art is High Priestess by Susan Seddon Boulet
Recapitulation Exercise
This is a beautiful self-healing exercise that we can all do, from wherever we are, with whatever we have! It requires nothing other than our own willingness and attentiveness. This great resource was shared by Brooke Medicine Eagle in her beautiful book Buffalo Woman Comes Singing. It was given to her by her dear benefactor Dawn Boy. See all instructions below and by all means, please tailor the exercise to your own experience and intuition! Whichever way you decide to go about it, make it simple and inspiring and all your very own.
From Brooke Medicine Eagle —
The Southern Seers often spend years in recapitulation, working with every person in their life as well as every belief, issue, and concern. This not only clears personal history, it also builds an incredible will, as you will find when you begin this seemingly simple practice.
This exercise points to the power of our attention. Whatever we attend to fully, we can gain mastery in. This one technique — recapitulation — if practiced exactly, can transform your life, enhance your personal power, and build a wide pathway to your left side.
✺ Choose an issue in your life that is of concern to you at the moment. It could be a thing, such as tobacco; a person — mothers and fathers are great to begin with; an emotion, such as loss; or an old pattern, such as greediness. Then follow these instructions.
✺ Beginning tonight, take five minutes before you go to sleep and go back in your mind to the very earliest memory you have of the issue you’ve chosen to work with.
✺ Spend the next few minutes coming forward in time from that point, identifying each memory connected to this issue, and “gathering them” in your left hand.
✺ Go to sleep.
✺ Do this for one hundred consecutive nights!
✺ You may find that you will slip up a night or two here and there. Don’t let that discourage you. Build your will by keeping up the process until your total is a hundred nights.
✺ Each night go back as far as you can, to the earliest memory, and begin there, coming forward. It is very likely that this stimulation of your attention will help you remember further and further back. So always begin with the earliest memory and come forward. You will gradually collapse years of experience into a few short minutes.
✺ As you go through the process, sweep your left hand through the air, gathering each memory and closing it into a fist, as though you were making it into a solid ball. Gather these memories and string them together like beads — get them in hand. This physical aspect of the process is one of the most powerful parts and helps make it real in this daily physical world, not just in your inner world.
✺ When you have finished the hundred nights, hold that imaginary ball in your hand and assess your current attitude toward your issue. Take a sincere look at your attitude and exactly how it came to be.
✺ Next, take that full string of memories that you have gathered into a solid ball in your left hand and put it in your right hand. Heft that ball of memories in your right hand — get the feel of it, the weight of it. I sometimes use a rock to signify my ball of memories.
✺ And now, throw that ball of memories as far away from you as you can possibly hurl it! Release it completely.
✺ After you’ve thrown away the old patterns surrounding the issue you’ve been working on, take some time to carefully choose your new attitude, one that will empower you and open your experience rather than limit and debilitate you.
✺ Although this is not necessary, I often create a ceremony to mark this turning point. I announce my new attitude to the world, perhaps even creating a talisman of some kind to commemorate this moment. You may do this also, if it works for you.
And so it is!