Shaman Camp and Laundry

Re-entry

After nine days of “Shaman Camp” in Brazil, re-entry has been variably challenging and smooth.

My honey picked me up at LAX on the 11th and after a quick hug, he deposited me at the Bodynamics final module of a three module training in Venice. We traded suitcases, he took the Brazilian bag home - filled with all white clothing and a few souvenirs, and left me with the bag I'd pre-packed with colorful clothes and note-taking devices (paper and pens) for the next five days.

I arrived at the Bodynamics workshop just after all the first day check-ins of the other seven students, two teachers and one assistant were completed. I was still thinking in Portuguese, so I felt as if I were underwater in the thinking department - not to put it all on jet-lag. (It’s only a four hour difference between Belo and beautiful Venice.) 

Fatigue does funny things to the mind and body. Language immersion engages my gears in a different and pleasant way. I wish I’d had another week in Belo to really seat the poetry and music of the Brazilian tongue in my bone marrow. I feel homesick for the sound of Portuguese. I miss my Shaman’s velvet baritone singing into the night - the songs of each Orixa (deity) in the pantheon of Umbanda. I miss the drums and the mandalas, the roosters crowing and waterfall splashing. I miss the unconditionally loving community which supports us in myriad ways - including cooking three squares and keeping our whites white for ceremony.

Dream-like is how I’d describe the rest of the first day back in the US. 

Tired and wired and weird, oh, my!

By the time Mark picked me up on Monday night, I was toast. So ready to be home and so NOT ready to face two weeks of snail mail and email. Somehow, I have. Somehow, I’m here and showing up to work, play, drive and thrive. Somehow, what seems so life changing as immersion in the study of healing in a foreign country, is integrating into my cells little bit by little bit. Voice contact with my fellow travelers has helped to seat the reality and ground the teachings. We WERE there. That DID happen. We ARE changed and yet, the same as we do the same tasks with a different emPHAsis on a different syLAble.

There's always laundry. Where ever you go, there's laundry.