Roots and Rootlessness: A Conversation about the Four Medicines Approach to Health [Episode 4]
Learning from traditional animist, ritualist, and ancestral guide, Erica Nunnally, is an opportunity to feel deeply grounded and immersed in practical, earthy wisdom. You can almost hear the trees singing, you can almost smell the dirt rich under your feet as she speaks.
In this conversation we explore:
(7:00) “Rootlessness” and Erica’s experience of having lived in many places around the world at an early age. Each place she resided spoke to her differently. As a “tumbleweed,” she found ways of grounding through her family unit and through creating a heart relationship with the living world around her.
(13:00) Erica describes how she came to understand and use the Four Medicine’s Approach (Mind-Body-Spirit-Nature) in her life and practice. So much focus is placed within our culture on just the first three (Mind-Body-Spirit) and “still we are not well.” Nature acts as the fourth leg of the stool (so to speak), creating health and and seating us more fully on this planet.
(24:50) Health is our natural state of being. What we are eating, how we are living, who we are surrounded by is all impacting our sense of being in/out of balance. In Erica’s experience, re-education is key to reclaiming a sense of agency and responsibility.
(42:30) Yoga practice reminds us that all of life is a practice; we are literally constantly learning and unlearning. Let us feel into how we are all doing our best. Let us take this time in these bodies as practice. Let us not linger too long with the “second dart” (listen in to find out what this means!)
(47:00) Erica describes connecting with Dandelion as an ally to remembering our personal and collective resilience. “Life is truly a gift and worth opening up to.”
Resources:
Erica Nunnally’s website and offerings
The Seven Practices of Wildly Successful Wellnesspreneurs
Initiations: A Life of Ritual (a year long journey through Ancestral Medicine)
Braiding Sweetgrass by Robin Wall Kimmerer
