Tara Stonemother: Following the Sparks of "Yes"

Ross Tayler: Hello, I'm Ross Tayler, your host and guide for Sacred Sundays, a space to slow down, tune in, and return to what's sacred within and around you. I'm also a life coach walking alongside those who are ready to come home to who they actually are. These conversations are part of fulfilling that purpose, a collective exploration of what it means to live in connection with the sacred. Some weeks you'll hear a sound-based offering to open the space. Other times we'll simply begin in conversation. As it unfolds, this is an invitation into presence, connection, and the beauty of the unseen. If these conversations find you, please subscribe, rate, and share so others can find their way here. Pour a cup of tea, settle in, and let's begin.

Ross Tayler: Today on Sacred Sundays, our guest is Tara Stonemother. Tara understands that she has been on the medicine wisdom path her whole life. Almost two decades ago, she stepped fully into the calling by completely dedicating her life to it. Her primary purpose on earth is to listen to the Great Mother, to be guided in sacred service to her people. Those people span the globe, and her tribe grows with each person who finds her.

She is a carrier of several medicines including bufo, kambo, hapé, and the ancient mushroom medicine. She works intimately with ayahuasca, she is a shamanic seer and a mesa carrier under a Peruvian lineage. Her home and family are based in Enderby, British Columbia, though she travels extensively to wherever the medicine and spirit calls her. Welcome Tara to Sacred Sundays.

Tara Stonemother: Thank you, Ross. It's a beautiful honor to be here.

Ross Tayler: You're welcome. I'm so happy to have this conversation with you. I was thinking about it this morning, and I think we met three or four years ago when we were both participating in a sweat lodge in the interior. I remember being struck immediately by your presence, your groundedness, and the wisdom that you carry. It's hard to put into words, but I would just call it an embodiment of your work. I can really sense that. You've done your work, you're living your experience, and it translates into everything you do. This embodied wisdom comes across. So I'm grateful to have sat in ceremony with you and to get to have this conversation on the podcast.

Tara Stonemother: I remember that day. That was a wonderful sweat lodge with, I think it was Albert.

Ross Tayler: Yes.

Tara Stonemother: And I was struck by how much love was within you, radiating outward. Your gentle soul and your watchful, quiet presence were noticeable.

Ross Tayler: Thank you for that, Tara. In your bio you mentioned that you've been on this medicine wisdom path your whole life. I'm curious what that looks like for you, what that translates into experientially, and what it took to wake that up when you fully stepped onto the path.

Tara Stonemother: Well, of course, when I was a child I didn't know or recognize what it was. But when I look back at it, I can see that I was on that path. It manifested even in kindergarten, as a little six-year-old. All of the other kindergarten students and friends that I had there, we used to have a blanket and there was a nap time during kindergarten. I don't think they do that anymore, but that was a really common practice. What would happen is that one or another of the students would come to me and sit on my blanket. They would have some emotional situation going on, or they just wanted to be close, and they would tell me about it, and I would say whatever came to my mind.

Then as I was growing into my preteen years, there were times where I would take the Greyhound bus and grown adults would tell me their life story and tell me what was happening in their life. I remember thinking at times, I'm like 12 years old. Why are they telling me these things? It just always was like that. People would come to me, I guess for solace or guidance or a combination. I would rescue animals. My mom said I was always bringing home strays, whether it was animals or my friends. I would ask, can they stay for a while because they're not doing well? It was just always like that.

Ross Tayler: I can relate to that. I haven't had similar experiences, but I have had that energy show up in the sense that people open up very quickly, very easily. I love the story of kindergarten, because we had naps when I was in kindergarten as well. I love the image of someone coming just to be in your presence, and it speaks to your energy. I felt that with you. Some of us do hold that space. Someone in a workshop once told me that I was the safe harbor in the room, and I thought that was such a beautiful description. It feels similar for you as well.

Tara Stonemother: It's probably why we recognized each other's souls so quickly.

Ross Tayler: Yeah. And in terms of the transition into dedicating your life to this work, what did that look like? Usually there's some tap on the shoulder or something bigger. What was that like for you?

Tara Stonemother: Yeah, for sure. So as I was in my preteen and my teen years and my young adult years, what was happening is that I would be picking up the energetic state of people, sometimes literal thoughts. Hollywood has this idea of what psychicness is. I would say something to somebody if I was picking up something from them. Sometimes I wouldn't say anything, but sometimes I would, and I'd say, are you feeling like this? Is this going on in your life, X, Y, or Z? Sometimes they would look at me and just go, how the heck did you know that? And then sometimes they would say, nope, don't know what you're talking about.

