for the first time, because you know I read the book and that's the first thing I do, I think that that's the first thing a lot of us do.
And so when I received this deck and the word somatic is right there on the front, I was like, oh, yeah, okay, she's she's not going to give me the answer. No, I went back and forth a lot. I really, really did because I know people love the book and the books are amazing sometimes. And you know, if we think about the little museum in your hand or if we think about when we go and this happens to me too. And here's a practice for all of us listening. Go to a museum and don't read whatever is near.
The painting just haven't experienced with what the creator made. If you're an author writing a story, we want you to read the words. If the story is illustrated, we want you to pause and be with the image as you turn the page. But as somebody who creates things that sometimes have words and sometimes don't have words, it's very difficult to then add words to something that we want you to have an experience with.
And so when I really started working with these, with the bird song, I had a, my room was filled with all of these images on the ground and then eventually I started to draw them and put them up on the walls. And I started to learn about the feeling or even what what feeling would accompany what bird song by taking its shape.
So if we go outside and we mimic, and we see this in nature, mimicry happens in nature, you know, as protection, as repellent, when things begin to mimic, they grow different ways. And so if we just take on the shape of one of those birds on and then see what would come next. And so I started to do that. I started to just begin with the shape.
And this is how some shapes were created. This is how some of the feelings were, again, it wasn't linear. Sometimes the bird came first, sometimes the shape of the body came first, sometimes the feeling came first, sometimes they got changed and shifted, you know, it wasn't like, oh, joy, it's always, you know, the hands up in the air and, you know, it wasn't always like that.
But sometimes when we take on a shape like joy and we have the hands up in the air, it does something to our body, right, our lungs expand, our chest opens. And then what would happen if we just shifted that because we're not, you know, feelings are not static. We say, I feel, I feel, you know, I'm panicked. I feel panicky or I feel frustrated or I feel joyous. But it could be fleeting, right, it could be from one moment to the other. We can listen to a song and completely our whole world.
We can go outside and listen to the birds. And I just read this study of like how listening to the birds and it's like, of course, it's like stress relief like for me or Shinore Miyoku. That's the Japanese word for it. You go into nature or you're being with nature, you're going on a hike and your whole world changes. The other day I was sitting here and I was editing, you know, doing some editing on this.
And my husband was like, I'm going up to the mountain. Do you want to come? And I was like, no, I want to finish on number 25. I got to get through. And that was like, wait, wait, let me just, let me shift here. And it was such a complete change of your whole body changes. And so I going back to the question of the book.
And what an author writes. It does not come with like a blank slate. We don't come with no life and we don't come with no story. We come with, you know, a lot. And that's sometimes it's so beneficial. And you get that in the drawings, you know, a lot of the drawings are just me playing, feeling these feelings, adjusting, looking at the birds, noticing what they do.
And then translating that. And so, however, with feelings, I felt like I really wanted to move away from this idea of all the binaries in all of our structured world. And so if I was going to tell you, love is this joy is this. Then, you know, you read the book and you're like, oh, yes, if it's if it makes you feel good, then it's like, oh, yeah, having a good day.
If it like challenges you're like, oh, no, but what happens with that nuance in between, you know, what happens with that ability to for ourselves, choose what joy, it's joy might not be like 100% for us or might be really difficult, you know, joy is not always easy for some folks. And so, the book was created as a place to explore. And I really mean that the pages are almost blank.
And it's going to be, Marils is completely blank and that really intimidating. A blank page can be really, really intimidating. And so the final copy is going to have just a little bit of like, hey, what might this feeling. What might be extra be what might it's color be what message might it share with you right now. And then so that when we have that feeling again, then we can go back and be with our own sensations.
Because a lot of, you know, ideas of feelings have been kind of cooked into our culture, you know, like good and bad, you know, but if you're frustrated, that's not good. It's like, it's like a bad feeling like, or if you're confused, you know, that's even worse. You know, and sometimes, you know, we have this like idea of like, why can't confusion be a place where there's so many ideas and thoughts that we might just need to pause for a long period of time.
And you said before we hit record, you said you were incorporating a sentence or phrase or something that that called out to ingredients that were necessary. And so as I want to explain for listeners that maybe aren't watching the video or haven't seen images yet, like what you see when you pull a card from this deck is a drawing of a human like
human like body with a bird head. And there is a word at the bottom. The one I'm holding up right now is frustrated. There's joy, there's nourishment, there's fearful, there's rest, there's listen, there's many, many words. And that's it. So I'm holding up frustrated. And then you mentioned that now that I'm looking at this now that this is the emotion that I'm paying attention to, there are two ingredients to work with us. Yes, what are these two ingredients.
