Ancestral Herbal Narratives

[0:17] Nicole Wines: Alright. So today is Monday, December 21st, 2020. The winter solstice. Thank you so much Anne for being here today on Zoom with us. And we’ll just jump right in. This is a part of a series of interviews called Herbal Ancestral Narratives. It’s an oral history project with Raíces Cultural Center Digital Archive and we’re very very happy to be talking to you about the topic of herbal healing which is what we met… we met on that topic. 

[0:55] Anne Napatalung: Yeah. 

[0:56] Nicole: That was our connection point, so… I’ll start with the easy stuff. Can you please just tell me your name, where you were born, and where you are now?

[1:05] Anne: Um, my name is Anne Carol Theresa Batica Napatalung. I was born in Murfeesboro, Tennessee in the United States. In the U.S. south. And I am currently in Santa Cruz, California in the United States, on the west coast.  I am currently on Olone land that is stewarded by the Amah Mutsun Tribal Band. You know, I do want to go back to my name. So my first name, especially in this moment because we are… um, it’s winter solstice and it’s also the Christmas season, but my namesake is Saint Anne, who’s the grandmother of Jesus. So she’s very with me right now, today for this interview. And she was, you know grandmother to one of my favorite Palestinians, Jesus Christ. Who was a miracle worker on Earth. Known for… she was known for womb healing and she doing a lot of meditation in her garden in order to talk to angels. So she’s been present with me through the Christmas season certainly and during quarantine and through my life because of my name. And then, Carol is the shortened version of the Irish O’Caroll. Theresa is my namesake from Saint Theresa of Lazoo who was my grandmother’s namesake. Who was a Lithuanian orphan and was like a very big part of my life. So I’m sure my grandmother will continue to kind of pervade some of my responses. Botica is my Muslim given name which means blessing. And that comes from my Naqshbandi Sufi lineage and some of those things may come up again as well. And Napatalung, I want to say [laughs] you know in this interview because Phatthalung is a really important part of my life and my work and some kind of important things that I’m thinking about and feeling right now. So Phatthalung, I don’t know if you know where that is? It’s a province in southern Thailand, um, it’s really… for me it’s really a space of mixture as well. The indigenous people there are black people and they’re understood as indigenous inhabitants of that land in Thailand. There’s Persian immigration. A heavy Muslim concentration for Thailand in particular. Um, so it’s a unique place of mixture and there’s a lot of who I am that comes from Phatthalung and visiting there which I have not done now in 2020 cause of quarantine of course. But I think our names say a lot about our paths in life and they also offer a lot for us to continue to learn about ourselves. So thank you for that question actually. You said it was very simple and I made it very not simple. 

[4:40] Nicole: Well I appreciate you sharing. And I just want to point out that so we met here in New Jersey. 

[4:53] Anne: Yes. 

[4:54] Nicole: Yes so, I know that you were born in Tennessee. And you’re currently in California, but our point of connection around herbal healing happened right here in central New Jersey, and that you had a large impact on Raíces Cultural Center moving forward with expanding our herbal program and creating our herbal circle. So, I’m so happy that through this digital technology we’ve been able to make this reconnection and have you be part of this project. 

[5:21] Anne: I didn’t realize it was the, um, kind of the starting point because I felt like I just… I kind of like floated into the market space and met people so easily. I think it was like the first or second week I was at Highland Park. That you came… ya’ll were having that event and you know handed me this little paper flyer thing. I had never even met you before that day. And so I didn’t… I just thought that was already kind of the things that were going on. It was a beautiful space and I told you before we started recording is you know the lemon balm you gave me that say still grows in the plot I had and now a person that was kind of working with me with herbs then now also has that lemon balm. So it was, yeah it was magic but that’s expected. I appreciate all that you all do. 

[6:16] Nicole: Thank you. That’s the same for you. So now this question is going to be a little bit more complicated. So I start with this seems super simple and jump into really complicated. What does the word healing mean to you? 

