About five years ago, my close friend Marion rushed over to me in the cafeteria at Vermont College. “You have to see Hitaji and have an energy healing.” Marion is a serious woman, never taken lightly.

I thought of Hitaji, very different than I am, larger than life, unaffected by her overwhelming presence. She studied and embraced her African American heritage, bringing healing and wisdom into her world. I simply did not know what to make of her. When overcome by the spirits, she broke into boisterous chanting and dancing. As a rooted, earthy New Englander, I admired her from afar, not knowing or trusting myself at the time how to react or respond.

Unaware of the possibilities and deeply absorbed in my exploratory study process, I rejected the idea. Agitated at my uncertainty, I wondered what I feared.

Marion grabbed me by the arm and pulled me towards Hitaji, who sat quietly, enjoying her lunch. Marion was not a physical person; her intensity was unsettling.

Hitaji did not look up; she continued eating her lunch and told me when and where to meet her and to make sure that my hands and feet were clean.

I returned to my room and wondered if my feet were clean enough, as I had taken a shower a few hours before. I washed my hands and stared at my reflection in the mirror. What was I doing?

The dorms at Vermont College are very old and traditional New England with bricks, cinder blocks and old tile floors like what they have in hospitals, only these are not shiny. I hesitated as I took the flight of stairs down to the lower level and approached the seemingly empty dorm room. Hitaji sat on an antique wooden desk chair, her head lowered in meditation. I paused.

“Come in, Mj. Don’t be afraid.” Her voice penetrated; I sweat. She knew.

She dragged another chair before her, got up, flipped off the light and returned to her seat. She sat in front of me rubbing lavender oil in her palms. She instructed me to close my eyes as she massaged the oil on my rigid hands. My fear lingered. I struggled to take slow and even breaths until I finally relaxed.

She brought me face to face with generations of women in my family. She asked for their presence so that they would stand with me. Much of my research is based on my paternal lineage of grandmothers reaching as far back as the early 1600’s. I already knew a great deal about them, their lives and interesting journeys through the passage of time. Hitaji summoned them into my circle.

After reaching a relaxing place and state, she then told me that it was time to let go of the fear and trauma of the accident that I had as an infant. She instructed me to advise my inner child that it was okay and that (I) Maryjane, the adult, would protect her. I was floored. What accident?

At the end of the session, she asked me about the ‘accident’, that I encountered as a child. I had no idea. She suggested that I seek answers.

That was it, so I thought. I knew that I did not have any memory of an accident and that no one spoke anything of the like.

During my entire life, as far back as I can remember, I suffered from night terrors. I believed them to be bad dreams or nightmares. I have no recollection of any part of the dream that would offer clues as to their origin – no colors, sounds or specific people. I used to think that my blood curdling screams actually scared the memory of the dream from my consciousness. I could not explain the dreams or terrors, nor could I trace them to any particular event or person.

When in the dream state, I envisioned being in a very dark, silent place, the darkest place that I had ever encountered. It was almost like a vacuum. My conscious self tried to make sense of this, so I labeled it a cellar or dungeon. Sometimes I thought that I was in a coffin because it was so tight fitting that I could not move and felt wildly claustrophobic. The root of the terror was that my life was in extreme danger and no one knew I was in there, hence the loud screaming that often left me hoarse.

These dream events were so common, that people in my life became accustomed to them – sisters, parents, husband, children, roommates…I simply screamed at least three or four nights a week and woke up in a sweat with my heart racing and then I apologized and went back to sleep. It became an ordinary part of who I was.

After my return from Vermont College, I had dinner with my parents and my sister, Susan. I asked them if they recalled any accident that I was in or that I may have witnessed as a baby. Everyone shook their heads no and continued on to other topics of conversation.

Suddenly my father interrupted and looked at my mother. “How about when you were pregnant with Maryjane and you fell down the stairs. You were holding onto Susan and you had to go to the hospital.”

