Embodiment Series Week 2: Decolonizing Our Bodies

Welcome back to Week 2 of my new series called Embodiment as Sacred Force for Change!  Today’s episode occurs during a powerful triple conjunction with Chiron, Eris, and Venus in Aries, while the first quarter moon is in Gemini.  We explore how the energy of this moment pushes honest questions and sacred speech.   Eris represents profound spiritual warrior energy, acting as an agent of change, and is a fierce disrupter on behalf of those who have been systemically silenced.  

We use this bold timing to dare to speak about the colonization wound as a living pattern in our bodies, our relationships, and our healing spaces, including the way Eurocentric Western psychology and the mental health industrial complex has tried to strip spirit, ancestry, and land-based wisdom out of care.  We confront how colonization shapes disconnection, disembodiment, distrust, and suffering across lineages, and the path of healing involves daily acts of intentional resistance.  We will remember who we are, and that we are love.  We will relaim our bodies by decolonizing them – one breath, one tear, and one song at a time.   

In today's emobdiment pracitce, we return to vocalization as a pathway to regulation, expression, and energetic movement. The voice connects with the vagus nerve, and humming, toning, and finding a comforting middle note can cue safety and soften the throat, breath, and heart  -- deepening spiritual practice and making space for guides, ancestors, land connection, and sacred speech.

If you’re ready for more then join me each week! Get ready to dare, together!

Check out the links below to connect with the brilliant people and their work mentioned in today's episode:

https://www.decolonizingtherapy.com/

https://www.decolonizingtherapy.com/podcast/

https://www.laurakchung.com/

https://www.embodiedastrology.com/

https://www.morrigan.academy/

Transcript

Welcome And Why We Dare

SPEAKER_01 0:26

Hello. Hello.

