Nesting Eagle
Indigenous Wellness Center
Supporting regenerative recovery, wellness and advocacy in indigenous communities and beyond.
The first center will be located on First Nation land.
Honoring Ancestors, Mother Earth and Self in Right Relations
Spiritual
We use somatic storytelling to connect to Mother Earth
Mental
We use ancestral rituals to move forward beyond talk
Emotional
We learn the water in our bodies as pathways for transformation
Physical
We nourish with Indigenous sustenance and practices
These programs develop a culture of 'hozho' (Navajo/Diné for peace, balance, beauty and harmony) in themselves, family and community. It reestablishes 'right relations' to recover from negative impacts of past generations, find the wellness potential in the present, and shape a regenerative future for themselves and their grandchildren's grandchildren. These programs are developed and facilitated by and for indigenous communities and their allies, and all integrate the Generational Expansion Program.
We integrate each Nation's own medicines, territory, language, culture to find their own way to wellness.
We support indigenous and regenerative modalities ('braiding', two-eyed seeing, ) to remake our own sovereignty.
We facilitate 'skippering the canoe' as an indigenous way to reengage the spiritual and emotional parts of others.
We support emerging leaders in developing regenerative wellness opportunities for their own communities.
We cultivate and integrate 'beyond the right brain in a good way' and indigenous peacemaking in academia
It is imperative to see and honor our young learners as sacred individuals who are here to remind us how to be human.
Healing our reproductive system allows us to recreate right relations, regenerating our ability to produce, to love
We support systems-impacted Natives integrating back into their communities for recovery and thriving.
Indigenous Regenerative Modalities
Our center focuses on:
Somatic Archeology
Somatic Archaeology is a practice developed by Ruby Gibson (Lakota, Ojibway, Mestiza) in 1995. It is the process of becoming whole by curing your amnesia and remembering your stories. When you dig, you remember, and when you remember, history is revealed, and when history is revealed, you clearly recognize the trail of stories that formulate your life. This knowledge affords you choices and restores to you the power to manifest your unique destiny in a conscious way. Somatic refers to the body, and Archaeology to the study of ancient cultures through examining their remains. When we bring the two words together, Somatic + Archaeology, we are denoting the capacity to excavate familial and cultural memory imprints buried in our body. Exploring somatic memory and body narratives help us understand what impels us biologically to certain behaviors and symptoms, and provides us with skills to release neurological patterns of historical amnesia so that we can become free to live unburdened, non-fragmented, compassionate and harmonious lives.
Generational Brainspotting
Brainspotting is a powerful, focused treatment method developed by Dr. David Grand that works by identifying, processing and releasing core neurophysiological sources of emotional/body pain, trauma,
dissociation and a variety of other challenging symptoms. Generational Brainspotting (GBSP) combines Brainspotting with Somatic Archaeology, a transgenerational healing model developed by Dr. Gibson. GBSP is indicated specifically to provide healing for seven generations of inherited familial and cultural patterns. Our focus is on developing positive aspects of inheritance, and reducing traumatic aspects, such as: adverse childhood experiences, domestic and sexual abuse, addiction, anxiety, despair, grief, depression, attachment issues, survival coping mechanisms, stress biasing, adoption, war related trauma, genocide, ethnocide, immigration, and removal from traditional homelands.
Somatic Storytelling
Somatic storytelling is the practice of listening to and making sense of the stories your body, mind and spirit are continuously sharing with you. For indigenous cultures of the Americas, storytelling is used as an oral form of language associated with practices and values essential to developing one's identity. Somatic storytelling is an interactive self development practice and an invitation to explore the organic being that you are. Through breathing techniques, explorative movement, sound and stillness, somatic storytelling can provide a deeper understanding for the conversation between body and mind. Even when you do not speak your body expresses your internal experience through breath, posture, movement patterns, micro-movements, body language, interactions with the external environment and how your body responds to your inner being. The history of storytelling goes back thousands of years, it has many forms and it's in our nature of leaning to gather around to tell and listen to stories. The way we perceive the story told also reflected the person who is listening.
Beyond the Right Brain In a Good Way
An indigenous-based epistemological axiology that draws from multiple moving and dynamic sciences, natural elements, and right relations to Mother Earth. This practice reengages the right brain to be in balance with the left brain, integrating the spiritual and emotional parts of us that are often disengaged as a result of generational trauma.
Indigenous Art Therapy
Indigenous forms of visual artistic practice promote physical health and psychosocial well-being, particularly as it relates to the discipline of art therapy. Indigenous communities value interdependence as key to well-being, offering cultural safety and acknowledgment for the local culture. Indigenous art therapy evokes emotions, problem solving, imagination, memorializing life events, and enabling non-verbal communication, and is integral in establishing rituals and communication as well as, in “making special” key events and milestones in the lives of individuals in communities. Indigenous art therapy revisits cultural humility frameworks, recognizes historical trauma and disenfranchisement experienced by many indigenous communities and approaches their work through a participatory model of co-creation.
