Dovetail Healing Arts

07/27/2024

Alchemizing trauma of the mother: transforming fertility issues, experiences of deep loss, such as miscarriage, early termination, or the death of a child. sexual trauma, birth trauma, medical trauma, change of life trauma (trauma surrounding the circumstances of new motherhood), housing/environmental or resource trauma (such as extreme poverty). We are born through our mothers, and our children are birthed through us. Mothers are an expression and manifestation of the divine feminine, and the dakini nature of wisdom, playfulness, joy and love. Being a mother is challenging in the dharma ending age with the pressures of the world, societal expectations, social, work, and home life.

Vajrayogini is the trauma healing goddess. She supports us in healing and alchemizing our deepest mother wounds, and wounds associated with the feminine. We will be performing a powerful Vajrayogini fire rite ritual to support the transformation of mother trauma. This could manifest in many ways and is very personal to each individual. please note that it does not matter how long ago or how old the trauma is.

If you feel this could benefit you or someone you love, and would like to be included in this healing ritual (not an in person event) please check out the event link for further details.

please note: This is for distance participation sponsorship only & not an in person event- portions of the rite will be filmed and/or photographed and shared with you

To sponsor yourself or another person, please check out the link

https://www.gaiabuddhism.com/events/ahrckjyt3m61fpwabtfd7uym1laweh

01/01/2024

The direction of the wind shifts. I look to the trees. They whisper of the coming of a magnificent force, summoned forth from her forest guardian abode. A leading archetypal force in the coming year, the Wood Dragon is both beneficiary and protector, inviting us into her realm of rejuvenation, rebirth, new growth and abundance.

Inexorably linked to the hun, spirit of the wood element in taoist medicine and alchemy, she is the blue-green spirit that grants us a special sight into our own unique tao. A conduit between the stars and the earthly plane, the Wood Dragon gives us insight and clarity to our most treasured goals, creative pursuits, and plans. She is the giver of sight, opening the gift of our dreamtime eyes into our mundane daytime lives, marrying our ordinary and extraordinary sight, birthing new ideas and pathways for creativity and success in our lives. Here we can meet challenges with positive assertion, cultivate the vitality needed, and meet the world with positive assertion and the grace of a flexible, neuroplastic mind. Seeing the benefic path the stars have laid for us, perhaps we can re-imagine our assumptions and definitions of happiness and success, and apply our vitality in life-affirming directions.

Happy New Year! Although the Lunar New Year begins on the second new moon following the winter solstice (February 10th according to the East Asian Calendar), I do love to begin ushering it in alongside our western New Year.

12/29/2023

a little excerpt from some of my recent writing ....

"The water archetype is the deepest of the depths, the caverns of the dark underbelly of the universe. The dark caves with etches of ancient markings. The bones of my soul, the essences of my ancestors, the transmission of lineage beyond space and time, the threads that embed and inform my very cells."
..read the full piece with the link below✨

The water archetype is the deepest of the depths, the caverns of the dark underbelly of the universe. The dark caves with etches of ancient markings. The bones of my soul, the essences of my ancestors, the transmission of lineage beyond space and time, the threads that embed and inform my very cells

09/28/2023

01/25/2023

OBIT
BY VICTORIA CHANG

My Mother’s Teeth—died twice, once in 1965, all pulled out from gum disease. Once again on August 3, 2015. The fake teeth sit in a box in the garage. When she died, I touched them, smelled them, thought I heard a whimper. I shoved the teeth into my mouth. But having two sets of teeth only made me hungrier. When my mother died, I saw myself in the mirror, her words in a ring around my mouth, like powder from a donut. Her last words were in English. She asked for a Sprite. I wonder whether her last thought was in Chinese. I wonder what her last thought was. I used to think that a dead person’s words die with them. Now I know that they scatter, looking for meaning to attach to like a scent. My mother used to collect orange blossoms in a small shallow bowl. I pass the tree each spring. 
I always knew that grief was something I could smell. But I didn’t know that it’s not actually a noun but a verb. That it moves.

https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poems/151141/obit-5d8d0cffc5885

01/17/2023

I wonder what would happen if I embraced all of my traumas, all of the uncomfortable, hard, seemingly unbearable aspects of life, as part of my living tao. A living tao is not simply full of love and light; it is the cascade of experiences and a full spectrum of experience. How do I know what is right, what might look inauthentic may be someone's path. I do not know this. There is utter freedom in releasing the responsibility of judgment and blame. The liberation of removing the chains of victimization. I am whole. I am holy. I am wholly me. My life is in its perfect order, even if that looks like chaos

