Dear Reader,

There is a black and white photo of my mother on a clothing rack shelf in my closet. It’s propped up behind some jewelry boxes. This location offers a moment of communion with my mother as I clothe and adorn myself.

She stands close to a building that may be her home. She stands her full length, her silk sari perfectly pleated and draped over her left shoulder and arm. Her thick black hair is pulled back at just the right amount to allow a slightly raised bouffant while also being secure. Her gold thali peaks out from under the pallu of her sari and pairs well with her gold bangles that now sit in my jewelry box.

She smiles in a way where the corner of her lips are horizontal and her eyelids look half shut. She looks beautiful and contained. In this picture, what stands out the most for me is the way my mother’s arms are tucked close to her sides. Her right arm wraps tightly around her waist and her right hand layers over her left at her core with her right hand clasping her left wrist. Looking more closely, i notice for the first time how her left fingers are gripping a small bit of her sari.

I mirror her shape and come into a familiar position, one that i often held in lines at elementary school, standing on the periphery at middle school dance floors, during breaks at work conferences, and while facilitating large training rooms. To hold this position, i need to press in my arms creating contraction in my shoulder joints. I also feel contraction in my lower arms and pressure at my core.

As I take this shape, I feel containment, control, and vigilance in my body. I feel contraction in my breath that cannot move freely in my belly. I know this shape as one expected of me as a queer brown woman living in patriarchal culture. Throughout adolescence and young adulthood, the grand censor of patriarchy warned me that if I did not take this shape, i risked drawing unwanted attention, lude remarks, and dominant gestures.

By the time I was in my 30’s, patriarchy’s external structures no longer needed to constrict, contain, and control my body. My body adopted and defaulted to shapes of subjugation with very little outside pressure. These shapes of subjugation are an unconscious pattern in my body and life journey.

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As i look at my mother’s photo, I see that this shape is not only one i learned, adopted and honed, it is one i inherited from my mother and likely one she inherited from hers. In seeing this pattern within my maternal line, I understand that to unlearn these shapes requires seeing the conscious and unconscious patterns within my lineage with clarity and compassion and then choosing shapes that support the authentic expression of my essence. By doing this, i prime a flow of healing within me and across generations before and after me.

Thanks to my sister friend and cherished collaborator, Ana Polanco, I’ve discovered family constellations, a powerful framework and embodied approach to help us see patterns within our family systems and lineages for the first time or in a new way.

In family systems, unrelated people gather to support one another in seeing and addressing dynamics that are causing some form of contraction within them and their family system. In the process, a person presents an unresolved issue and/or dynamic and asks others in the group to represent different individuals within their family. These representatives are believed to be able to feel and experience the emotions of the family member whose role they have taken on. The person whose family issue is being constellated also chooses one person to represent themselves. This person positions the representatives in the room in ways that reflect their current issue / dynamic.

A family constellations facilitator then has an opportunity to ask different family members what they are feeling and may even invite them to shift position in relation to other members to more fully represent their feelings or needs in relation to the issue being explored. The responses and movements of representatives usually illuminates perspectives on the issue that are new and may even offer clues to what is at the root of the unhealthy patterns of relating.

Attuning to intuition, Spirit, and ancestral guides, Ana is masterful in asking questions and shining light on where there is blockage, misalignment, and/or deep wounding within the system as well as the values, gifts, and medicine of our lineages, particularly the maternal line.

Over the past year, Ana and I have intuited that her practice of family constellations is complemented or even amplified by my own practices in sound healing focused on unlocking our authentic voice. Through breathwork, toning, and movement, I support people in feeling where their voice is blocked and stuck and re-membering the parts of us that got lost or hidden as a result. I also accompany people as they explore what tones emanate naturally and what tones they suppress or silence. Through guided vocal improvisation and medicine songs, I invite people to feel into how their voice wants to move through their bodies exploring questions like:

In all of this, there are opportunities to see our patterned sounds - both those that serve us and those that don’t and to experiment with choosing authentic shapes within our voice guided by our intuition.

In our collaborations, Ana and I are finding that to unlearn conditioned patterns and to choose freedom, we need to reshape ourselves within our bodies, voices, and lineages. Ana and i will be braiding family constellations and sound healing at two events in July. The first is a half day retreat in Brooklyn on July 13 centered on the theme of Awakening the Divine Feminine. Then, on July 27, we will offer Remember & Reawaken, a ceremonial journey to heal our connection to the land in collaboration with Aurora Commons in the Bronx. See details and registration links below. We’d love to see you there!

Enchantments