[6:35] Anne: Um, I think… I think it isn’t that complicated. The root of the word healing is whole, is sound, is well. But I think of whole a lot. And I think sound is very interesting, but yeah. I mean for me it’s in some ways it’s like our mind and our body’s ability to be present together. I think a lot of people’s bodies are… People for many reasons are unable to be fully in their body and fully present with their body because of things that have happened. Because of traumatic experiences. Because of fracturing experiences. Individual… larger… like colonialism… racism are structurally fracturing. So I think it’s remembering that we’re whole. I don’t and just recognizing. So this kind of integrating all parts of the self. Like recognizing connectedness, wholeness rather than kind of a separatedness. So, the more I talk to people during COVID it’s like… I think some people are scared that they can’t heal. Or that healing is not possible. Um, and I mean this at like the planetary level too not just the individual level, but the earthly level. And I just really think for me I have great hope. I just have a knowing that no matter what we do to fracture this earth, to fracture relationality, to fracture our connection of plants it’s always already whole. I mean for me. That’s healing in some ways. And in other ways… this is, this still is what we are living with right now and kind of material planes so I think it’s also a shifting of vibration so I can’t… there was a talk with some elders at a restorative justice kind of talk that I was in recently. I was listening in on, but you know someone was talking about just the work that we do shift the vibration. and I really started to think about this with… I do a lot of writing now cause in a Ph.D. program and for a while it’s strange to be kind of like sitting somewhere by myself. You know, like what are you doing? Just doing this work and being a researcher was different to me than… I’m used to… we do a lot of massage in the forms of healing I practice. Modalities. So like being with people and the…what changed for its not like this goal. This thing were going to do, but in the moment. Even this conversation right now. I mean we shift the vibration during solstice. During the Great Conjunction, this star hasn’t been seen since 1623 and the Star of Bethlehem. This conjunction. What we’re doing with one another. The way we’re being together. The way we’re present with one another. The way we are in when we’re incredibly present with one another it’s something like a meditation. This is healing. And so, when we can… that presentness, and I think that links back to what I was kind of saying before is that the kind of integrating all parts of the self, the being fully present, the being in the present moment with our mind and our body and Spirit. The Spirit never leaves for me. For any of us. And Spirit is never late for many of us. Spirit is always with us. Those things bringing them together is part of our responsibility in the kind of human plane experience lifetime right now. None of these are really straightforward answers, but one thing I want to say right now with this overwhelming… Whether you’re non-profit world, whether you’re in whatever world. These kind of trauma frameworks are everywhere. Trama informed. Trauma this.. trauma that… And self-care is everywhere right now with the kind of like whatever wokeness has emerged out of COVID where activism is posting memes and being on social media. Um, that you have to… you have to go to the pain. This is one thing that when I’m working with people. And this even sort of in conflict resolution for me when I realize people don’t want help with conflict resolution people just wanted help actually. They want someone to tell them that they have to deal with their conflict. But for me it’s pain. So being in the healing arts you have to go to the pain and this can be within us this can be within our histories. This can be within like larger structural conditions right now. This can be thinking about how badly we’re destroying this Earth right now. Attempting to. Even though she’ll get rid of us before we get rid of her for sure. Um, that you have to get… whenever you’re kind of these traumatic moments traumatic histories all of these things the intention is to go to the pain and you have to come back out with the medicine. That’s the healing. So not to get to drowned in the pain hurts, but you have to feel around. You have to explore it all the way. You have to look at it, care for it, give it space to heal. My goodness to rest. To do whatever it needs to do. But you have to. If it’s the individual or collective… get the medicine and get back out. People want to wallow in this stuff and I’m a little less soft because I’ve been alone for nine months, right now. And people call me or whatever is going. Everybodies like, um, you can’t get stuck in the… the trama is not the end. And the self-care is not the goal. The self-care is like heal what you need to heal within yourself so you can come back out on the community and we’ve got to build actively every day which we are a different world. But doing it with intention, doing it with healing and connectivity at the root. With repair and mending as part of our job and our human work in this lifetime. And, um you know and just like listening to plants. Like giving them your vibration enough, like healing your stuff enough where you can like listen to what’s going on with a kind of a cleanness, a neutrality, instead of carrying our traumas everywhere and then just enacting them kind of like on the world. So, if I say like that’s what healing is I don’t know if there’s… if we go into like the work of what a healer or healing ourselves is or does, but in a broad sense, I think it’s just holding space for people to process that stuff. To surrender. To be vulnerable. To go explore things that are really painful and know that they’re going to come back out. Know that it’s going to be okay and know that somebody could support them through that no matter what kinda undoing happens when you get there. And I don’t think a healer is somebody that heals somebody else. I’ll say that too, but it’s perhaps somebody that sees the power in other folks. Sees the possibility in other folks and I always already see other folks as healed and whole and capable of that as well as the Earth is already healed and whole no matter what we do to it. So I think that’s some of what healing is. I think the whole interview in some ways I’m sure if we’re talking about herbs is going to be what healing is. But I think those are some of the things I’m thinking about right now and you know a little like with COVID and everything too, I think some of it is maybe is like this moment specific, but man. We have work to do, but we’re doing it. So. Yeah. 

[15:34] Nicole: Can you tell me a little bit more about the healing modalities that you practice. What your connection has been in your lifetime like growing up and now, to herbalism, herbal healing, and any other healing traditions that you practice?      

 [15:55] Anne: They’re so mixed for me so, when I would do markets in New Brunswick too I would always… people would say, “Where did you… When did you first start studying herbs? When did you learn about this? Like how?!” You know? “How do I do this?” And for me it’s like did your grandma or somebody like make you ginger tea when your belly hurt when you were little? You know, did somebody when you were sad or joyful like cut up some fruit for you and feed you? Or when you were in pain did they hold you? Did they embrace you? You know, this is tactile medicine, right? This is medicine food, ginger teas. These things go right into the body. So, for me those are the beginnings, and as far as I’m concerned all that started before this lifetime of mine. That started with memories when I was little. My father and grandmother were a big part of my life growing up. I spent summers in my grandmother’s kitchen just like sitting, watching, eating of course. You know getting stuff out of her garden. Getting tomatoes off of her plants and with my father as well. They live like a mile away from each other. It was just that food is medicine. It has purposes. It does things. You know fruits, vegetables. I mean hot cold is a lot of like Thai traditional medicine. Thai traditional medicine as well as what my father studies Which a lot of this is from my great aunt. And you know if you’re a child or any member of diaspora there’s like phone calls. There’s medicines, there’s shipments of supplements. There’s dried stuff you can’t get in this country that you probably shouldn’t be shipping across this border to this… you know lots of smuggled stuff. Plants back from, you know. So it’s been a mix of Thai traditional medicine, Chinese traditional medicine, and Aravaidic medicine, Western medicine certainly. Place space medicine, which I just think of the food and the plants around us. Those were the… in terms of herbs I would say, those are like a lot of the initial foundations and then a lot of that was mixed in with, and my father taught me Muay Thai and I did Thai dancing. Um, and so these are body modalities that also help us do massages. We used to walk on each other’s back as well. We’d walk on each other’s bodies as a form of massage when I was growing up. When you’re the kid you think it’s fun, but it’s really you’re the one doing the massage, you don’t know what you’re doing [laughs]. So those are the… you know I think of herbs and those are the kind of movements that train you to help do massage better. That really get your body in touch with and in the kind of movements. I mean Thai… Muy Thai is like my father calls it dancing, but it is for me it’s like a form of dancing with the body self-defense as well. And it gives you kind of greater structural lessons in terms of what to do with plants. Muy Thai and Thai dancing. I say Thai dancing I’m not sure if you know it’s Manora dancing and when I say Muy Thai I think people know what that is. But when I was talking about Phatthalung before part of my lineage is also Manora. There’s this  story of the kind of Manora bird who were half human and half bird. So part of my lineage is half human and half bird. And also those forms of dancing have…I want to say more magical traditions and lineages that continue to run through me. So there’s a lot that I was given in ways… I didn’t have to tools to interpret that when I was doing Thai dancing when I was younger some of this stuff was built for me to understand plants better too. But, these systems we know are always complex and not just like singular when I started to work with herbs. I think that was the question? Was kind of how I started off with herbs as a young person… 

[20:28] Nicole: Right. 

