Renee K. Smith - The Way of Ori

Renee K. Smith (Ifagbaye Esubola Ayelaagbe Egbesina) is a certified flower essence practitioner and proud founder of Akika Flower Essences & Apothecary.  Akika Flower Essences was created to explore the ancestral practice of tuning into plant intelligence as a tool for transformation, healing and empowerment on one’s soul journey.  Renee received her flower essence certification from Oceans & Rivers Acupuncture and Wellness and The Flower Essence Society (FES).  As a strategist, Renee believes that everyone can manifest their dreams by creating a strategy that encompasses the right people at the right time. Her goal is to assist others to find joy through the use of plant intelligence in as many forms possible beginning with  flower essences. As an Iyanifa and Olorisa, initiated to Ifa and Egbe in Nigeria, Renee also uses the knowledge she gains from her spiritual practice to assist her clients in finding and maintaining balance in their lives.  She continues to expand her repertoire of community tools for healing through consistent study of our plant allies, learning and practicing the art of alchemy as taught by Master Teacher Diana Pharr and becoming a Level II Reiki Practitioner certified by Taino Reiki Healing. Renee is a Brooklyn native, mother, artist,  healer, alchemist, strategist, cultural arts curator, flower essence & reiki practitioner, SRJ advocate, priest, artist and community member.

Transcript

00;00;04;04 - 00;00;31;08

Chicava

Welcome to the Sheroes Space Podcast. It may be a man's world, but it sits on a woman's earth. The philosophical and spiritual lives of black women are often overlooked for the care and responsibility that we take over others career and ambitions and whatever else can cloud our view. Take our energy off ourselves. The Sheroes Space Podcast.

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Renee

Is a place for black.

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Chicava

Women to connect and share their points of views, learnings, spirituality and philosophy. As she now is a woman committed to expanding authentically in her sovereign expression. Join me for conversations with sisters and our allies to help unleash in you, me, and we. This zero.

00;01;00;12 - 00;01;06;17

Renee

Weekend.

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Renee

Welcome, welcome.

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Chicava

Welcome, everyone. This is Chicava. Up back with a new conversation on the show Space podcast. In this series of conversations, I'm talking with other black women about their spiritual journey and in conversation. And I said to myself, I've listened to a lot of other people talk about their journey, and it's fascinating and it's amazing. And I wanted to open up a space where black women talk about our journeys, what we learned and how we do it, how we get through this world.

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Chicava

So today is extra special because visiting with me is Rene, Kimberly Smith. I would say she is a community activist, cultural activist, educator, healer, priestess, community leader in terms of even community spiritual leader, because of programs she does each year and essentially my tagline for Renee Kimberly Smith is, I am so grateful to be on the planet at the same time as her.

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Chicava

That's how much she impacts me, inspires me. I'm in awe of everything she does, how she sustains her energy, which are going to get into because sustainability is a real thing. And what inspires her? What is pulling her along through these journeys? Good afternoon, Rene.

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Renee

Good afternoon to cover.

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Chicava

How are you feeling today?

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Renee

I'm doing pretty well. Can't complain.

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Chicava

Good. So I'm first going to ask you and I'm super interested because I've never heard your her story, if you will, Will you share about your upbringing and the cultural community that you came up in?

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Renee

Sure. So I was reared here in Bed-Stuy. I went to Boys and Girls high school. I had the opportunity to be around really great elders like Baba Stan Kennard. I worked in actually my first or second dance teacher actually was one of the first African dancers in Roots. So we had this opportunity of like, we didn't realize who we were around until after we got older.

00;03;43;08 - 00;04;11;16

Renee

I really good girl girlfriend and sister friend Ioco Dr. Yokel Wiles. Her father is Lucas Wiles and he was one of my first like drum dance teachers. He came to the studio. We told Baba Stan, we want to dance. And that's who came. He came, Baba. Neil Clarke came. His son came by. Brianna Clark came. We were taking classes with some of the first set of artists that came from Guinea, West Africa.

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Renee

So that was Yusef Bassa. And so all of these different folks that we were able to be around grew up doing African Street Festival on in the in the yard at Boys and Girls High school and decided to pursue a career in folkloric dance, specifically because of the connections that I had there. Wanted to continue to study that, but then also had an opportunity to think about, you know, teaching and how do those things interact and where do they intersect.

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Renee

And so, you know, throughout my career, I had the opportunity, of course, to then work with Baba Chuck Davis. So I did dance Africa for a couple of years. I toured with Forces of Nature. I toured with quite a few, you know, I did a quite a few things. And so I always tell people when I get here in this present moment, it's is like the fifth iteration of a career for me because I've done all of it.

00;05;11;09 - 00;05;50;25

Renee

I did nonprofit work for over 20 years. I'm still doing some coaching and business coaching around that, but it's not the basis of the work. I think now the work that I'm doing around transformation and spirituality and really locking into plant intelligence is probably where I needed to be. I always tell the story when my as my daughter was coming into this portal, I had had a reading done and they were like, Hey, that, you know, that they were really, really high level priests and herbalists that exist in your Metrolink line, and you're going to be one who brings that back.

00;05;50;28 - 00;06;12;09

Renee

I was like, What are you talking about? I'm not doing that. At the time, I was you know, I was in corporate America. I was doing work. I was getting ready to have my first child. It was, what are you talking like? I'm not about to go learn something else. And then Spirit would have it that I had to have an experience with flower essences, which that opened the door for all of the flowers to start talking and saying, This is actually the work that you should be doing.

00;06;12;10 - 00;06;36;10

Renee

This is the way that you need to be working in community. And so I've been there since, and so that's been the work. And so that work led me to my work as an initiative. And of May, it's led me to the work of doing alchemy work and learning how to work with community. It's done this, you know, this work around how do we look at wellness and balance, right?

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Renee

And what does balance look like for us? Because we live in a world that tells us that as an individual we can stand and be balanced, but we come from an indigenous culture that says I, I isn't what we look for. We look for, we write. So we are a reflection of our own balance. We're a reflection of our own wellness.

00;06;55;16 - 00;07;18;04

Renee

And how do we get to a place where we're able to do that. And so that's a lot of the work that I like to do. I like to go into classrooms and corporations and talk about how do we reconnect with our heart, how do we work? And they're like, What? I mean, I remember doing a zoom about this with a company that was actually from London, and they had like 50 something people on this at the time.

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Renee

It was teams, it was a microsoft teams call, and I didn't know which way it was going to go. Like, is this going to be well received? I don't know what's happening, but it was reconnecting with ancestral intelligence and we were talking about the plants and we were just talking about it because remember, we weren't in-person. That was during the COVID time.

00;07;35;23 - 00;08;04;29

Renee

And I halfway got off the call and started getting dings on my phone like, my God, we hadn't thought about this. We hadn't thought about how this could actually shape our our corporate culture in the way that we work with each other. And so doing that work has been very fulfilling for me, going into classrooms or parties and talking about, you know, using our water or using dance or using music or using, you know, how we are reflections of our own environments, right?

00;08;05;07 - 00;08;21;18

Renee

If your children are acting wild that day, I need you to take a reflection about how you woke up that day. And saying that to teachers is really hard because I know how hard they work. But I was like, How did you walk in the door? Because you're thinking that this little person isn't an empath and they're not picking up on your energy.

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Renee

And many times they picked up on it by the time you crossed the threshold. And because you never autocorrect it or was really clear with them, like I'm having a hard day, let us all have a moment where we're doing X, Y, and Z that they picked it up and they went with that energy. And so how do we use those things or, you know, the ways that we communicate that aren't through our words?

