Tai’s Written Works

Young Healer

Hi,
My name is Tai. I am 21 years old and I am a healer. A Craniosacral therapist. I have worked with many people. I did the two year training from 18-20. Before that, I struggled a lot with depression and anxiety starting from age 13. I was born with a chronic condition, Hemophilia. There is treatment where I live that allows me to have a normal life span, however I have thought that the condition affected me not only physically, but emotionally mentally and spiritually as well. I am an identical twin, we are very close but outwardly different in personality and interest. I am obsessed with cats. I have always felt much older than my age. I love nature and plants. I dream about living in Thailand and meeting new friends through traveling. I love elephants and would love to spend more time with them. I am a woman but I also don’t identify with the gender binary, so I consider myself non binary. I am multi ethnic and multi cultural, being born and raised in a big city. I am young but my healing skills have healed trauma, heartache, physical severe pain, desperate physical and emotional distress, and spiritual disconnection. I have worked at a distance since the pandemic started and my work is still amazing. I am extremely close with my grandmother who is a healer. I imagine living on a large stretch of land with cats and ecovillage and mountains. I am curious about ancestry and lineage. I love writing, dancing alone, drawing, singing, listening to music. I am super curious about other cultures. I identify as neurodivergent. The most important things to me are my family, my healing work, nature, cats, and creative expression. I have never felt that connected to American society and cultural expectations. I can see myself very happy just living in tune with the land instead of in such a robotic and disconnected society. I lived at a Tibetan Buddhist ashram when I was 17 for one month. I loved Tibetan Buddhism. I have a strong spirituality. In a past life, I was an old man healer with a strong use of my hands for healing work. In this life, I do Craniosacral work, and like in that life, I am still a hermit who likes to be alone and also just focus on my healing work. I feel huge inferiority when I see my physical body which does not match how I feel inside, I feel much older. I have an inferiority complex because people say I look younger than I am, and also people don’t respect youth in American culture.

The Cultural Loss of Darkness

When was the last time that you were in the dark with your eyes open and aware? When was the last time you sat in a room or stood in the world, eyes open, seeing darkness. No light, no screen, no candle. Just the physical environment and you. Darkness represents so many different things. To me, it’s a place where we orient to a place with senses beyond our normal visual perception. We aren’t relying on our optic cranial nerve to make sense of the environment and world around us. In this modern day, the focus is so much on how things look—how people look, how we look rather than feel, even to our own selves when we are alone. In order to meet ourselves kindly in different ways—We are tuning into other subtle methods of perception.

These are our senses of smell, of touch, of hearing, of taste. What new scents might we smell in the air when we take a deep breath because we aren’t frozen moving our thumbs above a screen of light, words, colors, and images. What new sounds might we hear now that our ears are attuning to our surroundings, to make sure we are safe and can also hear the subtlest alerts of our place in physical proximity to other physical objects and to other beings. What are our feet, buttocks, ankles, backs, palms, fingertips, toes, necks, ears, foreheads, scalps, touching, as we sit in the darkness. What senses do we take in from the tastebuds.

And then interoception and proprioception. What phenomena are we aware of on the inside of our bodies, in our organs, in our stomachs, lungs, bladders. What felt senses are present? A buzzing? Tingling? Is there heat? Expansion? Contraction? Anger? What story is being told? Can you listen deeply and closely? The narrative when you’re in the dark…can lead you to quite a different and magical place—the expansive range of experiences possible in interacting with the world and perceiving the world as a human being in space…is pretty freaking rad, I mean c’mon guys (your organs talk to you, can it get more cool?😆)

So, I urge you to unplug your favorite lamp by your bed. Turn your phone onto the dimmest darkness. Light a candle instead of turning on the lights. Light a candle every night at dinner or some nights. And, when you’re ready, begin to sit in darkness for a few moments every day or night. Even if you have to force yourself to unplug a lamp. And notice, just notice…if you can hear the story your organs are narrating just for you😆.

Walking In Between Two Worlds

Once upon a time, there was a being that lived in between two worlds. Or rather, one foot in one world and one foot in another world. How to describe the two different worlds…I will try with much zest. One world…like the moist soil-filled forest, oak trees rising up for many feet toward the potent stars, busy worms diving in and out of mountainous acres, all things performing on an ecstatic stage we would call life. And, did I tell you about the reishi mushrooms puckered up, gleaming red-orange, on fallen logs, the snails prancing swiftly on the burdock, the nettles swaying and swinging like a tango, occasionally boosting one bold leaf stalk into the air, sailing for miles and miles to implant a new mark in the ongoings of life, a new constellation in the happenings of Earth. Oh, how beautiful, how much like a dance, a song, a galactic movement, this world was.

Now, onto the next world. The next world was beautiful too. It had many gears to the overarching functioning. There were faces and names. One shape, one main shape, one main species of beings. There were abodes and rituals. Ones that stayed together, ones that drifted through space like a lost bird. Ones that sang the song of the evening doves, ones that croaked the tones of the overconfident cricket. Ones that, like Nettles, said nothing at all, but rather acted with stillness, and then movement, moving with intention yet openness, curiosity yet determination and force. Playful, yet goal-bearing. Aiming to create form itself, aiming to make magic out of magic. Ah, I got lost in the first world I spoke of again. Back to this next world. There were rules and if you did not follow them, there were consequences. These consequences were quite serious, you see. They were not the simple death and rebirth of a leaf in the soil, no. They were a loss of imagination. These beings, they forget that becoming open and boundless like a song, a dance, or a story, is the way. They forget that that is what life has asked of them. Instead, they close up yet continue on, they forget the existence of the other world. A world with nettles and burdock and snails and worms and oak trees and constellations and reishi and soil-filled forests. They forget that the other world can touch them, can remind them, can hold them. Plants can affect us? No, they retort.

Now, is this world completely all out of whack, you ask? What of the abodes, that seemed so cute, so comfortable? The rituals, that filled them and their environments with whispers of the forest. The packs, the gatherings, the ties, the bonds, that complicated, yet rooted and still, were. The faces and names that felt both worlds, or that were walking with one foot in each world. The faces and names that belonged to a grandmother and her lineage holder two offsprings down the line, as they sat by the fireplace drinking kava tea, drums and rattles surrounding, the crackle of the fire amongst the whispers of the forest and the whispers of the stars. The moonlight streaming in through the window as the two beings cackled and then sat in silence, then danced, then sang, then existed together, thinking of the forest and the ocean and the soil. Ah, so I guess it wasn’t all too bad.

—Girl who walked in between two worlds with her Grandma