The Triple Conjunction In Aries

Eris As Warrior For The Excluded

Astrologers To Learn From

Decolonizing Therapy And Remembering

The Colonization Wound In The Body

Perfectionism As Colonizer Mindset

Vocalization For Regulation And Healing

Ancestors Water Offerings And Rosk

SPEAKER_00 0:32

Hello, friend. Welcome. I'm your host, Aaron O'Brien, a human being who is daring to create and hold space for decolonized healing and transformation. So let's get ready to dare together. As a licensed psychotherapist for over 20 years, a relationship counselor, a spiritual intuitive, shadow worker, and witch, I believe that true therapeutic practice calls for right action and remembers all the ways of well-being. This is a place that will remember the old truths and reconnect them to their land and to their people. We unite the relational, social, spiritual, psychological, ancestral, and magical because it is all sacred and most powerful when working as a whole. 2026 is a time to dare to create the world that we've been dreaming of, to dare to be the dream we have been waiting for. So let's do it. All right. So I am excited for today's episode. I'm recording on March 26th, Thursday, 2026. And there's a lot going on right now in the celestial rhythms. We've got a powerful conjunction happening today. At the twenty-five degrees of Aries, we've got Venus conjuncting Chiron and also Ares. Now, this is a really special triple conjunction because I want to speak a little bit about Ares. And I've spoken about Chiron before, the wounded healer, and Aries season is here and bringing a lot of initiatory energy. It's all about beginnings, it's all about fire, the spark that ignites action and movement. And so we also had that really rare astrological event that I spoke about last week happening a month ago, the Saturn and Neptune conjunction at the zero, degrees of Aries, which was the you know world point, the axis of the beginning, right? World building. So I want to just tune in and channel just a bit about Ares because it's all connected to and very right on time for what I want to get into today. So Eris is a planet that represents the warrior energy and the fierce rebellion against marginalization. So the mythological background essentially, and I'll just speak very brief about this. So Eris is the goddess of chaos and strife who initiated the Trojan War and highlighted the consequences of being left out. So this is a feminine warrior, and again, I'm holding that gender is a social construct and gender identity, gender expression is all important to name and make distinctions around. So this particular planet connects with the profound spiritual warrior energy, forcing individuals to fight for what they believe in and follow an inner compass. It is associated with standing up to the establishment. Eras speaks for the marginalized, the disrespected, and forgotten. And this potent force highlights injustices and demands for liberation, particularly for those whose voices have been systemically excluded. So Aeris is linked to cultural disruption, sudden changes in society and shifts, and she is an agent of change. So welcome Eris, who is conjunct with Venus and Chiron in Aries. So pretty cool. And we've got the first quarter moon that is happening in Gemini. And we also have the moon in its closest point in orbit to Jupiter, which is the planet that provides abundance and prosperity and blessings, and also is the teacher that can dish up some essential lessons through being that very direct teacher that wants to instill wisdom and support us and also can help us move through challenges. So, okay, where am I going with all this? And also I'm gonna link in the notes for today two astrologers that I've spoken of before. I'm gonna link embodied astrology. They are the place to go if you want to understand more about astrology and to use it as inspiration and to elevate your awareness of liberation and activism through astrology as a visionary, as a creative force that it is. And Renee Sills, along with a lot of co-conspirators, created this wonderful platform. So another person I want to direct you to is Lara Chung. And this is another astrologer and mystic and someone who has a couple different podcasts. One is Awaken and a Line, and Lara will chart out what's happening in world events and the news and intersex political things that are happening with the astrology and with a focus on collective liberation. And she's another podcast called The Work. So I'll link that stuff because I'm here to do my part and I'm not an astrologer, but I will weave in key things and how it can support what we're doing today. So we are focused on embodiment. And I have an ambitious plan. And what I want to share right now actually is that you know how sometimes you can meet someone through their work and you meet their work, and it's clear that something about the timing of it, something about what it unlocks inside you, it helps you remember what you already knew and felt in your bones on a deep, not a deep level and in your soul and your spirit. And I have been having that experience right now as I've recently, I'm almost embarrassed to admit this, but I recently have been reading and and learning about and becoming very like total geek on Dr. Jennifer Mullen's work. And she is an amazing human. And she released the book back in November 2023, Decolonizing Therapy, Oppression, Historical Trauma, and Politicizing Your Practice. And prior to that, she had an Instagram page, and she has a really cool story and how that came to be literally got created through the community of humans that she was holding space for. And she's a very wise teacher, and I'm excited to be knowing her through her work, and it's pulling a lot of things together for me that I've been in a process around and practicing intersectional liberation psychology and all those things for a while now. And that's kind of how I grew up as a practitioner, specifically trained in therapy and counseling. And what is getting awoken inside me in a deeper level of remembering is that Eurocentric Western psychology and therapy, the mental health industrial complex, the