I wrote this down because I wanted people, I wanted all of us to not be so quick to just even gone about with our day, but to let this be like a practice tool.
And as I said for this journey, we need two main ingredients and for this journey of of somatically being with our feelings and emotion and getting to know them in another way, perhaps that is different than what we learned in that binary of good, bad, you know, some a desirable feeling, an undesirable feeling, a welcome feeling, ashamed feeling.
And so, the main ingredients were trust and translation. So trust that whatever, you know, our bodies, our minds are thinking, our feeling at that moment, we can go with it, even if it's like, oh, I feel frustrated.
You know, we're like tight. And the other one is, is translation, because translation allows us to then see it or experience it in a new way, when we translate something, whether that's in our, in our sound or whether that's in our body, it gives us almost like another little doorway to move.
And then when we go back and you can think about this as a journal, a journal to be with your feelings and to over time notice them, see how they change depending on the season, you know, because we might get, we might just be like frustrated and hot and agitated and then we're like, oh, this is happening in the summertime.
You know, when we might just be like, hot, our bodies just might be having the sensation of heat and that might be translating into like frustration or like, I need to get this heat out in some way or it might be like, you know, like, in, I'm from a warm place. And from, you know, my people are from an island that's really warm and we're really loud, passionate, hot people who get angry and dance and we're, you know, it's just a lot sometimes.
So when we go to like cold places like, I don't know Minnesota, because I live there or even Paris because it's colder, it's like, what is that? What is that weird specimen here with all this like fire heat. And sometimes, you know, we can feel unwelcomed just because people around us or the culture around us or the season around us is different. Why words migrate.
Okay, so unexpected movement migration. I'm now in a different room listeners, maybe you can hear that or see that if you're watching the video version. And I'm just named that I literally just migrated and it's a little bit what I wanted to ask what we just had a the last episode right before this one aired was on migration actually.
And I'm just going to say that I'm going to talk about the movement that is very indicative in spring, particularly. Maybe let's talk a little bit about why birds and your own your own birds story, Tunti. So earlier I said that this these birds showed up at a time where the big question of my dissertation appeared, which the question of my dissertation was, what is the image of the wound and is it helpful to have something outside ourselves to see and live with.
And that image of the wound for me was homelandlessness, my family literally migrated from an island from Cuba and came to the United States. I was the first to be born here. And so that wound of like, where do I belong? I don't feel like I'm from here, but I went back there and I didn't feel like I was welcomed in that way that we imagine we should be welcomed, I will say.
So I feel like the birds in a very unconscious way were very helpful for me to notice that this is a natural thing. It's not a negative thing to not have the same place to be able to say, oh, my roots are so deep, you know, there are birds that.
That stay all winter long, you know, the here we have the curve curve built raster it's here all winter long, the scrub jays are here all winter long, but the hummingbirds are not the hummingbirds they go away, you know fall and they still haven't returned in its March, but they'll be here soon.
So I feel like while this process and projects started with a lot of different heads and heads in the sense also going back to the somatic part of the deck is sometimes we need to put on a mask or a costume to help us explore that feeling. So the birds and a lot of them were birds, you know, like over I started counting the other day it was like over 80% of all these images were of birds.
And as I started being curious about that and changing the deck to be birds or all birds together, I realized how many or how much birds were a part of my life growing up. And related to my, you know, my family, everybody had birds, I'll just say that. My dad, my dad loved birds, he set fire to the kitchen because he went out to look at his love bird condominium in the backyard and totally forgot was there observing the birds.
And great grandmother had birds, she had finches and cockatiels and I was remembering the story of the cockatiels, she had had like some kind of she called it arthritis. And she would like cure it and care for it. And it just reminded me of like, oh, I learned in that dream, it reminded me of like, oh, I learned to care for my grandmother. And I remember, I remember my self looking at her put like this little, I don't know what she was putting on the birds foot, but my grandmother had birds.
And so we had, let's see if I can remember all the birds, we had a peacock, we had cockatiels, those big cockatiels and cockatiels. And then I had a macaul that somebody gave him, they lived very, very long time. So it had to be rehoused and he had he had it for a very, very long time. We had love birds galore everybody, my dad had like a love bird condominium and he would, I don't know how to say this in English, great.
