I was honored to be featured in In Wild Air (VOLUME VI | EDITION LXI), a weekly newsletter featuring six interesting things selected by an interesting guest.
Check out the excerpt below, and read the full piece here.
CULTURE
Shamans, Healers, and Griots
Shamans, healers and griots have held culture and stories of communities for centuries. In a world of big data and technology, I am constantly contemplating the place that these archetypes have in the contemporary canon. The urban shaman understands the chaotic often times unexplainable energy of the environment and can point out ways to reframe our experiences so that we feel more connected. VUCA ( which stands for Volatility, Uncertainty, Complexity and Ambiguity) seems to represent this transitional time between the beginning of this technological age and the age of full integrated human knowledge. The urban healer—such as myself—looks at organizations and groups the way a holistic doctor approaches the body: as complex systems operating on an external and internal level as well as from micro to macro and back and forth. In order to address root cause, we must first establish the pain, trauma and imbalance. Within organizations, I find that when our systems remain inequitable and based on a unilateral power structure we cannot possibly benefit from shared and integrated learning and therefore holistic problem solving. And finally urban griots exist to listen first, to observe and pay attention to the signs of the time and to accurately, passionately and skillfully deliver stories and qualitative data that allows for comprehensive decision making that evolve cultural and societal norms.
As we continue to merge with technology, our brains, actions and thought processes shifting, it is the healer, the shaman and the griot who will ultimately tell us what it means to be human and act as the witness while creating the moral and ethical lexicon. I am always on the lookout for my tribe, when we see each other there is a greeting in our concrete jungles and urban surroundings that allows us to know that we feel, think and breathe the people, the place and the universal truths that exist all around and through us.