medical industrial complex, you know, it's all connected, has taken the spirit out of healing. It has taken the ancestral ways out of holding space for other humans. It has instilled hierarchy and all of these constraints that do not really hold our humanity and do not really invite true healing and honoring the innate healer inside of all of us and the wisdom in our in our very being, in our blood that flows from our ancestors and from our specific lineages. And as I'm reading this book, there's just so much that's deepening in the way I've already been moving in my practice. But it's it's like the dream I've been dreaming for so long. And this human, Dr. Jen, has really channeled it, I think, from the divine and from her own brilliance. But, you know, she's talked about how she's the one who is stewarding this movement around decolonizing therapy practice, and really for anyone who holds space for other humans with the intention of healing. And there's this part in the book where she speaks about all the names, all the cultural names, all the ancestral names that quote-unquote counselors or therapists or psychologists, what have you, were named back in our ancestral times or indigenous cultures. And I just started to cry as she was naming all of these names, and I just felt it kind of vibrating through my body as deep truth, and even just hearing her say it felt like yeah, like like a remembering of the dream that I think lives inside us on a soul level, and how how everything that happens here on earth, the violence and the the dominance and the suffering can hide it, can make it invisible, the dream of the way it could be. And so I'm holding that and I'm so grateful for coming in contact with this work and how it just feels like it deepens the work that I've already felt moving in my body and in my heart and my spirit. And I had a similar experience when I when I met the work of Jessica Fern, who wrote all about relationships and the expansiveness of relationships and the paradigm shift away from monogamy and how that's really connected to dominant systems and the way that it is a very different vision and dream of how open and free we can be in how we relate to other humans and how we love and how we could imagine creating connection and family. So yeah, I'm just I think I'm feeling a lot of inspiration and I'm grateful that it's here. So I think what what I would like to maybe speak on now is how, you know, whatever your sense of higher power or or divine or spirit, I mean at the heart of it, it's it's a sense of spirituality. And for some people, they find that in nature or they find it in a building, you know, where they're in community and they're singing and they're connecting to whatever whatever form that takes for them. And I I want to be really inclusive here and and also not, you know, I religion is a part of the system and structural religion and these institutions certainly just like any system, like any institution has a lot of complexity there and a lot of harms that are done. So what I want to speak into right now, which is really up for me, the awareness that colonization, colonization wounds live in all of us and are at the heart of our disconnection, our disembodiment, and our distrust and our suffering. And we we need to name that. And I'm naming what Dr. Jen names in her work. So I'm bringing it forward, and that's you know, she she brought it forward, right? And what I'm kind of just in deep awareness and awe really is how it's this through line in all of our bodies. It's it's the wound that colonization is at the core of all that is wrong. And so colonization is in all of us, the colonizer mindset, the colonizer mentality. It's in our lineages, and even folks who experienced being colonized and being the colonizers, and often both are woven in our lineages because we come from complex lineages. And I know for me, I've spoken about this that part of my lineage up through my mother's mother's mother, Maggie, she came from Ireland during the colonization of English and the United Kingdom. And they had been colonizing the island for a long time, and there was many uprisings and rebellions and wars for the native Irish to reclaim their sovereignty over the land. You know, they were the indigenous peoples there. And my ancestors, three generations back, had to leave because the way that their land was being colonized, they didn't have access to the very food that grew on their land in their soil by their own hands. They didn't have access to it. It was extracted and sold overseas to profit and benefit England and the United Kingdom and all of that. So even now, as I'm speaking that, I feel it. Like I feel the sacred rage of it, which Dr. Jennifer Mullen also speaks of in her book and in her work. And I feel the grief of it. So my great-grandmother was forced to leave her land to be dislocated and to come here to the land, you know, Turtle Island was what the indigenous peoples uh referred to, this land that the colonizers and the Europeans named it the colonies and then the United States. So, and I know that I have other lineage that is a part of colonization, and so it's all there. And our work through being more embodied is to confront that and be with that because it's not an intellectual or theoretical exercise. It has to be tuned into in a way that you slow down and you really feel it moving through you. You feel your ancestors, you feel what is in your cellular transmission, the intergenerational trauma. And we know that it goes back three generations. You know, there's literally in your body, in your actual cellular material. So I want to share one more thing, and then we'll get into the practice uh for today. What I want to name is the colonizer mentality that was in me this past week, and I was aware of it, and it really critiqued the hell out of the episode I did last week, and it had a lot of shit to say, and it wasn't very kind, and it had things to say like, oh wow, you never introduced yourself. Like that was silly, and okay, fair, sure. I am really trying to make space to put this out there and to follow through with my intention and what my heart, where