CIIS Public Programs Podcast

TRANSCRIPT

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This is the CIIS Public Programs Podcast, featuring talks and conversations recorded live by California Institute of Integral Studies, a non-profit university located in San Francisco on unceded Ramaytush Ohlone Land. 

Layla K. Feghali is a cultural worker and folk herbalist who lives between her ancestral village in Lebanon, and California, where she was raised. Her work is dedicated to restoring relationships to earth-based ancestral wisdom as an avenue towards eco-cultural stewardship, healing, and liberation.

In this episode, Layla is joined by initiated Priestess, Energy Worker, Medicine Woman, and Flower Practitioner Maryam Hasnaa for a profound conversation that invites us to remember our roots, to deepen our relationship with the lands where we live in diaspora, and is a beckoning call towards belonging, healing, and freedom through tending the land in your own bones.

This episode was recorded during a live online event on April 4th, 2024. You can also watch it on the CIIS Public Programs YouTube channel. A transcript is available at ciispod.com. To find out more about CIIS and public programs like this one, visit our website ciis.edu and connect with us on social media @ciispubprograms.

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Maryam Hasnaa: Greetings, everyone. My name is Maryam Hasnaa, and I'm also in the land of the Ohlone people. I'm on the land of the Redwoods, the Manzanedes, and the Baylorals, the elderberries. I'm also in the land of the California wild rose, and the California poppies, the coyote mints, and the hummingbirds, and the blue jays. And I'm so delighted to be here with you all. And just before I joined, there was some hail coming down in my area, which is pretty rare. So I kind of feel like the elements were showing off a little bit in preparation for this conversation. So hello, dear Layla. How are you?

Layla K. Feghali: Hi, Maryam. Thank you so much. That was a beautiful acknowledgement of welcoming the plant cestors of the land you're on. And I'm connecting to you all today from the land of the Tongva Tataviam people, which share a lot of the plants you mentioned, but not all of them. This is the territory of white sage and poso blue of the California poppies, and the Pacific Ocean, of course, and so many other beautiful plant cestors and animal kin and indigenous peoples.

Maryam Hasnaa: Yes, and we're here to go deeply into this conversation about this beautiful body of work that you shared with us. First of all, I've told you before, but I'll say it again. Thank you so much for writing this book. One of the most interesting things that I have found about this book is the timing of its arrival on the earth. What that indicates to me is that you were deeply listening to the call of the earth, and deeply listening to the call of your ancestors to create this and the timing of it arriving now during what we're experiencing and witnessing in the world with the current genocide. I'd love to have you just share a little bit about how the timing of this all feels for you.

Layla K. Feghali: Thank you. Yeah, wow. Actually, this book, it's been years, at least a decade that my ancestors and my elders had been kind of nudging me to write a book. I knew that there was a book that wanted to be birthed. In fact, I wrote a completely different manuscript that I had been in process around and thought would maybe come into the world. Then I kind of put it down for a while and thought I might just let it be. Then I received this invitation to publish with North Atlantic Books. I walked through the open door to do it. It asked me to write a different book, a similar or a connected, but a whole new book. I had no idea that it would be born into a world where my own people and my own region would be enduring this level of genocide and desecration. I'm very humbled by it and sometimes overwhelmed by it. It's brought up a lot of contradictory feelings for me. It's a hard time to celebrate birthing something or just to celebrate in the midst of so much suffering and loss. At the same time, it does feel like the ancestors have their own plan and the earth has its own purpose for this book. Because this book is about the Levant, it is about Palestine and Lebanon and Syria and these places that have been targeted right now. It's about our life-affirming traditions. It's about our land. It's about the ways that colonialism has impacted us and the ways that we've survived and persisted and continue to be anchored in love and self-determination and care for the earth and each other despite all those things. Truly, I'm curious about what this book wants to offer to the moment. I feel like it's still unfolding. It's just trying to really humbly trust that the knowledge in this book will be of service to the healing that is needed.