[20:29] Anne: And then I think… I just want to say too, um… There were these kinda individual unique experiences that I had I used to have dreams and visions of being in these kinda fields of flowers and white flowers. And so for me, this was part of my own journey with plants that has continued. And I also was introduced in high school to an herb called bai yanang and spirulina as well. So, these were the smaller things that were less like, “this is part of a structure I’m showing you.” But my…I was having a lot of fire in my body was what was understood in Thai traditional medicine when I was in high school and my… younger in high school my aunt through my father told me to take um, bai yanang which is a leaf yanang leaf from Thailand. And also, I started to take some spirulina and it… these are cooling herbs and I was dealing with depression, anxiety. I was a highly sensitive child so I was… and I would… so talking to plants and talking to animals and kind of having these kinda dreams and thinking about these visions of flowers. All of this was part of my childhood, but I think it was the first time I fully and in like a material way understood that I could do something to heal myself. To heal my own body and it was through herbs that were from Thai traditional medicine and through elders, and apprenticeship/mentorships study that they’ve done. Um, I’m going to call it study because we don’t give healing knowledge is kind of the credit or money or you know there’s lots of things that they do. But it was the first time in my life it really shifted that like I have control in some sort of way or power rather. I say power over control, but um, to use these plants in a way that shifts my body’s state. My mood, my interactions with others and it was very empowering. 

[22:38] Nicole: So your first encounters was formally using or consciously using plants or herbs as medicine came from a family member?

[22:51] Anne: Absolutely. I would say family and direct experience. Um, and I think some people are so sad when your lineages you know… when you don’t have you it’s like, “nobody told me,” and I meet people remark it all the time. They’re like “I found out my grandmother was a midwife and I never knew her and she’s in the Philippines.” You know there’s all these… but we also have teachers in the form of plants, animals, weather forces, the universe. You know, all kinds of… Spirit is knocking at us from all corners really to wake us up I would say. So as a young person, I was seeing that, but absolutely family. And I just say kinda the things because I think there are many avenues for those of us who feel like we may be cut off from certain things.

[23:39] Nicole: Right. That’s true. And so obviously you have memories of your family engaging in these practices and you gave some of the examples of them. So, um that’s on your dad’s side of the family you’re… that Thai traditional medicine, Muy Thai, and Manora dance.

[24:03] Anne: Yes.

[24:04] Nicole: Are the different forms of healing traditions and artistic traditions and…

[24:12] Anne: Yes.

[24:13] Nicole: And I think it’s all related, but that’s what you were experiencing from a young age by just integrated into your life by family and through the things that you were experiencing and watching. Is there a formal system of study within those systems? Within those forms? Or is it, um, more just family history or tradition-based passed down?

[24:42] Anne: It’s both. Well, I wanna speak from my unique experience because I’ll say Thai traditional medicine and what I study when I go to Chiang Mai now is understood as Thai traditional medicine. So, Thai government formalized medicine and this is certainly more formalized because on my maternal side, you know when I talk about my healing frameworks with my grandmother. And my grandmother was Lithuanian but she was an orphan and has no connect[ion]… you know was very catholic. She was raised in an orphanage of nuns and so these are very like… these are even looser. You know I… there’s a spectrum for me. So, Thai traditional medicine actually is much more accepted by formal medicine… formal medical structures in Thailand. Part of this is because we weren’t formally colonized so we’ve had… what’s interesting it becomes more of like a nationalist project in some ways. But, there’s a formal system, you can look up this, “is what Thai traditional medicine is” and you can study it. Then I study with a particular teacher. Then I would say that Thai traditional medicine is very place spaced and that there’s a mixture of like Buddhism, Animism, Ayurvedic medicine, Chinese traditional medicine, all these things. Thailand has a lot of mixture, if you even look at like the geography of the… we are a water people, we are a fire people. And then what I study in particular is post-partum care is called ???  which literally means to stay with the fire. 

We put people next to a fire for forty days [laughs] after they give birth. So my frameworks are particular. It is a formal framework, but I mean I want to be clear that I study a particular lineage and that is also coming from a teacher whos based in Chiang Mai which is northern Thailand. Which is not necessarily even, you know, a lot of my roots are in southern Thailand so I go… when I’m there in southern Thailand, but what I study is the branch of a more formal system. Yeah. And it’s influenced by formal systems but it… mixture is inherent to ???  medicine I would say.

[27:11] Nicole: Okay. And when you say that there are formal systems is that… is the way that it’s taught I guess in modern times, generally, a direct teacher to student relationship like apprenticeship, or is it more in a formalized even university setting?

[27:32] Anne: They have them in university settings as well. I mean it’s interesting. My teacher, um, she learned how to read in order to become a midwife certified through Thai[land] when she was like in her… she was at least forties if not older. I mean it’s interesting what formalized can mean and do. Because historically this stuff is passed down by old poor women who can’t read. And my teacher says our primary tools are our heart in our hands. So, she’ll say that she doesn’t do online classes because you simply cannot learn. You have to smell herbs. You have to see the texture. You have to be with the plants. You have to touch the bodies. Like you have to be present with people’s bodies and you learn you know over and over again. The body is the text. You know, I think about text cause I’m in…studying Ph.D. program but it’s… and in the lineage that my teacher is from elder women. It’s from your mother. It’s from your grandmothers. Where I’m from in the south this is the lineages from your mothers, from your grandmothers. I mean sometimes Spirit comes in and tells you and has callings for you, but for the most part, you’re learning from somebody in a present kind of space and I think now that it’s… I think they have, you know, in universities and she teaches to university students and things like that, but if we look at the history for most folks when we’re talking about these knowledges it’s really old women who can’t read and birth hundreds of kids everybody calls them to their… I don’t know if you know who Toni… well I hope you know Toni Morrison, most people know who Toni Morrison is. Her grandmother was a midwife in the, along my research is midwives and healers, that is my research but um… she would say and she’s not recognized in any formal system and I think this says something larger about how I understand this work. When her grandmother would walk into a room and her grandmother was a midwife in this area for a long time. You’ve got to be space place. You’re birthing kids, you’re healing bodies, there’s stuff going on, but all the men would stand up anytime her grandmother would enter a room. I learned that from someone who is a scholar and now friend Linda Janet Holmes. But I think there’s been a certain power that these knowledges have had for a long that have been recognized and we’ve done a lot to suppress it, but we can’t erase it. Nobody can erase it. You know. 

[30:28] Nicole: Yeah. So they are truly… they’re ancestral traditions?

[30:31] Anne: Yes. But I and plants, animals. We have lots of ancestors, but yes certainly ancestral tradition. [unintelligible] what is written or what is spoken. Yeah. 

[30:46] Nicole: Do you have any specific memories that stand out to you from your childhood or from your study that you want to share?

