Wisdom Lineage

I want to start writing more about co-creating our lives and our worlds, transformation, manifestation, pleasure, empowerment, and relationships. What’s been stopping me is not having shared where I’m coming from. Because 1) it’s complicated, and 2) why would anyone want to read that? So this post is for me to blow through this block and access my own permission to share more widely and personally about life.

My family lines are all Ashnenazi - eastern European Jews. My ancestors immigrated from Ukraine and Russia to the United States, mostly in the generation of my great grandparents, and some before that. They sought survival, safety, peace, and eventually assimilation into white American society, and largely succeeded.

For as long as I can remember, even back to being a toddler, I sought a sense of identity: What’s my language? What’s my culture? What’s my magic? I learned languages, I immersed in cultures, I tried things on - all without knowing that Hebrew and Judaism and my own ancestry held answers, gifts, an inheritance of language and culture and spirit and magic.

Meanwhile, my mother and hers were both amazing dancers. For ten years, I was on track to becoming a professional ballet dancer. After quitting ballet at age 13, I kind of languished til discovering martial arts at age 15. The owner and lead instructor of my martial arts school was native Hawai’ian. After five years of devoting myself to training almost 20 hours a week, I traveled to Hawai’i with my instructor and some other students, where I connected with his siblings, who were in the process of reclaiming their connection to land, language, and heritage. They led me on a fully embodied, emotionally charged, nature-connection journey as they shared their life with me for a few beautiful days. That experience was a major turning point in my life. A few years later, I studied abroad in Aotearoa, learned to speak te reo Maori, and was promptly pointed back, by people whose ancestry connects with Hawai’ians, towards my own ancestral heritage.

Meanwhile, also at age 15, I was diagnosed with Hashimoto’s thyroiditis and started taking synthetic thyroid hormone. Eight years later I started my quest to get off the medication. About six years (and two children) after that I succeeded! Through diet, homeopathy, Chinese medicine, and with help from the ocean, I stayed off medication through about three years, including during my third pregnancy and for six months afterwards. Then a stressful travel experience, which included lots of dietary exceptions, sleep disruptions, and being alone with three young children in foreign places, brought about a big flare up. Once home and back in the swing of homeschooling and co-ops and all that, my body felt so exhausted I could hardly stand up while holding my baby. Really I couldn’t function. So I dug in the back of my medicine cabinet and put myself back on synthetic thyroid hormone.

I felt demoralized. I had done so much work, had been devoted to my healthy lifestyle, and now I was back where I started. There must be a deeper level of healing! I googled “shamanic healing autoimmune,” found the website of Peter Aziz, devoured all his content, took a deep dive into books his teachers wrote, and searched for someone in the US offering Body Electronics. Seven years later I found Faith Bost of Faith in Wellness. On Mother’s Day of 2021, I attended a five day Body Electronics seminar. There I met Amy Krohn, who has been my emotional consciousness coach ever since, because I found that, even more than the hands-on body electronics sessions, “playing in consciousness” was the most powerful modality for healing, transformation, and creating my reality that I had ever encountered.

From Peter Aziz, I had learned that this consciousness play is rooted in ancient Hawai’ian wisdom. I learned more about the Mormon guy from Utah who ran away to Hawai’i to study with Hawai’ian healers and eventually dubbed his combo-platter modality body electronics. And then I read the work of Serge Kahili King, which I highly recommend. His father and he were both adopted by Hawai’ian families and schooled in deep and powerful wisdom. He also studied in West Africa and weaves the wisdom he acquired there into his work. He affirms and teachers the power we have to heal and create with our mind-body-spirit with such lightness and ease.

Now, lots of traditions, programs, movies, books and individuals teach manifestation. There is even lots of shared language around it online and all over the place. Personally, I give thanks for the Hawai’ian ancestors who blessed the world with their teachings. Because, long story short, this is the particular wisdom lineage that has awakened my co-creative potential.