Ancestral Connections to Plants and Place with Shereen Öberg

#60  –  Join us for a wonderful conversation with Yoga Teacher, Chinese Medicine Practitioner, & Acupuncturist Shereen Öberg on Earth wisdom and recognizing how we are part of Nature, and Nature is part of us.

In this episode, Shereen shares about the strength of her grandmother growing up in Nature in the mountains, and how her grandmother offered key insights about speaking with plants and treating them sacredly. She explores how the deep connection with plants from her ancestral Kurdish homeland has informed her experience with local plants and herbs while growing up in Sweden. She also shares teachings on sacred trees, plants, and the sun in Kurdish culture, and how trees are revered and offer grounding medicine.

Shereen is a yoga and meditation teacher, Reiki practitioner and a licensed Acupuncturist, Chinese Medicine Practitioner & Acupuncturist, and soon to be initiated Priestess through Daughter of Ishtar. She has worked with channeling, healing and spiritual awakening for many years now alongside holding a Bachelor's degree in Business and Economics and a Master's degree in Global Sexual and Reproductive health and rights. She is also a religious studies graduate.

Shereen is an author and the creator of The Law of Positivism, and she is on a mission to help others on their spiritual and healing path. Her new book The Law of Positivism - live a life of higher vibrations, love and gratitude is practical book guiding you through all levels of being to help you to grow on all levels and live your highest potential.

You can find Shereen at: https://www.lawofpositivism.com/
On IG: https://www.instagram.com/lawofpositivism/
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Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC8e4-QDYkq8iYV__pLTsyPw

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Learn how to communicate with plant consciousness in the free workshop on How to Learn Plant Language: https://www.learnplantlanguage.com/

Transcript

Sara Artemisia: 0:05

Welcome to the Plant Spirit Podcast on connecting with plant consciousness, and the healing wisdom of Nature. This podcast is brought to you by the plants and my deep collaborative work with them as a Plant Spirit Wisdom Teacher, Flower Essence Practitioner, Financial Coach, and Co-creator of Plant Spirit Designs. To learn how to communicate directly with plant consciousness, you can check out the free workshop at www.learnplantlanguage.com. For Nature inspired financial coaching, visit www.financialabundancecoach.com. And for herbally inspired clothing, that is an ode to the plants and the people who love them, check out www.plantspiritdesigns.com. I'm your host, Sara Artemisia and I am deeply honored to introduce our next guest to the show today. Shereen Oberg is a channel, Chinese Medicine and Acupuncture Practitioner, Reiki practitioner, doula, author, and host of The law of Positivism podcast. She is a yoga teacher dedicated to the path of healing and heart based living. And she is a graduate of Religious Studies and works with ceremony and mythologies. Shereen is of Kurdish descent, and holds the wisdom and energy of the sacred lands of Kurdistan. Being brought up in Sweden, Shereen has merged the energy and DNA of both cultures and embodied Oneness that goes beyond the physical manifestations of being human. So Shereen, thank you so much for joining us today.

Shereen Öberg: 2:00

Thank you so much for having me today. I'm super excited to talk to you.

Sara Artemisia: 2:06

So great. And yeah, there is so much that I'm excited to learn from you and to share about today. And one of the recent things in a recent conversation that we had that you shared was about your grandmother and your connection to the lands, of course, where you come from, your homeland and her connection with plants. And so I would love to start there. And just hear more about who was your grandmother? Who is she? And what were her connections with plants in your homeland?