As I was assessing this psychicness, it was about fifty-fifty. Somebody was shocked and surprised and confirmed that what I was receiving is what was happening for them, and then 50% said, nope, don't know what you mean. So I thought, well, obviously I'm not psychic, because I had the idea that psychicness was a hundred percent bang on all the time, every time. But I still always played with it, and I didn't do much with it. I had a lot of empath abilities, and during that time I had a very tumultuous life. Not through my parents, they were very stable, my family was very stable, but things occurred in my life that would be classified as traumas. There's a lot of empath energy where you don't really know what's yours and what is somebody else's, so over the years I started to sort that out. I wasn't really actively doing anything besides the things that I have described to you already.

At one point in my life I was in my thirties and I was in the top one percent of a company. We were in what they called the elite group, and I had a team of 400 people who I was responsible for, so I was on that kind of career path. I was at a yogurt shop in Walla Walla, Washington. The woman who owned the shop, when I walked in, she lit up and she said, my goodness. I said, what? She just said, you just have this energy. We started talking and I would pop in every once in a while and we became friends.

Every year she was having a tea party at her yogurt shop where she would have Irish tea versus English tea, and she would have people put a little hash mark on a whiteboard about which tea they preferred. Every year she would have a tea leaf reader who would come and do tea leaf readings all day during that little event. One day she says to me, my tea leaf reader is not able to come and do it this year and I would like you to. I said, what? Why in the world would you ask me to do that? She said, because you're psychic. I said, no, I'm not. And she said, of course you are. Every single thing that you've ever said to me is a manifestation of this psychic ability that you have.

That really created something in me. It wasn't the most pleasant thing. It was a bit of a disturbance within me, because I had formulated an opinion, probably through movies and society, that psychics were grifters and charlatans and unethical. They were cold reading people, telling them what they wanted to hear, taking advantage of people in a disturbed state who were looking for help. So I said, I can't do that. I have a reputation I have to uphold in my career and I don't want to be seen as some woo-woo psychic person. She said, I'm going to ask you again in a few days.

Of course it really stuck with me. I was also very curious. What if I did do this? What would happen? So I spent a couple of days resolving the ethical aspect of it within myself. I said to her, I will do it because I'm curious and it's a fun thing to do, but I'll have to tell everybody that this is just for fun, that I'm not a real psychic. I'm not going to pretend to be a psychic. She said, okay, great, no problem.

The night before the event, I just Googled tea leaf reading. There are a few different cultures, and I was curious about where it originated. I thought maybe it would be in China, and it didn't originate in China. I can't remember now where it did. I just did a quick cursory look and then showed up the next day to her little shop. I had bought a teacup and a saucer and some loose leaf tea. She had a stack of paper that she handed to me, and it said, if you see a duck it means this, and if you see a wagon it means this. I said thank you and slipped it into my bag, because I had decided that I was just going to say whatever came.

The first lady sat down for her tea leaf reading in front of me, and I was going to tell her this is just for fun, I'm not a real psychic. I got a huge message, like a great big thump into my body, that said, do not tell her that. I could feel my face flushing, because I had this ethical conundrum inside of myself. I thought, I probably should tell her this, but it was such a profound message. So I thought, well, that's fine, I'll tell her afterward. I proceeded with the reading, and it was one thing after another that I was just allowing to drop into myself. I could feel it coming down through the top of my head and out through my mouth. She was so stunned and amazed, and she cried and she laughed and she resolved things. We got down to some very specific things, things that there was no way that I would have known, that came in vision.

Then we were finished, and the message came in: do not tell her that this was just for fun, because you will take away so much of what she has just received if you minimize it. All day long it was like that. I went home and told my husband what happened, and I was just stunned. He said, why are you so surprised? This is what you've done ever since I've known you. I said, not like this, where everything is just coming, one thing after another, things that there's no way of me knowing. Over time I started to suss out the dynamics of why it comes when somebody sits down and gives permission, and those kinds of things.

From that day forward, people kept coming to me. The people I read for told their friends, and their friends contacted me. I mentioned it to a couple of my friends about what had happened and they said, read for me. For two years straight I read for free for people. I called it my practicum. There's a whole big story around all of that, and I couldn't deny what was happening. So I just stayed open to it and allowed it to flow and continued on my career path. Eventually it became full time, and then into the medicine world and all of that.

