73. Braided Blood with Yaya Erin Rivera Merriman

Yaya Erin Rivera Merriman is a Plant Spirit Medicine Practitioner specializing in sacred plant medicines for communication and relationship. Believing strongly in the necessity of hybrid medicine to meet the unique challenges of modern life, Yaya is engaged in the continued study of Plant Medicine, Active Dreaming, and Goddess Traditions from around the world as gateways into the richness of direct personal experience of uncurated reality. A Devotee, Artist, and Mother of primarily Taino and Irish descent, Yaya offers multi-dimensional, plant medicine assisted, sex-positive prayer spaces, and healing experiences designed to help you integrate all that you have encountered on your soul's journey and come to live from a place of deep understanding of the way that each of your life experiences has contributed to the uniqueness and potency of your personal spirit medicine.In this episode, Yaya shares her experience of being of mixed descent and the braided blood of the Taino indigenous people. She shares how she's developed a relationship with the land she lives on and how she very much sees being in relationship with the land like being in a romantic relationship. We talk about the cyclical wheel of the year to foster reconnection to nature and how linear time is a tool that can facilitate a certain way of being, but that doesn't necessarily need to be adhered to. And finally, we talk about plant allies for a time of racial uprising and healing from white supremacy and how Yaya has found the medicine of kava to enable her to feel herself in a time when we lose ourselves.Find show notes for this episode here: https://beccapiastrelli.com/yaya-erin-rivera-merriman/My book Root & Ritual: Timeless Ways to Connect to Land, Lineage, Community, and the Self is now available wherever books are sold! My intention with this book is for it to be your guide to reconnecting with the earth, your ancestors, and your communities as you come home to your whole self. Despite our best efforts, our modern world leaves so many of us feeling isolated, unworthy, and alone. We’re unrooted from the land, untethered from our lineages, disconnected from our communities, and separated from our deepest sense of self. Root & Ritual is meant to be a pathway back to connection and wholeness through rituals, recipes, and ancestral wisdom. Find more information at: http://rootandritualbook.com/Follow Yaya on Instagram: http://instagram.com/activeculturefamilyFollow Becca on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/beccapiastrelli/