Shereen Öberg: 2:41

Yeah, thank you so much for letting me speak about her. It's such an important person in my life and held so much strength and wisdom. The things that she experienced in her life, the initiations, she had and she was a mother of many children. And she had this very strong connection the Kurdish people to the mountains. And in actually one of the arts in my healing oracle card deck is the town where we have ancestry from it's called Hawraman and it's literally like a village built on mountains sides. So it's like layered in a beautiful way very ancient, I'm gonna see if I find it. And her wisdom was not only so she actually never went to school, she did lose her mother, very young, very small, actually, as a child, and she had this deeply Earth connection. And you know, I've heard stories when she's, they were in the mountains as they were activists, so they were fighting for human rights and freedom and the Peshmerga, that the people who had the Kurdish people have been protecting our people, they were usually like riding the horses through the mountains and staying there because my grandfather was definitely well-known activist and in Kurdistan. And I think from that and her upbringing, and also birthing children and all that she was like this Earth mother, and at the same time, I connect her so much with the life of Mother Mary as well to see that strength it takes to lose children and to still like, hold that strength and wisdom. She just then big heart, always positive. So I grew up with her, even here in Sweden. And the things that I always think about when I think about her is an our upbringing in general. And the view that both she and my mother has was really coming back. And I know that you shared also with me, the same thing like growing up with holistic remedies, and not going to like, you created your medicine at home. And we have still these practices where things are, like, there's this philosophy that natural is good and I think besides all the herbs that are, are within our culture, like certain plants I saw that she connected with and one, of course, is the Kurdish women are really the connection with making food and making with your hands. And it's really the plants that you use within that. So we have this food called the Yaprakh or Dolma. And it's important thing about that is that we use the wine leaf, I just could see how my grandmother lit up for and if she sees like the, they see it naturally somewhere or if it's dried, or somehow. And it's not very common here in Sweden. So that's one thing. And then to find it, either naturally or in certain Middle Eastern shops, there was one thing and the way she worked with it. And it's a process of making that and filling it with rice and all the ingredients in it. But then also her spiritual connection with her apartment was filled with plants, and many of them are at my house now. And her flowers are blooming like I have two Orchids, Orchidea. One is purple, and one is pink. And it's a continuous, I've never had an Orchid that is flowing with flowers like these two. So I know that she's always here. But she truly had a deep connection, probably from how she grew up like in Nature. And also as an adult being a lot in the mountains and sleeping in Nature and all of that. And she really had this practice of speaking with her plants, which which many people do those that still remember, like we talk and she said that always talk with the plants. And that makes them feel good. And she saw them as sacred. Because if you made a comment about a plant, or like something fun, it is like no, this is a sacred thing. Like don't take your plants serious. So that's what, what I bring in to my practice and my view of healing and how that's come into my self practice when it comes to I always remember the advice that I got from her and that I still get from my mom.

Sara Artemisia: 8:15

That is amazing. And how would you say that her relationship with plants has really influenced the way that you connect with plants where you live?

Shereen Öberg: 8:29

Yeah. I know that she was always so happy if someone came over with a plant or when she saw things blooming or, and for me that's become important in my own home to have plants and be in communion with them. And now when I've deepened my path for the last couple of years into healing and also understanding Nature as being part of us, and we're part of Nature, for me, it's a lot about being out in Nature as much as possible. And we are surrounded here by forests and this sacred valley that we have here. And for me, it's a communion and I remember once I had an assignment by my mentor to do a ceremony outside and I felt like already before the ceremony I was gonna do. I knew that this was gonna and that started my ancestral work actually, I knew that I was going into a space where I'm in Sweden, but it's a grid and the ceremony and healing that I was going to do was going to transmit into Kurdistan, our sacred lands and people and everything that has been in those regions and to send that healing and throughout the ceremony I felt like the pain and grief of everyone connected to that, and also of my lineage. And I also felt this strong. Actually wolf-spirit. I think we spoke about this light last time. And by chance I found, because in the Kurdish mountains, there are wolves as well. And, and there's this probably communion there as well, of course, it's, you have to be very cautious. But I heard stories from my dad that they were walking through the mountains, because he was also in the mountains for a while when he was young, and that the wolves were around them and like, they couldn't really see them, but they could hear them and they were surrounding us. I felt that wolf spirit energy when doing that ceremony. So in all that I do I infused, I know that I'm channeling my ancestors, and we have deep spirituality within our culture, it's in everything that we do, it's not something that is separated from our normal life, the spirituality in the way we talk, like certain words, that in certain languages are just words for us is very descriptive words, and it can be connected also a lot to the feminine. So yeah, that's why infuse it on.

Sara Artemisia: 11:32

That is amazing. I love hearing that about the words, too. Is there a word that comes to mind in this moment, in connection with a plant that you could share what the word is, and then explain how it's describing something like that?

Shereen Öberg: 11:47

I would say that, this is not connected to a plant, but I really love that a pregnant woman is called two-live someone with two lives. So I love that because it's really descriptive of what it is instead of having a word that has no real connection to what's happening, because pregnant is just the word. Birth is if you say it sounds complicated in English, but to us it's normal to say like, birthday or a birth is to come from the mother. So it's like congratulations of coming from the mother. It's so like rootsy you know the roots of the language. There are more I'm gonna think about it but also our language has no gender either she or he does not exist for example, or and we don't have like feminine and masculine at all. In the language like certain languages have. We just have one word if you say he, she is always he, she so there is no merging together. Yeah, it's a poetic language and very it's very spiritual as well.

Sara Artemisia: 13:18

What could you share that what the word is, were, for being born like, what it sounds like?

Shereen Öberg: 13:23

La Dayik Boon and Dayik is mother to be of the mother to come from the mother. So it's will Du Gyan, to life. And also the word for woman and life is so interconnected, Jin O Jian. So, you probably heard Jin, Jiyan, Azadî. Those three words, woman, life, freedom comes from the Kurdish it's a feminist movement, it Kurdish women have always been very strong. Definitely. I would think that we have been many other cultures, a matriarchy. And the Kurdish women have really, in these times, of being, especially we know what's happened the past decade just it was a Kurdish women and those movements that they were always side by side, you know, that the women took a lot of and when I'm thinking about my grandmother, too I mean, she was also out in the mountains when, like, May and the claw like it's a really strong feminist movement that has grown out of the need of protection and the need to fight for freedom. So yeah.