my heart is at right now, and what I feel like wants to come through and to be heard by whoever might be listening, you know, maybe one person, maybe more, whatever. Just putting that energy out there. And I heard my colonizer mentality telling me that it's not enough. It wasn't good enough. It, you know, I even felt myself, I listened to it. I listened to the episode, and I cringed when I heard certain ways that I had edited and like I didn't have as much time as I would have wanted because I really want to just put it out there, and I'm like, ooh, but it's, you know, I can feel myself kind of getting maybe stuck in editing for too long. And so I was really trying to not do that. So I could just stay on course and put it out there and just let it breathe and let it be what it's gonna be, and it doesn't have to be perfect because perfect is it's an illusion, and that is the colonization wound, the illusion of perfection. We're humans, it's like not that's not a thing. That's a lie. So I felt the lie, you know, whispering to me and not whispering and saying, you know, you really don't have the skills to do this. You don't have the production skills, you don't have the editing skills, you're not as prepared enough. You you know, all the all the crap. And that I think is. Is what has really stopped me from being focused and being and letting it be okay enough. Letting, you know, okay, fine. I recorded different bits and pieces when I had time. And so maybe my voice doesn't completely match when I when I put some of this stuff together. So I guess what I'm naming here, I'm calling myself in and I'm calling the impact of colonization in on me and how it affects what I want to do, what I want to put out there to support and to hold space. So it's real. And I'm gonna try to continue my work of decolonizing my body and the patterns that live in me that perpetuate colonization, because it's in all of us. And part of this is gonna be right, like trying to be more embodied, trying to slow myself down and being with my breath and doing that, remembering that shadow work, working with the rhythms of nature that are there. And so putting spirit back into healing, putting our ancestors and honoring the global majority that have been really harmed, we've all been harmed. And as a white-bodied person, I'm holding what my unlearning and deprogramming continues to be. And it's very up for me right now. And it and it's and it's very timely because being embodied means being more at home in your body. So what I wanna do is shift us into some practice, and voice is really powerful, and we're gonna stay with vocalization and how that process of slowing down, connecting to your voice, playing with feeling the breath kind of over, even just the vibration right now. As I'm talking, I can feel the vibration, and it's nice, it's soothing, it's reminding me that music lives inside me and lives inside you. And what I want to walk us through is a way to use your breath. Again, we're always going to be bringing in the breath, and you can you know find movement. This is for all bodies. So however, you want to add a little movement uh to this vocalization practice. And again, the science of this, the the brilliance of our body is that our vocal cords and the vagus nerve are connected, they run together and also through the inner ear, the middle ear. So all of this process, when you're connecting to your voice and you're slowing down and you're finding sort of a middle tone, you're letting your voice kind of find a sound that feels comforting to you, and you'll know, you'll know when you found it. Something about it will settle your body, you'll sort of feel your throat open. And if we want to name, you know, the chakra system, right? And and the people that developed the chakra system, certainly the ancient India traditions. I mean, these are really wise, energetic channels and understanding. So I want to encourage you to let yourself play with your voice. And one way I like to do this, I do this in the morning every day. I bring the ancestors I work with and my guides and guardians, the divine ones I work with. And I've spoken before here a couple different, many different times, I think, about a particular Irish deity that I work with. The more again connected to my ancestors and my bloodline and working with her and her sisters, and she is a sovereignty goddess and all about truth and challenge and works on a larger scale. She is not, you know, my spiritual buddy, although I wish she was, but I know that's not how she operates. And certainly learning about her through native source and honoring the land and the voices that have learned her mythology from source. And again, Laura O'Brien, the Morrigan Academy, all things Irish pagan, that is your go-to. They are awesome. But what I have been practicing that actually came from some of that work is being able to practice Rosk, which is again that Irish form of poetry and spell work. And it's raw and it's simple. And you kind of open yourself up and you can take a breath, just sort of warming up your voice. Maybe you're maybe you've already done some purification or cleansing with water in your shower. I like to do that every morning. When I'm, you know, cleansing myself. I like to kind of imagine that the water is moving through my body because it is, right? And moving through my body and cleansing me and sort of offering that purification. I also use smoke, some cedar and things like that that I might burn. And I offer my ancestors a fresh glass of water every day because that is in my ancestor Irish tradition. That's a part of what you do. You hospitality is at the heart of that. And so you're offering those beings that you want to work with a reciprocal relationship. So some clean water is a way to honor them and honor the land. So I'm sharing a little bit of my practice. And what I do is I stand feet planted on the ground, I sway, I take some breaths, and I will use my voice and I will claim something through my voice. I will say something that's true. That is what my intention for the day is going to be. So I'll give you an example of something I will usually say.