Photo by Ales Maze

01/13/2023

Radical Acceptance. Most importantly, we need to be kind to ourselves, radically tender even. We are doing our best living busy, chaotic lives. Stress, pain and suffering are part of life. The way we respond to it is what matters. Our relationship with ourselves and our bodies is as important, if not more important, than our relationships with our loved ones and our responsibilities. If we can be kind to ourselves, forgive ourselves for the greasy meal, the sugary holiday treats, it makes such a difference. Do your best and live your life. We all love pizza. That’s okay! You can have pizza! Just try to be in balance about it. Let it go, enjoy your life, and move on. Find sustainable ways to eat healthy - things you can actually attain and sustain in your day to day life. Be honest with yourself. Be dedicated yet realistic. Be willing to fail, be willing to learn. What makes you feel good? What throws you off? Pay attention and observe with open, joyful curiosity. Make a plan. Does structure help or hinder you? If it helps, then write a little plan or outline for yourself with grocery lists and simple meal plans. If structure makes you feel restricted and want to rebel against it, then don’t make a plan. Eat intuitively. Pay attention to how your body feels when you eat or drink and give it what makes it feel good. That may change from week to week or season to season. That’s okay. Be easy with yourself.
For the whole piece visit:
https://www.dovetailhealingarts.org/blog/taoist-nutritional-concepts-ibd



Photo by Peter Olexa

01/10/2023

My work is rooted in silence. It grows out of deep beds of contemplation, where words, which are living things, can form and re-form into new wholes. What is visible, the finished books, are underpinned by the fertility of unaccounted hours. A writer has no use for the clock. A writer lives in an infinity of days, time without end, ploughed under. - Jeanette Winterson

Photo by Ivana Cajina

01/07/2023

Our instincts are hard wired for survival. What that means is that if we are vulnerable - and all children are- and being abused, we will do what we need to do to not die in that situation. We will please whomever we need to please to do that. We will find ways of functioning inside the mess and chaos, even if that’s to sacrifice our own health, spirit and sanity. We develop coping strategies so that we don’t die. We were so little. It’s okay to forgive ourselves. It was what we needed to do, and their abuse was not something we instigated. That is their pathology, and we are not responsible for it.

What we are responsible for is ourselves. As adults, we have choices. We can develop agency, we have tremendous capacity for healing and transformation. We can learn how to hold and sit with these horrors, and still find happiness, joy and peace in our lives. I am a testament to you that this is possible. That is why I am here to tell you my stories, and the stories of countless others. We are not alone. We are many. And we are ferocious.

- For more writing & tools visit my website blog (link in bio)

**e **st

01/06/2023

I’m sorry that striking forward scared me, made me numb, stitched my mouth closed. But you gave me so many new words that I didn’t know how to use yet. - Victoria Chang

Dedicated to my great teachers who taught me languages of the soul…

01/03/2023

Radical Acceptance…Most importantly, we need to be kind to ourselves, radically tender even. We are doing our best living busy, chaotic lives. Stress, pain and suffering are part of life. The way we respond to it is what matters. Our relationship with ourselves and our bodies is as important, if not more important, than our relationships with our loved ones and our responsibilities. If we can be kind to ourselves, forgive ourselves for the greasy meal, the sugary holiday treats, it makes such a difference. Do your best and live your life. We all love pizza. That’s okay! You can have pizza! Just try to be in balance about it. Let it go, enjoy your life, and move on. Find sustainable ways to eat healthy - things you can actually attain and sustain in your day to day life. Be honest with yourself. Be dedicated yet realistic. Be willing to fail, be willing to learn. What makes you feel good? What throws you off? Pay attention and observe with open, joyful curiosity. Make a plan. Does structure help or hinder you? If it helps, then write a little plan or outline for yourself with grocery lists and simple meal plans. If structure makes you feel restricted and want to rebel against it, then don’t make a plan. Eat intuitively. Pay attention to how your body feels when you eat or drink and give it what makes it feel good. That may change from week to week or season to season. That’s okay. Be easy with yourself. - For the full blog post on Taoist nutritional concepts , go here :

https://www.dovetailhealingarts.org/blog/taoist-nutritional-concepts-ibd

01/03/2023

Radical Acceptance...Most importantly, we need to be kind to ourselves, radically tender even. We are doing our best living busy, chaotic lives. Stress, pain and suffering are part of life. The way we respond to it is what matters. Our relationship with ourselves and our bodies is as important, if not more important, than our relationships with our loved ones and our responsibilities. If we can be kind to ourselves, forgive ourselves for the greasy meal, the sugary holiday treats, it makes such a difference. Do your best and live your life. We all love pizza. That’s okay! You can have pizza! Just try to be in balance about it. Let it go, enjoy your life, and move on.

Find sustainable ways to eat healthy - things you can actually attain and sustain in your day to day life. Be honest with yourself. Be dedicated yet realistic. Be willing to fail, be willing to learn. What makes you feel good? What throws you off? Pay attention and observe with open, joyful curiosity. Make a plan. Does structure help or hinder you? If it helps, then write a little plan or outline for yourself with grocery lists and simple meal plans. If structure makes you feel restricted and want to rebel against it, then don’t make a plan. Eat intuitively. Pay attention to how your body feels when you eat or drink and give it what makes it feel good. That may change from week to week or season to season. That’s okay. Be easy with yourself. (Click the link for the full blog post on Taoist Nutritional Concepts : )

Taoist Nutritional Concepts Supporting, Soothing & Healing Inflammatory Gastro-Intestinal System An Inflammatory GI system  includes a number of inflammatory bowel disturbances including ulcerative colitis, IBS, and crohn’s disease. Symptoms vary, depending on e