Song and Circle: Community and Inner Healing
In my travels, the common motivation for community action is clear: to prove that a mindset shift can reshape the world. Allies across the globe are saying this message in their own unique voice. Permaculture practitioners are relearning the wisdom of the land. Ecovillages are rediscovering the richness of interdependence. Healers are soothing ancient traumas.
The old stories of righteous individualism and domination over nature are being rewritten. Reciprocal gift and existential interdependence are a gaining hold as fundamental values that can drive our economies and settlements. Inner healing, nature reconnection, and community life revival are the three pillars I have observed common to any community ecosystem. These Three Medicines are the salves found in community for healing the systemic challenges of humanity. They are the fertilizers for new systems to emerge.
Inner Healing captures the teachings and tools for deepening our spiritual practices and overcoming the archetypal traumas germane to human existence. Pioneers of this Medicine include psycho-spiritual therapists, faith-leaders, and wisdom tradition masters. Nature Reconnection captures the resurgence of small-scale farming, permaculture, plant medicine, and indigenous thinking. Pioneers of this Medicine include permaculturists, regenerative thinkers, indigenous teachers and wilderness enthusiasts. Finally, Community Life Revival captures the renaissance of gift-economy, co-living, ceremony circles and ecovillages. Pioneers of this Medicine include intentional communities, festival communities, and faith-groups.
Of the Three Medicines, I was most surprised by the role of community in Inner Healing. Texts like Don Miguel Ruiz’s The Four Agreements and collaboration modalities like Sociocracy are now commonplace in intentional communities. There is a growing understanding that the individual’s inner clarity enables the success of the village. Said another way, it is generally accepted that psychological blockages, or personal issues, are the root cause of collaboration meltdown.
Ancient cultures knew that inner healing is a matter of the spirit, that it will take more than talk-therapy to exorcize certain traumas. While each community I visited had a practical dispute resolution protocol, they also sit in circle and engage devoutly in ceremony.
From the crisp and star-studded night of the New Mexican desert, to the symphonic rainforests of São Paulo, to the Ashrams of Rishikesh, humankind gathers in circle to shed their fears and cast their prayers. The air fragrant with the tang of white sage or the musky steam of incense, these ceremonies open our senses to connect the spiritual and material realms. And a song emerges. A tradition as old as time, the healing vibrations of group vocalization begins to heal our personal wounds and collective trauma.
The medicine song circles of Appalachia, with roots in folk and Celtic tunes, feel like ancient gatherings. Songs of lost love, found spirits, and nature’s grace are shared in an oral tradition as old as time. There’s often an elder or leader, bearing a guitar or drum, who facilitates and curates the experience for newcomers, around a fire under the light of a starry night. Each song carries an energy of reconciliation, sorrow, or celebration. If a person proposes a song, they want to share its medicine.
Some songs are complex and newcomers may shy away from singing. But after one or two rounds of a repeated verse, something happens. Together, the group slips into a trance state. Overlapping melodies, words, voices create a choral ecstasy that sweeps the group to an elevated state in minutes. This is the real medicine of the song circle, we co-create a field of timeless presence where the joys and pains of humankind are not only felt, but moved collectively.
In the heart of the Amazon Rainforest, the ancient ways of Forest Spiritism have been alchemized with Christianity into the Santo Diame tradition. Though there is scant data on the matter, single branches of the Santo Daime Church report tens of thousands of members worldwide. For a single gathering, church members spend more than twelve hours together, taking the sacrament called Santo Daime, a derivative of Ayahuasca, chanting hymns, and healing collective wounds. The psycho-active ingredient of the sacrament is the chemical DMT. Also known as the Death Molecule, it is a compound believed to be released in the brain twice in a human’s life: once upon their birth, and directly before they die. Said another way, the group comes together to experience a collective death of the ego.
The members gather dressed in white clothing in a large circular hall, a soaring thatch roof with an oculus above is supported by a wooden timber and golden-steel structure. They enjoy 360 degree views of the rainforest and a symphony of birdsong. Seated in concentric circles, one semicircle is male and the other female. As the intensity of the sacrament arises, some experience bliss states, some a psychological rollercoaster. For the latter group, the Daime pokes and prods at personal insecurities, long suppressed wounds, and once-forgotten grudges.
But, does this lead to group therapy, venting of personal misfortune in circle? No, the Santo Daime tradition consists of meditation and singing, and singing, and singing some more. The wisdom of the tradition is captured in hymns celebrating Christian icons and Forest Spirits. The Hymns, or Inus, are sung in unison and considered a lubricant to release, often subconscious, psychological woes. Participants are meant to witness their deep-seated fears, but not dwell on them.
The tradition dates back to the early 1900’s, developed by the church’s founder, Mestre Irineu in the Amazonian State of Acre. Considered a mystery tradition, the philosophy of Santo Diame is not easily summarized. According to the teachings, the psychological woes surfaced by the sacrament are intelligent, autonomous spirits that gain power by feeding on our attention. So, to sing Inus in the face of fear, to chant through the pain, is to starve negative energies of their power. Only once they are seen and starved, do old grudges truly die. Only then do we reclaim our full mental and emotional bandwidth to experience the richness of life.
With men seated on one side and women on the other, it is said that an energetic Current is formed by the polarity of the group. The Current is like spinning water in a washing machine, it eases the process of removing hard-to-clean stains, sufferings and pains. The burden of facing and processing fear is carried as a collective. Exorcism is a group activity and the lines between personal and group suffering blur into irrelevance.
And once the hymns are finished, the spin cycle complete, an aura of euphoria envelops the church. Hours remain for joyous celebration, meditative relaxation, and, if the mood is right, really rocking dance parties. Armed with mental and emotional clarity, participants can feel the effects of the work for weeks after a Daime session.
In the Native American community, collective healing and celebration happens in the circle of a Pow-wow. Dancers, drummers and singers gather clad in elaborate regalia hand crafted in a rainbow of beadwork, feathers, and leather details. Best described as a festival, vendors display intricate crafts of bones and fur while the smell of sage and fry-bread envelops the senses. Day-visitors and lifetime pow-wow veterans blend into an ephemeral yet timeless atmosphere for a weekend together.
Fifteen men and women encircle a raw-hide drum three feet in diameter, located in the center of the dance arbor. The sacred pulse of the Pow-wow begins to beat. Their voices create an ethereal and tempestuous chorus of ancient words and capricious, animal-like howls. Soaring, lead voices initiate a song, and are quickly backed by a tsunami of chorus singers. Channeling the stories, traumas, and victories of the cultures’ millennia-long history, drummers and singers radiate their trance-like connectivity across the entire grounds.
Receiving those radio-waves, dancers enact the stories of the hunt, healing, and the harvest. Dappled with sparkling beadwork, glistening furs, and colorful feathers, the dancers connect the sound of the drum to the Spirit of the Earth. Each step a prayer, each step a story, the dancers flow between trance-like determination and breathless exhaustion. The drumbeat and the footstep become one, and for spectators, dancers, drummers and spirits, the Pow-wow circle transforms into an altar connecting Man with the Divine.
This text is an excerpt of an essay that originally appeared in Kosmos Journal in Fall of 2022. The original article can be found here: What I Learned Visiting Intentional Communities – Kosmos Journal
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