BYI Out In the Backyard CHAT Healing Circle

by Leila Sarene and Harry Ford

BYI Community Health Action Teams or CHATS, Circle of Healing and Out In the Backyard, together with the Cultural Wellness Center have partnered to create community healing space. The primary goal is to provide opportunities to members of the LGBTQ community and their allies to build knowledge and practices related to understanding the healing power of community connection. For healing to take place, the group is discovering each person must begin to create space for trusting relationships. 

The group began its process with uncovering the collective understanding of what it means to trust. Trust is a critical element in the function of community. When people are able to trust themselves and one another, growth is possible. As we examined how each person viewed trust it became clear that a lack of trust contributes to the fear and isolation that is present for many of the circle members. Healing began with using the space to share with each other our vulnerabilities and strengths. 

Together, the circle members are building a picture of where they are headed towards feeling whole. The circle is working on understanding the role each person plays in the function of community and how this impacts their own growth and development.… Read the rest “BYI Out In the Backyard CHAT Healing Circle”

Backyard Initiative Circle of Healing CHAT: Our Vision

Photo Credit: Ellen Cleary

by Dr. Michele Semerit Strachan

The Circle of healing is a gathering of people who all feel they received a special calling and transmission of knowledge/wisdom to heal. We are on a path to which we are called. The ultimate authority on our work is the calling. The ultimate development is our deepening communication with the calling. 

All illness is the resistance to the calling, the holding on to anything that will protect us from the total dissolution of self that Oneness with Calling requires. If all illness is a resistance, if all healing is a reconciliation with self, with the Creator, and with the blueprint for life and evolution, then what is the role of the healer?

In the African tradition, the teacher is the student and the student is the teacher. The healer is a mirror for the patient; AND the patient is a mirror for the healer. In this way, everyone has a healing role to play. And the intended healing that an illness calls for occurs best in community.

As someone specifically called to the healing path, we each have a role that is specifically patterned on the joys, the trauma, and the awfulness of our specific lives.… Read the rest “Backyard Initiative Circle of Healing CHAT: Our Vision”