Ross Tayler: A couple of things pop up for me. One is that I always wonder how many people out there listening are having similar experiences to what you described and push it to the side, thinking, I'm not like other people who do this work, and they just minimize it. I love that you're sharing this because you're speaking to those people who need to hear it, which is really important and powerful. I do think we're in a time when people are really waking up to these gifts and being asked to bring them forward. The other thing I noticed was being in a corporate environment and having to almost hide that woo-woo part of yourself in order to still be in that environment. That's come up a lot during the podcast as well. Anything you want to add to those two things?

Tara Stonemother: Yeah, especially the dichotomy. We all have these gifts, right? Gifts of discernment and knowing and vision and receiving messages, to one degree or another. Some people play basketball in a wheelchair and some people are Michael Jordan, right? I date myself by quoting Michael Jordan, because there are probably other more famous basketball players these days. We all possess that, and then also we walk in the third dimension and what we call the real world, and I'm doing air quotes as I say that. A lot of people, and I used to do this too, have a distinct separation between the real world, third dimension, daily life, and their spiritual life.

What I have learned and cultivated is that there is absolutely no difference between those things. You don't put on your spiritual hat and go and do a spiritual thing and sit in a sound bath or a breathwork circle, and then take that hat off and go to work or go to your home and be with your family. I know that in our minds we make that separation, but every single moment of our lives is our spiritual life. When we can integrate those two things and embrace all of the facets of who we are, we walk through the world more whole, more integral.

Ross Tayler: It's true, and I can relate to that. Years ago I worked for Starbucks. At that time I had gone through coaching school and they allowed me to bring in some of these things, and I was surprised. It was really interesting to be able to, in that corporate environment, wear both hats and have them be received. I don't know that everybody has that luxury. I think of some of my friends that work in the health authority, and they really do have to keep that separate in some way, or maybe that's just their perception. But maybe it's true as well.

Tara Stonemother: It's interesting, because I was in corrections and law enforcement for many years, and I used intuition. I used the ability to read someone and pick up on energy before there were physical manifestations of what state of mind they were in. I know that a lot of people in law enforcement and in corrections, and surgeons and doctors, are using intuition and those little niggling messages that pop in all the time, whether they're consciously aware of that or not.

Ross Tayler: I can relate to that as well, because I was an auxiliary for the RCMP, and I would have those moments too. A lot of the people I worked with and supported had them too. They just didn't have language for it. I think that's interesting. Perhaps we don't know what this is that we possess because of that adage, a fish doesn't know water until it's out of water. Unless you know how to name it, how do you make sense of it? I imagine there are lots of people out there who have that experience and just think, well, doesn't everybody have that?

Tara Stonemother: Yeah. Some of us will exercise it a little bit more. I think you really hit one of the nails there, which is there's no language for it. We're not taught to enhance it or to maximize it. A lot of times we're taught to do the exact opposite. No, you don't feel like that. No, that's not how I feel. Lots of people will subconsciously minimize that. Teachers, the school system, it's not really conducive to having a bunch of intuitive people.

Ross Tayler: And therein lies the challenge. For those of us who are sensitive, who are empathic, who have these gifts, it's really hard to be in the world and ignore the dissonance of what shows up. I know for myself there were lots of times I spoke my truth at great risk, but it needed to be said. Maybe the easiest place to relate to this is our family systems and the experiences we grow up in. Some part of us is like, this isn't right, and yet we have nothing to compare it to and we just accept it as being normal. We begin to doubt our core knowing and our feelings and our intuition. We start to suppress those things because we can't reconcile the two.

Tara Stonemother: And you said the word doubt, and I think that's one of the keys. If you remember back in the story, in the tea leaf reading I decided to just say whatever came. It wasn't going to be right or wrong, and it didn't matter, because I'd given myself the freedom of this is just for fun. But what that did at the same time was liberate me to receive the message and say it, and erase the doubt.

Ross Tayler: And would you agree that these are energies that want to be expressed, that want to move? The more that we deny it, the stronger that push is. I always think about this analogy that depression is the pushing down of these things that are trying to emerge, as much as it is our life experience. If we allow these things to come up and work with them, life starts to flow in a different way. Would you agree with that, or add anything to that?

Tara Stonemother: Yeah, that's a really good analogy. That's perfect, actually. I wouldn't even add anything to that. I agree with you for sure.

Ross Tayler: And so, being a shamanic practitioner, what would you like to tell people about what that actually means? A lot of people call themselves shamanic practitioners or say I'm a shaman, but there's a lot more to that than people might understand. Most of the time it's a rite of passage of some kind, and that can take years. What would you say about this word shaman?

