Looking back on this past 12 months, I’m in awe at the transformative groundwork that has been laid. This year in and of itself will truly serve to be the immovable foundation for many great things to come.
Some context of who I am and what intend to do.
I’m CJ, a tattoo artist and newly fledged personal transformation coach. I live in the southwest suburbs of Chicago. For all my life I’ve been called to study plants, food, medicinal herbs, the mind, the body, and the spiritual essence that unifies and underlies all these things. For as long as I can remember I’ve wanted to be a transformative coach, a shaman, and a renaissance man.
September of 2021 marks my first meeting with indigenous shamanism and ayahuasca. The build up to that is quite the story, involving mushrooms, yoga, meditation, fasting, and non-medicinal somato emotional process work.
The somato emotional process work I was guided through involved presence based study of fragmented aspects of ourselves (parts). In the process we were guided to identify, personify, and give voice to these parts. We were to become present of these parts, the thoughts, memories, sensations, the compulsions that accompanied them, and do nothing but be present. No fixing, no fighting, no judging, just plain old self-acceptance and allowing the parts to dance and then poof reintegrate. Presence being the fundamental mechanism for resolution and reintegration.
This practice of parts processing has been so incredibly powerful and impactful. To think that the intellect could be used in such a way blows me away.
Now for plant medicine, I’ve spent the past year back and forth from Colombia. It’s a very foreign experience for me, something that works in mysterious and unseen ways. The work I’ve done with plant medicine has been nothing short of miraculous, empowering, and fulfilling. I’m talking years of suffering resolved within a single night. The realm of shamanism and plant medicine is quite mysterious, for it is working with the invisible.
The parts processing and work with ayahuasca play upon the same transformative mechanism. To deconstruct and shed the conditioning we’ve gathered in order to reveal the innate primordial wisdom within.
To combine the two, participating in ayahuasca ceremonies and parts processing is the best of both worlds! Rocket fuel for transformation to say the very least.
This is what I find most interesting about what SoulDreamers had to offer. With the help of Jeronimo and Petter and their respective staff, both approaches come together.
Why do I feel this is important?
Self-empowerment and self-reliance.
I myself have succumbed at one point or another that I’m incapable and unfit to transform and heal myself. Helpless and convinced that what I needed was outside of me, another cup, another course. Yet another aspect of my conditioning, one that is widespread, learned helplessness.
The essence of both schools serves to empower remind and teach the individual that they have everything and are entirely capable of healing, transforming, and revealing the primordial wisdom within.