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Body, Mind & Spirit New Thought

Embrace Your Divine Flow

Evolvements for Healing

edited by Julian Hobson & Lorene Shyba

illustrated by Helena Hadala

by (author) James R. Parker, Marlene Yellow Horn, Raymond Yakeleya, Rich Théroux, John Heerema, Hilda Chasia Smith, Audrya Chancellor, Kayla Lappin, Islene Runningdeer, Mar'ce Merrell, Lynda Partridge, Antoine Mountain & Alex Soop

foreword by Elizabeth Rockenbach

Publisher
Durvile Publications
Initial publish date
Sep 2023
Category
New Thought, General, Prayer & Spiritual
  • Paperback / softback

    ISBN
    9781990735097
    Publish Date
    Sep 2023
    List Price
    $32.50

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Description

Created by a collective of spiritual practitioners, Embrace Your Divine Flow combines ‘evolvements’ in the form of allegorical stories, with exercises and activities that encourage readers to undertake their own journeys of healing and wisdom. The substantive investigation asked of authors was: “What is your connection to the divine—whether it be God, the source, the light, the power of the universe, or Newet’sine, the Creator? How does this connection to the divine flow a path of least resistance along your river of life and beyond, and how might you share this?” Authors’ themes include sacred places, sound and sensuality, ancestors, magic and imagination, infinity, authenticity, spirits, and gratitude. Authors are Mar’ce Merrell, Antoine Mountain, Audrya Chancellor, Julian Hobson, Kayla Lappin, John Heerema, Valerie Campbell, James R. Parker, Lorene Shyba, Alex Soop, Islene Runningdeer, Lynda Partridge, Raymond Yakeleya, Hilda Chasia Smith, Iikiinayoonaa Marlene Yellow Horn, and Rich Théroux.

About the authors

Julian Hobson's profile page

Lorene Shyba PhD is publisher at Durvile & UpRoute Books and series editor of the Durvile True Cases series.

Lorene Shyba's profile page

Helena Hadala's profile page

Dr. James R. Parker is a Professor of Art at the U of Calgary and author of Generative Art: Algorithms as Artistic Tool.

James R. Parker's profile page

Marlene Yellow Horn's profile page

Raymond Yakeleya is an award-winning Dene television producer, director and writer. Originally from Tulita in the Northwest Territories, he now calls Edmonton, Alberta home. Raymond is author of the Dene children’s book The Tree by the Woodpile and editor of We Remember the Coming of the White Man and Indigenous Justice. He wrote an extensive foreword in Nahganne: Northern Tales of the Sasquatch. Says Raymond, “Indigenous Peoples need to have a voice in mainstream media in order to tell our stories, our way. With the passing of many of our Elders, the telling of these stories has become more important.”

Raymond Yakeleya's profile page

Besides being a caveman, Rich is a genius talent at painting and drawing. His art hangs here and there in prominent homes and galleries but he prefers not to boast about it. Rich is founder of Calgary’s Rumble House gallery and happens to also teach junior high school art. He is the author and illustrator of Stop Making Art and Die, and the co-author of the poetry book, A Wake in the Undertow, along with his partner Jess Szabo. Intriguingly, he calls himself a tomato can. He and his gang exist/co-exist in Calgary, Alberta, Canada.

Rich Théroux's profile page

John Heerema's profile page

Hilda Chasia Smith's profile page

Audrya Chancellor's profile page

Kayla Lappin's profile page

Islene Runningdeer is a musician, therapist, educator, and writer who lives and works in central Vermont. She draws upon her French and Mi’kmaq/Abenaki First Nation roots to make music a joy. For more than forty years she has used music as a medicine to teach students about creative freedom and health, to aid and comfort patients and families during the dying process, to draw people with severe dementia out of their isolation and confusion, and to uplift and calm anyone within hearing, whether in church, the concert hall, the hospital, or the living room. Her work blends her lifelong interest in music of all kinds, psychology, physical health and spirituality. She is also the author of Musical Encounters with Dying: Stories and Lessons.

Islene Runningdeer's profile page

Mar'ce Merrell's profile page

Lynda Partridge is a member of the Algonquins of Pikwakanagan First Nation. She grew up in the child welfare system and spent her childhood in numerous non-Indigenous foster homes. At a later age, she obtained an Honours Bachelor of Social Work (Native Human Services), followed by a Masters of Social Work Degree. It was while obtaining her undergraduate degree that she found her birth family and reconnected to her Indigenous culture. This experience led her to the field of Indigenous child welfare.

