Urban Oracle

Cecilia Garcia, Chumash Medicine Woman

I love having met people of different healing persuasions.  On Sunday, I upped the ante spending some ceremony time guided by Cecilia Garcia, Chumash Medicine Woman, with animal skins preserved in the Native tradition, feathers, herbs, steam and fire.  Cecilia’s style easily unfolds, she’s humorous and delivers with passion and focus on topics that touch us all.  Speaking of touch, the days work revolved around the group remembering our own power as people, as women, is to touch ourselves and each other.  To know our bodies, our physical centers without worry or fear and also how we connect to touching in the world around us.  This lead to a deeper message of being centered so others cannot pull you away from your strength and the power of having an open heart.  While she shared about plants, empowerment, feathers and friends we all spent time with some special items from her collection each with properties to empower.  Whale bone, rabbit fur, sage and steamed herbs just to name a few, collected in her tradition to honor life and the gifts to the world around us.  There I was breathing, touching a fox, a weasel…owl wings, and myself.  My arms, legs, my face which hasn’t been touched in so very long.  I loved how safe it felt to connect with things I have always been curious about as a child.  This is a medicine woman who deeply connects to her instincts in her medicine space…nothing is written in stone, but rather, we are guided by what work our group collectively called for.  I joked with her that I would show up at her door, an ‘herbal junkie’ after sitting with an herb pillow that has seen hugs from over 1,000 people.  I silently dreamed as she told us how pregnant women in her culture are constantly touched, even with offers to rub their feet to ensure the baby is properly welcomed.   Though I felt a sense of deep respect as a personal home coming of sorts to spend time in Cecilia’s medicine space, she is quite personable and down to Earth…she loves to laugh.

I walk lightly.  My form is ever changing.  But I sing inside.

For more information on Cecilia’s work, please visit http://www.ChumashMedicineWoman.BlogSpot.com for more information…and tell Cecilia, Kahshanna, from Urban Oracle, says ‘hello’.