Join us for a complimentary healing The Medicine We Carry this Sunday.
Here is the recording for the Equinox Gathering, what a powerful time we shared.
We are still in that energy so if you missed it, check it out, truly.Applications are only open for a few more days for Shiloh Sophia’s training, Stardust Initiation - you can speak to her live this week!
WHY WE HEAL TOGETHER
by Shiloh Sophia, Cura Council
Probably not unlike yourself, I’ve been feeling concerned about where we are. And I continue to ask myself what the most essential question is — an inquiry that guides us. That question is: how can we improve the quality of our lives right now?
It’s no wonder that one of my focuses this year has been to refine the way we work with group healing, and to begin teaching other healers how to do it — to offer our services and expand our capacity to reach people who need this work.
There are reasons why we heal together. I’d love to share a few of them with you today.
WE WERE NEVER DESIGNED TO HEAL ALONE
Many of us are more connected and interconnected than we’ve ever been — and yet many of us feel alone. But worse than alone, we feel like we don’t belong. We scroll. We connect. We attend Zooms. We do in-person gatherings. And still, there’s this feeling that maybe it could be different.
It can be.
I want to remind you that this feeling of not belonging is not some kind of personal failure. For me, it’s connected with evolution itself — with where we are as a species. The truth is, we were never designed to heal alone. We have always healed together.
Right now, as we navigate everything that’s happening — whether that’s your personal experience, the collective grief, the overwhelm, the increase in anxiety — there is a call to gather. To gather intentionally. To work together creatively. This is spiritual. It is community. And it is backed by science.
THE SCIENCE OF CO-REGULATION
In our teachings about the Red Thread, the very first teaching is this: we are already connected. So when you come into a room that our community is curating, your nervous system may feel something different. Not always, and not for everyone — but often, people feel already connected when they arrive.
This is backed by the science of co-regulation, which tells us that our nervous systems are not fully self-contained inside our bodies. They exist in our field. Whether you’ve spoken to someone, seen them on a Zoom screen, or simply entered a shared space together, you are already reading the field. We are ultimately social beings, and we are wired to regulate with one another.
Dr. Stephen Porges and his Polyvagal Theory have been quietly revolutionizing trauma research by naming this experience: neuroception — the unconscious scanning our bodies do to assess the safety of our environment. [1] In our circles, the facilitators will often have us look around and notice that we are actually safe — that this is a safe enough space. Because when we find even a sense of safety in another person’s presence, our vagal tone shifts. We drop out of fight-or-flight and into a state where learning becomes possible, connection opens, creativity increases, and healing deepens.
People can be our poison or our medicine. In this work, we choose medicine.
There’s also beautiful research on oxytocin, the bonding hormone, showing that it’s released in many more ways than we once thought — not just through touch and hugging (one of my favorites), but through making eye contact with someone who doesn’t look away, through singing together, listening to music, dancing, collective ritual, and yes — through painting and creating together with intention. [2]
What’s remarkable is that oxytocin regulates cortisol, increases trust, lowers blood pressure, and activates the brain’s reward circuitry. When we work together through group healing or Intentional Creativity with an intent to heal, we are changing our biochemistry in real time.
And in some group settings, something even more remarkable begins to happen over time: brainwaves synchronize. Research from Princeton’s Hasson Lab identified what they call neural coupling — the alignment of brain activity between people that forms the actual foundation of real communication and understanding. [3] When we are gathered together, we can, in a measurable sense, begin to think together. To feel together. To heal together.
Healing in community is not a metaphor. It is neuroscience. And our bodies have always known how to do it.
THE STUDY THAT CHANGED EVERYTHING FOR ME
I want to share some research that is older and has been debated — but that factors deeply into my story. Into the day that Intentional Creativity came to me.
My teacher asked me what I cared about seeing transformed in the world. I said: the healing of women and children. The ending of violence. I was working with clay, and as I was wedging it, she said: put that intention into the clay. And I did. She said: now believe. And I did. I saw colorful strands reaching out to women around the world.