Lynda Partridge's profile page

Antoine Mountain, illustrator of both of the Bird stories, is from the Radelie Koe/Fort Good Hope area of the Dene Nation in Northwest Territories. As an artist, painter, and activist, Antoine focuses on depicting the Dene way of life, his love for the land, and the spiritualism of his faith. He holds a Master’s in Environmental Studies from York University, and is currently doing a PhD in Indigenous Studies at Trent University. Mountain uses his voice and art to ensure that today’s youth do not forget their Dene identity. Antoine also translated the Dene words and phrases throughout the book.

Antoine Mountain's profile page

Elizabeth Rockenbach's profile page

Alex Soop, of the Blackfoot Nation, meticulously voices each and every one of the stories in this collection from Indigenous Peoples’ perspective. While striving to entertain readers with his bloodcurdling tales, Alexander imaginatively implements the numerous issues that plague the First Nations people of North America, by way of subliminal and head-on messages. These specific matters include alcohol and drug abuse; systemic racism; missing and murdered Indigenous women and girls; foster care; Residential School aftereffects; and over-incarceration. He also deals with legends of Indigenous folklore, such as Wendigo, ghosts, and the afterlife. His urban home is Calgary and his ancestral home is the Kainai (Blood) Nation of southern Alberta.

Alex Soop's profile page

Excerpt: Embrace Your Divine Flow: Evolvements for Healing (edited by Julian Hobson & Lorene Shyba; illustrated by Helena Hadala; by (author) James R. Parker, Marlene Yellow Horn, Raymond Yakeleya, Rich Théroux, John Heerema, Hilda Chasia Smith, Audrya Chancellor, Kayla Lappin, Islene Runningdeer, Mar'ce Merrell, Lynda Partridge, Antoine Mountain & Alex Soop; foreword by Elizabeth Rockenbach)

 

Foreword
by Elizabeth Rockenbach

We are free as Fire is free. We flow as Water flows.
Our bodies vibrate with the Earth and
we breathe the same sacred Air.
We are not bound by past experiences, our habitual patterns,
or an unknown future.
We walk together, free of all that would limit us.
We were created unbound and live in a state of
pure spiritual freedom.
The abundance of Spirit flows in and through us. We are
channels for self-love, self-acceptance, and self-forgiveness.
This is the Power of Parable,
This is the Power of Evolvement.

Parable is a river flowing beneath our human experience. Making sense of the world through story is as timeless and evolving as human language. This collection of stories is rooted in oral traditions, the written word, hand gestures and facial expressions, movement, and visual representations. The stories explore these different ways that humans make meaning in our lives across generations. Some work through creation stories, while others tell tales of our demise. Scaffolding these written pieces are the gorgeous and expressive paintings of Helena Hadala.
Embrace Your Divine Flow is more than a book of powerful stories and pictures. The authors and editors have created exercises so that the reader may apply the lessons in their own lives. It is through lived experience that we connect ourselves to community, art, and spirituality. A multitude of approaches are represented here including Mindfulness, emotional exploration through the senses, Buddhist Chod practice of overcoming the ego, storytelling, prayers of gratitude, poetry, visual art, sound and vibrational healing.
I felt called to write this foreword because of an energetic connection to the title and intention of the work Embrace Your Divine Flow. The opportunity arose at a time when I was making another big change in my life, having relocated to a small remote town in New Mexico, and it had everything to do with Divine flow!
My ancestors were farmers, but I had never been on an actual farm until I took an apprenticeship on a market vegetable farm as a young adult. It was the ideal place for me to put my hands in the earth and watch as seeds sprouted into plants, and plants bore fruit. After a few years of intensive physical labor, my back became unable to support me in this work any longer. I turned to natural ways to heal my spine. Thus began the journey I’ve been on for twenty years of healing the mind and body.

I studied energy healing at The Barbara Brennan School of Healing. The school’s founder, and my brilliant teacher, Barbara Brennan, developed a healing science that supports us as human beings to heal our emotional and spiritual wounds and to manifest the life that we want. Barbara Brennan was a scientist as well as a mystic. She grounded her studies of the human energy field with her background in physics, and believed that in unlocking our emotional wounds, we would find our greatest gifts. I opened to the reality that all physical disease is a manifestation of a complex matrix of our emotions, thoughts and beliefs, experiences, and relationship to the whole universe and all its elements. My physical injuries healed. I connect to these following evolvement parables and exercises because the artists not only accept this truth of our Divine nature, but also offer a range of ways to work with this kind of practical magic.
Eventually, I began to feel the call of nature again. I needed to get out of the city and firmly replant myself on the earth. Divine guidance led me to an internet search of a tiny town just outside the vast magnificent Gila Wilderness. Here I found the most unusual posting. Instead of the typical list of square footage, number of bedrooms and bathrooms, and other amenities, this post was written in a narrative format. It told of magic, fairies, of a creek that flows among a high desert terrain, and a charming little house that sits among the sunflowers.
I spoke to my niece, who, at the time, was spending long afternoons with me. “This is my house!” I showed her the beauty that was calling to me, and from that moment on, I referred to it only as “My Sunflower Home.” Two years later, I am living here, in my sunflower house among the mountains and juniper.