00;08;44;02 - 00;08;53;15

Renee

How do we use that to kind of set up really good balance spaces for us to thrive? And so that's been the work.

00;08;53;18 - 00;09;14;12

Chicava

The work is good that you are you work in the Board of Education as a freelancer. You're setting we did a beautiful workshop with some early teen girls and introduce them to a whole world of wellness, if you will. And you also do that work with the teachers, too.

00;09;14;13 - 00;09;15;07

Renee

Yes.

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Chicava

Now, how has that been in the I do think COVID created an invitation where people finally even the most McKinnis machinist ambitious among us, kind of were like, Whoa, how am I doing? You know, after that third week on the couch, how has it been like how how are you seeing? Because I think that this is a lot about the subtlety of societal and cultural change.

00;09;48;21 - 00;10;14;27

Chicava

What was super weird 20 years ago? What do you mean? You're walking around with a court skirt small, you know, the same person bought the huge $1,000 one and it's in the center of their room now, for better or for worse. Yeah. How do you see the tide shifting? And I think you've seen it a lot over the last four years, this shift.

00;10;14;29 - 00;10;40;29

Renee

So I think that one of the things that I was taught, the way that I kind of approach my work, I look at Dr. Fukuyama when Seki was a key Congolese scholar, and he has a book called Self-Healing The Powers of Ancient Africa. And one of the things he says in that book is that part of the work of a healer is to activate the healing in others.

00;10;41;01 - 00;11;06;05

Renee

And so a lot of what I've seen is this ability to activate that because we've gone so, so long with forgetting how connected we are, that in that moment of putting on the hat of teacher, that role, it doesn't mean that your humanity has gone away. And what society has asked us to do is to remove our humanity in order to work for quote unquote, the public good.

00;11;06;08 - 00;11;28;00

Renee

And many times we don't realize in that working for the public good, we then also become reflections of toxic energy all the time. And so there isn't a place where we're actually checking in to make sure that we're okay. And so what I found is going into schools and being called to do PDS or PDS, actually even with parents and doing very simple things, what I would consider simple.

00;11;28;00 - 00;11;48;05

Renee

But they seem to be reawakening concepts with folks to say like, you have these tools at your hand all the time. You can go and speak to water and ask water to help you because it's one of the most primordial energies that we have access to. You can take a moment to learn how to breathe differently, how know different ways that you breathe.

00;11;48;05 - 00;12;11;27

Renee

You breathe to activate. Sometimes you also breathe to relax, and you can call that in whenever you need to. You can take a moment to use your own Reiki energy to calm your nerves and calm yourself and understand where you need to be. Those things seem like, like you said, like the hoodie duty and all the things from before, but people are very much more open to it right now.

00;12;12;00 - 00;12;32;04

Renee

You know, going into a classroom and starting off the session with us doing the Cha-Cha slide and it seems like so farfetched. And I was like, When's the last time you laughed at yourself? Like, laughter is one of our healing radiations. That's one of the things that Dr. Fukui talks about in his book. All of these things are healing.

00;12;32;06 - 00;12;51;08

Renee

It's. It was the first premise for the Grand Rising Summer Solstice Summit when we did it during COVID. It was, what are the things that we do as a community that are healing radiations? Laughter's healing, cooking is healing, dancing is healing. Sitting and talking with you is healing touches, healing. All of these drumming is healing, Singing is he?

00;12;51;08 - 00;12;58;13

Renee

All of these things are healing. Radiations that we have access to. We forget that we have access to it.

00;12;58;16 - 00;13;23;15

Chicava

I think we were maliciously hypnotized into forgetting. Yeah. You know, we were talking earlier about, like kind of our frontal lobe, like it has a job to do, the egoic job of keeping us alive. But it like we're breaking through this hard, crusty mess that's been put on it for a few thousand hundred. However you want to shake it years.

00;13;23;15 - 00;13;57;27

Chicava

But it's it's people. It is an awakening. It is an awakening and it's self-paced and self timed. And there's such it's such a beautiful time, especially to live in Brooklyn when so many communities are culminating together and you feel a palpable shift. And not only in terms of there's always that first wave of excitement at new things, and then we have to wait and see how it settles in and develops.

00;13;57;27 - 00;14;36;26

Chicava

I used to tease about I used to get frustrated that like the goddess everybody was goddess, Goddess, goddess, goddess goddess. But people only wanted to be like Aphrodite or Shun, You know what they say? Yeah, but as it settles in, like, well, and that also to me as women that accessing goddess energy is becoming more faceted because it's so much of it had a male gaze reference right before and the male gaze is starting to have less and less meaning for us.

00;14;36;28 - 00;15;00;22

Renee

And you know, the other part about that is that it's not just the male gaze, is that they actually constructed our reality around their gaze, right? So I always tell people, like when we look at the calendar, you know, the turtle was our first our first calendar because it has 12, you know, 11, 12, 13 spikes and, you know, and it goes with the moons.

00;15;00;22 - 00;15;07;15

Renee

And so on and so forth. And so some guy decided that it was a good idea to like literally shift our time.

00;15;07;17 - 00;15;08;27

Chicava

Our concept of time.

00;15;08;27 - 00;15;30;05

Renee

And so instead of 13 months, we have 12 months instead of 28 days, we have some 30 days, some 31 days, because in their brain it made sense, right? But also their fear of what that power meant meant that, well, however we construct this, we have control. And I think that that piece is the biggest piece that still continues to control us.

00;15;30;05 - 00;15;52;21

Renee

Like we haven't yet been able to reconnect with our cycles happening on the moons or, you know, judging what's happening in our lives in those cycles and trying to be kind of in these two realities at the same time, like one foot in, one foot out and, you know, trying to figure out what the balance is. I think what's happening is with that awakening, there's more of us on that.

00;15;52;28 - 00;16;05;21

Renee

And so what happens is those of us who are healing from our mother wounds, those of us who are dealing with parent wounds and things like that, we now have the opportunity to have another generation of children who will not have that issue.

00;16;05;21 - 00;16;05;29

Chicava

Right.

00;16;06;01 - 00;16;13;13

Renee

Because we're able to where we're able to do the healing and we need to and we're passing down the things that it took us 20, 30 years to.

00;16;13;13 - 00;16;38;14

Chicava

Learn. And, you know, you just made me think of it's like 100 years later, the concept of double conscious ness is it's different now. It I now think of it more as it is a woman's earth. And these men have put a world on top of it, you know, and to find and that's so much about like the reconnecting with nature.

00;16;38;14 - 00;17;08;13

Chicava

And it's the simple things. It is it is very much, I think, that the simplicity of your practice, it can grow, it can go on and on and on. But if you can find your rhythms, your things, you do for 3 minutes now and again while you're on the sub, while you're while you're waiting for someone, instead of picking up your phone, just how you fold it, how you fold it in again and find your centeredness.

00;17;08;15 - 00;17;27;23

Chicava

Now back to my questions. Tell me about the first time that you had a real in or experience of noticing spirit. I hear the dance moving you. You started dancing, what, when you were four or five? Like when you walked?

00;17;27;25 - 00;17;48;22

Renee

Yeah. Yes, I was one of those would dance around and not understand what was happening, that I would just dance. And then my mom was like, Yeah, we're going to put her in class for a little bit. And then I stopped for a while, and then when I came back to high school, I went kind of full throttle, took it in college and went from there.