Tara Stonemother: Well, at its very core, a shamanic practitioner is somebody who has earth-based beliefs, connections, interactions. That's probably the base, right? Then there are definitely skills that are specific to lineages, perhaps, but I'm not a fan of saying that if you're not in a specific lineage, you don't have connection. I don't believe that.

Part of my definition of shaman is someone who has the ability to walk between worlds, with one foot in one world and one foot in the other world, without losing orientation, and receiving the messages from those multiple dimensions. Of course, it's more than just walking in two, it's walking in multiple, being able to perceive in multiple dimensions and, like I said, not lose orientation, remain grounded, allowing the clarity to come through so that the information is useful. That is another aspect of shamanism that I hold.

Then there's a refining of skills. We can have natural abilities, and then it's up to us to refine those and find the teachers that can help us with that. The practice grows and morphs and the abilities do the same. Nobody is a shaman so that they can be a shaman. People are in shamanic work because they're in sacred service to their community, and that community begins with themselves as a conduit, and then it goes out to their family, and it goes out to their village, and then to a broader perspective, and it can go out to the world depending on what one does with it. So part of that definition is that a shaman is in sacred service to others.

Ross Tayler: It made me think about when you talked about walking between two worlds. I feel like we are shifting at the moment, shifting our vibration. What is it that you see in terms of bringing your shamanic practices to helping people who are moving from one dimension to another and trying to find their way in some way or another?

Tara Stonemother: Well, I think this is partly why my practices expanded into becoming a medicine carrier. Many, many years ago, the very first medicine ceremony I ever sat in was an ayahuasca ceremony. I didn't even like being in altered states, because I still had enough of the woundings that I had received from life that I had an ego desire to control my experiences. I didn't need to control other humans, but I definitely wanted to control my experiences. When I would smoke marijuana as a teenager, I would literally, I called it hallucinate back then. I didn't realize what was happening, that I was really going into a medicine journey. I would have all kinds of visions and the third dimension would become distorted.

During a tea leaf reading, I was describing something to this woman I was reading for, but I had no idea what it was I was describing that I was picking up from her field. She said, that's ayahuasca. I had never heard that word before and there was no context for it. It went into my ear almost like a worm and just stuck in there. I had this crazy shiver go through my body. I said, what is that? She described it, and I said, my goodness. She said, yeah, you should sit with ayahuasca. I said, that will never happen.

Ross Tayler: Yeah.

Tara Stonemother: Because of this desire to not be out of control, and it sounded like that's what would happen. But as it turns out, it was the most powerful experience of my life. It was absolutely life changing. So many things fell into place, so many puzzle pieces. I absolutely had no control in that medicine ceremony, and that was a year and a half after I'd heard the word. It was the best thing that ever happened. The medicine taught me so much. It took me to a tree where she was a vine growing up the tree. It was such a powerful thing, and it also opened up even more of the inherent abilities that I had already had.

Because it was such a life-changing thing, immediately I wanted everybody I love to have that experience. I continued to be with that medicine and to learn from that medicine, and that grew into being able to carry other medicines. I don't carry ayahuasca specifically. I work very closely with ayahuasca, but as I was training and helping in ayahuasca ceremonies, I had a vision about ceremonies with mushrooms. That's the path I went after my several years of practicum within the ceremonial containers. Now I've forgotten your question.

Ross Tayler: Well, I think you're leading into it. How are you seeing people in terms of the shifts that are going on? How are people showing up, what is it that they're needing support with, and how do your shamanic medicines meet that?

Tara Stonemother: I almost want to say it's so obvious, but it's not, right? We have a structure within us, the ego structure, and the way I see that ego structure is that it is a beautiful thing designed for survival and safety and security. Unfortunately, over many, many generations, that is the part of us that's in the driver's seat in our life. We're talking about psychicness or intuition, and certainly there's not much room for the ego in that. The ego doesn't really want that to happen. It wants us to clock everything, pay attention to all of the possible dangers, all the past dangers. In that, it shuts down a lot of our flow.

In the medicine work, somebody already has to quiet the ego enough to reach out to schedule a medicine ceremony or to attend one, and to do the work to prepare to be there. So the ego is already being guided and asked to move over into the passenger seat at that point. Within the medicine ceremony itself, the ego is relegated to the trunk. Then we open up and we allow that flow. That flow, whether we allow it or not, might insist on being there, and we get those teachings. From tea leaf reading to being a soul guide, which I was in kindergarten and onward, the work gets sped up and expanded when we have these beautiful gifts of these medicines on the earth to help us do that.

