What is medicine? I never wanted to be a doctor like other Asian Americans. Western medicine profits from the violence perpetrated through other arms of colonization such as the military, big pharma and big farma, and technocorporatism. Meanwhile, Asian healing practices such as acupuncture, massage, and yoga are often appropriated and commodified for the benefit of wealthy people. Last year, at the height of my unhealed C-PTSD, I visited the doctor 27 times but this year after beginning my healing journey it has been only 7. This has inspired me to become a trauma therapist rooted in my Eastern tradition.
Our ancestral path to the present is seared into the Earth and she binds us with the gravity of responsibility we have to all our ancestors human or non that brought us here. I am learning how plant medicine such as cannabis, psychedelics, and many herbs were used by shamans who preceded us. I am appreciating all indigenous forms of healing such as tarot, astrology, cacao, kava, breathwork, and diasporic storytelling.
Being Chinese American means having to hold the duplicity of two very difficult truths: one, that our homeland was shattered by colonization; two, that my parents had to choose between the lesser of two evils that resulted. I know I enjoy many freedoms here, yet like an unsevered umbilical cord, my body still has ties to her homeland.
“It’s understanding the divine is everywhere. Eroticism is that embrace, it’s about knowing that there is so much more to the erotic than sex. It’s a way of life, of existing in a state of liminality, of understanding that the sacrosanct has its own erotic compass. If we accepted our ways without demonizing them, if we understood our complexities without judgment, and took effort in finding peace with ourselves, we would find true, unadulterated liberation.” -Fariha Roisin
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