00;17;48;25 - 00;18;14;27

Renee

Interesting. I would say probably dance was probably one of the first places that happened in a secular setting I think my family also belonged to. They had, you know, they're from the Caribbean, so my family's from Trinidad and Belize and so many times in those Caribbean countries you have Episcopalian and like very, very like it's one or the other, like you don't do in between.

00;18;15;00 - 00;18;23;27

Renee

So I think my family was Episcopalian for a really long time. And then one day my dad was like, We're going to try this Baptist church. And I don't know what made him do that switch.

00;18;24;00 - 00;18;26;03

Chicava

But where was your dad from? He was.

00;18;26;03 - 00;18;26;22

Renee

From Belize.

00;18;26;22 - 00;18;27;26

Chicava

And where's your mom from?

00;18;27;26 - 00;18;28;23

Renee

He's from Trinidad.

00;18;28;26 - 00;18;31;05

Chicava

And so was your mom, the Episcopalian.

00;18;31;07 - 00;18;53;03

Renee

Both of them were Episcopalian, actually. So they went to a church in Manhattan called Trinity Episcopal Church for a long, long like I remember being sitting in the pews and the pews being bigger than us and me and my little brother would. And they would like do like my father did, like the offerings or something like that. And they would leave and my dad would like I always know when you guys were paying attention because I would just see the book flip.

00;18;53;05 - 00;18;54;12

Renee

It was like, I see the pages.

00;18;54;18 - 00;18;55;11

Chicava

So and we were.

00;18;55;13 - 00;19;15;04

Renee

We were so small and the pews were so big that we were kneeling down. He was like, I just see the pages go, which made me know that you guys were paying attention. But yeah, one day he said, I'm going to we're going to go to a Baptist church. I was like, What's happening? Had to have been like pre-teens or maybe like 12 or 13.

00;19;15;04 - 00;19;41;11

Renee

Like, why is my dad want to go to Baptist church? Something was happening with him in his own awakening. He was like, Well, the whole family's going. And so he literally the whole family's going. And I think that in that setting, the first place where I really felt Spirit was singing, I had been singing for a really long time, but to sing and feel spirit mount while I was singing happened there and there I you know, I sang on choirs.

00;19;41;11 - 00;20;06;13

Renee

I did, actually did Mom, I want to sing. That was one of the reasons why I went into off-Broadway productions and things like that. Being able to sing and sing gospel music really kind of helped me connect to Spirit. And that was the first time really understanding like, we have these other gifts or we've access another part of our brains that are not in white dropped into reality.

00;20;06;13 - 00;20;13;16

Renee

That's happening right here. Like I'm getting downloads and I'm not really clear about where or what, how all of those things.

00;20;13;19 - 00;20;50;01

Chicava

Definitely African-American spirituals. And then what became gospel music was the place where our spirituality of origin broke through. And it's beautiful. And there's so many problems with the Abrahamic folks, you know, because it keeps getting like. And that's why all of our most powerful singers come through these ways. I just want us to untangle from all that. But I grew up, my mother is Bahamian, so she was like, We're Episcopalian.

00;20;50;04 - 00;21;23;21

Chicava

My my father, he was pretty flexible. His mom was holiness Pentecostal. So when we moved to the small town of Boulder, Colorado, we had a small Baptist church, a nice burgeoning community. Now, as the years have come and gone. But my mom, of course, decided we were going to be Episcopal alien. And my dad said, I'm not going to any church unless somebody comes up here and talks to me like comes to the house and talks and thought that it was beautiful.

00;21;23;21 - 00;21;54;19

Chicava

Father Jim came up to the house and talked it to him, and he was like, okay, I'll come to church. And they went on to do really cool things together. They created housing for low income people at the church. Like, there's a beautiful thing. That's why I get so frustrated with our situation on the macro because there's such there's no other established with buildings and resource community like the church.

00;21;54;21 - 00;22;23;00

Chicava

It's just there's like a lot of problematic programing that goes on. But you can't beat the community for it. You just can't beat it. And I too. And to be Episcopalian, sin is stand up, sit down, kneel, stand up, sit down, kneel over the book like I, I still probably have everything memorized. I know I do. And I hid up in there twice a decade.

00;22;23;02 - 00;22;39;21

Chicava

The programing is so intense. Yeah. Did you have the one? Did you have, like, the incense? Kind of like Greek Orthodox. Yeah, like everything but the confessional. Yeah. Pretty Catholic life.

00;22;39;23 - 00;23;13;17

Renee

There's pretty much. Pretty much. But yeah. So that experience and I think over time I'm starting to understand and I talk about it. I talked a little bit about it in the idea around the spirit of Carnival, but I think that one of the things that has happened through the ages is that our understanding or how we transmute has always been through those spiritual spaces, right?

00;23;13;17 - 00;23;35;07

Renee

So the Baptist church has been that place where or any kind of church in that space calls forward the begins to call forward the spirit of our ancestors that were dealing either in slavery or before. And so through the music or through the singing or through that, it's pulling it forward. And that's part.

00;23;35;07 - 00;23;37;18

Chicava

Of why we're getting in any way of can.

00;23;37;18 - 00;23;54;08

Renee

And so that's part of what I think had occurred. And so I understood it, which was great. I hadn't seen it much. I mean, I think after that I may have seen it once or twice in like dancing and doing folkloric dance or doing Haitian dance or African dance or things like that. But it really happened for me.

00;23;54;08 - 00;24;10;20

Renee

That was like my first time in the church. And then after that, you know, since then, working with Russia and working and I've seen it more like I, you know, I can recognize it more, I understand it more.

00;24;10;22 - 00;24;12;19

Chicava

So, yeah, degraded into reality.

00;24;12;20 - 00;24;33;28

Renee

It is. And it's always an opportunity. It's always a you know, I always say it's always an honor. There is something that occurs to be that close to any spirit at that time. You know, you know, we were talking about it earlier that, you know, our our ancestors and indigenous understandings, we've always had ways of communicating with spirit.

00;24;33;28 - 00;24;59;02

Renee

Some people were audio meaning they heard some people were visual, they saw some people had the gift of tongues. They were able to speak. And some people have all of it. Some people have the ability to be mounted and other people don't like all of those spiritual understandings are a part of our languages sometimes, you know, we've been cut off for so long that sometimes we don't even get a chance to to tap into what that is on.

00;24;59;08 - 00;25;00;28

Chicava

Your whole life. Right.

00;25;00;28 - 00;25;24;20

Renee

And to integrate it and even to bring the conversation that we had about call it right. How do you now deal with it when you talk about integrating and having those spiritual experiences with plants right there? Our ancestors, they have energies and understandings and the way that they're cultivated will determine the way in which we actually have that interaction with them.

00;25;24;22 - 00;25;53;13

Renee

So we have you know, I had this conversation with a young brother the other day about about marijuana. I was like, you know, I know that you all you know, people think that they need it all the time. But my my concern is, are you clear about how it's being cultivated? Right. Because when you see a person who looks like him, looks like they're being starved and they say that they're doing right, they're smoking pot, my concern becomes, what kind of plant are you using?

00;25;53;13 - 00;26;08;08

Renee

Because that's not the way the medicine is supposed to work. So if the medicine is working that way, you may be dealing with a plant that's being starved, which is one of the reasons why you look like you're being starved, which means that you may actually not be getting the medicine you think you're getting.

00;26;08;11 - 00;26;56;14

Chicava

Maybe getting an that's say well and there that that's the the the fine line with the plant medicine are you getting and that's the size all right or are you getting fat Are you even you know there's just days for me where prayer over a meal isn't. Thank you for this food. It's thank you morphic field of lettuce Like there's like the energy that this is like the source of the source and what happens when it when you're taking your time you're having your join at night but you really sink in to like, move it, move all respect it for for the energy that it is and not a product that you buy.

