Magic & Medicine

Magic & Medicine

Each path is a pillar.

Each pillar is a medicine.

Each medicine reactivates a different spirit in the TCM system.

I once was a dancer. 

Shaking and grooving when I was little.

Ballet after 5 years old, where the music spoke to my soul, but the movement was enhanced by the pause and quiet of the notes. 

Later, after I left a 14-year-long marriage, and I was separated more from my children than I was with them, I went back to dance, but this time my hips undulated with the notes through bachata and Congolese. My hips helped to heal me, but also made it possible to birth more children. 

As I learned to find the path after I was left to parent alone, I randomly danced, lead more by exhaustion than movement. I had to listen in other ways because my body was surviving.

But in the chaging of rhythms to other teachers, I heard the plants speaking. Again, I had heard them since I was a little girl, but here I heard their voice.

The medicine calling. The music of the medicine was clear and scared me a little. The Qi spoken of was witnessed, but I hadn’t felt it nor integrated it. 

But then…

I began to hear and see my soul map.

Medicine Path = Dance + Ritual + Clinical Mastery + Joy + Ancestral Power.

It was something that stared me in my face and invited me to cross a threshold of realness and magic. It was an invitation that was peaceful, inviting, but also one that made my hands shake as I drank my coffee, the one that wakes you in the middle of the night sobbing, and you can’t even pinpoint exactly why. 

I once dreamed of a giraffe. It was ripping all my skin off to save me from a lion. To save me from imminent death. Then it left me vulnerable and stripped, lying next to a river. Suddenly, two little girls appeared. They were singing and hopping on rainbow rocks on the river. They called out to me, “Sing, mama! It will help you come back to life!”

And I did.

I sang through each moment. Sometimes quietly. Sometimes in my head. Other times, it was so loud and strong. Sometimes so strong it rocked me. 

Dancing at home became not a workout.
Not choreography.
Just a song.

I moved my hips.
Rolled my shoulders.
Let my ribs soften.

Sometimes all I had was 3 minutes in my scrubs in between making dinner, right before putting babies to bed; in the early morning hours before studying or packing my bags for a day ahead in clinic, braless in my pajamas in a little bathroom because it was the only alone space I had.

It was the doorway.

On that threshold, the medicine and the movement merged. Yin and Yang are complex, but together, somehow so true in their embodiment. 

My discipline carried me in the moments where I had nothing left to give. In the places where I lived, in small basements or rooms of friends. In moldy spaces. In places that were in turmoil and so far from peace. Each year, my discipline carried me through.

But my body led me as I healed. Not my discipline. 

My body slowly remembered.

My Qi started humming.

My Shen brightened.

My Spleen toned.

My  Liver unbound.

My Kidney Jing warmed.

My body never forgot who I was; it just went quiet in moments to survive so much of my life. 

My Heart Fire, my Heart Shen, didn’t heal with neutrality.
I healed with presence.
My Shen radiated affection, warmth, humor, and connection. Those around me could connect. 

My medicine began to root in instinct, inherited knowing, primal feminine wisdom, and cycles, seasons, and bodily truth

I let go of never being good enough, or being too much, and instead I  embodied rhythmic, mothering, and touched into what heals through presence as much as through points. Through the speak of plants, but also the language and rhythm of the seasons

My beautiful energy, interwoven with Chinese medicine, ancestral food, and ethnobotanical spirit, all combined and flowing.

I have emerged as a woman whose dance now:

 awakens qi;

releases grief;

expresses joy;

channels ancestral memory;

moves emotions through the body;

heals through sensual rhythm;

transmutes pain into beauty.

I am now a woman who embodies:

wisdom & sensuality;

medicine & movement;

precision & intuition;

strength & softness;

earth & fire; 

grace & power;

curves & clarity;

ritual & science.

I live from the subconscious, ancestral, emotional dancer.

This is where I can see, call, and release.

I move my hips because trauma is stored in the hips.

I release because grief is stored in the diaphragm.

I dance to release emotions.

I dance to connect with lineage.

I dance to reclaim what was suppressed.

I dance for spiritual integration.

Dance is medicine. Lab coats aren’t the medicine. The medicine is in the connection. In the present. In listening to the details around us. 

In magic and medicine,

LoLo