They're always, they're always paired, but they would have their little bird houses and then the babies, they were given to all of the family. My grandmother had a bird, my great-grandmother had one of my dad's birds. So I started to think about like, oh, this is, and I had a bird in college, which somebody gave to me, and you know, it lived in my dorm room like on the download. For a while, like, houses, you know.
So I think that unconsciously being with those birds and then allowing those bird songs to like help me move my body in a way that I didn't know, I didn't know that this is what was happening until like very much afterwards. And so I started to write this book, honestly, I didn't link up the birds with like all these birds that I had growing up. And now I don't keep birds. I'm not a fan of keeping birds. If you have birds, that's great.
I have so many birds where I live. Like, they just come and they land on the trees and they sing their songs and I feed them. I feed them and some seed and some fruit sometimes, some peanuts. My scrub jays love a peanut and it's fun to watch them coming in like, going and putting it back into the earth. So yeah, so I feel like that's, that's why I became just birds. And when I think about home and where the birds live.
I've researched and wrote about the birds. They are some of the animals that live highest in the skies. Some, you know, like the albatross doesn't come down. But they're very long. They just kind of live up in the clouds, up in the mountains, very, very high. And then, you know, you have the birds that live on the trees. And then you have like some birds that live in the water, like the flamingo or the anhingo, which dives for its food.
And then, you know, I've got a lot of owls and birds that burrow under the ground. So it's like, oh, it helped me to see. And to feel like, oh, I could be at home in any of these places. Lighty feeling that kind of flightiness. I can be in a more kind of, you know, in a tall tree and have like a broader view. Or it can be in like the juniper tree and be nourished by, you know, the juniper.
And then the anhinga, the anhinga is a bird that I feel like it was probably the bird that I've actually seen. Most, that was just like, wow, you know, because some of these birds I've seen, I've like observed. And so, in the Everglades, there's a lot of anhingas in Florida. I got to see one dive in, literally dive in into the water. And then when it comes out of the water, it has to dry its wings. Their wings are coated with like a waxiness, but they still have to like dry their wings.
And so they land, they like, they're so exposed. So it's almost, and I, and I paired that that one with courage, I think courageous. And we think of courage as like, yes, this person is courageous. That's, but at the same time, when I think about that and hanga with this arm spread out, it's so vulnerable.
And come at any moment. And you know, in the Everglades, you're like, you're waiting for that moment. Like people, you know, they got the photographers out there looking for like, and I was just remember just being with this anhinga and the wings were just out. And it's just there like, are you going to come closer? And I'm like, no, no, I'm not coming close. But I, you know, it's just fascinating to be able to observe.
And this, this bird that dives and, and, and swims, swims, and then come back up. So these like different claims of like home and place, and also like different levels of like consciousness, because of feelings and our emotions, sometimes it can be really high and sometimes they can feel really low. And we move like, you know, like a wave back and forth through them, or we move like a bird, migrating, going up high and then like diving down.
Even the hummingbirds do that here. I think it's part of their like mating ritual. Like they go really high. And then it's almost like a free dive. And, and, and it's, it's amazing. I think that's why the birds. I love that. And you know what I was thinking is you were talking, because I was, I'm holding what you're saying. I was also, I'm still on the like, don't use the book. And how do we use the book, you know, right?
Like when we're working with cards. And what I was thinking about is, you know, when we go outside, and we have an experience in nature, it's not because we've read a book. We're not holding some book that's like, when you're in the mountains, this is what you feel. And this is why you feel it. And this is what it means. We're just in the mountains. And we have our own experience. And it's meaningful to us.
In the same way as you're talking it, like we have our own experiences with birds, whatever birds are, whether you know the name or not, doesn't even matter. You don't have to know like this is the annual thing it does every March, you know, 19th or whatever. But you're seated outside or I'm right next to a window and I look out the window and I see the bird at the feeder. And I have an experience.
If I take long enough, if I pause, and then as you said, if we pull the thread of like, here's what I do next is let me be truthful and let me translate. Let me take long enough to translate that experience, right? Not because it's so easy to glance at the window and go on our day. It's so easy to draw a card and be like, okay, frustrated. That's what I'm working with. Great. Thanks, Chanty. And I'm out the door. Right.
It's easy to do that. Our life is designed to like prompt us in that direction. Yeah. And so I want us to be prompted in a different direction. Yeah. It learns to be prompted to do our own research in a creative, more indigenous way that says, this body has wisdom. This body, mind, soul, spirit, field. There's a wisdom there. And when you were talking about, why do we go to the books all the time, I thought of something and it's because it's safe.