00;26;56;14 - 00;26;57;16

Chicava

Right.

00;26;57;19 - 00;27;21;04

Renee

Right. And to consume which is a thing, right. Like how are we becoming having reciprocal relationships with everything that we're dealing with. Right. Because everything is give and receive. So it's not just going to be by itself, right? You can't just take and not give back. So you have to have that reciprocity.

00;27;21;07 - 00;28;14;17

Chicava

Well, yes. And the way you phrased it, you made me realize that even when you think you don't, you do like that it's there's a fundamental ality to it. And that in fact, might be what we mean by indigency, you know, and there's an unfairness in in the creating of whiteness that strips them of their indigency like most white people don't understand that the years ahead of the transatlantic slave trade, the centuries ahead of it, were spent burning down and destroying their indigenous religions, practices and cultures that they too were woman centered.

00;28;14;19 - 00;28;41;13

Chicava

And they don't understand. Like after the investment into whiteness with the coming, with the solidifying of whiteness, with the creation of America, there's a total disconnect. And sometimes when I am able to not go into a rage stroke about cultural appropriation, I understand it like, right. That's like part of how I came to kind of a piece with tribal belly dance as a visual practice.

00;28;41;13 - 00;29;26;21

Chicava

I love it, but it's like you're wearing some Afghan woman's jewelry with an Indian lady's scarf and you're going to do it to hip hop music. I'm sorry. That like, that is literally what you're going to do, and I'm going to have my feelings about it, but I'm going to be able to look a little deeper now because I realize, like, there's a prolific teacher, We we should bring her back to New York named Mac Statue Mac Statues Work is chronicling women and spirituality across cultures throughout time and making the connecting points.

00;29;26;23 - 00;29;57;00

Chicava

And it was in in studying with her that I really I was like that cultural appropriation is subconsciously about where's mine like I like when you have had something taken from you at the end and it's such an unconscious happening subconscious unconscious. It's happened so long ago, repressed in. Yeah, yeah. We need our European friends to tap into.

00;29;57;03 - 00;29;59;10

Chicava

I was the ancestor, right?

00;29;59;12 - 00;30;21;18

Renee

Exact. I mean, you know, this used to be my argument. I think when I was getting ready to graduate from undergrad and I was studying specifically Dunham dance and doing folkloric dance and, yeah, I had a down drag out conversation with one of my professors because they tried to, you know, play ballet as fine art. And I was like, No, ballet is actually a folk dance.

00;30;21;21 - 00;30;32;15

Renee

They nearly lost their all their stuff. I was like, Ballet is a folk dance. And the only reason why it's been considered, quote unquote fine art is because I have money. Yeah.

00;30;32;17 - 00;30;32;29

Chicava

Yeah.

00;30;33;01 - 00;30;41;07

Renee

You know, but if you think about where it was done right, where it was created, how it was created, it's a folk art, right?

00;30;41;09 - 00;31;09;12

Chicava

Right. Well, that's an interesting take because it made me think. It made me take on the idea that most of the time work that is on a proscenium stage is proscenium stages and artifice, right? Because plays happen. We sat in a circle and heard a story. We danced in a circle, in dance, we did a song together. This elevation of celebrity is a falsity.

00;31;09;19 - 00;31;17;02

Chicava

One of the when I was about five, it doesn't matter when my first movie Memories is Jesus Christ.

00;31;17;02 - 00;31;18;05

Renee

Superstar, wow.

00;31;18;09 - 00;31;49;04

Chicava

Was still one of my favorite favorite movies. And it was a big brouhaha. Big, big brouhaha. We had to have like that. The church we had to have like church talks about the movie because this like more so because it was talking dealing with religion more so than hair. Like hair like blew a lot of circuits. But to make Jesus Christ Superstar a rock opera was a big, big deal.

00;31;49;06 - 00;32;24;13

Chicava

And I lost to push powers. I'm back. But what that movie teaches me every time I watch it, especially when I watch Brother Carl play Judas is one of my favorite favorite actors. I realized in that finale, Jesus Christ Superstar that Jesus is the basis of celebrity, that the way they've taken, they possibly true, the way they've taken this story and turned it into a hero's journey in our cultures.

00;32;24;13 - 00;32;28;18

Chicava

There wasn't no one hero. Everyone was everyone's hero.

00;32;28;18 - 00;32;29;09

Renee

Yeah.

00;32;29;11 - 00;32;57;08

Chicava

You know, but it's the foundation for everything and everything that causes proscenium, that fills the stadiums just that otherness. It causes a sense that greatness is other than you and an inequity among us. Prove what happens when we break through all that.

00;32;57;10 - 00;33;10;25

Renee

We get to live free. We get to develop, we get to integrate. We get to build our families and our communities. We no longer have the trap of ego.

00;33;10;27 - 00;33;11;15

Chicava

00;33;11;17 - 00;33;18;18

Renee

Telling us that we can't do it or we shouldn't do. What are we? Because we begin to believe in what we came here to do.

00;33;18;20 - 00;34;04;02

Chicava

Yes. That trust of self. Because what we're tapping on is basically saying like, my 98% of insecurities are manufactured and we spend all this time we're doing our healing work, we're doing our stuff. You know, we're but it's like at what point people can understand that the system is evil or corrupt or whatever. But how deeply, when do we get to the bedrock of understanding just how deep the game is to the point that the game you're playing isn't the game you think you're playing at all at all?

00;34;04;04 - 00;34;53;12

Chicava

And that I mean, it's a terrific time to me to be alive because I do see the progression. We do see a lot of quick progression. We see snake oil salesman, we see amazing ness and it's all super necessary because we're questioning. And I think that this is a good place. It's like this concept of celebrity and the Jesus Christ concept being equalized and taken apart seems like a terrific place to jump in to talking about Worry and Crystal Palace, because that is essential contact with self is a big deal and it's amazing.

00;34;53;12 - 00;35;34;29

Chicava

I've lived in Brooklyn for my goodness since basically 1992 or three. There's been times away. But my whole adult life I've spent here and watching the African diasporic spiritual community blossom, watching us blossom, watching people like you come into your glory and maturity and making so much change. It's been amazing, amazing. But in our respective paths, we have this center inside our brain.

00;35;34;29 - 00;36;19;25

Chicava

So when I talk about the crystal Palace, I'm talking about a physical location inside your brain that's about an inch big holds your pituitary, your pineal gland, your hypothalamus and your thalamus. We work with it as one way. You could say the place spirit enters is the place where your personality meets your soul. Self meets your higher self where the divine can pour in from and accessing it through breath pattern, through focused work, physiologically turning it on physiologically, you can say.

00;36;19;25 - 00;36;38;01

Chicava

And yes, there is a release of DMT, a natural release, not like the lifting of the veil to pass. You can go that far, but on a daily basis you might not want to depart each day. What is the story?

00;36;38;04 - 00;37;11;15

Renee

So Ori is a Europe a concept or construct around self, right? So Ori translates to mean head, but it's it's like beyond the physical head, like you exist in your head. You know, people say, I'm talking to my hand physic. I hear myself you, you exist in your head. But the aura also houses the eyes. It houses the nose, it houses the mouth, but it also is this kind of sacred altar for communication and interaction.