Maryam Hasnaa: Thank you so much for that. I know just from knowing you and also getting to dive into your work a little bit more and having similarities in both of our paths of stewardship and yet seeing you coming to the forefront in terms of speaking engagements and being invited to share about this work in this moment. Yet a lot of this work is behind the scenes. It's things that people don't see or know about. A lot of times this work is the earth asking you to do something that might not completely make sense to you in that moment and yet you know where that call is coming from that you can trust it and that to fully show up for that call is why you're here. You talk a lot about stewardship in your book, stewardship of culture and family and medicine. You share a lot of really beautiful, sacred stories that you've honored of people that you've crossed paths with and people that have influenced you. I remember when we were talking about the book and you were saying I really feel you're going to love the part about the cedar trees and I was like how did she know I was going to love the part about the cedar trees. There was a lot of mystical reverence that was explicitly spoken about when you were talking about the stewards of the cedars and that land and it being a portal for all kinds of different healing and regeneration that the earth is providing. You and I have had different conversations about how the earth has the ability to deeply listen to what we're experiencing and to show up with a very particular kind of medicine and that medicine is often shared through the food and the plants and the plants and all of the beings that are on that land. So as stewards, this is like a, it's becoming like a trendier word to be like a earth steward. But one thing I think that's not quite as often talked about is how, and this was really prevalent in the part about those that guard the cedar trees is that it is about guardianship. Can you say a little bit more about that balancing of our love for the plants and we love to share it with people and we love to bond with people over our love for the plants and it also requires discernment with what we're sharing and how we're sharing it and I know that's something that you grappled with in the book of some of this stuff is so sacred to me that I don't want to like invite people into that and yet also it wants to be shared. So yeah, I would love to hear more from you about that.

Layla K. Feghali: Oh man, I love that you asked that question and especially because I know that you ask it from such a personal place and that it's something that we share in our negotiation of you know being in roles of teaching and sharing and and offering and serving and also yeah being guardians and I feel like the you know guardianship is such a massive part of the work actually and you know there is an element of guardianship that is about the sharing because the sharing is what guards the fact that knowledge persists and continues and that the way that we learn to care for land is passed down and supported and that generational knowledge can persist and then there is so much about the way that we live in a culture of consumption and extraction that also makes certain kinds of knowledge and certain kinds of traditions vulnerable to being exploited and to being manipulated and for the power, the inherent power inside these traditions to be misused and sometimes that happens through being misused by corporations or you know capitalized or profited or just you know negligently taken more than given to but sometimes also it can be misused in the hands of people who sincerely mean well and are just not meant for that knowledge and that's kind of a hard thing I think for diasporic folks in particular but one thing that I've learned from the earth-based stewards and the indigenous stewards in my life that have I've been you know you know very honored to learn from in any way shape or form is that you know everyone gets something different and and every conversation changes based on who's there because we all have our own role we all have our own role and so much of guardianship means you know taking care of our role and also respectfully being humble about you know just staying in our lane honestly and I don't claim to be the person to determine what someone's lane is but with that chapter with the cedar elders actually I was very you know those elders are elders that I've been building with for years they're like family to me and for the first several years of building with them they there was a lot of hesitation they had around sharing with other people I had actually been trying to invite sharing knowledge and some teachings about the region because the guardianship of that particular ecosystem is so critical right now it's so critical and it's so compromised that and you know there's a lot of trust that we've had with each other that was almost immediate in some ways but there was a lot of hesitation about sharing beyond that which I really respected and that cued for me that I need to really honor also that what I'm shared with doesn't mean that it's for everyone all the time and so I actually intentionally went to visit them when I was writing this book and explicitly asked them what they wanted to share with this broader audience and just to respect that process and let them kind of determine that for themselves but it is always a dance of I think really listening to the cues and trusting that knowledge will you know arrive to who it's meant to and that also that it's going to be understood in layers based on who's receiving it and surrendering to the rest yeah with a lot of prayers with a lot of like you know prayers for protection and purpose and intention but yeah

Maryam Hasnaa: Yeah I love what you're talking about and you know one thing I know about this path is that it goes at its own pace and it has its own timing and you know that there's been plants that I've been like let's say kava for example that I've been courting for a very long time and at some point you know recognizing like yeah if I want to build a deeper relationship with kava I'm going to need to go you know where it lives and meet the people that have been stewarding it for generations and I'm happy to do that you know it's just just the same way as if you were having a relationship with a person right happy to invest the time and the resources and the dedication and to build that trust because it's something that is going to it's going to be reciprocal you know so you want to show up in that way right right so you know you you talk so much about the role of land and the way you know something in your book that you talked about was how your parents were tethered to their inherent dignity and that was something that over time you know really became clear to you through the way that your parents and your grandparents how they loomed and how they showed up and that taught you to be a good person and that's something that I've been learning about and you know you said you love the way that your grandmother's body made home in foreign earth and and and these are so so there's so many beautiful gifts and abilities and you know and different types of awarenesses that are connected to like our sensory body and our intuitive self and to our spirit that come from that relationship with land and there's you go into that so much in the book but I just love for you to share a little bit more about what you would like people to hear about that.