The book just tells us something and words are really powerful. And we believe them. And sometimes we just need a little bit more listening. We just need to pause and listen and listen to our bodies and listen to what it's feeling and saying. And, and you know, because we're like a huge antenna, you know, we're feeling all of this.
And then, oh, frustrated. This is what frustration means. And then, you know, you can say that you'd be like, is that true? Is it helpful? You know, and then we might use that antenna and just slow down and say, oh, I'm feeling, you know, heartbroken. Because, and it might not even be yours, you know, you might just be in the field of like, you know, heartbreak. Or something might be going on astrologically that you feel, you know, totally inspired or, whatever it is that you feel, or
you might have heard somebody in your life say, oh, you're always blank. And you want to, you're like, am I really like that? Or is that just something that somebody told me? And so I'm going to, I'm just going to be curious about that.
So having that moment to be in relationship with our bodies and be in relationship with our feelings and do, I'm going to call it research, you know, do creative research with what is coming up in our field on that day during that season and translating that for that moment doesn't have to be forever. We were talking earlier about you not wanting to write in this book, even though it is made for you to write.
Because what if I have a different feeling on a different day and, and then that can be included. And eventually we realize that anger doesn't always look like this. Firstration always doesn't look like this joy doesn't always look like this. It could look like so many like a bird song, you know, you can hear and you can identify. Oh, that sounds, you know, if the hummingbird comes by. I mean, it's immediate. I know that's a hummingbird. But it's not always the same sound.
The curve, the thrash that lives here. It's change, it's song changes as the season changes because I have not heard it sing in the same. I know it's the curve, the thrash and it's a mimicking bird. So it can mimic a lot of sounds. Now it's song is different. So it's a same bird. We're the same kind of we're you know today we feel like, oh yeah, this is me. But you have an experience or you, you know, something happens in your life or you grow and evolve and then joy feels different.
But it's still happening in this kind of field that we call our body, you know, and so again, I'm just going back to this. Moving away from like this dogmatic rigid one way only linear binary of everything, you know, of everything because even when we speak to each other, it's like, okay, I know I'm having conversation with you.
It's like, okay, I know I'm having conversation with Merrill and Merrill might, you know, you just birth this like new name and so it's like, oh my god, we're, it's like a different vibration of Merrill now. And so it's, it's nice to acknowledge that that there is nuance in this world. It's so easy, it's so easy to go outside and to really notice that nuance, you know, from the weather, the weather is the beautiful, the weather and birds, you know, I have been paired a lot.
And divination, by the way, all gear, yeah, I feel like it's the name of that. But it changes all the time, all the time, even like in Florida, where it's the sunshine state, you know, it's like sometimes it's blurring, sometimes it's sundering, sometimes it's sunny, other days it's windy. I really do hope that, that the bird song allows us to slow down and listen and listen, and that's why the first card, you were asking, I think you asked, did you ask me already this question? No, go for it.
Do you want to ask me the question about like ancestor? So the first two cards, don't feel like a feeling. You don't necessarily say, I feel listen, you know, sometimes we say, I feel heard or I feel unheard. And the listen is the first card and it has this bird kind of with its ear to the ground and in a sense, that's, that's what this, that's what this deck asked me to do.
It asked me to listen and to translate. And so if we move a little bit slower and really pay attention to listening, we hear the bird song, we hear the nuance of that feeling, we can see its gradation, how anger can be, you know, 1% anger to like a thousand percent anger, you know, or panic. We can feel like a little panicky and then we can have like a moment of panic and then we even have this thing in our book, I really call the panic attack, you know, that's feeling.
And so if we listen, maybe we can hear the nuance because I do feel sometimes when we, when we say a certain thing or when we hear when we say, oh, how are you. And you say fine, there's no fine in the stack. I don't know if you're feeling a fine. What does that really mean? And so that's kind of the question that I want to continuously ask of myself, like, what does it really mean to feel lament or to feel a shift or change.
And then the second card, we don't necessarily feel ancestor, but we feel ancestor. We really do. We can't help it. We're made of ancestor, this bone and body, the land that we're in, we're made of ancestor. And that, it reminds us that this space of feeling of exploring our emotions happens in this body that is old and ancient and it's new and within this environment.
And that also contributes to how we feel. As I was doing this, there was, there was one in particular, you see, like, oh, there it is sensitive. So sensitive. It doesn't necessarily look like a bird, but this is a neolithic image that Maria Gambutas, who's, she was an anthropologist, she did these drawings of these neolithic images that she was looking at.