Right after that, over a cup of tea, she told me about the 1993 Washington D.C. study.
That year, John Hagelin — a Harvard-trained quantum physicist — led 4,000 practitioners of Transcendental Meditation in a single shared intention: to generate coherence, inner peace, focused and sustained, and direct it toward the city. The results were striking. Published in a peer-reviewed journal, they found that violent crime in the city dropped by as much as 23% during the weeks the group gathered. Researchers controlled for temperature, policing, prior trends, and other variables. The effect held. When the group dispersed, the crime rates returned. [4]
This is formally known as the National Demonstration Project. It was reviewed by independent boards of scientists and sociologists. It was not perfect. But the meditators did not march. They did not protest. They sat together, changed the quality of their attention, and the world around them changed.
This tells us something profound: consciousness, gathered together with intention, is not private. It is participatory. It can be very, very healing.
This is what Intentional Creativity works with. Not wishful thinking. Not affirmation without action. But the practice of directing our life force — our embodied human consciousness — through creative acts, through art, through collective group healing.
A RADICAL ACT
Right now, in this cycle of collective grief, we need rituals. We need sacred containers. Many of the older ones are breaking down and fraying.
Oxytocin is not released by a well-worded post. Mirror neurons do not fire in response to scrolling. Vagal tone does not shift from just listening. It’s when we are together — when our hands are moving, when we’re breathing in the same space, when the heart knows that other people are present in the circle with us, no matter how far apart — that something real begins to shift.
Group healing is not a luxury. It is something that helps us regulate our nervous systems by choice and moves us from beta to alpha to theta. It is a radical act of individual sovereignty and collective healing.
We do not need to do this alone. And I don’t want to do it without you.
The stardust in your bones is 13 billion years old. This is not metaphor — it is established science. Every heavy element in your body, including the calcium in your bones, was forged inside dying stars and scattered across the cosmos in supernovae explosions. You are the universe, made conscious of itself. That is where we begin together. Healing starts right here. This is the ancient medicine we carry.
YOU ARE BEING INVITED
If this has landed with you, I’d love for you to join us for our complimentary Group Healing coming up called the Medicine We Carry — and consider joining me in a cohort for Stardust Initiation, my next training and mentorship program, beginning in June. Applications are open now and we can connect directly (interview live)
An initiation is needed — individually, in small cohorts, and in big collective groups. That’s what I’m a part of. I hope you’ll consider joining me.
Apply and learn more at: www.stardustlineage.com
FOOTNOTES
[1] Porges, S. W. (2011). The Polyvagal Theory: Neurophysiological Foundations of Emotions, Attachment, Communication, and Self-Regulation. W. W. Norton & Company. Porges describes neuroception as the body’s unconscious scanning for cues of safety or threat in the environment, prior to conscious awareness — and the foundation of our capacity to co-regulate with others.
[2] Uvnäs-Moberg, K. (1998). Oxytocin may mediate the benefits of positive social interaction and emotions. Psychoneuroendocrinology, 23(8), 819–835. Research shows oxytocin is released through a wide range of social and creative behaviors beyond physical touch, including eye contact, music, movement, and shared ritual.
[3] Hasson, U., Ghazanfar, A. A., Galantucci, B., Garrod, S., & Keyser, C. (2012). Brain-to-brain coupling: A mechanism for creating and sharing a social world. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 16(2), 114–121. Princeton Neuroscience Institute research demonstrating that neural coupling between speaker and listener is the foundation of genuine communication and shared understanding.
[4] Hagelin, J. S., Rainforth, M. V., Cavanaugh, K. L. C., Alexander, C. N., et al. (1999). Effects of group practice of the Transcendental Meditation program on preventing violent crime in Washington, D.C.: Results of the National Demonstration Project, June–July 1993. Social Indicators Research, 47(2), 153–201. The study reported a statistically significant reduction in violent crime of up to 23% during the demonstration period, reviewed by an independent 27-member board of scientists and sociologists.