Layla K. Feghali: Oh yeah thank you I think one of the most powerful things about plants is that and about being on a path of um you know being on a path of um you know connection and kinship with plants um is that they kind of automatically bring you back into your sensory body because that's the language that we're able to speak and understand and also to receive and exchange medicine with them through and so much of our just the way that we're taught just the way that we're taught to be in the modern just systems that we live in as folks especially folks in the global north and in city centers etc is very cerebral and kind of disconnects us from the inherent kind of um the primordial language of our bodies and of ourselves as earth beings you know we're we are related to the plants we also drink sunlight and starlight and water and soil and minerals you know we're made of the same stuff and the earth has this powerful way of really bringing us back into um you know needing to to attune and listen and show up in our own bodies if we want to attune to them and understand and deepen and so it's kind of like it is a remembrance of a profound kind it is a returning to kind of an essential primordial sort of our first language you know our first way of knowing our first way of being and um and also just the sensual beauty and pleasure and depth and possibility that exists within you know being in multi-sensory conversation with our existence and so you know the plants I think are very underrated as like a primary somatic healing tool if we want to use that kind of language because our relationship with them brings us into our bodies and the body of the earth in a way that is so natural and so profound and so healing and it starts to kind of thaw out some of the colonial and like linear and overly cerebral sort of rigidity and oppression and domination that we just internalize to survive being on the earth in this moment or you know the yeah the societies that we've created.

Maryam Hasnaa: Yeah it's like there's there's these these patterns of like survival and kind of what it took for us to arrive at this point and you know those skills were necessary and needed and they allowed us to to be here and there's so much more to feel there's so much more to be and so much more to relate to and and to receive and to also express and emanate and just before our conversation I read a quote and it said rituals are not just an invitation to the element they are an invocation of the senses and you talk a lot about you know sensory awareness sensory attunement sensuality and you also talk about ritual quite a bit in the rituals of reclaiming names and reclaiming traditions and reclaiming culture and really kind of owning things and this idea of belonging is a is a is it a beautiful theme that is woven in at the same time it's woven in in the context of what colonialism has done and how it intentionally as you said intentionally disrupts our roots and and it creates that displacement right and it severs us from our culture so can you speak a little bit about why are rituals so important as as a reclamation practice when these are the wounds that we're dealing with you say original wounds require original medicine.

Layla K. Feghali: Yeah and I think for me the original medicine it's the earth it's the land that is like the that's just part of our nature as being humans you know like we are as long as we're in these bodies the earth is is you know is that lifeline it's that mother that we're all kind of feeding from and with and that's reflecting the cosmos to us in our immediate every day and rituals help us re attune to the vibration of life within that reality they bring us back into that reality they they tether us kind of to the reality of our our beingness in a way that you know provides um you know provides expansive structure you know um just enough structure to arrive in our beings so that we can attune and align and receive and connect with the worlds around us intentionally and with purpose and with care um and it's part of the rhythms you know a lot of the ritual and belonging I talk a lot about how belonging is less about you know if we think the same way or if we have the same idea or our identity a lot of the time then it is about continually showing up and the ritual of continually arriving and coming back to and being in the same place with and it's really a relationship it's basically about the cultivation of a relationship that brings you home.

Maryam Hasnaa: Yeah it doesn't get much more primordial than the earth right

Layla K. Feghali: Exactly we're talking real basics here, fundamental literally.