And this is the markings here are of water, are of water bird. And so as I was moving with this image, I literally took this position. This is why this image is in this position. And I don't know why this came at this moment, but for me, I've had my hands, it felt like I had my hands in water, and I could feel the rippling of the water, reminding me of an ancient technology where mothers put their hands in the water to see if their children had made it to another land because of migration.
Now you can say, oh, that's a story that Chanty made up. Or you can say, maybe this is an ancestral memory. Maybe this did happen. Maybe this is more archetypal. Did we ever go to the ocean and put our hands in the water and wonder if our family made it across the land? I don't know. And so that's why I got paired with sensitive because it was like, you know, if you just put your hands in water, what do you hear? And so that's why those two first don't, it doesn't feel like a feeling.
But to me was like, oh, here, here are some other ways, or here's another kind of song, really, good to song. Here's another song for us to be aware of, you know, our feelings can be old and ancestral and ancient. And so you can move into the future. They might be future images or future feelings that we're having now in this body. And if we listen to those, what, what is it actually telling us?
Because that, that's what that shape was sharing with me was like, you can be sensitive to a wisdom that is old and ancient. And whether you can prove it or not, it doesn't necessarily matter. It doesn't necessarily matter to me, I will say. Yeah. That's where that trust comes in, I feel like, right? Yes, it, yeah. And, and to trust that we can, we can do that.
And lean up against a tree or sip some tea or cook an old recipe or a recipe and receive wisdom from that which we are in relationship to. And that's really, that's really, we're in relationship. I want us to be in relationship to our feelings, not just saying, oh, you know, I hear this sometimes. Oh, you're so emotional. It's like, imagine no feeling. We even have a feeling for no feeling. No. You know, like just, just delete emotion. How do that? Is that even possible?
You know, I know we both read Carla McLean's book on emotion. And, and there's one sentence that to this day, many, many months later, stuck out to me, which was that people that have had a traumatic brain injury that impacts the part of brain that processes emotion, they can't make decisions. You can't make any decisions, you can't make any decisions when you can't feel what I rather talk to you on Wednesday or Thursday. I don't know because I don't know how my day feels, right?
I can't, it's such a processing experience for us to have emotion and to be aware of emotion. And I just want to name that, you know, it took me many days before I realized that some of these cards weren't. I'm using quotes. If you can't see the video emotions, right? They weren't on the emotion wheel as I know the emotion wheel right it took me many days because I did know the feeling.
And I was just, I'm here with it and I'm working with it. And then as I, and I wrote down like, I'll ask Chanty about how calm and sister, right? And then I was like, you know what? Like what would I call it emotion that maybe isn't a word on the emotion wheel because that they're and today even I, I woke up in a weird, in a weird mood today, that's my word weird. And for me, what weird means is a whole lot of layered things together and I can't totally pick them apart and identify them.
And so weird serves as like a lovely all-encompassing like I'm not great and I can't explain it further than that. But also like maybe I have the freedom to name, I could name it whatever I wanted to name it right I could explore my own version of well what does weird mean to me and is there something that expresses that translates it even more effectively for me in my body and my experience. And sometimes it could just be helpful to say feeling weird.
Yeah, you know, because then when we go into places where people don't want us to feel a certain way or words not accepted, you know, if you, if you go to your like local place and maybe we can all test drive this and how are you today? I feel weird. Just notice that like like official expressions coming back. It's not, you know, we say fine because it's safe.
You know, but if we were to, you know, and you asked earlier about nourish, I mean, I feel nourish. Oh, yes, a feeling like nourishment to me is 100% of feeling like what that means to each of us individually is nuance though, you know, it's like. And this was very helpful for me and maybe it's helpful for you and for anybody listening. This idea of archetype and archetype will image. So archetype is something that's been.
You know, a thought and image and idea that is always and will continue to be always in all cultures and during all times backward and forward like nourished. You know, like have people been nourished before how we felt nourished. Yes, are there ways that we yes, we've always we have to eat, you know, basic nourishment. But what we eat the archetype will image how we're nourished always can change, you know, some birds drink nectar, other birds fish.
Some birds like the seeds and the fruits, some birds get nourished at night and some birds nourished during the day. So that idea of like, oh, there's this overall general. And how that is represented can change every single day like communication, we've always been able to communicate whether that's through letter, you know, or now through phone or now we zoom, you know, communication, I would say is archetype.