[31:01] Anne: I have to give a lot of credit to… I wanna say… there’s so many moments. I wanna say Pankisani an Indigimama ancestral healing in… now I’m gonna say two moments. Cause there was one before. She’s a person who introduced me to womb work and she practiced Mezo-American traditional medicine. And I met her in the Body and Soul Healing Arts Center which is a space cultivated by Venus Williams in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Which radically also changed my life. My relationship to healing and herbs, but Pankisani introduced me to womb work. And she welcomed me with open arms into her work her space. I was the… the first time I did her workshop I volunteered to be the womb dummy, you know, laid out and let everybody touch me. I had no idea what they were doing and it radically changed the course of my life. The womb work has been central to so much. My questions, my study, my healing work. So much has centered around that and it’s why I went back to Thailand to get this particular medicine because I didn’t grow up doing womb work or it wasn’t womb-specific forms of massage at all. Most forms of massage avoid that area actually. They’re everywhere else except for that area. And the pelvic region and our reproductive organs. If we talk about healing the amount of shame attached to those areas. So, that’s been my life’s work since then, and that’s not that long ago, but it changed my life because there’s been a life that has occurred after that. Because when you… you know when Spirit pushes you into some question or into something that it opens up everything. And the one other moment I have to say radically changed my life when I was in Wisconsin too was Kalief Browder who was wrongfully accused of stealing a backpack. Um, was on Rikers Island as a… around 16ish. I cant’t…I don’t remember age cause I’m trying to forget my own. But um, you know he was a young person and he eventually, um he was kept in solitary confinement for a long, long time. Eventually, um killed himself and his mother later died of heart… because of heart conditions. I mean she was just torn up over all of it. A lot of my work… my life’s commitment and work as well is about abolishing the prison, but that’s another conversation. I was at a healing conference, an herbal conference in Wisconsin and it was this herbal gathering it was huge and it was a ton of old white women healers in the U.S. Herbalist I don’t want to call healers is an interesting word, but herbalist in the U.S. and the very last day there was this small women of color group. The whole conference felt really like erasure on every level for the days that I was there. It felt like ya’ll think herbalism started when? Ya’ll think what? Like and the stakes for why people weren’t practicing healing work to me were not the stakes that I was familiar with. Um, and I’m not in this just to heal myself, like what? And like you know I think there was some like women’s empowerment stuff going on, but there was such erasure of like Indigenous, and African American, and African knowledges that make up what U.S. herbalism is. I was like sick and it was like the third day and I was leaving. It was a weird thing right cause you’re learning all these beautiful things, but then you’re also mad and that was I was a little bit younger so I’m just like pissed kinda. Sleeping in some tent freezing and it’s just like what is? But I came… we had on the last day a women of color kind of… there was some event in the schedule that was there and I attended that. And it was clear to me while we were all there and you know that’s a mixed bag it’s like. We come from all kinds of cultural backgrounds. It’s… we don’t have anything similar except for like we’re not the white women here [laughs] you know. But while we were there it was clear. There was more complicated forms of trauma and more… longer questions of trauma that we were trying to… from colonialism, racism. How we were understanding environmental harm was much more entangled with those things than what the larger conversations were. It wasn’t just some women’s empowerment summit for us. So, that weekend was when Kalief Browder took his life. I came back after that and that hit me. Just something about those two things together in that weekend I was like there’s something… because the kind of sensorial damage that was done to him through not only putting him in the prison system but in solitary confinement for so long that inflicted torture that that necessitates. That’s embedded in the prison… so, the prison system is torture across the board, but what he had experienced and I’ve always been highly sensitive and I at this point I’ve learned the skills to deal with that and have been able to kind of heal myself so I can get over myself… but um, trying. I couldn’t… I’m like what is healing? What do we do with this? What, how do we help people after these kinds of violences. That’s what I want to know. So, those two moments I think are the ones that I’ll point to. 

[37:49] Nicole: Thank you for sharing.

[37:51] Anne: Oh, I want to say one more thing about Kalief. I just know his mother before she passed there’s this plant. I mean everything that you see of her she’s bawling tears after his death. She, I mean her heart is broken and it is broken while he’s living as well. She walks into his room. There was one of the documentaries and there’s this plant that grows in the window where he took his life. And she just it’s like the only time she that had ever… She like finds this piece in this plant and she smiles at it and she really like.. it seems to be the only piece to me that she… I’m sure, I really hope that she found more than that moment of peace actually after he took his own life, but it always sticks out to me and it’s so small and I don’t know what else… I’ve never said that to anybody, but I loved that there’s this moment in the documentary where she sees that plant and it grew where he took his life. And so there’s still medicine, there’s still medicine that we can get from those moments even the ones that seem to just break our own hearts. Yeah. 

[39:03] Nicole: Thank you for sharing. We’ve talked about so many things. There’s so much there. Um, yes I want to… I want to ask you about, um, you’ve brought it up a few times and it is one of my questions and it’s one of the things that we circle back to a lot of times in our discussion at Raíces in terms of our herbal healing programs and projects and that’s the connection of healing in herbs and plants to energy and Spirit. You’ve mentioned it. You’ve brought up Spirit from the time that we started to talk today. You’ve continued to touch on it. So, I want to ask in the healing modalities that you practice, but also in your own life and experiences that you have what do see as that connection between healing and Spirit? Healing and energy?