Maryam Hasnaa: And um and and I love what you're saying about um belonging in this kind of um idea that belonging means saying and I I got a lot of opportunities to experience that when you and I even first started connecting because um we kind of just dove right in and there was not a lot of pretense it was just having like really honest conversations from the beginning and what I what I experienced was that um there was a lot of resonance and there was a lot of respect and care and there are also these places of difference and um and even though we are both in a way like on this path we have different roles on this path and that was something that we you know identified really early on and um and at the same time what I experienced uh with you was that I could see how you were what you were doing was in service to what I'm doing and how what I'm doing is in service to what you're doing and um and how we have a lot of the same plant allies and plant kin um right so they kind of created a bridge between us to speak that common language of plants um and and and the plants that we walk with and have built these relationships with so um it's been it's been lovely to engage with those points of difference because for me that's where um the leading edge is you know that's there like there's an opportunity for expansion and deepening and also clarifying and refining like what is it that I'm here to do um and you know I think I joke Amistad like oh we get to spar like I love that about our relationship like we kind of get to engage with those points of difference with a lot of skill and a lot of care right and um you know one thing I also really appreciate about your work and why I think your work is so important in this moment is because um because of your relationship with being born you know in California and then spending time in your ancestral land but not having the exact same experience as someone that was you know born there and spent their whole life there right that you kind of understand both worlds right and you're one of those people that kind of walks between worlds and so for people that um have even less of a relationship to their ancestral land right for you know for me um I remember like on my 40th birthday my mom said you know I was born in Libya and my mom said you have to go back and get as close to that land as possible you know it was something that she knew that was going to be awakened um was going to be activated and it was and it was it's been since since then that I've gone back every year and sort of picked up on um those those breadcrumbs that my ancestors will have dropped right and and I'm aware that there are people that have an even less of a relationship um than I have right and I'm I'd love you to speak to that directly of how do we relate to our ancestral land if we if like I can't even go where I was born and live right right and and that longing of kind of just like I can kind of get close right I can't really go there um and and some people don't have the ability the capability or access to go at all right not even close and some people don't even know right ancestral lands are right um and that's a lot of people's experience now absolutely so and you speak about that but I'd love to hear you share a little bit more about what what um how do we connect.

Layla K. Feghali: Yeah wow thank you for sharing that that's really beautiful and powerful I also want to say one thing before I acknowledge that because something you were saying about how you know in our relationship it's like okay we have different roles there's some connections there's some peership there's some you know unique um ways that we interface there's some sparring and it really reminds me of the guardianship question from the beginning and it comes back to that thing of you know we really do have we all have a different role and like we do learn from nature that what maintains the integrity of life is biodiversity and it's really about each person being able to embody their specific role and so I can I can be like okay okay Maryam like I I'm you know you have gifts that relate to the the real realms that I I understand parts of but I'm also like yeah that I don't feel like that's supposed to be my focus right now and so I get to entrust that through your you know integrous stewardship of that that my stewardship of the things that are mine to care for um can be be better and vice versa and that it really I feel like guardianship in a lot of ways comes down to that like what is like what is our specific purpose and our specific roles so I just wanted to say that but yeah you know I talk about the not being able to access ancestral lands a lot in the book and uh because I come from a region where you know a lot of my you know cousins siblings relatives of of you know Kinhan or the Levant can't go back literally people can't return to Palestine or Syria or their village here or their village there and even those who can like me you know there have been times in my life where I couldn't I couldn't you know and there are and there have been I've had to make very intentional choices about um you know reinvesting in a relationship there even with family there even with access even with the privileges that have been granted to me to actually have access um and so you know it's a real thing and this is actually so much of my of the book and my plancestral remembrance you know methodology comes is from the place of diaspora that doesn't get to go back and it's really that I really feel that the plants of our grandmother's kitchen you know of our parental homes and you know what even if you're adopted and you don't really have that something in your body will resonate with plants of a place of a culture of a lineage of there is some way that the plants and food is such an easy access way towards them that they they wake up things and that they travel with us and they come with us to all these places and that re-engaging the plants of our ancestral um and lineages you know our lineages and our traditions becomes a portal way towards embodying home when we can't physically arrive there and when you can't even do that because you really just don't know or you don't have access to them honestly I truly believe that connecting to the indigenous plants where you are is a portal way to because the earth the earth is our primordial mother it's just that's just how it is by design and the earth will it will unfold its own kind of story and path once you start to be in relationship with it and the plants of the place where you are that you breathe every day and you eat every day they know your being they know your spirit they know your body to the water that you drink the bodies of water and those places they have their own intelligence and I think when we start to engage the land where we are with intention you know things things open and answers start to come in those sensual less linear ways and um and we find our way.