Ross Tayler: Would you say that those medicines are playing an important role in kickstarting people's awakenings and people's spiritual journeys?

Tara Stonemother: Yeah, there has been a whole new blossoming of these medicines in modern times. They've been with us since we began as a human race. They weren't as well known or as widely known, and there is a renaissance of that these days because there are a lot of displaced, lost humans. One of the things I often say is, the plants are trying to save us from ourselves. They want to show us how to live in right relationship with ourselves and with the world.

Ross Tayler: Yeah, it's so true. Having sat in many mushroom journeys, both individually, with groups, and with yourself, it's interesting, the reversal. I didn't do ayahuasca at the front. I did it recently and I sat with you and Mark for an ayahuasca ceremony, and it was powerful. What I wanted to say is about this piece around the ego and how that shows up in ceremony, and the piece around control. I'll try to say it quickly, but I remember there was a time I was sitting with you and I had a role during that ceremony and I couldn't fulfill that role. I had to face that. It wasn't hilarious during, but it was hilarious the next morning when you said, and you know, Ross tried to help everybody, but he couldn't. That's the way these medicines show up. They show us these blocks in such a metaphorical way, and we could miss it as much as we can see it. You mentioned people feeling displaced, and those are the kind of lessons that come into these ceremonies. What would you like to add to that?

Tara Stonemother: Well, first of all, I loved that night. That was so awesome. I imagine there was probably that ego moment for you of, I failed in my duties, but you absolutely did not, right? You surrendered to the medicine, and the teachings around control are such a fabulous, powerful thing. Within the medicines we have the opportunity to come back to ourselves, to ask the ego to take that back seat and to flow with being, rather than thinking, rather than doing. Just to flow with being and to become part of nature, which is what we are. Not to become part of nature, we already are, but to remember that we are.

The displacement, the lost feeling for so many people, is why they're searching for these medicines, right? Not just the actual plant medicines or the amphibian medicines, but also the medicine of community, and the medicine of sweat lodge, the medicine of sitting with somebody in wisdom. It's to remember themselves, to understand that they have a place on earth, that they have that connection with other human beings and all the other beings of earth, including the tree spirits and the stone spirits and the sky spirits and everything, right? And to come into remembrance of that. It's what we're here for. Many people are born and die without discovering that, and I want to be part of people remembering themselves.

Ross Tayler: Before we pressed record, you used words like people are looking for their spiritual home, and I feel like that's what you were just speaking to. Why do you think that is showing up now in such a big way?

Tara Stonemother: There's lots of talk about 5D transcendence, and I have a little theory that if we don't master the third dimension we're not transcending to the fifth. But at the same time, humanity has been around for a very long time and we've gone through ebbs and flows and waves of consciousness. I would suspect that there is a lack of conscious awareness, capital C, capital A, that is pretty widespread and profound within humanity for the last many generations. That has probably come to a tipping point where something needs to occur to wake us back up. I think that is why these medicines and these practices, all kinds of practices, are becoming so widespread: breathwork and consciousness and meditation and all of these kinds of things. I think that tipping point perhaps has occurred or is occurring within humanity so that we can come back into conscious awareness.

When I serve hapé, I say a prayer before I serve it to somebody. Part of that prayer says, may you remember who you are, why you are here, and where you're going, and when you fall asleep and forget, may you wake up quickly. Waking up and being awake is being in conscious awareness.

Ross Tayler: What you just shared makes me think about the feeling, and I definitely had this feeling, that something's missing, an emptiness within. Unfortunately, we live in a world that is happy to fill that emptiness with all sorts of things that are actually still empty. They don't actually fill the space. They create more emptiness or more challenges or more problems. The spiritual home is something different. I do feel like we have reached a tipping point where we're not going to settle for those things anymore. We want the real thing, whatever that is. Ultimately it's an internal shift more so than an external thing that we're going to find, and I think the medicines help us connect to that place in a direct way.

I can't remember the name of the teacher right now [?], but I was listening to him on a podcast recently, and he made the comment that he had been doing ayahuasca for years. He shared this idea: if every politician was to do ceremony, we would be living in a very different world because of what would occur afterwards. I thought it was a great metaphor for considering that this awakening is requiring help. I think that's where these shamanic practices and these medicines can become such great teachers and helpers along the way.