00;37;11;17 - 00;37;49;11

Renee

It's the place that or the the destiny we chose before we got here. So each person walks with their own Ori you walk with your destiny, you walk with your, you're accountable to what you chose. Right. You're accountable for what you chose. And in that accountability you have the ability to, if you chose a battery for it to be, you can do work that would allow it to become a good Ori some of the work that we do with IFA is around, you know, one of his Iraqis is about taking a bad, a bad head and making it good.

00;37;49;14 - 00;38;12;00

Renee

So that's part of the work of Ori. But Ori also is this place where we see ourself, we embrace ourselves. We if we want blessings to manifest, we've been praying for something to manifest. If our Ori is not going to accept it, the blessing won't manifest if we don't think about it, even in your own development of of of your life.

00;38;12;00 - 00;38;33;18

Renee

Right. People will always say, I want to be a millionaire, but if you have it in your own Ori embrace the idea of what does it look like for me to be a millionaire? How would I What would I do? How am I doing this? What are the things around that? That blessing can't come until you're ready to say, I'm ready to be a millionaire.

00;38;33;20 - 00;38;54;03

Renee

Not to say that. And it may. It's probably a part of your destiny if it's come to you in that way. It's a part of your destiny. It's a part of the path that you're supposed to walk. You may not have been ready for it at 20 or 30 or 40, maybe 50 years, 60. But, you know, whatever time it comes, it comes because it's a part of our destiny.

00;38;54;05 - 00;39;29;23

Renee

So that's that's the basics of Ori. I can read something that's very helpful as well. Central to the Yoruba cosmology is the concept of Ori the your will believe that every human being was born with a destiny or purpose or re and was called to Earth to discover and fulfill that purpose. The term ori literally means head that is the physical head, and it is conceived by the Yoruba as a representation of the inner essence in humans.

00;39;29;25 - 00;39;53;03

Renee

It symbolizes our individual and individual's essential nature. The persons ori in new or inner head is distinct from their physical or outer head, which helps us to understand our personality, what rules control and guides our life and activities of the person with it.

00;39;53;03 - 00;40;04;22

Chicava

Being distinct from our physical. Is it sitting above us? Is it an energetic field?

00;40;04;24 - 00;40;14;05

Renee

So the way that I love to explain it, you know, I'm a firm believer, a, you know, teacher and educator for many, many years. I always tell people, if you can explain it to toddlers, you can explain it to anybody.

00;40;14;05 - 00;40;14;26

Chicava

Everybody.

00;40;14;27 - 00;40;49;16

Renee

Anybody and everybody will get it. So the way that I like to say it is that our physical head is where our Ori also sits, right? It has to land somewhere in the body. Matter matters, right? So it has to be somewhere. And one of the places that it sits is in our head. One of the things I was sharing with you earlier is like one of the practices that we have in terms of greeting your every day is that you literally will hold your head in the morning and you'll greet your Ori and say good morning today, I want to accomplish or I'm thankful for or today my goal is or I'm working on

00;40;49;16 - 00;41;08;29

Renee

these blessings or all of these things, right? So I'm greeting and I'm, you know, essentially programing my day because my Ori, now that it's aware of what I want to accomplish in that day, it's going to make sure I say the universe is going to answer those prayers. Certain things are going to just start coming. All of sudden, you're like, Interesting.

00;41;08;29 - 00;41;20;04

Renee

I had that thought today. I pulled that back. So that's the way in which we greet our story.

00;41;20;07 - 00;41;34;24

Chicava

It's just before any jargons and books and seminars. we'll see. Before an LP there was the aura, right?

00;41;34;24 - 00;41;49;29

Renee

And so that that those you know, the issue is we've been so, like you said, the jargons and the we've been so caught up in all of those bigger pieces that it can't be this simple when life has always been simple.

00;41;50;01 - 00;42;16;11

Chicava

Yes. And as you were talking about it and I relating to it, what we're trying to do, folks out there is figure out the correlations between these cultures, like where they meet, how how the Crystal Palace and the Ori come together and I'll share in the second and experience that I had moving to and from with Renee. But it's so purified.

00;42;16;11 - 00;42;46;03

Chicava

And even when we were talking about plant medicine and the excessive use of that, when that we are just striving so hard to shut down our frontal lobe, like our thinking is driving us crazy. Yeah. And I keep thinking ourselves the same ruts and corners of our life. And so I'm going to do this or I'm going to try that and I'm all I'm all for it.

00;42;46;03 - 00;43;16;01

Chicava

I think that those things are here to help us remember how to open them up and that we're going through a phase right now where it might seem a bit excessive because there's so much to break through. And I want to get to a point where I'm running into people that say, I used to do it this many times a year and now I don't really need it anymore because it opened.

00;43;16;04 - 00;43;30;02

Chicava

And that is it just on individuals. It's on the re shifting of community culture having right, community culture like for real. For real.

00;43;30;05 - 00;43;38;27

Renee

And I think it's also around the accountability of the people who are facilitating it to ensure that they actually know how it was used indigenously.

00;43;38;29 - 00;43;40;11

Chicava

Well, that'd be great.

00;43;40;13 - 00;43;40;22

Renee

Right?

00;43;40;22 - 00;44;18;23

Chicava

Because that means I'd be like, that'd be great. That'd be great. I literally, even before this new craze of it, gosh, this was 20 years ago, I'm a little more me like 17, 18 years ago I had a buddy that was going to upstate New York like monthly, doing ayahuasca and they were having the most terrifying. Like, you know, you think you want to do it because it sounds so mystical and magical, But the the the just terrifying experiences.

00;44;18;25 - 00;44;50;10

Chicava

So what I've learned is in Daoism, I mean, this a big connection. This maybe Ori is even maybe Ori is some culmination in a spirit to want to come explain it to us. Feel free to join. We welcome you to the Crystal Palace and the Immortal Fetus. The concept of the immortal fetus is preparing because it would make sense.

00;44;50;10 - 00;45;16;20

Chicava

It's immortal. So it's been here with you the whole time. And what you strive in your spiritual practice to do is deepen and correlate a conscious relationship with it such that at the time of you are crossing over that final lifting of the DMT veil, you're not popping out like where? Where am I waiting for a light or anything?

00;45;16;20 - 00;45;29;19

Chicava

You know where you are because you've been going there, because you've been building this body, you've been building this relationship every morning. Yeah.

00;45;29;22 - 00;45;57;08

Renee

Yeah. And I think, you know, that that talk brings me to this thing of, you know, how simple, but how much indigenous practice was bigger than what we understood. Like, we, we, we saw certain things and we thought, that's just why they used it. So, for example, when you appease your or we, we use coconut. And so for the longest time I was just like, interesting coconut.

00;45;57;08 - 00;46;19;13

Renee

Why do you use coconut. Did it that. And so we did some research. You know that coconut helps to remove the plaque off the brain. It helps to loosen up and creates the juice that's necessary, especially when people are dealing with lost memory or fogginess or any of those kinds of things. And so part of the ritual is to actually use coconut and to eat the.

00;46;19;13 - 00;47;00;16

Chicava

Coconut, to eat coconut. And even just for even to report on it. I mean, because it's all well and I think coconut also like baby coconut water, it also helps your gray matter. And like the same thing because we transition and a lot of focus on the reason why it's encouraged for especially older people. You know you start the better to have a taiji practices those practices help grow as your gray matter starts to grow it brings the white matter into play and I feel like that there's something about there's a correlation like the sciencey people know the water and coconut helps your brain.

00;47;00;21 - 00;47;07;17

Chicava

BROWN And I also appreciate that there's usually those three dots.

00;47;07;19 - 00;47;09;03

Renee

Yes.