[40:12] Anne: Well in Thai traditional medicine. So I’ll probably move from like some formal and like how I understand as well. So we have stemlines and I do my focus is postpartum care but it’s really its anyone. It’s massage, um through postpartum care it’s massage. We bring in herbs in all kinds of ways into the bodies. Which we know that… well for me or um everything is energy. I mean energy can’t be destroyed. Energy is in everything. Herbs have energy as well so we use compresses, steams, all these things but we have also two energy lines that go through the body in Thai. There’s multiple energy lines if you do like full body massage. For me, I focus on two which run um, I mean we see through the eyes, the nipple, then go down through the knee. And so these lines when the body is healthy, when the uterus is lifted up, when the organs are in place it’s not just uterus, but when everything is where it should be and in alignment, you see this through the face. So you see energy. This kind of clarity like if you’re eyes are droopy like we see, we can see this when we look into people’s faces. Into folk’s eyes. This is when we… we can begin to diagnose before somebody is laying on a mat or something like that. So these are actually energy semlines but these are actual energy lines. We also take in through this through Thai… the postpartum and Thai traditional medicine the uphi care.We understand energy a lot through the mouth so illness comes through the mouth. And so food and breath are particularly important in that kind of teaching. Let’s see… there also… I’m also trying… I do Vipassana, my Vipassana was in the… I’m in the Ayurvedic Buddah tradition as well. Buddhist tradition and my training is to the forest tradition which you kind of like go up on a mountain. I go up on a mountain and I get to hang out in my dreams a lot. And then do some really digging in the shadow work in the dirt in the dark stuff. Which I find fun which a lot of people don’t find fun. But, um, in those teaching energy is something, again energy cannot be destroyed so we, um… and feelings are energies. And both of these kind of systems, feelings are energy. These are my teachings. Those are some ways the energy show up. How else do I want to… I think I have, um… Maybe I’ll use this to kind of go into my own understandings. In this teaching too, I wrote the primary energy or vibration our, which is like our connection to the world is our breath. Um, the breath is important too in the kind of Thai traditional medicine because when illnesses are coming through the mouth right, breath is our connectedness to the world. Um, in a certain kind of way. So that’s one of the things that I want to say. I’m trying to think about how I kind of connect it to my own practices. For me Spirit is everywhere. I mean energy is everywhere. And so like I mean when I’m in the… I mean… it’s our plants, and its our ability to sensitive to be…this is what any of these trainings are teaching me to do. When my teacher’s telling me my instruments are my heart and my hands. Your heart is a connectedness to your breath, is a connectedness to your womb, is a connectedness our rootedness in the Earth, is our connectedness to one another. I mean breath is our… it’s everywhere. It’s what we’re breathing in, I mean it’s… and like I said it’s never late and it never leaves us. I mean I want to say this a lot right now. And I can’t say these things in really in academia in the same way so I don’t…you know how we talk about Spirit we also know the history of this being suppressed, right. And we know that this is not always a safe thing to talk about. And both of these the Theravada Buddhist tradition that I train in and the Thai traditional medicine I train in. I mean fear is this… fear is an energy also. It’s an energy that does not serve well in the body. So, we see in massage that fear is an energy that contracts the body. It creates forms of border making, right it’s really difficult. It makes it where you can’t surrender the body. If I’m someone who is doing massage if there is no… if fear exists then there’s no trust that can exist. Like the body is not going to open up in the same way. It’s not going to open up in the same way for birth. It’s not going to open up in the same way to receive the kind of healing it needs after birth. Um, like fear gets in embedded in folk’s body so we see sexual trauma from years before that when we’re trying to do birthwork people didn’t even know was still lodged in their body. This is energy being stuck in the body. This is when we… it’s harder to let Spirit in in these kind of moments. And then the same way in the forced tradition in which I trained this comes in the form of dreams. So nightmares will come and they… when nightmares they suck kind of energies from you through dreams and it can also fear can become lodged in dreams in that way in the form of energy and also can become lodged in cells in that way in the form of energy. So sicknesses can come. This is why, um, this is why we do meditation which is a balancing of static and dynamic energy to kind of get to a point of stillness where we can deal with that fear, we can approach that energy gently. We can usher it out gently. We can face it confidently. Um, and kind of nuetrally instead of. So fear is an energy too and shame is an energy too. That I think, you know, if we’re talking about the relationship between energy and Spirit at the bodily individual collective level. Um, are getting in the way of our ability to connect with Spirit and certainly getting in the way of healing so, and these things becoming lodged in the body of course to the context of massage is important to me, but it’s also important to me because these are the things that make us cling to this reality as if this is what possible? Are you kidding me? Like this world that we see, that’s what possible? That’s are our imagination of what’s possible? Are you kidding me? That’s what fear does and I mean we see fear at a collective level right now and insecurity we see what that does at a collective level um, so… I think that’s some of it. Um, I mean for me energy and then part of it is like I… I talk about like the fear and the…. both of them… I love this I’m a crier… I’m surprised I haven’t cried yet today, but [laughs] both of those traditions too. I mean I  teach that crying is a way to relieve the body of some of those energies as well. So, I love crying… I love tears I mean I just think about… I’ve cried so many times during quaratine that’s actually tears of joy mostly just reflecting on lots of stuff that’s been going on, but um, I say that to say as far as energies I love right now for me like laughter and joy and going back to like what it means to kind of… I have more time to be with my dreams and in and out of dream state right now. So, those kind of energies and being intentional about them like they actually help. They help with breathing, they help the uterus and the belly, they help the pelvic floor. They help raise vibrations and shift vibrations. They help us move out of collective fear and chains, so.  I mean Spirit is all up in my conver[sation]… I mean Spirit is always here but I think there are certain if we are going to tlak about energies there’s more energies that get in the way of our connectedness to it than the fact that you know it’s here. I’m looking at a plant out my window right now, you know. It’s talking to me, but you know I can have conversations it’s all over. That’s a given.

[50:15] Nicole: Do you think that our culture and society as a whole, not saying individual cultural practices, that our modern society, our modern kind of industrial technological whatever you want to call it, society the disconnect from Spirit and energy do you think that that’s causing a lot of blockages towards not being able to heal? Keeping people from being able to heal? 

[50:53] Anne: Yes, because why else would you cling on to this stuff that we’re seeing in the world right now. I mean this is the project. This the stakes of now it’s like the project of first of all healthcare. We can get into another conversation about medicine and care being commodified and like what? What is this defined as right now? If this is people’s imagination of that? That’s part of what we are battling in the healing arts. People are dying… people are… we are sick. We are… and our relationship with the Earth is in need of a healing, but we’re there. We’re in that direction. Um, I think there’s so many things to be said but I just I think people are remembering. I mean it’s intentional to these disconnect things. If we go back to what I kind of tried to even scratch at like what, what healing is. If it’s integration of all parts of the self. If it’s integration of all of it. We  have…  If we don’t have Spirit… people can’t, people are not even mind body joined right now. I’m like, “get in your body then we can have another discussion,” because… The hopefulness in me doesn’t wanna… part of what I do, I trace the history of midwives and healers. So it’s the supression of Spirit, it’s the because it’s not something that can be quantified, contained, proved, evidenced, whatever, right so it has to be suppressed, but at the same time all of this fracture it’s like this is what medicine even is right now. It’s like a fracturing. People dont know they have a body. They don’t stuff is in here they don’t know the food you put in does all kinds of things like so it’s the kind of historical like just an ongoing suppression of Spirit, but it’s not lasting. It’s just for me it’s not. I think people are… some people are still awake, some people are waking up, some people are whatever. Um, but to me if we want to talk about wholeness and if we want to talk about healing I don’t know how we can do that without bringing that back into the conversation. Cause if otherwise we have just a material world is like I don’t know. That would be sad.