Maryam Hasnaa: Yeah and I love the part that stood out to me that in the most in what you just said is when we engage with intention right um I think you know the thing that happens with this and so many other things is that when it starts to gain traction it gets reworked by people for their own needs and their own agendas and it's very easy and this is something that you and I have talked about in regards to some of even the work you know that I put out of how it's this kind of tricky balance of knowing that there are people that are going to take language that I use and the things that I say and use that as an opportunity to justify harmful behavior and you know currently right now we've seen a boost in travel blogging and people being called places and you know really bypassing responsibility as you mentioned when we chatted about this before what can you say that might be missing from that equation because I feel that what I really appreciate about your book and the way that you kind of laid things out is that you you don't just you know leave people that don't have the connections kind of like out on the road you know you're like no no no you get to be a part of this too and you offer specific ways that that can be done with intention and with integrity so can you talk a little bit about what might be missing from the equation when people kind of use that framework I was called to this place and yet might not recognize that some of the ways that they're relating to the land really mimic the the colonial harm right I spoke about that a framework that I have when I teach about being called somewhere is to don't assume that you know what that call means because sometimes actually that feeling of that pull or that attraction is because you have karmic work to clean up and that in regards to what your ancestors have done in that land right not just because you know it from a past life or something like that it's it can be a lot different than that so I do think that you offer quite a bit of frameworks and tools about that and I'd love you to just share you know what can be missing from the equation sometimes.

Layla K. Feghali: Yeah yeah that's a it's such an important question you know thank you for you know just attuning to the just how real that that phenomenon is it's really just it is actual relationship and responsibility I mean it's really that these places first of all are not empty places you know they're they're places with living people and cultures that have their own realities and their own struggles and their own loss and their own things that they're trying to maintain and their land that has experienced its own you know it has its own intelligence and its own ecosystem and we don't really get to just decide that we want to go somewhere with complete disregard for what the people who steward that place feel or how they are impacted by our being somewhere and I think a lot of what happens in you know the privileges of the western diaspora in particular is that people you know we've been we haven't a lot of us haven't been socialized within values that center relationship and responsibility and reciprocity in the way that the earth actually requires to thrive and be balanced and well and that we all require to be balanced and well and so I think that yeah there's a piece around what are we contributing to the place that we're feeling called to you know do we have is the call you know calls need a response you know like calls need a response like is the call reciprocated is there energy in both directions is there you know how much intent and effort and you know relationship has really been invested and then we kind of go somewhere and then we we're when we get what we need we throw it away and whatever we left behind is left behind you know I'm being reminded of this woman a very powerful curandera from the amazon her name is Edda Zavala and she works with the sacred medicine of ayahuasca as well as you know is a very fierce defender of the indigenous communities of different amazonian tribes between Ecuador and Peru if i recall and she talked a lot about you know this ayahuasca is a really simple example for this because ayahuasca is one of these plants that everyone suddenly somehow everyone is called to ayahuasca no no shade intended but like it's just like everyone you go any and it's everywhere i mean i go to like Egypt or something and i meet people who are sitting in ayahuasca ceremonies and plants do call people and calls are real but she talked a lot about you know people in the west who are being called to this medicine need to understand that our communities that have been traditionally stewarding these traditions are being completely eroded and destroyed by the west's obsession about this medicine and the ways that it's being consumed and the ways that it's being extracted and the ways that it's being extracted and the ways that even people in our own territories are basically resorting to selling it because of the economic need and that there is no way to be in an integrous relationship with this medicine if you are not also in an integrous relationship with people and that's the same with places you know what are we doing to ensure that these places have you know what are we doing to support their sovereignty their needs their cultures their ability to practice and to steward and to care for these beautiful powerful places all over the earth so it really comes down to relationship and reciprocity and the humility to you know be in a conversation about it so that the call can receive a response before you just run with something because you feel like it and it it's this is a difficult thing and again i'm not claiming to be an authority on this on the contrary i honestly try to double check things with elders with whatever forms that i have with dreams with oracles with divinations with whatever it is but you know the the truth is that a lot of the times what we feel is a call because we many of us have lived lifetimes disconnected from the traditions and the cues that help us discern these things yeah like you said they're not always a call because of the reason we think but they're also sometimes not a call and we're still read reclaiming and remembering our spiritual tools of discernment to even assess what we what the signs we're receiving.