Everyone was quiet. I couldn’t believe that I had never heard this story. However, the science of my parents’ generation was not as advanced as today; they had no reason to think of PTSD in utero. My mother went on to tell me that she fell down a steep staircase with Susan – my older sister – who had to have stitches in her chin and that she (my mother) went to the hospital and remained there under doctors’ care for two weeks until my birth. I was born slightly prematurely because of this accident. Perhaps I was really going to be a Leo instead of a Cancer. Another thought to ponder, although I am a typical Cancer with strong Cancerian traits.

I knew that when my mother discovered that she was pregnant with me, her doctors advised her to have an abortion because they believed it was a tubal pregnancy. Obviously, she refused. I did not know about the accident on the stairs. I talked with my family about the probability that my lifetime of night terror and fears stemmed from this in utero experience. I was proud of my father – born in the 1920’s – for having the insight to consider that my trauma was in fact prior to my birth.

Later on that night, I meditated. I faced my frightened inner child with conscious awareness of the accident. I assured her that she was safe. I fell into a deep sleep.

Since this truth unfolded, I have not experienced a night terror. I have an active dream life; I acknowledge my dreams and record them in a journal. The trauma of my pre-birth accident, which resulted in a lifetime of Post Traumatic Stress, has been resolved.

Thank you, Hitaji for your gift of healing. Thank you, Dad for considering all possibilities. Thank you, Mom for ignoring the doctors. Thank you, Sophia for your infinite wisdom and guidance.

Source: http://mjpettengill.blogspot.com/2010/06/ptsd-in-utero-thanking-hitaji-energy.html

May your New Year be blessed abundantly with wealth, wellness, and grace. May your health be uplifted, and all things healed and made new. May your insight search for a deeper clarity of the how and a deeper clarity of the why. May you be made strong of heart and gentile by nature. May you walk in the footsteps of the Holy Spirit. May you taste the softness of Mary Magdalene and the sweetness of the Black Madonna. May you be free of enslavement and pain.

May you breathe deeply. May you be guided by the natural environmental beauties of our planet. May you be of service to your family and to your community. May you harbor self-pride and dignity. May you be sustainable. May you not be afraid of dying or living. May you just BE.

May you be wanted and loved by yourself first. Never needy and desperate for the love of another. May you never run from responsibility. May you have the ability to stand on your own two feet. May you be self-sufficient and brave. May you develop the ability to love over hate. May you develop the ability to appreciate instead of resenting. May you be able to sit in stillness when needed. May you see the God in you. May you develop the ability to be warm instead of cold. May you be all of you and nothing but you. May you be a person of honor.

May you be present and mindful. May you walk with purpose and the determination to make it happen. May you allow your soul to take flight. May you be your true self never allowing yourself to compare you to another or to feel not good enough. May you speak your truth because nothing but the truth will save you.

May you slowly allow the right kind of people into your life. May you be willing to forgive and let go. May you never break your own heart nor disrespect your own personal boundaries. May you stretch as wide as the earth. May you fly with angels customized just for you.

Hitaji Aziz- M.A., RMT, Reiki Master
Trauma Abolitionist, Speaker, Writer
Poet, Life Coach, Holistic Healer

A tribute to the resilience of poor, working class women 

Act One 

“I knew George Floyd’s mother even though I never met her face to face. I never shared a meal with her, nor did we gossip about our neighbors while waiting for the arrival of the monthly welfare check or being careful not to miss the Metro because we had houses to clean, standing at the bus stop surrounded by the silence of Latino women going to some of the worst jobs in the city. We never said hello and never had the time to say goodbye. No formal introduction would ever happen but at the same time we were tribal sisters with ancient identical tattoos. 

We wore the tattoos of poverty, Spirit, hard work, generational resilience, laughter, single parents, burritos, gospel music, flying bullets, Black eye peas and cornbread, prayers, dreams deferred and a sacred hope when there was nothing to hope for coupled with periodic despair. We kept our heads above the water but mostly we existed under the water with small pockets of air slowly keeping us alive. I knew George’s mother, but I never met her face to face.” 