[53:52] Nicole: [laughs] I agree and that’s actually that’s a big part of why we’re doing this project and talking to people who practice different modalities and are from different cultural traditions because really what you’re talking about that’s a commonality that that’s a thread that runs across. It doesn’t matter what you’re healing practice is or what culture you come from or cultures you come from. That’s there and I think I’m really happy that you said that throughout history maybe there has been a suppression. Maybe there is one right in terms of you know people look for a remedy. They say, “well I get a lot of headaches what herb can I take?” Without looking for the root. Without going to exploring those energies and exploring what might be happening in a spiritual level as well or how that plant might actually not work for you if you don’t have that connection. If you can’t work with the energies or that you don’t even believe. 

[54:51] Anne: I think the frameworks are important. Like I go back and forth because I know people have… I’m really fortunate to have a lot of direct connection. Some of these modalities and my own histories and documents and archives and things like that that I can that I have, but not everybody has those things. So I think as blueprints, as frameworks, they’re very important and they’re available. Everything to me because I’ve been, because my life has been guided by Spirit in a lot of kinds of ways. For my whole life, um, when you’re ready just ask. When you need help and I mean books, prayer, plants, whatever just ask. The more that you’re ready for and then it will appear. You appeared into my life the first or second market that I did you know with the herbal thing in my hand telling me to come to this thing with [snaps fingers] when you’re ready just ask. Because they never… Spirit never leaves, your ancestors, your guides, whoever you may connect with like and so these frameworks are really important to me because they give us like a blueprint. Healing technology these systems are much longer standing than, you know… it’s interesting the term alternative medicine because modern medicine has been around what since 1800’s and is a hot mess if you ask me, um, just like capitalism and colonialism. It’s clear that it is dying, you know it ain’t working for nobody but um, there are blueprints, but also they’re very place spaced. They’re responding to what is happening in the time and in the moment they are. I try to encourage people not to freeze these things these knowledge systems in the past as if we’re going back to something that was unchanging. Cause it’s clear to me with any of my teachers that I work with like these things, we’re responding in the moment with the tools. With our hearts, with the plants that we have around us, with the communities and people we have around us, with the hips that we have for shaking. You know, whatever the thing is um, so don’t be. We have this study. I really study the frameworks as they are and I can critique them and I can say I don’t have that plant. And I’m not going to get fresh anywhere close to me so do I want to… you know, so what’s the energetic resonance of getting something from a family member that’s dried that’s old? What’s the energetic resonance of making offerings to the land that I’m on and the plants that are near me, you know.? So having conversation. Have a conversation with the plant on the corner too. Study frameworks too. These things have been suppressed but we also see them being really quickly moditifed some of it is… we can critique capitalism all day, but also people need these things right now. They’re here because they work. Like they’re enduring. They endure. They’re suppressed in ways which is unfortunate. I studied the criminalization magic and the suppression of like these kinds of knowledges that particularly through circuits between the U.S. South and the Caribbean. But really I’m looking at bigger circuits than that certainly. So through law through policy it’s really through fear of the kind of power that it holds that is not… first of all that’s not a masculine kind of power and it’s not a forcible kind of  power and it’s not a monetarily easily like it’s kinda more fluid than something you can monetize right? It’s just always there though also, so study the frameworks well, but also talk to the plant on the corner man, you know? And one more thing I want to say too because we work a lot with roots in Thai traditional medicine and I think for some of us who are really in tune with plants right now, I could strictly adhere to the exact plants which I use many of them. That I’ve been trained with, but it’s also clear to me right now that because of what that generation was dealing with you had to turn more to dried supplements and roots and you know. There’s a lot more movement, enforced movement in my family history that I then what I’m currently experiencing for my life. I’m really intune with flowers right now and I think a lot of people are who are working with plants. In ways that are subtler, softer, gentler, and bees as well was introduced to in New Brunswick and changed my life dramatically. Uh, not dramatically, but I would say deeply rather. And so these are the things…I remember the first time I went to into someone’s ??? hive and it’s like I was in their power. And all I have to be is be calm and be with them in their meditation you know? But I can’t go by force. There’s nothing… I mean I could killl them and I could poison them as we’re doing at a mass scale, but if I have to respect them in order to engage with them. If I want a flower to be open to me or to remain open to me I have to respect it in a way in order to engage with it in that way. I just say that because there’s things that we have to be… we’re given these frameworks so we can in tuned to the moment that we’re in that may not be the exact plants, things, whatever right, but it’s to respond to what we are being called to in the moment.

[1:01:13] Nicole: Um, a great segway into the next question which I think I… I think I can anticipate what your answer, the simple answer is going to be, but I really want to hear what you have to say about it because you hinted at it. Do you feel like we’re in any danger of loosing our connection to these healing practices that have been around for centuries? Do you think that we’re in danger of losing our connection to the knowledge base that they hold? Um, I know this is a few questions, but you’ve mentioned that some of these traditions, all of these traditions evolving overtime so I don’t see evolution as loss, but do you see like a kind of in modern times, that we’ve pulled away from these traditional forms of knowledge? And that we’re in danger of loosing them or do you feel like in other ways they’re being preserved and passed or in your experience that they’re being preserved and passed and shared enough that they’re going to continue to thrive as modalities?