Maryam Hasnaa: Yeah yeah thank you so much for diving into that um that question and you know something that i you know something that i often you know work with people on is when they want to start working with nature spirits and devas and elementals and beings in the unseen one of the most important things is to throw away what you think you know about them right because you're you're not going to actually be able to meet them if you're projecting ideas of what you thought a fairy was from a disney movie and stuff like that so you know we do have some purification work right that we have to do before we're clear channels to be able to actually understand what are those sensations that are coming up in our body and how do we actually translate what they mean and where they're coming from and what's kind of driving our behavior um you you know you you spoke about um the the over harvesting of plants and you talked about why it is that you have such a love for flower essences um can you just say a little bit about that because i i i obviously also have a deep love for flower essences in in just the way that they are vibrational and homeopathic and they're ethereal and they don't require you know the harvesting of this you know bulk amount of a plant matter um yeah i just love you to say whatever wants to be said about the flower essences.

Layla K. Feghali: This is where like the our ethereal like inclinations meet for sure i mean who doesn't love flowers honestly they're like just magical you know powerful potent um you know just yeah beautiful beings and um what's so powerful about flower essences to me is first of all you know it's just such ancient medicine that has been our there is like no people on this earth that has flowers where they live that has not yeah you know recognized the medicine of flowers and like what happens when flowers meet water and sunshine and that's just part of our it is just you know universal um medicine you know that people all over the earth recognize and have have felt the power of and so connecting to them in that way is connects us to a whole lineage of um of kinship with just these beautiful generous abundant you know gorgeous beings that we get to like experience on the earth you know and all their pollinators and all their the light and the consciousness that they carry and so i think what's really powerful about flower essences especially as such a sensitive person is that um they're so potent and they really actually um they undo so much of the colonial indoctrination we have about like what medicine is and what is needed for medicine and how medicine works and they really get to the root of kind of like the spiritual root of issues and then they heal our body from that place um or they can and they're just powerful and i i share this in the book too but there's this afro-brasilian elder um um maesta um what what oh my gosh i forgot her name for a second um she's a beautiful elder she came to teach us a workshop i'm sorry i'm blanking on on her name but it is in the book it's her name Alice, Maria okay i'm sorry i'm bad okay in all cases this afro-brasilian elder really said that when she went to make flower essences in her territory and she asked the flower or she asked for a remedy that was needed for this person who needed a medicine that was gonna shift their consciousness what she received in her dreams was instructions to make basically a flower essence and that she said that these medicines really are you know a medicine for our time because they're a medicine for shifting consciousness and shifting things and transforming things from the level of consci usness and she i really you know i had a very brief encounter with her i got to learn from her for like what two hours you know only but her teachings were really powerful and really resonated with me and that particular teaching um really rings us true um so i think that they are really potent potent medicine and um yeah and they really welcome us to connect with such intention and and presence with the plants without needing to take like very much from them so it's beautiful.

Maryam Hasnaa: Yeah i agree um and i i know that we jokingly talked about um you know our love of bonding over plants and how much we love being with plants and sometimes it's hard being with people and um if you can just share a little bit about some of the deeper shadow parts of this work in your experience

Layla K. Feghali: Yeah you know i i actually love people i'm a very relational person that's probably why i do this work but i also feel like you know people hurt my feelings a lot and you know the relational ruptures in our just social conditioning through this time are very real and very deep and um actually so much of why i started this work i think is because of my desire to heal our capacity to relate well because um it's so fundamental to our dignity and our well-being as as people and as a planet and on all every level and so i i feel like plants actually help us heal that so they they also they are easier to relate to because the lack of those things but they also help heal our knowing how to be in right relationship in a way that is just in a way that is just built into caring for plants and observing plants and learning from the earth in that way and you know when i say plants i'm like you know it's not just plants it's like plants connect us to soil to water to stars to sun to all the elements to the air to everything so and to the stories and the people and the pollinators and the animals they're you know it's everything um they're just bridges that are quite accessible and i think yeah the shadow work you know the this work can be this this work can be really isolating and really lonely and it's interesting because i feel very honored and thankful that i think my work has actually built so much community um i don't always feel like i'm a part of the community the same way you know which is you know this is just one of those like the wounds like the wounds that you create because of you know you create because you want certain things that you didn't have and sometimes the role is that you um you create it for others and you end up in this weird marginalized place despite that and you know there are a lot the dark night of the soul thing is one of the real things that i think you know some of these like sci-fi you know like some of the harry potter's and the sci-fi things like they might be wrong about fairies but like the dark nights of the soul and they can last for much longer than a night and there's so many layers of just um interrogation with yourself and with your own process and with you know just all the layers and the ruptures of our reality right now that you kind of interface when you really when you remain on a ritual of stewardship around culture and lineage and healing for long enough it's just kind of part of the territory and you know there's not that much support all the time um sometimes you have you're lucky and you have elders and traditions that help you and sometimes you find yourself all alone yeah you know yeah a lot of the times you find yourself all alone so it's very humbling it's a very humbling road.