She and I were the statistical conclusions of governmental research. We were the charted cycles of the marginalized studied in college classrooms across America while members of our families generationally rotated through the American prison system. We were the “New Deal” failed by deficient school systems, food deserts without food justice, racist red lining, brutalized by traumatized police systems, chronic medical disparities, culturally insensitive gentrification of communities not seen as historically worthy. 

Educated people studied us in sanitized United Way board meetings,  preparing for their next funding cycle. We were “section 8 mothers “, meaning that you might have to be a mom and a dad all at the same time because too many families with fathers touched by incarceration would never be allowed  to live in  government  housing. The Section 8 program is a support system for broken families with no intention of those families becoming financially grounded, mentally thriving, or sustainable enough to envision a positive future. 

We were expected to heal the sick as well as tame the wild alone. We were experts at surviving and morphing into distorted versions of ourselves, bonded to section 8 account numbers,  housing inspectors, caseworkers, and slum landlords. We tried over and over to make things better as we tumbled through welfare systems and poverty programs that could not nourish us as mothers fragmented and broken by the constant shock of not having. I never knew George’s mother, but  I will tell you one thing, I knew her pain. I knew her deep disappointments. I knew her feelings of abandonment. 

We were American women rooted in African ways that would never be remembered. We were grounded by the tribal energy of the diaspora, in places where race and class hypocrisies dance well together. Where poverty has always been a generational problem, hand in hand with the mass killings of Black men. The violence of poverty has never been far from the violence of the Black body. Black people dying by the hands of the prison system, by the  hands of White people killing them and by the hands of other people who looked just like them. The journey of the Black body has always needed intensive care. 

Waiting patiently with patriotic foolishness. We were women of color trapped in a romanticized matrix of dreamlike American visions never meant for melanated women who surrender  to life  in marginalized ways. We are the mothers waiting for the next funeral; the next open graves waiting, the next balloon released into blue skies. 

We were colonized  and constantly surrounded by the stress and the fear of whiteness. Each day we bore witness to the systemic manipulation of poor Whites rooted in  Eurocentric brutality based in distorted stories of indentured servitude and racialized traumas used to divide, control, and concur. We noticed the deadly residues of White supremacy through the actions of young White people acting out White family system-trauma- nightmares in bold and dangerous ways. I never met George’s mother, but  I do know that we hungered for reparations and a home, waited for those forty acres of work well done with mule in hand and a place of safety that we can call our own. 

With intention, we will carry the ancestral heartbeats and the resistance of those who came before us, always resisting and fighting to reclaim the humanity of a people. Even when shot in the back with cuffed hands we resisted. We resisted and died while jogging on a sunny day. We resisted by suicide, heart attacks and nervous breakdowns. We  sold cigarettes on corners until we stopped breathing. 

We were magical women resisting, hiding under the sun, birthing new people, disappearing, murdered while sleeping or simply coming from a store eating skittles. We were often accused of resisting while  being suffocated with knees on the neck, quietly whispering,”I can’t breathe. Quietly whispering, you are killing me while echoing the sacred  childlike words of Mama…… Mama…. 

Hitaji Aziz- M.A., RMT, Reiki Master
Trauma Abolitionist, Speaker, Writer
Poet, Life Coach, Holistic Healer

One late night in the middle of a dream an old White Polish woman told me that this was my world. Yes, she did. She was just there knitting and sitting in a silver rocking chair on the side of my bed covered with the letter X. She wore a red scarf tied under her chin and those orthopedic stockings that old women used to wear. She had on a white dress covered with smaller Xs and a warm matching shawl hanging delicately over her shoulders. She smelled of jasmine and lemon grass. She sat there like she was always there.

