ABOUT GURUMUKH

“Free your mind and your behind will follow.”

- The Elders

How do you make a sane adjustment to an insane situation, that has been normalized? Health disparities have been normalized, particularly in communities of color, and impoverished white communities.

I have a saying:

“What was once done to us because of race, is now being done to you, for the money.”

Slavery is immoral, but it persisted because it was profitable. Health disparities are immoral, but they persist because they are profitable. Slaves freed themselves by becoming more literate. You can free yourself by become more health literate, especially in a pandemic. Becoming more humane, ruling yourself with knowledge and calm, than your oppressors, who promote fear and ignorance, can be a life saving skill.

By understanding the causes and structure of your oppression, you can free yourself from it.

I was educated to treat clients in a Western mode, which was completely inadequate to meet their actual needs. Western medicine, particularly psychology, proceeded as if sexism and racism didn’t exist. Despite the prevalence of sexual abuse trauma, and current and epigenetic effects of racial trauma, being drivers for mental illness and substance abuse, all Western medicine can offer patients are pills. Not the skills, to change or neutralize the effects of oppressive elements of society. In fact, historically Western Psychology viewed freedom seeking African slaves, as mentally ill for escaping slavery, and seeking an equal humanity. Women were also viewed as “hysterical” for wanting the vote, equal pay for equal work, etc. In other words, we’re mentally ill for not accepting your “superiority”, but you are not mentally ill for thinking you are superior to us, and enacting laws and customs to enforce that supremacy.

As a scion of Black Psychology, which recognizes that systemic discrimination exists, and that you can neutralize it, by systematically educating and empowering yourself and others. As an addictions mental health worker of color, observing people of color experiencing health disparities in treatment settings. They were being discharged early, simply because they correctly and appropriately, raised issues of racial and sexual trauma in treatment. Despite years of work, increasing the skill level of white practitioners to deal with counseling issues involving race, they often defaulted to racial bias. I concluded we need a new approach. Which turned out to be an old approach. Combining the centuries old addiction recovery frameworks created by Native-Americans, and African-Americans, where you have to not only be substance abstinent, but revitalize a non-White Supremacist scientific cultural framework. The science was key, because traditional cultures had developed a skills-based pharmacology. That is, you practice the skill, after you no longer need the Pill.

Pills Are Not Skills

Since Western Psychology doesn’t believe racism exists, nor sees racism as a mental illness, there will be no pill to cure racism or sexism. Human Unity, must be experienced beyond drug effects. As a Kundalini Yoga teacher and music performer, I found that yoga, meditation, and music, could replicate the effects of self-medication, to alleviate the pain of discrimination. I learned to operate outside of the box of Western civilization, to develop a solution-based practice, and teach it to others. Thus was born The Yoga of Intersetionality. I particularly like working the “hard to reach” cross-cultural populations, and I believe that Healed People Heal People. I utilize and develop a transpersonal, African-American & Native American Post-Colonial Psychology. In order to recover sobriety, you must also recover or create a healing culture, particularly if you didn’t come from one.

Recovering Culture

“You suffer because you love what deceives you.” - Ieshua

Recovering Sobriety is key to Cultural Recovery.

Recovering Culture is key to Sustaining Recovery

The oldest recovery frameworks in Turtle Island (North America) involve re-creating a vigorous and vigilant pre-Colonial/pre-Slavery lifeway. In addition to abstinence, recovery of indigenous culture, in the Code of Handsome Lake what became The Wellbriety Movment;, and Frederick Douglass’ “We cannot stagger our way to freedom.” Addiction is Slavery movement. We’re recreating an indigenous and African-American lifeway that enhanced continued freedom. In a world that actively profits on maintaining colonization, slavery, and exploitation, of human beings. An addicted population is a controlled population. Slavery is maintained by keeping people ignorant of the nature of their chains.

“Slaves have to break free of two kinds of Chains: The ones on their bodies, the ones on their brains” - Palmares

Iron chains can be be replaced by mental-emotional chains, cultural and digital chains.

How do you free yourself if your culture limits who you can be: Unless you are content to live within those limitations. As Maya Angelou said “The caged bird sings with a fearful trill, Of things unknown but longed for still, and his tune is heard on the distant hill, for the caged bird sings of freedom.”

E-Mail or Call for a free initial consultation for Organizations, to schedule one-time or ongoing Counseling. Fee’s negotiable, or sliding scale.