[1:02:25] Anne: I, do already know my answer. I don’t know if it’s cause of this talk or just cause you’ve been maybe other moments, but I, first of all I get it. I get that like for some of our grandmothers, for some generations before us the ways that things have been suppressed have been more overt and dangerous. And so, we… in between studying midwives and healer and on one hand and then the prison system was my earlier like really like research as a student for a long time and continues to be apart of my political commitment on this Earth, to abolish the prison system. A lot of people that I’m thinking with, learning from don’t want to be documented, don’t want to be archived, don’t want to be visible. This visual this like social media culture I’m in the… I’m generationally I don’t know what is going on. I don’t know what this thing is, but I’m just used to people that are like do the work. People are doing the work always. This stuff never goes away, but how we narrate it and how we imagine that it’s there may. And so for me it’s an act of, remembering for many of us. It’s not gone, so it’s not buying into the narrative that it’s gone. It’s not buying into the narrative that our grandmothers you know sit at somebody’s feet man. Like ask an elder, talk to people, that’s a really simple thing. But I just I don’t want to say too like I understand this is the thing that changed for me dramatically during COVID actually I’ll say. Because I’ve been studying this stuff and it’s like and learning with people and I was scared. I don’t know if you remember this is a personal detail. When I was with you and Francisco in 2019. I had a vision when I was younger of someone who was pregnant lost their child and they ended up losing their child and this was one of the things when I was younger, um, I didn’t know what to do with. And I had many experiences like this. And, for many people that have had these traditions, we’ve been in these traditions, and we’ve been in these ways of knowing, we’ve been these energetic frequencies, we’ve been in close relationship with Spirit. These things were scary for a while and it was scary I understand for many generations to engage with Spirit because you’d be killed. I mean, you would actually be killed. So, I don’t want to take lightly the fact that like these things have been suppressed. I don’t want to take lightly the fact that like erasure as a project has been intentional. Like, and we can talk about colonialism, racisim, patricarchy, we can talk about that right like religion being, the patriarchy and religion I’m down for all that. But it’s…so I want to take seriously the kind of violences people have faced. At the same time what changed for me during COVID I think it’s safe in this lifetime at least for me to move and I would like to encourage if there are other you know, so I try to talk to elders and I try to say man we’re here like the younger generation you know it’s, we want to learn, you know? Cause I get that people are tired at certain parts of their life. And I get that people don’t want to share things because it’s scary whether it’s their own memory. Memory of their grandmothers, cultural kind of memories or just things they want to shut off. And I’m okay. That’s another thing is people can choose their path they don’t want to turn some of these things back on.  They don’t want to see some of that stuff. And I also have the privilege of teaching like eighteen, usually eighteen to twenty year olds and I have older students as well, but um, they’re so sensitive right now. Like, we got some sweeties. They are like plant people, they are softies, they are awake. And, we’re just getting started like, they need us to be here and we need this knowledge and I think everybody across the board knows that what this thing is called medicine is not it. Like, as it’s nationally defined, as it’s defined by kind of um, it’s not just in the U.S. this is like everywhere. Like what’s being paraded around as medicine and health, many of us have all these frameworks where we’re like this is not it. And at least our bodies are telling us the very least, so we just have to remember. Our imagination has been colonized too like this is not how we are supposed to live. This is not how our bodies are supposed to feel. This is not what. I come from… one of the gifts I think or talent you know we’re known as the land of smiles and the land of sweet smelling herbs so I understand some of the stuff I’m talking about is not happy, but I also take a lightness to it because that’s the… I feel like I used to be… I used to quiet my smile all the time or quiet this kind of joy because im in dealing with these kind of conversation and I thought people didn’t… I didn’t understand the heaviness of the situations but um, I’ve also visited many past lifetimes I’m like, I’m alive this one. You know what? Ya’ll aren’t killing me early in this one [laughs] and guess what? I’ll come back the next one if you do. So, that’s part of my lightness and my hope because I don’t cling to this material world in the same way. So I can, I move with that levity, but I get that other people there’s kind of the stakes of this moment. I don’t know if ya’ll think this is the last time you’re going to be on this Earth you may be like freaking out. So, [laughs] or you think you know death is, I don’t know. I just to me, this is the frameworks too. They give between midwives, doulas, healers, all of this stuff we’re learned when things are birthing, we’re learned when things are dying, we’re learned to see the signs and you don’t and you hold space for those things to happen. I’m not the current moment is not scaring the hell out of me because things are dying and they’re clinging on for dear life. I mean when I teach my students about this project called the U.S., United States, this kinda shaky experiment, scientific…. whatever… this experiment is it’s like, it’s failing. Like the prison system… the needed more and more force and borders and like the more you got to do this. It’s all dying as a hospice, you know, I’ve done hopsice work and I’ve studied hospice work and I’ve been with death and I’ve been around dying people and I’ve reborn, rebirthed, and put myself, you know. I just marked my nine month quarantine rebirth so, some of this stuff is dying is just like you got to be able to recognize the signs honey. It’s oh you’re clinging on and all this and that’s cute, but it’s not sustainable. And we know these systems have sustained much longer periods of time. Much deeper forms of structure, I don’t know about deep, but many forms and iterations of violence and if you look at, I mean if any of us are listening to the um, indigenous peoples, to the land that were on, to the land that we’re from like… uh, what endures is there’s wholeness, wholeness, and Spirit, and healing, and maybe those are all the same thing you know. Whatever the thing, but they are never gone. And so, we just have to remember.And talk to the plant on the corner and start remembering. Like, you know. And tell the young ones that if the vision that I told you all about is like, now I can go back to many of the visions that I had as a young person and say, “it’s okay and it’s safe,” and you know. How to navigate those situation we need a little help on from like and we have to be here on Earth. Um, I was part of different… I’ve been apart of different spirital communities that treated people like crap. That we can go into trans state all day, it’s fun, yes. We can go play with the you know. I don’t know, go jump around the astro realm and interpret our dreams and that’s fun, but we have to treat each other well. We have to treat our bodies well. We have to treat ourselves well. And, I thank God for dula work for teaching me that and having boundaries. Boundaries [laughs]. In order to harness those kind of… our own kind of spiritual power and our ability to tap into these memories and um, yeah. Like, there’s so much. This is a moment where it’s simply for me it’s just simply our imagination of what’s already there and what’s already possible. It’s all here we’re in it. I mean I tell people this.

[1:12:56] Nicole: Signs. 

[1:12:56] Anne: Everybody’s looking for something. We’re it. We’re the answer we have it. We’ve had, so believe in yourself. My father and my Meemaw the first people I was talking about, influenced [me], believed in me before I believed in myself and so it’s just we’ve got it. What is whole sustains, and endures, and lasts and this other stuff is just… it’s not enduring as far as I can see. Just from the simply analyzing like as a birth worker and as a death worker a lot of these systems are dying so it’s… so this is hospice work, it’s mid-wife work, uh, it’s care work. And we all have the capacity to engage in that. 

[1:13:44] Nicole: I feel like you kind of already answered this but, and this same as the last question I also… I feel like I know the answer, but why is it so important to continue to preserve these traditions and continue to teach them, study them, learn them, share them? Why is it so important to remember?