She told me that I was the keeper of every valley, every tree, and every butterfly. She told that me I was the keeper and part of every seed that sprouted and every wave that moved across the ocean. And then for a second, she would pause to knit another stitch. She told me that this was my world and that all the people were relatives of this great earth. In the book titled Seven Secrets of Success, Dada Madhuvidyananda , “We then think, feel and act for the welfare of all beings”(p.29). He explains that for one to have balance and success they must act with a kindness to all. She told me that the more that we loved and respected one another the more we would remember who we really were and why we were here on earth. The old White Polish woman told me that love had to start with self-first or it would not be effective.

She told me that we all had signed a contract to come to this great land and that we knew each other before we arrived but had forgotten all that we came with when entering this dominion. We were spirits having a human experience. She rocked in silence again, knitting unknown colors, and then she began to tell me that I had everything that I needed to fulfill my end of the deal. She told me that if I remained willing, I would remember all of who I was before, because this was a part of the great mystery of life on earth.

She went back into her silence rocking and knitting as if she were listening to instructions from some other place that I did not know about. Suddenly, she would slowly open her eyes and begin to instruct me on the beginner’s guide to “How to Save the Earth in Your Lifetime.” She said that all this could really be done if all of us were willing to walk past fear, past false mythology. She said that we had to be willing to critically think and diligently question all situations with faith as the foundation. She said the key for us would be to follow the still small voice inside.

She rocked back into her silence as I waited patiently for her to continue to tell me what I was to do while being a keeper of the earth. She said that all people no matter what their difference were leaders of the earth. She said that the act of remembering would sometimes feel painful for most of us because it would call forth a level of honesty that would radically change our lives. She said that it would feel like a birthing and that a lot of us would resist and die without ever knowing who we really were. She continued to rock like she had always been there.

This story is dedicated to Ms. Anne who was my grandmother’s Polish friend. She was an immigrant with memories of Hitler, struggle, and demanding work. She owned a Polish bar not far from our house. She would share a shot with my grandmother as she poured ginger ale for the little colored girl sitting on the bar stool.

This is for you Ms. Anne and all the hard-working Polish women that I grew up around in McKees Rocks and Pittsburgh, Pa. I honor your spirit and kindness. A deep bow to you and your kind.

Hitaji Aziz “Angels speak to me and through me every day”

Minding the Indigenous Mind
Mindfulness Journeys to Nirvana

Greetings Mindful Friends and Relatives,
The Buddha once said, “There is a way to be purified, to overcome sorrows and grief, to release suffering, to secure the right path to realize nirvana. This is to be mindful.” Mindfulness is a journey that enables us to contemplate the origin of all things that arise in our minds and bodies and the termination of them. As we come to understand that nothing is permanent, we are relieved from our suffering. In this column I wish to share a short fiction/nonfiction story that I wrote about a mindfulness journey that I have begun and have yet to complete.

Day 1, Afternoon

I arrive at my destination to begin a ten day journey of mindfulness and neurodecolonization sitting meditation. I have sat in meditation for several hours a day, for a number of days, in the comfort of my own home. But that was in the northern California town where I live. This is the first time that I will be sitting outside, back home on the rez, and I imagine the energies, sensations, and effort will be quite different.

The buffalo grass is waving in the winds and the air is filled with the fragrances of sage and the earthy-smelling Buffalo Bur and Owl Clover flowers. No mosquitoes. No wood ticks. No biting flies, yet. To the east of where I will be sitting are the rickety willow frames of the sweat lodges from last year’s Sun Dance and my brother’s fasting camp. A lone bird, probably a scout, sits atop the one in the center, occasionally flapping its wings to keep its balance in the sporadic gusts of the prairie wind.

To the south, I can see the all but translucent shades of dirty, yellowish-brown plumes of arsenic, chromium, nickel, lead, and dioxin clouds rising from the coal gasification plant across the Missouri river. The rising ash makes no sound but portends a tale of climate change and compromised health for all creatures, waters, and lands. My Amygdala, the fear-central region in my brain, activates as I experience a bit of anxiety realizing that I am probably breathing in the noxious fumes that are blowing across the lake from the plant.
I gently place my big, dark purple, square Zabuton meditation cushion on the place that I have cleared for my sit. On top of it, in the center, I place my smaller round, black Zafu cushion. I sit on the Zafu as a test run, close my eyes, cross my legs, and sink into it. It is slightly off center and I stand up and make a few adjustments. I lay my two blankets that I’ve brought for the chilly evenings and mornings next to the cushions and go about setting up the sun shade, positioning it over where I will be sitting.

