Championing, cultivating and integrating Indigenous healing modalities around Mother Earth for all our relatives
We support the emergence of dignity, compassion, hózhǫ́ through indigenous knowledge, regenerative wellness and the spiritual significance of the Tribal Canoe Journey
Our Universal Sacred Values
We see our sacred values as a fractal, when repeated in its numerous applications whether as a conversation, a document or a service, generating paradigm shifts at scale.
Compassion
Love in action, peace in effect, responding to suffering in others to alleviate it
Hózhǫ́
Dinë/Navajo word harmony, balance, beauty, everything in its right place as it should be
About Us
We are a nonprofit advocating for sacred recovery, wellness and advocacy in indigenous communities and beyond, providing this through the programs and places described below.
Our Initiative
Join the initiative to develop indigenous-centered places of regenerative recovery, wellness and advocacy.
Join the Canoe Journey
We invite you on an epic spiritual journey with our Canoe family, to connect and celebrate with 10,000 others at the annual Canoe Journey.
Canoe Journey Resilience Modalities
Providing indigenous-centered healing, recovery and wellness
Somatic Archaeology is a practice developed by Ruby Gibson (Lakota, Ojibway, Mestiza). It is the process of becoming whole by curing your amnesia and remembering your stories. This knowledge affords you choices and restores to you the power to manifest your unique destiny in a conscious way. Somatic refers to the body, and Archaeology to the study of ancient cultures through examining their remains. When we bring the two words together, Somatic + Archaeology, we are denoting the capacity to excavate familial and cultural memory imprints buried in our body. Exploring somatic memory and body narratives help us understand what impels us biologically to certain behaviors and symptoms, and provides us with skills to release neurological patterns of historical amnesia so that we can become free to live unburdened, non-fragmented, compassionate and harmonious lives.
Brainspotting is a powerful, focused treatment method developed by Dr. David Grand that works by identifying, processing and releasing core neurophysiological sources of emotional/body pain, trauma, dissociation and a variety of other challenging symptoms. Generational Brainspotting (GBSP) combines
Brainspotting with Somatic Archaeology, a transgenerational healing model developed by Dr. Gibson. GBSP is indicated specifically to provide healing for seven generations of inherited familial and cultural patterns. Our focus is on developing positive aspects of inheritance, and reducing traumatic aspects, such as: adverse childhood experiences, domestic and sexual abuse, addiction, anxiety, despair, grief, depression, attachment issues, survival coping mechanisms, stress biasing, adoption, war related trauma, genocide,
ethnocide, immigration, and removal from traditional homelands.
For indigenous cultures of the Americas, storytelling is used as an oral form of language associated with practices and values essential to developing one's identity. Somatic storytelling is an interactive self development practice and an invitation to explore the organic being that you are. Through breathing techniques, explorative movement, sound and stillness, somatic storytelling can a deeper understanding for the conversation between body and mind. Even when you do not speak your body expresses your internal experience through breath, posture, movement patterns, micro-movements, body language, interactions with the external environment and how your body responds to your inner being. The history of storytelling goes back thousands of years, it has many forms and it's in our nature of leaning to gather around to tell and listen to stories.
Canoe Journey Generational Expansion
Integrated with the annual Tribal Canoe Journey, this program helps us develop a culture of dignity, compassion and 'hozho' (harmony, balance, beauty) in ourselves, family and community. Braiding indigenous ways, neuroscience, and the Canoe Journey protocol, a clear understanding of self emerges to heal from the negative impacts of our ancestry while connecting to its resilience , shaping a regenerative present and for ourselves and our beyond.
Generational Storying
The storying is a visual chronological representation
of the experiences that shaped our lives, including moments of resilience, trauma-inducing events, family history, birth story. Creating the timeline is the beginning of the interruption to our ancestral connections. Mentally, it brings order to the chaos of suffering. Emotionally it brings intelligence and reprieve to suffering. Spiritually it brings connection to our ancestors and Mother Earth. Physically, it brings a relationship to self and accountability to healing. When you remember, history is revealed, clearly recognizing the trail of stories that formulate your life.