00;47;09;05 - 00;47;48;13

Chicava

Right up there. The wisdom of things. Yeah, the wisdom of things. Wow. there's a lot. Yes. So the immortal fetus, I think I made this. I believe that this is an ongoing conversation because Immortal fetus notes are not what I brushed myself up on. But in a cause geographically in the brain. How so? It's right. The frontal lobe is your Ori.

00;47;50;24 - 00;47;53;14

Chicava

How does the rest of it play? And how does our.

00;47;53;17 - 00;48;02;15

Renee

So your Ori is not just located in your brain, so you have your Ori, then you have your Ori in new which is in your bellybutton.

00;48;02;19 - 00;48;08;12

Chicava

And you're downtown near them. So this is your up or down DNA and your lower know.

00;48;08;14 - 00;48;20;12

Renee

And then you have two more spots. You have your the top of your nail and your right foot in the top of your nail on the left foot. Really? Which nail the big toe sorry.

00;48;20;14 - 00;48;44;17

Chicava

Big toe which would correlate in this practice to behind that joint behind the big toe. It's called the bubbling spring where you pull up earth. And it's interesting. One of my ways to practice in that is to reach my big toe forward. Because it once it grounds into the earth that little space behind I feel it.

00;48;44;17 - 00;49;28;28

Chicava

Open up. I'm so, I'm running around. And a hypothesis that much about inner alchemy and physical Dallas practices. I know that we all hung out together like all of these great teachers, everybody who had anything to share to contribute to the spirit of humans, or they just went home in and related it to our they bought their culture together with everyone else around the world, and then they related it to one another as it it fit the invite meant for them.

00;49;29;00 - 00;49;35;24

Chicava

Wow. Where should we go from here? Do you have.

00;49;35;27 - 00;49;37;01

Renee

I know because this is the lab.

00;49;37;01 - 00;50;20;01

Chicava

It's like, yeah, I have this one thing that I, It is. It's so very much. And I'm going to be in editing. Editing the Crystal Palace is an oval shape. The shape is in agreement that the color is. that's something different. Yeah, I'm going to have to edit. It will be fabulous. The internal head center is white and colored, associated with the principle of spirit or Shen and Yang Energy.

00;50;20;01 - 00;50;36;19

Chicava

Heavenly energy for our In this orientation it is Mother Earth and Father Sky. And I think that that also does does already have agenda. It's both.

00;50;43;02 - 00;50;49;03

Renee

Because we're all energy. the gendering of energy is a is a new and new thing.

00;50;49;03 - 00;50;49;14

Chicava

The world.

00;50;49;14 - 00;50;50;28

Renee

Concept.

00;50;51;01 - 00;50;52;00

Chicava

So much of what we're.

00;50;52;00 - 00;50;53;27

Renee

Talking like, it's a new world concept.

00;50;53;27 - 00;51;11;21

Chicava

The confusion that we are talking about in unraveling here is very like left brain. Yeah, it takes me to like, in whose interest was it to make sure everyone was confused? Exactly.

00;51;12;11 - 00;51;33;13

Renee

That's a good question. That's a very good question. And actually, it does benefit folks to for people to be confused. But again, as our as our frontal lobes uncrossed and people start, you know, the third eye starts to weaken. There's really nothing else you can do there. Don't they just going to awaken? That's what's going to happen.

00;51;33;15 - 00;51;44;10

Renee

They're going to notice certain things that they didn't notice before or be moved by certain things that they weren't moved by before. And if you are paying attention to it, you also it makes you ask questions.

00;51;44;12 - 00;52;22;25

Chicava

Yes. Yeah, I yeah, I guess the world changes in this incremental consciousness shift. And I hope to keep coming back and checking out how it happens. I was looking at a news report on the New dress requirements for women in Afghanistan. They went from suggesting black veil, full gloves to requiring it recently. So this picture is a group of women.

00;52;22;25 - 00;53;02;12

Chicava

It looks like what you and me would be like the lecture hall at a university and every single one of them is shrouded in black. And that is the scariest shit it because there's, I mean America not perfect, but at least you don't have to abide by the laws of a somebody is a difficult thing whether or not you believe in it because I'm sure they really don't give a fuck if you're not Muslim that's what you're wearing.

00;53;02;12 - 00;53;16;19

Chicava

If you want to get in and out of the streets alive. And I just want to know how much longer with the Abrahamic yo.

00;53;16;21 - 00;53;18;16

Renee

Yeah. They hold on their.

00;53;18;16 - 00;53;19;13

Chicava

Whole night.

00;53;19;16 - 00;53;45;20

Renee

And it it's showing up in all you know we talked we had this conversation earlier about even in politics it's like it's showing up everywhere because folks are realizing that control is being lost and so they don't know what else to do. And so we got to keep doing the work that we're doing and being dedicated to what liberation looks like and to understand that it's this is a marathon.

00;53;45;20 - 00;53;46;25

Renee

It's not a sprint.

00;53;47;02 - 00;54;04;23

Chicava

It isn't. And I really I'm one of those people, you know, people are like, it's the Aquarian Age. They're like, it's here. It's huge here. I'm one of those people. I'm like, I think it's like now in this conversation, I'm like, I again, I still feel like it's about 270 years away because.

00;54;04;23 - 00;54;24;29

Renee

This change takes time. It's not going to end. You have acute moments where something make something happen, right, Right at that moment. But then you're still dealing with the old patterns. You're still dealing with the old talk is still. And so those patterns aren't going to just disappear. They're going to hold on for dear life like we still want to be here.

00;54;25;01 - 00;54;43;20

Renee

And so that's what you're dealing with. And so now you're watching smaller increments of it happening and it happening. And then, you know, again, there's probably going to be another flash point where it wipes out another opportunity for people to say, we can't do due to gender. Like, why you been doing it like this all this time?

00;54;43;20 - 00;55;11;10

Renee

It's just stupid. We should have been doing X. And so that flash point again. So it it's a marathon, not a sprint. And it requires people being dedicated to the work and, you know, doing the work in the way in which you've been destined to do it because everything that everyone is doing is necessary. Sometimes you feel like, I'm not making it yet, but everything that you're doing is necessary because if you're not doing it and nobody else doing it.

00;55;11;12 - 00;55;12;21

Chicava

Which means.

00;55;12;23 - 00;55;16;08

Renee

And then that means it ain't getting done with.

00;55;16;13 - 00;55;17;08

Chicava

The dishes.

00;55;17;13 - 00;55;38;05

Renee

Right? So that part of us understanding, again, this concept of worry and our purpose, we come here with very specific things that we need to be getting done. And for a really long time we've been distracted. We haven't been doing the things we said we're going to do because of all the other things. So how do we get on point with all the things that need to be done?

00;55;38;08 - 00;55;40;27

Chicava

How do we get on point with all the things that we start?

00;55;40;27 - 00;55;58;28

Renee

We do the work that you're talking about around the Crystal Palace. We do the work around art, or we we start checking in with our ancestors. We start developing the skills that we need. We get into practices that allow for us to be well and balanced. And then we do that for everyone else around us because it can't just be us, right?

00;55;59;05 - 00;56;15;15

Renee

Part of what society has taught us is that us one individual is going to, but it's never been us. One individual. Our communities were never built on us, one individual. And well, because of that, because of us staying disconnected, we haven't been able to connect and collectively be able to do the work forward.

00;56;15;17 - 00;56;19;29

Chicava

Part of that, that Jesus Christ superstar celebrity. Yeah.

00;56;20;01 - 00;56;34;11

Renee

Right, exactly right. So that one person is the pedestal or the proscenium or into. And so we all believe, like that's where we need to get the problem is that person on stage has clapping for them if no one's in the audience.