I will sit for long periods of time, meditating in silence, focusing my attention on training my awareness and concentration to mindfully tune in to my mind, body, thoughts, and all the sensations that arise. When my body asks, I will get up and mindfully move around, exercise, stretch, walk, eat and drink, and sleep.

Day 2, Morning

The first several hours of my mindfulness journey have been pleasant, as it seems that I have been able to hold the awareness of my breath and body without too much effort. My brain waves seem to be holding very nicely at a mid to upper Alpha band range, and I feel alert, relaxed, centered, and alive. Enlightened already? I smile at my arrogance.
Whenever an unpleasant memory, a twinge of anxiety, or a sense of boredom enter my field of awareness I acknowledge them, befriend them, accept them, and return to the awareness that I am breathing in and breathing out; whenever joy, happiness, or desire make their way into my consciousness, I do the same.

Day 4, Night

I stand looking at the stars above me and the darkness that envelops the land. The breeze is cool, and I detect the smell of smoke, probably from the fires that are burning in Colorado this summer. Tonight before I begin meditation, I find myself wrestling with many fears and self-doubts. After some time, I sit down and begin focusing on each in and out breath. I see the exact moment when each in breath originates outside my body, and I consciously breathe it in. I continue watching it as it fills my entire body and then ends when I can no longer take in any more air. I hold the fullness of my breath in my body for a moment and then take note of the instant that my out breath begins inside me and then exits through my windpipe and throat, and finally trails out of my nostrils:

“Breathing in I see the origin of my breath, Breathing out I see the cessation of my breath. Breathing in I see the origin of all things, Breathing out I see the fading of all things.”

Day 53, Morning

I don’t know how long I’ve been distracted or if I’ve been mindfully maintaining my awareness of all the processes of my mind and body. It seemed for a long time that I had been successfully engaging the awareness of my breath and body. Then for extended periods, my consciousness began picking up mesmerizing, sometimes very disturbing, old memories that I had long forgotten, or didn’t know had taken up residence within me. When I regained my mindfulness, I gently detached from them, remembering that they are just memories. Before I could return to my focused breathing, my awareness exploded into beautiful shades of black and I found myself sitting alone in the deep, dark recesses of celestial space, breathing in and breathing out.

A wood tick is crawling across my face and it is at this moment that I realize that I have been visiting the “ghost cave” of makyo (魔境), clinging to the experience of illusion and self-delusion. I smile and release myself from my bubble of deception.

I’m not tired or hungry, but I feel the wind and sun gently caressing my exposed skin. For some reason I feel it most in my hands: “Breathing in, I make my body calm and at peace. Breathing out, I make my body calm and at peace.” Calmness and peace evade me and I open my eyes and stand up, stretch, and begin walking to the west.

Day 54, Night

I’m sitting. I’m solidly grounded to mother earth, feeling her electromagnetic energies probing me as they rise, making their way to the stars above, and then descend back deep below to where they came from. Sometimes the waves of energy are so strong and saturated that I feel every part of my body pulse and inflate like a balloon that is filled with liquid electricity. I sit very still, unmoving, lest my body spring an energy leak and my soul escape, only to be whisked away and pooled together with the falling stardust. Concentrate. Breathe.

Sometimes the energies have a predictable pattern, and I am able to brace myself for each incoming wave as it builds momentum and strength and then releases into a calm buzzing in my ears and toes. At other times, the waves seem to chaotically materialize from all directions and engulf every molecule in my being, bringing me closer to a thermodynamic death. Death? Death is not so bad.