Sara Artemisia: 14:56

Thank you for sharing that and just really honor the journey of your family and your ancestors and all that they have gone through and just amazing that you're able to connect in with them through the healing grid to support healing through the ancestral lineage is so powerful. Also thinking about one of my great loves in life, the trees, could you share a bit about trees and Kurdish culture and really anything that you feel called to share about that as the sacred trees?

Shereen Öberg: 15:32

Yeah, I told you I've been really so on my path. Especially I would say, since I started with the ancestral healing part, things have come up to me. So you came into my life in at one point with your Plant Spirit work definitely was part of that, I think last year, and yeah, last year, a really interesting study that came out that was called Sacred Trees in Kurdish culture and mythology. And it was actually around that time that I really started communing with the trees here. We have so much here, all around us and you know, the lakes and everything. But for me, tree is medicine. And in Chinese medicine, I really need that the wood medicine because that's like connected to liver and gallbladder, I'm really, that's where I have imbalances. And it's also I noticed a shift when I moved away from Stockholm where there was a lot of water and that element around us were surrounded by water everywhere and just moving into more of the tree element, where there's a lot of trees, it's really grounding and, and helps to balance that, that element. Anyway, so the sacred trees in Kurdish culture and mythology, written by Himdad Mustafa was so interesting for me to connect with. So I want to read this summary first, because it's what they found in this study is that three kinds of sacred trees could be distinguished in Kurdish mythology and religious belief. First, a tree called Yazd, whose worship had survived until the early 20th century, although not necessarily as an organized religion, and the tree which was believed to be inhabited by Yazd was regarded as the king of the forest and the trees or bushes that enclose the sacred tree were highly revered for they were in gauged, they were regarded as the children of Yazd. And then the second type of sacred cheese are considered the abode of spirits, lending them their supernatural attributes. These three spirits may be ancestral beings, jinn, jinns, demons, and other supernatural entities. They are seen as guardians protectors sources of wisdom and guidance. This is best evident in rituals associated with the Tree Pirs and Dari Mirazan, the Pir is an elder and Mirazan is wishes. Dar means tree in Kurdish. The third type of sacred tree is the Tree of Life. So, study showed that Kurdish call in Kurdish countries, trees are revered as sacred wise beings and sources of power. And they are often seen as dwelling places, Gods and spirits, therefore, they're honored through rituals, offerings and prayers. I was really happy to see that because one aspect of being an Indigenous culture with very little you know, how Indigenous cultures are preserved through oral teachings. So there's not a lot of the written that things are coming up now that people are really studying. There's probably much more than I know of, but it was interesting that the also The Cosmic Tree comes in there and yeah, this super natural powers and then, of course, things happens politically patriotic system that certain things have been forgotten. But I would say in connection to that, also, the birds have a lot of sacred meaning in our culture, too. And I connect the birds so much with the trees. So I feel that you know, that day when I was doing ceremony, the trees started really speaking because all of a sudden in the middle of the ceremony and I was giving offerings, there was this wind, and all of the trees started sounding so much. So for me right now, it's just as we spoke about last time, it's like passing spirits, individuals, you know, it's incredible. And that's all about grounding. And being mindful of where we are when we're walking as well, because we can pass like we pass people just like that without acknowledging anything. That's what we do with plants as well. And the animals today, I was just walking through the forest here and just heard like this collection of birds. And we can take that in as a healing, just the sound, why not accept the offering?

Sara Artemisia: 20:58

That is so beautiful. Thank you for sharing that. And I love hearing about the especially the connection with the Tree of Life. And that makes so much sense just recognizing that the Kurdish culture goes back to Mesopotamia, it's so old. That is just wonderful to hear that being brought forward today. And I know another really significant aspects of the Kurdish culture that you mentioned earlier was the sun, would you be open to sharing a little bit more about that and the sacred significance of the sun?