Maryam Hasnaa: Yes yes yeah i agree i mean the initiations and the tests and the opportunities to embody what you say you're here to teach you know there it's never ending especially in this current time of planetary awakening and i remember a teacher uh Sandra Ingerman just recently started teaching publicly again and said she had been in a dark night of the soul for the last nine years you know

Layla K. Feghali: Exactly exactly i feel her

Maryam Hasnaa: Yeah yeah so it's it's not as glamorous as as it we might make it look sometimes yeah um it definitely you know i think there's um you know there's a cut off point when it's kind of like if this isn't really your path you're not going to be willing to endure all of the trials and tribulations that you're being put through you know because they they are real and i do feel that the earth is um you know in a way like requiring more of us right um and asking more of us giving these little assignments to see you know are you actually going to do the thing that you're being asked to do and i always talk about um how you know when there are you know when there are calls put out oftentimes there's multiple calls put out because some people aren't going to be successful in their assignment you know um and and and that's not a judgment but there is so much uh distortion you know in our current time that we have to slice through an illusion that we have to be able to move through to actually be able to you know recall what we're here for why why did we say why did we say that we would come here and do this right um and you know and the interesting thing about the timing of your book is that um you know you you say that it's something that you were kind of working on for a long time and that was kind of cooking in the background and yet it came to the world in this moment um and as you said you know you had no idea whatsoever that you know the the many of the beloved people on the land that you speak about um that there would be so much devastation currently happening i think when you were writing it you know a lot of it was talking about some of the past kind of displacement um that we're going we're going to need to address but now there's this whole other layer and dimension of it um exponentially happening right if you were writing this book now what would you would you do anything differently would you add anything else to it.

Layla K. Feghali: Um yeah yeah i've thought about this a lot and i i think so there were things that happened even while i was writing it like the august 4th explosion of the port in beirut happened and it was a moment where actually it actually pulled people back into these traditions in so many ways um by need but like what's happening now is like i'm like wow what does an herbalist do on land that is being completely destroyed and covered with white phosphorus where are the herbs to speak of how do these traditions help in a moment like this and i i think that had i been writing it now i would have focused a little bit more i talk about this in the book but i think i would have focused a little bit more pointedly on um just the relationship between land stewardship and stewardship and sovereignty movements the um the need and the responsibility for that i think i would have maybe thought about more of the kind of specific ways that relating to land and that land as medicine could serve and help in practical forms in this moment um and could also be more of a guidepost for those of us who are committing to helping dismantle empire so that we can create life-affirming worlds i've been writing into that a little bit on my instagram but there's just more there that i think i might have you know emphasized with a little bit more um specificity and urgency.

Maryam Hasnaa: Yeah i mean something that you and i have spoken about is that you know as there are these kind of different roles and assignments in the planetary awakening and the collective liberation that there's you know there's people that are going to be needed to create the kind of healing right that is going to be necessary for the kind of next years of what we're seeing um and how do we kind of mobilize those people and get some of this ready so that when it's time that we can actually disseminate that information and those tools and that medicine and things like that um can you say a little bit about some things that you're currently the earth is calling you to do right now other than to share about this book and um be speaking openly about it is there anything else that you would like to share.