Canoe Journey
1
Journey 1 introduces somatic storytelling and the practice of Somatic Archaeology. Somatic storytelling is the practice of listening to and making sense of the stories your body, mind and spirit are continuously sharing with you. Somatic Archeology is the process of becoming whole by remembering all the parts of you. These 1:1 sessions involve providing safe migration to and from the somatic self where the generational trauma is stored. It is about listening to the body, not the mind - you can't talk your way to healing. We practice the five steps of somatic archeology: noticing, sensing, feeling, interpreting, regeneration.
Canoe Journey
2
Journey 2 is based on the integration of Journey 1. Your home environment, body, dreams, and any emotionality since Journey 1 will impact this journey's outcome. The mental space and the relationship between the client, Mother Earth and their ancestors will further cultivate healing and generational trauma recovery. The completion of this journey will provide resources for your emotional, spiritual, mental and physical health. An ease of relationship with one's ancestors emerges in a good way.
Canoe Journey
3
Journey 3 is based on the integration of Jouneys 1 and 2. By this time your body's rhythm has an archeological foundation of cultivated stories. The rhythm consists of the practicing and honoring of your relationship to your emotional, spiritual, mental and physical being. Our being is three fourths water, which is the emotional part of us. So this journey is focused on working with your own water / emotional being, to enable the emergence of pure regeneration.
Canoe Journey
4
Journey 4 is based on the integration of Journeys 1, 2 and 3. This is when you realize your purpose. This journey reconciles right relationship to the remaining elements of our being: our mental/air, spiritual/fire, physical/earth parts. This is the beginning of establishing healthy relationships, identifying a clear vision for our grandchildren’s grandchildren’s grandchildren.
Meet our Crew
Experienced doctors and Scientist form our medical staff
Solana Booth
As an ocean canoe skipper and NW coastal traditional medicine keeper, Solan's vision is to open the doors of Nesting Eagle, a behavioral health and spiritual clinic. She promotes indigenous teachings by being as a speaker/doer of ancient knowings, hunter and gatherer, medicine keeper. She is a family violence and recovery specialist, practitioner of generational brain-spotting and somatic archeology, and plant medicine (Mother's Breath) educator. She utilizes traditional ceremonies, art, first foods, birth and death work, storytelling/first narratives, and her positive interconnectedness model.
Neil Takemoto
Neil Takemoto (Hawaii kamaʻāina, Japanese) has stewarded regenerative community development for 30 years, supporting sovereign cultures and places designed, governed and owned by the people, for the people. He is a facilitator at the Healing & Reconciliation Institute (indigenous peacemaking), and an architect of regenerative systems, including self organization, partnership culture, gentle action, regenerative economies, He develops 'braided' programs that integrate indigenous practices with regenerative practices from contemporary society.
Felix Neals
Felix is a licensed mental health counselor (LMHC), practicing for over ten years. His theoretical orientation as a therapist is trauma informed and somatically focused, based in sacred, relational, and humanistic approaches. He draws from transpersonal psychology as well as attachment theory, neurobiology. As a psychotherapist, he supports his clients to look at themselves with honesty and love in order to create more freedom and connection in their lives. His areas of practice include: trauma-focused psychotherapy, mind-body therapy, somatic therapy,
psychedelic integration.
Storytelling is the first healing modality of all Indigenous Peoples
Without our first narratives, we would not have our ceremony and examples of Potlatch, Art, Canoe Society and other Societies. We would not be here today if our ancestors didn’t speak to examples of existing in harmony and protocol with Mother Earth and one another.
Advocates Of Sacred invites you, calls you to action to listen, learn and share stories. We have written a curriculum to train and teach historical trauma to organizations, native nations, healthcare providers, community organizations, children and families. Join us in weaving our truth, our creation and our breath to practice our first healing modality for a true sustainable recovery from generational trauma, civil unrest, pandemic wake, self marginalization, spiritual and emotional justice.