The ultimate fate of the universe is heat death. One day the universe will weaken to a state of having no thermodynamic free energy and therefore will no longer sustain the processes that devour energy, including life, including me. It starts to rain; gently at first and then a downpour bursts from above. I remind myself that I am at peace.

Day 55, Day

I remember the electromagnetic waves are distractions, and I go back to my breathing and adjust my Purple coneflower meditation position so that it is stable and synchronized with each breath. I allow my belly to become soft and begin my inverse breathing. I silently repeat to myself, “Breathing in I am connected to all life. Breathing out I am connected to all life.” My breath is alive.

Day 72, Night

The chirping sounds of the multitude of crickets all around me have now magically converged into single ringing chime that washes over and through me. The sound touches me for only a moment and then proceeds far beyond, to the north. When I become distracted enough I can hear it change back into millions of cricket voice choirs, rising and falling in an ancient unison. Their song begins to synchronistically pulsate with the beating of my heart. I use this shift in my perception to go back to my mindfulness breathing in the present moment: “Breathing in I bring clarity and purpose to my life. Breathing out I bring clarity and purpose to my life.”

Day 81, Afternoon

I’ve finally made peace with my memories of death. They arise and I no longer react with fear or grief. The blood has dried on all their faces and their smiles have returned. Their eyes sparkle and they turn and walk back toward the east and gradually fade away: “Breathing in I feel compassion for the suffering of those that have died. Breathing out I feel love for those that have died. Breathing in I feel compassion for my suffering, having died with them many times. Breathing out I feel compassion for my suffering, having died with them many times.”

Day 88, Morning

I slightly shift my sitting position and notice that all of last night’s aches and shivers are gone, and the burning in my legs from sitting in my semi-Purple coneflower position has finally faded away. In the southeast, the sun has now fully transcended the earth and raised itself over the horizon to see if I am sitting where it saw me last evening. Through the skin of my closed eyelids the sun produces a deep red that bleeds into my field of vision. The shade of red changes as I gently raise and lower my chin towards and away from the sun. All the life in the summer air has begun buzzing, singing, fluttering, and floating through the humid, damp sky that hangs above me.

My attention on my breath is like my breathing itself: life. The pace of my breathing remains unchanged, and I notice how my lungs and belly fill completely with the warm, sticky air that is gently blowing from the west. I exhale with awareness as my lungs empty emotional toxins from long, long ago. My mind silently utters good-bye confusion as I breathe out; good-bye self-pity as I breathe out; good-bye greed as I breathe out; good-by historical trauma as I breath out. In a moment of distraction, I am able to feel my breath as it enters and exits the hollow centers of the hairs on each of my thin, dehydrated, sunburned, wrinkled arms.

Day 90, Evening

With the subtle changes that are going on around me, I begin to ascend out of the deep breathing awareness that I had been suspended in for much of the past eighty-nine days. I feel myself being slowly liberated my from my connection to my meditation cushions and it seems as though someone has turned off the spigot of the earth’s electromagnetic fields. I am ending my sitting to return to the world of chaos, and I am reminded of Qigong Master Duan Zhi Liang’s teaching about disorder and confusion: “The essence of all evolution in nature emerges from chaos. By understanding the infinite energy that is always available to us, we can flow naturally with the chaotic energies of the universe.” Breathing in I draw in the never-ending life-force that envelops me. Breathing out I draw in the never-ending essence of this time.”

Day 91, one minute after midnight

I feel a hot, panting breath in my face, and the intense smell fresh of blood enters my nostrils. I slowly open my eyes to see that I am in a six-inch, face-to-face staring contest with a large mountain lion. In his eyes I can see the smoke rising from the coal gasification plant and his fur smells of crude oil. We calmly look at each other for few seconds. I uncross my legs and move my body slightly forward to stand up. My visitor steps back, allowing me the room that I need to get to my feet. I pick up my cushions and blankets and walk through the grass towards the gravel road. My companion follows beside me as we both fade into the darkness, heading towards the lights of White Shield, heading towards nirvana.