I find a lot of resonance with Rich Theroux’s “Let the World Catch Up” where the narrator has a knack for making wishes come true. In his story he sees through pictures, as the wish granters do not speak, but they do see. As long as the narrator believes what he is saying, it is so.
For me, there is immense healing through exploring and regulating my energy field. Much like Marty and Jake find in Lorene Shyba’s, Aura Borealis, light and colour are essential elements in the healing process. Our auric fields contain all of the colors of the spectrum, and in this healing evolvement, the siblings find their essential nature in the Aurora Borealis with the support of a wise woman healer and guide.
The human experience is at times painful, difficult to understand, and baffling. A saving grace in these moments of suffering is the surrender to a Divine flow. We long to connect to a greater force than ourselves, whether that be Love, community, the elements, God, Newet’sine, Source, or Nature. We discover ourselves and an elegant meaning to life through Art and Expression. These authors have poured their understanding of the Force of their art into their stories that they’ve shared here.
Our own personal timelines may seem haphazard as we live our lives moment to moment. Revelations come, we live through their magic, and we return time and again to a feeling that living can put us in real danger. As in Mar’ce Merell’s “Breath of the Monster,” sometimes we have to enter an unsteady vessel and live through the fear with only our brave hearts to sustain us. She guides us through her practice of “feeding your demons,” employing stillness, imagination, sketching and movement to overcome the ego.
All healing is embodied. Our human vessels give us the ability to evolve and transform. Sensation and the present moment are keystones to Valerie Campbell’s “Moving her Poetic Body” where breath and the spiritual tradition of Anam Cara moves the narrator’s body and pen to create poetry. In her workshop exercises, Campbell explores the unconscious through authentic movement and a writing practice.
Another balm for our soul in challenging times are sacred places. Yellow Horn and Yakeleya explore this terrain in their parables. Iikiinayoonaa Marlene Yellow Horn offers us a traditional Napii story that is part of the Blackfoot creation myth. Discovering through her exercise how the only real quality that matters in a tale is Truth. Community unites us.
Raymond Yakeleya takes us on a trek in the mountains to find the essence of Newet’sine the Creator in nature that is all around us—in the places that we cannot see like the wind, and the beauty that is knowable to the eye such as beautiful wildflowers.
As healing has become a way of being in my life, I have aligned with a group of the most open-hearted and open-minded people I have known. We’ve formed Universal Healing, an online forum for group energy healing, from a spiritual download that a dear colleague had in service of global healing. We experience the joy of making healing accessible to everyone, anywhere on the planet. A revelation we have with each healing is sacred alignment and community. It feels like, as a soloist, I’ve become a member of a divine orchestra. Instead of working alone, we join in concert with each other and with our clients and their spiritual support, such as ancestors and divine guides. There are no bounds to this venture, and I am ever grateful to live at this edge of evolving.
Group work allows the healing field to be magnified by the collective energy. It is why monks meditate together. This is, in my opinion, what brought these authors and artists together in this Divine embrace awaiting you. Individuals long for community to express and hold the power of Life and Story. Here, the invitation to you is to practice the wisdom that is called forth through story. Please join with us to embrace the evolution of humanity.
Spirit has guided me back to the earth, to my own little place in the mountains of New Mexico, where I fell in love with rainbows, sublime skies, and the alluring smell of juniper. Here, I have fertile land around me to inspire my dream of healing our planet.
We hope these stories and exercises guide you to ask these questions. What is your relationship to Nature? What is your Art? What is your unique Medicine? How does the Divine flow through you?

— Elizabeth Rockenbach,Co-founder, Universal Healing, 2023

 

Editorial Reviews

"Embrace Your Divine Flow: Evolvements for Healing is an inspiring book. This diverse collective of spiritual practitioners, from Indigenous Elders to movement therapists, artists, soul session teachers, and musician healers make a unique contribution to the literature and explorations of peace, love, and healing." ~ Mark Anthony, JD Psychic Explorer, author of the bestsellers The Afterlife Frequency, Evidence of Eternity and Never Letting Go

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