[1:14:07] Anne: It’s so…uh, it feels so good. That’s what we’re supposed to feel. I mean. Sit in a field of flowers and tell me that your being does not change. Sit at a cubicle desk for twelve hours a day, for five days a week, in front of a computer screen and tell me your body does not change. Put on a riot gear or if you’re IBF in Palestine put on uniform and throw urine and feces at people’s house in the middle of the night, tourture somebody, incarcerate somebody, evict somebody, evict mothers in Oakland right now duing COVID. That’s your job you go to five days a week, seven days a week, tell me how you feel after that. How does your body feel? How does your spirit feel if you have not killed it? Attemped to kill it at all cost. So all of these things that’s not how we’re supposed to feel and so we have… Spirit has given us all of these beautiful gifts. I mean, I had a persimmon this morning and about fainted it was so good. About cried. So we’re given all of these… this is our divine birthright is healing. And, each of us is our greatest healer. Community is important, plants are our friends, our allies, our ancestors. But, we all have the capacity to heal. Our bodies have the capacity to heal. If you do nothing, if you get off social media, if you lay you know, we have… healing is already… it is in us it is in you. At every… if we quit taking in toxic stuff. It literally… that’s the state of our body. It’s ability to heal itself . It wants to heal itself. The Earth wants to heal itself. The waters want to heal themselves. The trees. Everything. And so it’s just, it’s our divine birthright. It’s why we’re on this planet. It’s to be, and for me the stakes are like… I’m not done on this Earth right now until like my, until the Earth is free my work is not done. That could take more lifetimes, that’s fine. But it’s a joyous thing and people have always found joy in these things. You all know and you showed me you know. Before we started talking it’s like drums and yoga and we’re chit chatting it up before I get on this thing and start talking about, you know, all this violent stuff, but it’s like this is um, that’s how we’re supposed to feel. We’re supposed to feel like the flowers, not like the you know, not like the other stuff. We have all of these things. They are free. They’re abundant. Uh, it’s and the time is now. I mean I just want to say too. The urgency of the moment it’s now, but what I’m saying right now, people’s imaginations, some of it’s a joke. I mean I don’t really watch the mainstream news a lot, but um, the stakes are high, but also I mean I just still wanna approach it with a kind of lightness because we have the tools. So if you wanna feel better and we want to heal and we want to do this like everyday we are creating the world. What we remember by how we understand history… and study, my goodness! It’s just like, read. People cannot. I mean I tell my students this I’m just like, I don’t need you to think a thing. We gotta get out of these binary, this hot mess of a, but like I need you to be able to critical thinker. I need you to be able to critical thinker. I need you to read situations and when I say read I mean text. I mean bodies. I mean energies. I mean the room when you walk in. I mean the fact that everybody that looks like you may not be for you. I mean that having somebody that looks like you be the head of the empire may not be like [laughs] you know so it’s… um, the stakes are high, but it’s a joyus occasion and one of my favorite, one of my favorite teachers ??? he said that the Earth will provide testimony for me. So you know what do you want the Earth… what kind of testimony do you want the Earth to provide? And I’d like to walk gently here, but I’d like to playfully and I’d like to walk joyously, um. Man when you heal some of that yucky stuff living is so fun. It really is. And it’s a great time to be alive. I’m just telling you all like it’s just like I mean I want to tell everybody. For anybody who’s like doing healing work and is scared and feels it’s like… this is to me, it’s one of the best times to be alive because you’re not, we’re not being killed for this. We can do it. It’s like we don’t even know that we’re magic anymore. What people’s imaginations are so small, but it’s like we could just I’m like I’m hiding in plain sight and I get to do it. It’s not scary anymore [laughs]. 

[1:20:19] Nicole: Right. Thank you so much for sharing today and talking telling a little bit more of your story and sharing your thoughts. 

[1:20:29] Anne: I…

[1:20:30] Nicole:…really appreciate it. Is there anything else that you wanted to add or say? 

[1:20:34] Anne: I just want to thank you because I was um, it’s into the quarter so it’s like calendar. So it’s like what did I do today? What did I do? And I just I read over the details of this last night and when I was thinking about, when I… to go back to saying about work that shifts the vibration as a form of healing and a form of like, what is the work that we are being called to do right now?  Um, you know it to lift my spirit just through the kinds of things I’ll be thinking about.You know I’m not like, “oh, what am I supposed to say for this?” Or you know. I knew this would be a conversation with somebody that we’ve shared laughed with. We’ve shared food, we’ve shared all these things, but also the work does shift the vibration that you’re doing and it’s so important. Like Raíces, the fact that ya’ll existed during my short time there. What we see and what we choose to see in the kind of relationships and people that we call into our lives because I maybe not you know I didn’t call Nicole Wines into my life, but like I called you into my life before I met you certainly. And so, these are just the this is all the treats and the sweets stuff along the way. And so you all do this the conversations that we’ve had that I’ve continued to think about. And just knowing you all exist where you do because everything that we all do in like a placed spaced wherever we are changes the world. At every moment we are writing what is possible into existence so what you all do is just so critical and what we’ve and what I’m able to imagine because of conversations with you is so critical. And what you all are able to do in a space that I’m not rooted in is so critical. So, and we have more conversations to be had on another day too. But like, even in terms of diaspora and our responsibility as people who are rooted in the U.S. a\And I just have to say this cause this is part of what some of my research continues to land is this also circuit between… and Haiti and Puerto Rico and Cuba and Hawaii. So anybody who’s in the U.S., our responsibility is to kind of circuits of urban knowledge in these places and forming solidarities across these places. Um, you alls work is so important, so beautiful, intergenerational, um, intermodality in terms of healing, just what you allow for people, what you allowed for me and what you continue to allow of people is so critical. And this project about just herbs. I mean what you have done with this and what it means to… I just, cause Nicole you don’t toot your own horn either. You just but, you um, you’re like a you’re work I just thank you. At the end I thank each interaction that I’ve had with you all has been very generous with me as a kind of when I was a newbie in New Jersey and I kind of stayed a newbie I never became un-a-newbie but uh, to give people their flowers while they’re here is to not let you go without saying some of that… it’s. 

[1:24:15] Nicole: Thanks [laughs] It’s been a pleasure to share and to provide that space and I look I really look forward to a lot more of it.