SPEAKER_01 29:43

I'll take some breaths and I'll say I move with steadiness and truth. I speak with honest love. And I am in my integrity. I know what is true and have always known in my bones What do your bones tell you? What do your tears say Where is your fire, my friend? Breathe it in, speak it loud, cling your place. You are beautiful you always have been, you always will be.

Sacred Speech And The Channel State

Unlearning Shame Returning To Love

Practice Invitation And Closing

SPEAKER_00 31:49

So that just wanted to come through. I didn't really know I was gonna start saying something something, and sometimes that happens, it's sort of something comes through, and I know it's not coming from inside me, it's coming through me. And you know when that's happening, at least I know when that's happening. It starts from being embodied, it starts from being really present and in my having enough cues of safety coming from the inside. So, in the in the neuroscience, which I'm gonna get into probably next week, I'll see how long this is, maybe this week. But it is our divine design that allows us to be in our deeper regulation and our brain is fully integrated. We have access to all regions of the brain, and we are in a place of being tuned into our body and what is rising up from inside our body in terms of are we safe enough? And when we feel that, then we are able to be in greater alignment and connection with spirit, the divine, our higher self, however you connect to it. But something can come through you, and you can be the channel that you were meant to be, or the truth teller, and this is sacred speech. And Rosk in particular is spoken, it's spoken word, it's not necessarily sang, although there is a rhythmic piece to it. So we'll be you know playing around with more of this. And I want to encourage you to use the energy of today with Venus, and you know, Venus is a very powerful energy, the energy of love. And when Venus conjuncts in Aries in particular, along with Eris, I mean, there's just a real magnitude of energy around going deeper into patterns that you already recognize, we already know that colonization and imperialism and the systems and how they harm and dominate and lie and exploit and gaslight the people, we the people, it can leave you feeling like we're not love, or that it's not safe to love or to trust each other. And that's the lie, that's the colonizer mindset, and that's the colonization wound. That there's something wrong with us, that it's our fault, that we should be ashamed of ourselves, that we're not doing enough, that what we have to offer isn't good, that anything that happens to us actually we could have stopped or prevented. It's a real mind fuck. And it's that way by design. So please know that you are love and you are loved, and these patterns of unlearning that we're all invited to do are in service of creating the dream that is here, and it's a dream of love and peace and prosperity and true connection, and we don't always know what that looks like because colonization has erased with intention a lot of our old ways of knowing. But they're there, they're there, and they didn't go anywhere. You can connect to them when you connect into your body and to your breath and to your heart and to your spirit and to your allies, the seen and unseen, and to the land. You know, you can you can listen. You can take a breath in and just listen and invite images and and words or or songs or sensations. And that's how spirit speaks to us, how the divine, how your guides, whatever resonates. There's so much support all around. And the divine is always trying to communicate that support. So maybe you're moving through your day and you pass by a sign or something written down on the sidewalk. That's happened to me so many times, and I'll look down and it'll say something like, Your heart is full of courage and you are loved. Or remember who you are because we need you, those kinds of things. And it'll just hit in a moment, and I'm like, ah, okay, got it. So I want you to remember who you are, who we are, who we have always been. And we're in this together. So thank you for being here. And I'm gonna uh get less stuck in editing and just put it out there. And it might sound a little, I don't know, wonky or not like I've got some fancy thing doing it. It's it's just me. So I'm like, do it, and that's cool. That's all right, because yeah, it I'm learning and so and I'm unlearning. So all right, less is more, Erin. Wrap it up. Thank you for being here, and I'll see you next week with more work and practice for our voice. I'm gonna get more into the science, which is important if you're a geek and you want to nerd down on some of it. And I want you to bring that practice in your week where maybe you don't have an altar, maybe you do, maybe you like to stand in front of your window or stand outside or look up at the sun or the moon. We're gonna have a full moon next week on April 1st. So we're gonna focus in on some stuff specific to that. But bring your voice in for energetic healing and movement. Your voice can move energy that is stagnant and play around with inviting your voice to be kind of a conduit for prophecy or truth or something to be channeled or to come through. And, you know, you can be intentional with that. You can specifically say, higher self, I want to bring forth some truth that I need to hear, or truth that is meant for someone that I can speak it to them today. And you can do something like that. So often when things come through me, they're for me, but I know they're also for someone else. And so I just kind of look out throughout the day, like, who else is meant to hear this? So I will leave that there and let me know how it goes if you want. If you want to email me or the technology of this platform, I think you can like send me mail through here, whatever. I would love to hear how your vocalization practice goes, how you use your breath and let the words come through, let the sounds come through. Let yourself be your own oracle for change and love. So thanks for being here. I look forward to being in holding space for you, creating space, and doing this together. As above, so below, as within, so without, as the universe, so the soul. Bye for now.