Podcast: Liberation Ecotherapy with Phoenix Smith (Upstream)
Ecosystems can be restored, but we have to do the work we have to do the repair we have to do the reciprocity we have to change our consciousness and relationships can be restored as well. restoring our relationship with ourself. Right to Know that we are nature, we are nature, our cells, our body, our biology. Our veins are like rivers, right? So as rivers and ecosystems can be restored, we can be restored. And then we can repair our relationships.
Although many therapists are beginning to understand the importance of the natural world in healing and overall mental health, for example, by recommending time in nature to help with depression and other mental health challenges, very few also address the connected issues of economic and racial justice, such as a lack of access to nature, the high cost of eco therapeutic offerings, the lack of diversity and cultural competency among practitioners, and the fact that communities of color are disproportionately impacted by climate catastrophes and are far more likely to live in areas with heavy pollution. What if therapy were able to help us heal not just at the individual level, but also at the collective level and in the realm of the ecological as well as the social.
Because what I find is that we are holding so much, that when we get the opportunity to rest together by water, or near a tree, or, or in a park, or in a balcony, in someone’s backyard, or in a garden, that it gives us the opportunity to kind of lay down all those things that we’ve been carrying, and people really open their hearts in ways that they didn’t even realize they needed to.
My elders told me that before we begin any important work, especially if we are going to even slightly mention our own wounds and the wounds of the earth. If we’re going to talk about the genocide, or if we’re going to talk about whatever we’re carrying that before we even start, that we need to put prayers down, before we get into any kind of action, or any kind of dialogue, that we need to put prayers down because the work that we’re doing, and us just being together is sacred. So that’s that’s how we would move forward.
We would set up these beautiful, I’m going to cry because this is probably one of the most beautiful experience I had, they would set up these beautiful pop up clinics, healing clinics, in the hood in Oakland, and indigenous healers like myself and others couldn’t dedos acupuncturist massage therapists would come and offer our services free. And people in the community would line up there would be lines around the block, we would have a space to take care of the children and the elderly, we would have food. It was the most healing environment and space that I’ve ever been into. And it showed me that it is possible for us to liberate ourselves from the dominant narrative that tells us that we aren’t valuable as human beings. That tells us we have to pay the state and rely on the state to take care of us which they don’t and we’ve seen that in the pandemic I’ve never had an experience like that where I didn’t want to leave, you just wanted to stay all day.
The root of the word eco is home, in Greek home, right. And so when eco therapy, the way I define it is using the roots of the words. Eco being home and therapy meaning to care for to attend. So eco therapy, the way that I practice it, and the way that I try to teach it to people, is what different practices can we use to help take care of home, home includes the natural world, home includes our own selves, home includes all of our relationships, as well. And so liberation, eco therapy is creating community based practices of caring for ourselves, and the natural world that is aligned with social justice.
Five Strands of Liberation Ecotherapy
1. Reciprocity
- nurturing nature and being nurtured by nature,
- Reciprocity helps us to accept And move beyond just transactional relationships to knowing that there’s a given a take
- in our relationship with the natural world, when we go out into the natural world, indigenous people of Turtle Island talk about this all the time: you greet the plant, you ask permission.
2. Restoration
- our anti racist ecological consciousness. It’s not enough to just say ecological consciousness that it’s important for all of us, no matter who we are, to move towards being anti racist in our ecological consciousness.
- we begin to restore our own consciousness and the earth through practices, and through community building, where we look at the world and the earth with open eyes.
3. Reparation
- Once we have spent some time in the in learning and being in a place of reciprocity and restoration, we begin to look at what repairs need to be made?
- what repairs need to be made with your ancestors?
- Once we move through repair, we can then start thinking about regeneration.
4. Regeneration
- Ecosystems can be restored. Right but we have to do the work we have to do the repair we have to do the reciprocity we have to change our consciousness, and relationships can be restored as well.
- Know that we are nature, ourselves, our body, our biology, our veins are like rivers
- as rivers and ecosystems can be restored, we can be restored. And then we can repair our relationships. And so the regeneration piece is where we are moving into the restoration, we have experienced some healing are about to experience a little bit of healing
5. Reimagining
- then then we can start to really reimagining and build and CO create this beautiful new earth
So people are also organizing around healing, which we could not say we It wasn’t called that are happening like that 20 years ago, but people are starting to organize around healing, disabled people are organizing to support themselves. Because listen, the st ate does not have our back, the state is collapsing. The state is collapsing, but people are organizing towards healing. And so that is what I also see that, that in the midst of drought and a trickle of a stream. Indigenous people are getting their land back.
That is it’s important to pray out loud, because your voice has we have a term that we call Ase (orashe (from Yoruba àṣẹ)[1] is a philosophical concept defined by the Yoruba of Nigeria to represent the power that makes things happen and produces change in the Yoruba religion.) your voice the vibration of your voice has spiritual power, and the creator and the water and the plants and the animals are listening to your voice. And I would encourage them to speak words, prayers, just speaking words of intention. Doesn’t matter if you’re of any religion. And speak to the trees and speak to the plants and ask for guidance and ask for support.