Shereen Öberg: 21:36

Yeah, the sun. And that that fire element is so important that it's within our flag. And I don't know if you can see this first, the sun symbol with the 21 race. It symbolizes actually the souls if I've understood it correctly, and this is why I say that many things have been lost. But in our, old Yazidi religion, it symbolizes the souls, you know, 21 is a, it reduces to three and three is very sacred and the 21 days, it comes up quite often actually, in changing habits and things like that, then this is also the souls transmutation, the path, which it takes after it leaves the body. So the sun is in almost connects all Indigenous people, because it is always been sun worshipping, and the fire, you know, in Kurdistan. There's these sacred places where there's eternal fire because of the oil, natural oils in the Earth. So we have a place called Baba Gul Gul, that the fire is just burning there all the time. So that would be a good place to do some ceremonial work, I think next time I go there. So there's something with the fire and the sun. And then in my cards, I also put in the other sun symbol that is common to see it's like a bow, like a half bow and then the sunrays and then the dot in the middle. And so there's an ancient practice of doing like this poking, tattoos, women, if you go to villages, in Kurdistan, especially in certain parts, it's not uncommon to have I know my grandmother was about to get a dot here, where it hurts too much this and on the chin. They're gonna do that poking. So it's quite usual to see like the full arms and feet with different symbols, and there's different ones, but I see the sun symbol so often, and they use also within the ink breast milk as well. And this practice is almost also getting lost because it's mostly the elder women who have it. That as we said, and we spoke, it's so interesting to study mythology and to see the connections that the Indigenous Sami people here in Sweden also venerated the sun as a goddess actually, and when Christianity started getting in here, about a thousand years ago, so that they started to see the sun. I think, if I remember correctly, it was the sun. And there was three Goddesses connected also to the sun mother. And then it also, there's an indication that the sun was translated into being who I think is a very interesting figure in religion is Mother Mary, as a mother who also conceived divinely, divine conception, and parthenogenesis goes way back into old mythologies, right? The creation from one. So that was interesting that they weaved in that mother Mary's mother would be the sun God. It's like the life giving force and that it's not a masculine aspect. I thought that was also interesting because usually we think about it as a masculine aspect, but it is life giving as well. Nurturing, it gives of it's nurturance. Yeah, so that's where the sun comes in, as well as an important part of my work and the symbols that I've used in my cards as well.

Sara Artemisia: 25:52

Amazing. Yeah, and just amazing how you weave those sacred symbols, the cross cultural, that's just I love that it's so good.

Shereen Öberg: 26:02

And it's a part of so many cultures. This one is, is a mountain in Kurdistan. That is, I connected this card with the Manipura chakra, or Solar Plexus Chakra and the fire,the creative fire to move forward I just, yeah, imagine how much the sun has impacted life on Earth and how our ancestors work with that.

Sara Artemisia: 26:35

So great, well, could you share more about your deck and where people can find more about you and your work?

Shereen Öberg: 26:42

Yeah, somy take is The Law of Positivism Healing Oracle and I, I based this from my studies and teachings from yogic perspective, and the different layers of the body and Chinese medicine. And the card deck is divided into five parts. And each theme is connected to a layer of healing. So it starts with the physical body, then we move into the mental thinking body, and then the emotional body, energetic body, and then the spiritual body that is beyond time and space. So the cards really gave it's, it's called the Healing Oracle, but it's actually a card deck that helps you focus in on like practical ways of working with your own healing. That's, that's what it does. And it gives practical tools and guidance to tap into any of the layers that you need to.

Sara Artemisia: 27:48

Wonderful. And so how can people find the deck and find you?

Shereen Öberg: 27:51

Yeah, so you can find me on Instagram, lawofpositivism, on the same on Facebook and YouTube and my podcast with the same name and the deck is available on all major online bookshops and Amazon and everywhere, where I think you can Google it. Maybe there's local online shops that people can find. Yeah.

Sara Artemisia: 28:18

Wonderful. Well, Shereen also, before we go today, I also really want to ask, how would you say that the plants really support you in your life's work?

Shereen Öberg: 28:32

Yeah, it's, I mean, if I need medicine, if I'm not feeling well, on any of those layers, if it's physical, emotional, it's just to step out and it makes a huge difference. And I know that we live in different parts of the world and we have different access. But if there's something to make time for, is to be out in Nature. And it's not just something to it's something that we have lost and forgotten, and we're boxed into these, these homes, we need to be constantly in communion to feel good at any level. There's no level of our being that would not benefit from being outside with plants. And then also, starting from my own healing path. Plants are so important right now I'm working a lot with Chamomile, for example, very simple and easy, but it was really needed in my life to calm my nervous system. And it's not something you do once you communion with it all the time. And you, you can work with it just as we spoke about like, through communication and through this, it's spirit but I'm also drinking it as a tea these organic whole Chamomile flowers. There's so much that I've used as medicine like physical medicine. And so yeah, and that comes from how I grew up also like having to learn medicinal use of plants and things that come from Mother Earth directly.

Sara Artemisia: 30:16

Amazing. Well, thank you so much for joining us today, just so wonderful to connect and, and hear everything you have to share. So thank you.

Shereen Öberg: 30:26

Thank you Sara, thank you so much for having me.

Sara Artemisia: 30:29

And thanks so much for listening and joining us today on the Plant Spirit Podcast. I hope you enjoyed it and please follow to subscribe, leave a review and look forward to seeing you on the next episode.