And the way that we do it or the way that is manifest, it will change throughout time. This has been an incredible conversation. Thank you. Do you want to share a little practice that feels connective to our discussion today that we could try at home. I feel like what I want to share with us is almost like a practice for a practice. So if you're watching this, this is great. I'll try to be very descriptive for those of you who are listening. But depending on where we are, I'm inside right now.
And this practice might be really helpful to do outside. And even better, if you do it with like the birds right now, it's like midday here. It just snowed a little bit and it stopped. And so it's really wet outside. And the birds are like, at a feast right now. What are we being nourished while the juniper berries on the trees and my seeds outside. So this will be a practice of one observation. And then a little bit of movement and then a little bit of imagination.
And then a little bit of translation. So it will be great if you can translate and I will say, for whatever reason you can't get outside, this can happen all within your imagination. So hopefully we could all imagine a bird. We've all seen a bird real or fantastical like, oh gosh, what's that bird called. What is a fantastical bird called with fire? Oh, a Phoenix.
Yeah, we can even imagine like the Phoenix as like a fantastical bird. All right, so whether you're inside or outside or using your imagination, maybe you can kind of look around and look around the space you're in. If you're outside, you can listen to the birds or you can look around for the birds. And you know, the birds will move around. So you might have to kind of get a snapshot of what that bird might be.
And if you have a snapshot of what that bird might be or if you're looking at a bird, I've had three birds, four birds now just with by my window. Just allow your eyes to lower or close, but just retain that image of your neighborhood bird. That you saw that is close by that is perched on a tree or on your rooftop or the bird within your imagination. And in your own way, just welcome that bird as a friend, a mirror, an ancestor, a way to explore sensation and feeling or even just to play.
And as you're imagining this bird. Now the movements that the bird makes or has made be welcomed in your own body. Whether that's a timing movement of the wings or maybe it's the way that the bird jumps and you're jumping. Or maybe it's just how the bird stands or is perched. But just allow for the next minute or so some movement in the body. However, tiny, however big, you might experience this bird in quick motions or slow motion. And if your thoughts move to like, oh, what am I doing?
How is this even possible? Just remember the bird again. Remember its movements and just allow yourself to mimic this bird. As if you're curious, what does this bird feeling? What can I learn about this environment by mimicking this bird? And then for the next minute, just allow your body to move or to not move or to move spontaneously sometimes. As if you're just following and trusting your own movements. And then you can slow down the movements. And just pause.
And for the next minute, just observe the wisdom of your body in the space at this time, sensing, feeling, noticing. And then in your own way, just keep moving. And then in your own way, think this bird, birds, wisdom, its share, for your ability to look and mimic and play. And then in your journal, just begin to translate. Translate in words. Maybe you write the name of the bird or the name that you're calling this bird.
Maybe you translate how it felt to move your body, what thoughts, images, ideas, can forward, whatever they were. And then maybe using your off hands or your, what is that called when you don't write with the, whatever hand you're not, you're non-dominant. So it's called your non-dominant hand with your non-dominant hand. Just make a little doodle. Scribble doodle. And think about how it felt to move like a bird and translate that in that scribble, in that doodle.
And then to complete, maybe there is a feeling that came forward for you that has an aim. Maybe it doesn't have a name, maybe it has a name. You can read what you wrote, remember the sensation of movement and look at the doodle. And see if there's a specific name for this exploration. And then you can transition however you like. Maybe you reorient yourself into the space that you're at by looking around, looking up and looking down, looking behind and to the sides.
And then maybe rubbing your body. And then transitioning into whatever you're going to do for the rest of your day. Thank you, Chanty. You're welcome. Where can we find you? Where can we find bird song oracle? So the bird song oracle will be ready for presale on March 19th. And maybe I can send you a link, but it's intro wisdom dot com. It'll be up there. Yeah, you can find me there. I hope that you do this practice outside though. Yes, we will definitely do this practice outside.
Thank you listeners. All these links will be in the show notes. Chanty, as always, thank you so much. So fun. I could talk to you forever. Thanks for playing with me. That was fun. Really was. Thanks. Thanks for listening to our mindful nature. If you enjoyed today's episode, please consider sharing it with a friend or leaving me a review wherever you get your podcasts. It helps others to find the show. And let's face it, we could all use a few more meditators in our lives.
Our mindful nature is recorded on Muscogee land and produced with the support of Brianna Mealson. Deep gratitude is offered to acoustic ecologists, Gordon Hempdon and Nick McMahan, for the use of their nature field recordings in many of these episodes. To join my live classes, ask questions or learn about my teacher trainings, please visit maralarnet.com. Thanks again for listening. I'll see you next week.