Layla K. Feghali: Yeah thank you um yeah it is that it is i really feel the task you know this moment has i feel like called me to integrate all the different types of knowledge i've cultivated throughout my life you know my background as an organizer my background as a there someone trained as a therapist and a social worker my background and traditional healing my background in like spiritual practice of various traditions my background in earth medicine and herbs and all of this stuff i feel like it almost it feels like this moment is calling me to truly integrate all of these skills towards and i kind of understand why i have them why i've had different experiences so some of the stuff i've been working on um i am supporting a mutual aid campaign for direct cash assistance to folks in gaza um to support their survival and to i feel the earth is asking me to support the affirmation of life which also means to tend to the living and to support life as much as possible including resistance against the forces that that attempt to desecrate it um you all can find my mutual aid campaign it's coordinated with friends from gaza it's direct relationships to direct families we're also working on a really honestly it's a whole book of its own we've been working me and some amazing um herbal peers and friends have been working on an herbal guide for the medical workers in gaza who have you know lost all access to their institutions as we recently saw the horrific raids at al shifa hospital which is just one of the hospitals that has been targeted in unimaginable ways so an herbal guide for medicines you know that could be useful based on what we're told is still available in gaza um based on the herbs that are available from some of the apothecaries that are still standing and just practical being of practical service as much as possible and really thinking through preparing for the day after and preparing for um you know the skills that are going to be needed to truly interface with the level of trauma and devastation both on the land and the people and um you know supporting the organizing honestly i never thought i would go back into organizing as much as this moment has really been like okay you know really addressing the systems is very important right now so what is my role and how do i support other land workers to understand our unique role in supporting um the movements um during this moment and yeah i think my book feels like i see more its role in the days after than i do in the now so i'm grappling with what is the service to be of now while preparing as thoughtfully as possible and you know i think so much of it is just showing up for our communities and for the people that we are able to support who are directly impacted in all the ways so.

Maryam Hasnaa: Yeah i'm just thinking about kind of our initial conversation around that time about us having a conversation um creating something doing something and we were kind of um trying to find that moment to align and that moment's here which is incredible.

Layla K. Feghali: Wow i know right a month wow it's six months later wow yeah yeah something so faithful it's so yeah it's great it's beautiful and i it's really i think it's significant to me it's meaningful to me that you know you and i have been in conversation and you know we talked a little bit about like how the plans about for for us but i feel like nefertum blue lotus kind of brought us together into each other's orbit months and months ago but it's very meaningful to me that this moment is the one that actually brought us into um a different kind of relating and i'm very much paying attention to the fact that there's a role that we each have and that we have together um towards the support of this moment um and so you know that honors me and um i honor you and i thank you for showing up for that honestly with me.

Maryam Hasnaa: Yeah thank you for seeing me and thank you for this work and thank you for yeah being willing to like jump on a call with like essentially a stranger and kind of you know connect in that way to find out how we can support one another and how we can both show up and support our communities in these different ways and also to be able to um be in service and to expand all the current things um that we're each doing and again as i said you know oftentimes there's so many things that i know you're doing behind the scenes that uh don't get recognized and everything so just just appreciating and valuing you for who you are thank you what what has brought us together is um you know is something that on some level of course i wish was not happening right um and at the same time i also have a lot of trust in the earth and the way that the earth creates these divine orchestrations of like okay i need you two to be talking right now because you have a piece and you have a piece and like let's let's kind of build relationship from that place.

Layla K. Feghali: I mean truly truly.

Maryam Hasnaa: Thank you so much for

Layla K. Feghali: Thank you thank you my sweet dear friend

Maryam Hasnaa: So beautiful all right thank you everyone so lovely to be with you all

Layla K. Feghali: Thank you

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Thank you for listening to the CIIS Public Programs Podcast. Our talks and conversations are presented live in San Francisco, California. We recognize that our university’s building in San Francisco occupies traditional, unceded Ramaytush Ohlone lands. If you are interested in learning more about native lands, languages, and territories, the website native-land.ca is a helpful resource for you to learn about and acknowledge the Indigenous land where you live.

Podcast production is supervised by Kirstin Van Cleef at CIIS. Audio production is supervised by Lyle Barrere at Desired Effect. The CIIS Public Programs team includes Izzy Angus, Kyle DeMedio, Alex Elliott, Emlyn Guiney, Patty Pforte, Nikki Roda, and Pele Shalev. If you liked what you heard, please subscribe wherever you find podcasts, visit our website ciis.edu, and connect with us on social media @ciispubprograms.

CIIS Public Programs commits to use our in-person and online platforms to uplift the stories and teachings of Black, Indigenous, and other people of color; those in the LGBTQIA+ community; and all those whose lives emerge from the intersections of multiple identities. 

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