Stories of our People: Healing through Land Connection

Earth connection is an act of generational healing.

Nature connection and a tradition of being close to the land is wide-spread, cross cultural experience that most of our ancestors have had. The idea that humans and Earth are somehow disconnected, or that natural spaces are not important to our wellness is a relatively new idea that was popular for a relatively short 700 year period of the human story.

Many of us feel the call to visit places of our ancestors. This could be a town or village they immigrated from, somewhere that is associated with a spiritual kin like a pilgrimage site, or a city. This is something that comes from deep within us. It is part of our story, our culture, our kinship and our collective soul resonance. Going to these places is mystical because it lets us invoke parts of ourselves that are beyond the realm of scientific intervention.

In anthropology, we call this ‘spaces of cultural connection’. In spiritual world, we call them spaces of soul connection. This is an article introducing how these places are important. It serves as an introduction to others like it highlighting spaces you might like to visit and/or what to do when you get to ones that you find.

This is also something I have studied and taught about extensively over the years. I am excited to be present to welcome a new wave of learners after a few years in ceremony to Earth!

*Places of power* Spaces of Connection * Practices and guidance to connect to Earth for Healing*

Spaces of CULTURAL connection: this is a different form of medicine

A space of cultural connection is a place that you are able to go to that has significant meaning to you or a group of people. For the purpose of this article, it is an Earth place that you visit to come into contact with a past event, in remembrance and/or commemoration, or as a phase of your own journey to personal and/or spiritual fulfillment. This could to do with an origin story for your people, part of a big change like slavery or deportation that they experienced, or simply to celebrate a happy occasion like a wedding or spiritual event.

Some places that are culturally significant are recognized as national heritage sites. Others are more personal and have to do with the individual or localized relationships and experiences of people.

Why are these places important?

In the modern world, many people struggle with feeling disconnected and disaffected. Whether we know it (or not), being away from the Earth spaces we (and other people) hold dear can create an emptiness. Visiting the sacred site, going to the favorite family place, or even going to the land that we played on as children helps us feel safe and connected.

The ability to practice culture is linked directly to identity and connectedness.

When we do not have these spaces (or cannot access them), or we stop observing our traditions, it leaves a vastness that can sometimes be difficult to place (which is why I am writing this article) but that comes up in our patterns for generations. This is a key finding in the anthropology of ‘space, place, and identity’ I have read hundreds (and there has to be thousands) of research projects have come to the same conclusion: something notable yet difficult to explain happens to people when they are removed from the cultural Earth places that are important to them. They feel like they have lost something deep inside of them.

• Have you ever visited somewhere that was dear to you in life? Have you felt that feeling? This is what I mean. Alternatively, have you ever not been able to be in those places? That lack is also what I am speaking about.

When we give ourselves the chance to reconnect – this vastness dissipates. This concept is driving current Australian Aborigine community healing practices. It is part of what is working here in North America as well. Reconnection to land, our stories about the land, and being able to rekindle our customs helps us find and feel peace and connectedness. This becomes part of our root system.

This goes much deeper than identity. It has a soul component. The lands that our ancestors come from or that our soul calls us to as pilgrims or adventurers has something for us that sparks a part of our own spiritual development. When we feel the call to visit these places, we are also hearing the call of the soul.

(This is a placard that is on Georges Island in Halifax, Nova Scotia. Visiting here was a very sad but necessary pilgrimage to my people, the Acadians. I came here as part of my own soul healing journey and then a second time, to help my people who had had parts of their own spiritual trauma rooted here.)

What happens when you go to these places?

When we visit places of cultural significance (or create new traditions where we live), we help carve out a space of rootedness in the Earth.

Space (Earth) holds resonance. Earth also holds our stories. Whether you are able to directly hear and feel the story by sitting down with a tree like many of us innately can (and I teach in my advanced Earth medicine course), or you become enriched through reading roadways and placards when you get where you are headed, going to a place of cultural significance can have a profound impact on you. How you receive the information or are moved is entirely unique to you, what you are seeking to learn, and what your perception focus is.

Forming this honest relationship is a main theme in my teachings.

This is an introductory article to a series. I will outline main points here to give a big picture of something that you will hear more about in detailed examples if you stay connected to this website (via my email list – sign up at the bottom of this page.)

Places that are import to your people can reconnect you to the spirit of what they endured. This is a path toward self-understanding and when needed, resolution.

• This can be positive – perhaps your family or kin thrived somewhere and visiting that place helps you feel that.
• Perhaps it can be something more hard, like a place they had to leave in order to survive, were thrown off of, were evicted from, or were abducted from. This is the case for my people (the Acadians and the Irish), persons who were enslaved, those who were involved in colonial dislocations (removals), and those who had to leave war torn areas. Though we do not often think about it – this is in the background of many of our own energy stories.

For some people, being in a place that has been spiritually or culturally significant to you, your people, or other humans can also evoke deeply spiritual experiences. This could be visiting a pilgrimage site (my favorite), finding and climbing a mountain, or going to a formal place of worship.

• When you go there, you are able to evoke or spark a metaphysical link and/or to understand and transform one that already exists.

The point?

Being with the planet and following the call that brings you to the mountain, the village, the riverbed WILL help you find your answers. Earth is ready to help you spark what is required to generate your inner shift. This may sound ‘out there’ to people who are new to these ideas or parts of the self that are so hurt they are pushing this away. I have helped well over a thousand people personally through private reconnection journeys. This is the type of thing people are now putting into therapy and re-connection cultural education. This is something that is profound and widespread.

• Visiting places where your ancestors had been helps you become aware of parts of their past that you may not be aware of. This point is abstract yet incredibly important. A bit of a personal example to help ground what I mean. I moved to Maryland from Nova Scotia. When I got here, I found out that this was the first place that received my people after the Grand D’erangement and learned that they walked the land naked and without shoes in the winter. This is nothing you would ever hear about on PEI. Knowing that shifted something in me. I understood myself and the things I had experienced with my family and friends just a little different – that led to something profound.

Finding and Creating your own spaces of connection

One of the other ways that you are able to heal what comes from disconnection and to form your own positive rootedness is to build up a positive tradition of nature connection in your own life. We live in a world where there is an epidemic of loneliness. Part of what people long for is to be back with Earth. Taking the afternoon to go for a walk in the park, to sit with a river, to get to know trees and if you have a family, to take them with you is a pure and beautiful thing.

Getting off of the telephone, away from all screens, and enjoying the world around us by direct immersion is powerful. Though the world is falling apart (and it needs to, because it was broken), the EARTH is thriving. The veil is shifting. Finally, science is converging with what we have heard inside of our hearts. The validation of traditional ways helps us feel emboldened to reconnect to nature. This is part of an age shift.

Please stick around and re-connect with me, this season. Over the next few months, I will be telling stories about spaces of cultural connection, powerful places on the planet that you can visit for nature immersion, and as always, offering tools to work with as you do it. I also have a new open level online learning experience about forming your own connection with the planet through this lens available RIGHT NOW

GET STARTED HERE: https://indicrowacademy.learnworlds.com/course/spiritual-grounding
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thanks for reading,

My name is Katie. I am a psychopomp who became a social anthropologist, who left that world to work in spiritual dedication to Earth. For more ‘about me’ and the method of self-connection I created, click here: https://crow-medicine.com/learning-at-indicrow-academy/

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