Dear First name / friend, 

 

Greetings, everyone, my beloved community, as we come together in the last part of the season of summer, we are reminded by our Indigenous relatives that this season is sacred. The sun lingers, the fruits of the earth are heavy with ripeness, and the days carry both warmth and the first sign of change. Summer teaches us that life moves in cycles, and after stillness, comes growth, and after growth comes harvest, and after harvest comes rest. 

The season of fall is near. These are also times of great challenges. The poly-crisis around us brings uncertainty and hardship for many. And yet, both Indigenous wisdom and the Buddhadharma’s teaching reminds us that nothing exists on its own. All things arise together in relationships. Our wellbeing is inseparable from the land, the waters, the ancestors, our animals, each other. When we forget this, we may feel lost. When we remember, we will find our belonging… please click the video above to hear the remainder of this message for the Season of Summer. 

 

There are certain trees that take years to bear fruit, like the mangosteen, a deep-red purple fruit from South East Asia, which can take 6–15 years before offering its beautiful fruit with the lychee-like center. For me, the mangosteen tree is a symbol of my journey in starting Pahingalay Herbal Medicine and becoming an herbalist in my late 30s. I began to taste the fruits of this work when I learned to embrace and integrate the parts of myself that family, society, and religion told me were not “normal” or “valuable.” Being brown, queer, and trans, I grew up in the Bay Area often feeling like an outlier in my own family and culture. My coming out and sense of integration, where my identities began to braid together in a rich, whole way, happened after I came out as trans to my family, was surprisingly met with acceptance, and from there felt a door open up in myself that allowed me to connect with plants and their medicine. It was during this time where I started living in a BIPOC-centered housing collective, where we lived in a collaborative relationship with the land and with each other. I met other queer and trans folks, who came out in their identities at different ages of life. All of whom were connected to their own cultural and ancestral healing practices. Many of my housemates were practicing herbalism: there were tincture bottles in everyone’s rooms, medicine I learned was used to support stress, gender dysphoria, anxiety, depression, and deepen connection with the spirit of the plants. Our communal kitchen was lined with mason jars of herbs from around the world, reflecting our multicultural community. It was my first experience tending a community garden, where fruit trees and vegetables thrived in the parklet in front of our home. It was also when I first began to truly listen to the call of the plants.

This sparked a remembrance deep inside me… the whispers of my ancestors who were farmers, gardeners, arbularyos, and babaylans. Following this call, I enrolled in a Filipino herbalism class at Ancestral Apothecary in Oakland. Like a mangosteen tree growing from a single seed, I continued: first as a student, then as a Teaching Assistant, and eventually through advanced yearlong programs to deepen my skills. At the same time, I was working as a mental health counselor, often battling systems where we had to fight for visibility and services. Herbalism became my lifeline, helping me survive the burnout of activist work while also nourishing me, unlocking the plant magic in my DNA so I could support others in reclaiming theirs.

 

Pahingalay Herbal Medicine is a continuation of my training in expressive arts therapy, herbalism, my time with the Braided Wisdom community, and an offering to my ancestors. I chose the word Pahingalay which is a Tagalog word for rest, stillness, breath, and offering. When I first heard it, I thought: this is the gift of the plants. They teach us loving presence, and how to bring a more expansive heart into our lives. I think of Pahingalay as a practice of loving reciprocity with this planet, our greatest elder. Currently I am working with clients 1:1 to support and empower their own deepening with plant elders/allies in their life to support their own personal healing goals. We develop a plantcestral medicine project over the course of 6 months to 1 year, and I provide sessions, coaching, and grounding activities that inspire their journey with their plantcestors. This culminates into a presentation where they can creatively reflect on their plant relationship with their community at a local farm. I also lead “Writing with Plantcestors” workshops where I tailor each workshop to the ecologies of the participants: we engage in sensory plant and food meditations, expressive arts journaling activities to deepen our relationships to place and better nourish our collective nervous system.

I quote a friend Penny Baldado who once said to me, “Community IS Immunity!” Braided Wisdom has been my embodied experience of community as immunity. Original Medicine Yearlong Program gave me the framework to uncover, remember and reconnect to my own indigeneity and the land stewards within my own Filipino family and culture. It helped me gain “mountains and rivers” of insight and opened up more space in my heart, braiding the wisdom of my cultures and intersecting identities. The program helped me confront intergenerational patterns and behaviors that weren’t serving me, and supported me to see my inner and outer nature. It was through Original Medicine that I began the practice of deep genealogy, reaching into my family’s tribal roots in the northern Philippines, exploring Indigenous sovereignty, and awakening to a more intimate relationship with plants and ecosystems. 

 

We hope you are finding steady support in the practices and tools that nourish you. We invite you to practice Four Divine Abodes Chant & Movement with Kimber Simpkins-Nuccio (with instructions) (video length: 6:53). A version without instructions is available here. 

 

Kimber Simpkins-Nuccio (she/they) is a white, cis, queer mom and writer who taught yoga and mindfulness in the San Francisco Bay area for over twenty years, bringing a body love and social justice perspective to her teaching and learning. She has completed the Dedicated Practitioner’s Program at Spirit Rock, teacher training at the Mindfulness Training Institute, racial justice facilitation training with Holistic Resistance, the Spiritual Teacher and Leadership Program at EBMC, Mindfulness Mentor Training with Banyan, the Dharmapala Training with SMS, Original Medicine with Braided Wisdom, and is a visiting teacher at Spirit Rock, EBMC, New York Insight, and Insight Santa Cruz. 

For those who missed the powerful August EcoDharma Exploration discussion with Guest Speaker, Dr. Leslie Gray, the recording of the session now available here. The session explored the Great Law of Peace, an oral constitution grounded in unity, balance, and mutual respect, and illuminated how Indigenous principles of collective governance, consensus building, and communal responsibility influenced the democratic ideals later adopted by the “founding fathers.” The presentation also surfaced the reality of what was omitted in this borrowing: the profound human cost that ensued, as well as the pathways toward repair and healing.

 

EcoDharma Explorations is a collaborative program between Braided Wisdom, One Earth Sangha and Spirit Rock, as part of the new EcoDharma & Transformational Culture Program. 

Carol Cano joins the Buddhist Animisms podcast for an episode titled Dharma and the Path to Reindigenizing. Hosted by the Dharmadatta Community, this series invites rich conversations at the intersection of Dharma and animist traditions. Carol shares the wisdom she gained on her own path to reindigenizing herself, starting from her time in a Buddhist temple in Thailand, to developing a methodology that weaves the Dharma, indigenous wisdom, Earth-based practices and psychology.