00;56;34;14 - 00;56;36;11

Chicava

00;56;36;13 - 00;56;45;23

Renee

Everyone has a role to play. You got to figure out what your role is. And sometimes the person that we put on the, on the stage actually shouldn't even be there.

00;56;45;26 - 00;56;47;28

Chicava

Yeah.

00;56;48;00 - 00;57;10;18

Renee

So it's that constant opportunity for us to reevaluate, to learn new skills, to integrate those new skills, to find places where we're balanced. It's a call in community when we need to to participate in our rituals, as we should, to reconnect to nature in all different forms. When's the last time you go out and stand sit outside in the rain?

00;57;10;27 - 00;57;13;00

Chicava

last week. Okay.

00;57;13;02 - 00;57;15;00

Renee

But I'm saying in general, like, we literally.

00;57;15;00 - 00;57;18;09

Chicava

Feel that we avoid, right? Are the things that we need.

00;57;18;11 - 00;57;24;02

Renee

We'll stand in the rain. Go touch grass. I'll touch what I saw. I heard a little girl yesterday say, Mommy, I want to go touch the water. I was like.

00;57;24;02 - 00;57;25;12

Chicava

Yes.

00;57;25;14 - 00;57;28;13

Renee

I want to go touch the water. Great. Go. Let the child touch them.

00;57;28;13 - 00;57;29;09

Chicava

Yeah, Listen to.

00;57;29;09 - 00;57;36;21

Renee

Those are those things. Those are the things that we need to be doing more of.

00;57;36;23 - 00;58;05;23

Chicava

And in that, it's also really important to let it be deeply intimate and personal so that you're self-guided. I think that that is a lot about this intersection of or a Crystal Palace immortal fetus that it is. There is something in interesting your navigation system. It's great. I love both of you and I. We stay in a class.

00;58;05;27 - 00;58;35;08

Chicava

It's great to you know, it's great to study with people. But just that in the studying and in the courses that you're really are, that you're adding to your library of tools and accept yourself as perfect, total and complete, even though we're always all going to be dusting out some corner, you don't need to be fixed, you don't need to be saved.

00;58;35;15 - 00;59;09;10

Chicava

You are essentially very, very Wow. And yes, so I guess part of our prescription today is to wake up, clasp your forehead by the palms and stop. Talk. Talk. And that's the ultimate that I love. Productive self-care and self-love. I mean, don't get me wrong, I love you like Rene also makes incredible, incredible soaps and all the delicious things we like to make our body silky with.

00;59;09;13 - 00;59;46;22

Chicava

I love that part too. But it's beyond self-care. What is? Self nourishment? Speaking of which, so Rene runs two huge community spiritual events here at the solstice, one online, one we travel for. She consults numerous nonprofit cultural organizations and probably businesses. She helps at the board of Ed coming in, doing self-care, nourishment educating our kids on how to do same, and our educators.

00;59;46;24 - 01;00;02;02

Chicava

She has a shop that she runs. She has an amazing podcast too, and she has the most remarkable daughter you could even ever imagine. My swim buddy. Did I get everything?

01;00;02;04 - 01;00;03;08

Renee

And I'm an author.

01;00;03;08 - 01;00;10;29

Chicava

Now and she has a book. So how how do you do all this?

01;00;12;26 - 01;00;38;27

Renee

I, you know, I always tell people I listen to Spirit, right? And so when Spirit says do X, I X now in the in my calendar of things or in a year, it could get really dicey. So for example, we just finished our spiritual festivals right? We started our spiritual festivals. I was getting ready to go into Will to start Summer Solstice and I literally was like, okay, I can only do one thing at a time.

01;00;38;27 - 01;01;04;01

Renee

I'll plan out my calendar and know what I'm going to be doing. But sometimes people may not hear about it until right before because there are other things growing. But I'm really committed to doing the things that I know I'm supposed to be doing and even asking and consulting and doing divination to find out, you know, can I take a break this year and be like, no, like, okay, great.

01;01;04;10 - 01;01;08;29

Renee

and you're going to do X, Y, and Z to like, sure, not.

01;01;09;02 - 01;01;11;23

Chicava

01;01;11;26 - 01;01;44;06

Renee

And so I, see it as a part of my community service. It's really a part of my community service. These are the things that I'm supposed to put into the world. And if I don't put them in no one else, then put them in. And that's not from an ego standpoint. My goal is to create and hold space where people can be themselves and they can find their liberation and find a pathway and connecting community in a way that once they've done that, they now have more tools to go out and do the things that they're supposed to be doing.

01;01;44;09 - 01;02;01;15

Renee

And so, yeah, and so that is what I'm seeing. Like every single event that I've done, I hear about it. You know, when I finish the event, I'm probably on the floor somewhere. Like every time I do that virtual event, I'm like at 507, I'm on the floor. Everyone was like, I woke up like, I just need like 10 minutes.

01;02;01;15 - 01;02;06;08

Renee

It's not even decompress. I just need to lay on the floor for a few minutes, lose a lot of.

01;02;06;08 - 01;02;06;19

Chicava

Energy.

01;02;06;19 - 01;02;24;01

Renee

And you would, you would think that it wouldn't be because we're online. But I can feel what's happening with people. I can hear what's happening with people. I can see people like doing these amazing things sometimes not even knowing people. They just met them in that one session and I can see it happening. And so it's it's a lot.

01;02;24;01 - 01;02;44;15

Renee

But it's again, the thing that we're supposed to be doing. So I just take it one step at a time and I try my best to, you know, I speak to the people and I say, are we supposed to do it on this time? And we go with it. I'm really good at putting myself on a deadline, and when it doesn't happen, that's one thing.

01;02;44;18 - 01;03;02;06

Renee

But there are other times where they may be pushing me to like, get it done. So like my book coming out on my birthday was, I need you to push this out because you have other things you need to be working on. And I you can't hold this anymore. Perfect. And pass it. I think the back of it has a.

01;03;02;09 - 01;03;02;25

Chicava

You found the.

01;03;02;25 - 01;03;17;09

Renee

Tape? I found a typo and I was like, you know what? If it becomes really, really a big deal, I'll just put out a second edition. And it was an elder who said that to me. That made me understand that what I was holding on to was not what I need to hold on to the medicine needs to be in people's hands.

01;03;17;09 - 01;03;33;27

Renee

You need to get it, get it out. I don't care. Just be done. And so sometimes you just gotta be like, I'm done. What's next? I'm done. What's next? And then that then starts the process of being able to do the other things. So this is, you know, we talk a lot about initiation being the beginning, not the end.

01;03;33;27 - 01;03;54;20

Renee

People think you get to initiation. Now. Initiation is actually the beginning. Sometimes when you do that first thing, it's just the initiation into the other part that you need to be in, right? I can't get to the I can't get to the other stuff because I haven't done that first part. The first part was push it out. Great is here now is next.

01;03;54;22 - 01;03;55;17

Renee

Yeah.

01;03;55;20 - 01;03;59;04

Chicava

I hear a lot of grace and a lot of discipline.

01;03;59;07 - 01;04;00;15

Renee

On both ends. Yes.

01;04;00;20 - 01;04;01;28

Chicava

Yeah.

01;04;02;01 - 01;04;24;08

Renee

On both ends. And a lot of compassion for self because you can get stuck in a rut feeling like you weren't good enough, you didn't do something. And sometimes it's just about the timing. Like it wasn't for that time, but it's for this time and you stick it out and you do it. I mean, all types of stuff happens when I try to push go on something.