Indigenous Peacemaking
Peacemaking is an ancient indigenous social practice seeded in becoming the 'relative' (i.e. all my relations) for others. It is a process for building relationships and community, healing from generational trauma, and bringing people together to talk from our deepest values and our best selves. Derived from aboriginal and native traditions, circles bring people together in a way that creates trust, respect, intimacy, good will, belonging, generosity, mutuality and reciprocity. The process is never about "changing others", but rather is an invitation to change oneself and one’s relationship with the community.
Plant Medicine / Psychedelic Assisted Therapy
Plant medicines and psychedelic-assisted therapy have been engaged as spiritual practices by Indigenous communities around the world for centuries. Sacred Indigenous traditions include ceremonies that practice these medicines not only to heal people, but to heal our planet by opening the spiritual gateways to the Ancestors (past and emerging) and promote transcendence through deep connections with Nature, the Universe, and Spirit.
INDIGENOUS KNOWLEDGE
A continuously updated repository of knowledge on the regenerative wellness culture behind the center
Solana (Nooksack, Tsymsyan, Mohawk) has long had a vision to open the Recover Me In Wellness Center. She is the founder of Advocates of Sacred, providing indigenous healing modalities, and is president of Transitioning Offenders Program that supports systems-impacted Native Americans. She promotes Native American and Alaska Native traditional teachings as a Traditional Canoe Family Skipper, Speaker/Doer of Ancient Knowings, hunter & gatherer, traditional medicine keeper, Family Violence and Recovery Specialist, Generational Brain-spotting Practitioner, Somatic Archeology Practitioner, and Plant Medicine and Lactation Educator. Additionally, she utilizes Traditional Ceremonies, Traditional Art, First Foods, Birth and Death work, Storytelling or First Narratives, and her Positive Interconnectedness Model.
Solana is an Advocate of Sacred Principals: consultant for Tribal Whole-Health Care, Historical/Generational Trauma Recovery Training(s) for Health and Human Services, Native American and First Nation Tribes, Public Health Care Providers, private organizations, and Family and Survivor Violence Recovery Facilities. She aids in drug and alcohol recovery, peri- pre- and postnatal programs. She develops trainings for adult learners of historical traumas, diversity/equity/inclusion, bio-decoding, Mother’s Breath and Indigenous plant medicine (including entheogen species) advocacy.
Felix (Eastern Band of Cherokee) is a licensed mental health counselor (LMHC), practicing for over ten years. He holds an M.A. in Psychology from Pepperdine University and a Graduate level certificate in Psychedelic Assisted-Therapies and Research from The Integrative Psychiatry Institute.
His theoretical orientation as a therapist is trauma informed and somatically focused, based in sacred, relational, and humanistic approaches. He draws from transpersonal psychology as well as attachment theory, neurobiology, Holotropic Breathwork, and psychedelic medicine work. As a psychotherapist, he supports his clients to look at themselves with honesty and love in order to create more freedom and connection in their lives. He specializes in assisting others to activate their inner healing intelligence, remove barriers to growth, and build unity within themselves and the universe around them.
In his trauma-informed work he understands the need for first building trust as the pathway to co-creating the relational security needed for his clients to explore their inner landscape. A profound source of healing often results from this two-way process, and leads to helping others experience a consent-based relationship that is respectful, heartful, and honest.
Areas of practice include: Trauma-focused psychotherapy, mind-body therapy, somatic therapy, psychedelic integration
Neil (Hawaii kamaʻāina, Japanese) has stewarded regenerative community development for 30 years, supporting sovereign cultures and places designed, governed and owned by the people, for the people. He is a founding steward of the Indigenous Regenerative Wellness Center Initiative, to develop places of recovery, wellness and advocacy that support a regenerative culture based on indigenous values. He is a facilitator at the Healing & Reconciliation Institute (indigenous peacemaking), and an advisor to Advocates of Sacred (indigenous wellness practices).
Neil is a steward of regenerative frameworks, including self organizing systems, partnership culture, sensemaking, indigenous peacemaking, and regenerative economies, partnering with Commons Engine, to support indigenous voices in the shaping of a living economy based on thrivability.
As co-founder of CSPM Group, he developed the practice of crowdsourced placemaking (CSPM) that integrates community organizing with revitalizing places. This included enabling 10,000 residents in the revitalization of several downtowns. He founded a national trade association for regenerative development, and published 1700 posts on regenerative communities. He is a member of the Burning Man Diversity Forum, catalyzing a multicultural neighborhood at Burning Man.
Neil’s heritage is Japanese, born and raised in Hawaii in an indigenous-centric culture that honors Native Hawaiian heritage.