01;04;24;10 - 01;04;41;24

Renee

You be like, This should have been so easy and then something you upload something and it's like, No, I don't want it in that format. I wanted this format. Well, I don't know what format that is, but we're going to figure it out because I got a deadline in 20 minutes. This thing has to I have to hit send.

01;04;41;26 - 01;04;56;14

Renee

But when you get to the end of it, you're like, okay. Or like I was doing something. And the numbers that popped up at the very end once I hit send was four, four, four. I'm in my 44th year and I was like, okay, got it. I see y'all.

01;05;00;02 - 01;05;16;06

Chicava

That's all I do. That's all that's, that's. It is easy to do you in the, in the rhythm of everything. Do you get, you must schedule down days. I do zero days.

01;05;16;06 - 01;05;35;17

Renee

I'm very, very big at scheduling down days and sometimes my down days don't even become down days because they're like family and things like that that have to be done. But yeah, I this has been a really busy summer for me. Like this summer that this June to August I was like, Whoa we did a lot in three months.

01;05;35;20 - 01;05;58;00

Renee

So I literally will tell folks, I'm on sabbatical in September and so I'll have like events and things like that and trying to like reorganize my coaching and things like that. But I won't do make like major things at all. And so, yeah, I do take those times trying to get better at scheduling downtime in my actual schedule.

01;05;58;02 - 01;06;02;17

Renee

And so this is going to be the year of that for me. Like everything goes in the schedule.

01;06;02;19 - 01;06;05;12

Chicava

No girl is.

01;06;05;14 - 01;06;07;02

Renee

Like, everything.

01;06;07;04 - 01;06;38;01

Chicava

Is so, so hard. good. That my goodness. I'm being crazy. Be the medicine. Wait, hold on. We're going to start that again. All right, Rene, I see you have your first book right there, Be the Medicine. Tell us everything.

01;06;38;04 - 01;07;03;08

Renee

Yeah. So our first publication be the Medicine Pathways to Healing and Liberation through ancestral plant intelligence. B The medicine is also one of the phrases or quotes from Dr. Fukui out in his self-healing book, and he talks about the fact that we are medicine for each other, things that we do as medicine for for the world. And so this book really just takes a short it's really short.

01;07;03;08 - 01;07;28;03

Renee

It's like 55 pages, and we just really take a moment to talk about what is ancestral intelligence, what is the healing archetype, what is how do we connect to plants and plant intelligence, How do we connect to water? Have you talked about what your medicine is something really, really simple and also different ways that we can integrate that into our lives.

01;07;28;05 - 01;07;47;07

Renee

So for me personally, you know, many times people say, well, you just need to do, but they never really give you like, what? The thing is, I'm that person. Like, I just want to give you the thing because my goal is not for me to hold the knowledge. I wanted to give it to people so that you can go out and do it yourself and discover what it means to integrate it into your life.

01;07;47;09 - 01;08;08;14

Renee

So, you know, we talk about water and making sure that we're hydrated and that we're connected to water. Well, are we drinking our water? Where's your water coming from? Are you being purposeful with water when you shower, when you you know, what does it mean to be hydrated or dehydrated, not just physically, but spiritually, mentally, physically? What does that mean when we're dehydrated and how do we rehydrate ourselves?

01;08;08;17 - 01;08;27;15

Renee

So we talk about, you know, concepts like that and just very simple ways of how you can deal with that issue. And so that's part of, you know, this work. This work is connected to also my work with flower essences. As you know, I do a flower essence line. We're currently in a beta test, so some of that work is also in the book.

01;08;27;15 - 01;08;34;26

Renee

So I feature some of the flowers from that work as well. And yeah, we're just going to keep building on being the medicine.

01;08;34;29 - 01;08;36;26

Chicava

And where can we find be the medicine?

01;08;37;03 - 01;08;42;17

Renee

It is available on Amazon in hardcopy as well as Kindle.

01;08;42;20 - 01;08;48;01

Chicava

Fantastic work and where is your store?

01;08;48;03 - 01;09;10;28

Renee

So I work in partnership with chief ology at the 256 Healing Center, which is located at 1393 Flatbush Avenue between Farragut and Foster. And so there we do work around yearbook culture, we do workshops and, so on and so forth. We have our festivals that are there as well. We have a huge festival that comes out of that space called the Eagle or Shea Festival.

01;09;10;28 - 01;09;29;08

Renee

So that's a time where at the beginning of the year, but New Year in the first weekend of June, we are paying homage to our ancestors. We do a procession from the store to the African burial grounds that are over there. And then we also do a lot of ancestral veneration practice during that time. And so that's one of the things that we're there.

01;09;29;08 - 01;09;46;09

Renee

And then we have the opportunity for other healers to come and work in the space as well. So we do some of the work around Orisha, any fire, but we also have folks who do massage or Reiki or Flora Essence or just come in and they want to talk or or we a since we've had people come in and they wanted to appease the Orient so we, we do those as well.

01;09;47;01 - 01;09;48;23

Chicava

What is already a piece.

01;09;48;25 - 01;10;16;16

Renee

So it's the same it's like if you were doing an offering to water, if you were doing offering to the earth, you're doing an offering to your area. And so there are very specific components that go into that. Like we talked about earlier, you would offer and say these very specific chants as well as give coconut, or you can give different animals that represent different things and then that person will sit for a minute and kind of what I say percolate.

01;10;16;19 - 01;10;38;20

Renee

And what happens is, is this almost integration of that ceremony in that one moment, your always is starting to say, something has happened and you get a minute to kind of meditate and see what happens. Then people go out into the world and many times that again is that opportunity to clear the fog, to find some clarity, to talk a little bit about, you know, what's been going on in your mind or really reflect on what your purpose is.

01;10;38;20 - 01;10;48;18

Renee

So sometimes we forget. And so these are rituals that have been set up by our ancestors to help us to remember. And so that's one of the ways that we do it through or appeasement.

01;10;48;21 - 01;11;12;04

Chicava

Who ways to remember our way back inside. Thank you so much, Renee, for Joining me on the Shared Space podcast. My last question for guests is what is your wish for all the sisters sheroes out there?

01;11;12;07 - 01;11;43;11

Renee

My wish is that we all reconnect with our personal power and put it out into the world and put it out into the world in a way that doesn't require us to label it the good, the bad, the ugly, the indifferent. There is a song by Don Tolman that I love to play in all of my workshops, and it's about celebrating yourself.

01;11;43;11 - 01;12;10;19

Renee

And she talks about the scars that see are the scars of the work that I've done in my journey, and that we have to respect those scars because those scars become our testimony and we have to stop being afraid of sharing our testimony when we learn something about ourselves. You need to get out there and tell somebody, because a new record re saying that story, you're also reaffirming who you are.

01;12;10;21 - 01;12;37;17

Renee

And in that reaffirmation we're able to then really sit in our power. So I want every woman to find their pathway to healing. And it doesn't have to look like what everyone says it is and that through that pathway they then find liberation and freedom is the one thing that we all need. And it's not the kind of popular freedom.

01;12;37;23 - 01;12;38;16

Chicava

That.

01;12;38;18 - 01;12;50;22

Renee

It's freedom to be who you are on a path to unapologetically and step into the world and know that what you have to give is going to be received.

01;12;50;24 - 01;13;10;25

Chicava

That was beautiful. Thank you so much for joining us on this year's space. I'm looking forward to many more terrific with you, sister friend. Have a wonderful time. Wherever you are in your day, everyone, be loving and reflective.