Tara Stonemother: Yeah, absolutely. After my first ayahuasca ceremony, like I said, I wanted everybody that I loved to experience that, and then I wanted the world to experience that. I often said for many years, and still do sometimes, that if we only had a rite of passage at a certain time in everybody's life, whether it involved plant medicines or just wise teachings, a rite of passage grounds us into ourselves. Like you said, this is an inside job. This is internal. What we are presented with in modern society is things to go after, an external thing that we are seeking. Once we get it, it doesn't fill us up, like you say. It leaves us wanting more and more and more, and it makes that empty space even bigger.

Ross Tayler: Many times on the podcast, this inside job piece comes up, and how we're focused so externally. Turning inwards is such a foreign experience. What would you add to that? How do we get there?

Tara Stonemother: Yeah. If we're talking about somebody who's just been in the matrix, fully in what I call eating, shitting, working, just your day-to-day life that is pretty unconscious, speaking to somebody who's never really touched their toe into the ocean of spirit: start to explore the things that feel like a little spark of yes. Even though there's a little bit of discomfort to hear something like woo-woo, I'm going to go to a meditation circle. It makes you feel like, that sounds weird, but it also sparks a little bit of curiosity. Start to explore those kinds of things, and sit in them long enough to get past the awkward discomfort that the ego is showing us. There's no one way to come to spirit, to come to your spirit, speaking with the spirit world. When you start down that path of exploration, things will open up. Awarenesses will open up, opportunities will open up, meeting somebody who will walk with you in a certain direction will open. There are so many things that will open up.

Meditation has never been for me. I love the idea of meditation. I attempt it all the time. I'm receiving messages all the time, so that's where I go, into places where I receive those messages, especially in the forest, especially in powerful places at the ocean or whatever. That's one of mine. That might not be for somebody else, but meditation might be, maybe starting out with yoga might be, maybe sweat lodge might be, maybe a singing circle might be, right? We just start exploring, and then our own soul will be lighting up and responding to the things that are for us.

Ross Tayler: What I love is you just brought us full circle, because we started talking about your journey and your yogurt shop moment when you met that woman and she opened these doors for you. That's really what we're all looking for, our yogurt shop moment. It shows up in different ways. I remember walking down the road of organized religion as a kid, only because the church was right next to our house and I went on my own. I very quickly was like, no, no, no, this teaching does not align, it doesn't feel right. But ever since then I was looking for something. I think we all are searching, whether we're conscious of it or not. Once we find that spark that you mentioned, then we can go down the path and start to deal with that inner world and start to reconcile and start to return to it, really. That leads me to the question of what you're currently offering. What is it that you want to share about how you're bringing people to these experiences, helping them, and where?

Tara Stonemother: My goodness. Yeah, I will answer that, but I also want to say just a sentence that maybe somebody could use as their mantra for a period of time. Follow the sparks of yes. Even when life seems dark and you might be convincing yourself that there is no spark of yes, I guarantee you that there is always a little spark somewhere to follow in your moment. If we spend our lives following those sparks of yes, the integral ones, not what the ego wants, not what the physical body wants, but the integral sparks of yes, our life will unfold so beautifully.

To answer your question, there are so many things happening as far as the medicine world goes. Of course sweat lodge is a foundational part. Here in Enderby that's open as community. I serve the bufo, which is 5-MeO-DMT, or [?] is what it's also called in the desert [?]. I do those as private ceremonies. Mushroom ceremonies are also available. I haven't been doing group ceremonies since I've been traveling a lot, but those might come in, or private groups can be formed, or it can be private ceremonies. Kambo is a beautiful medicine, they call it the vaccine of the jungle, the purifier. Those are also available here in Enderby.

Then the ayahuasca ceremonies. Mark and I serve that medicine in the Yucatan. We have had a beautiful [maloka?] built for us by the local people at an area called [Ek Balam?]. It means Star Jaguar or Black Jaguar, and that is actually an ancient Mayan archaeological area. It's a powerful place in the Yucatan of Mexico, near Valladolid. From January through March we're running retreats. People can come for a week or two or three or four or five or more for the ayahuasca ceremonies, and also Kambo ceremonies prior if they want to have that. We've created a package if they want that purification before the ayahuasca ceremonies. So yeah, that's really what's happening.

Ross Tayler: I love it. So many offerings that are needed at this time. I really honor you for putting the effort into making that happen for people and partnering with Mark and others to bring these medicines to everyone.

Tara Stonemother: Yeah. I can't see my life doing anything different.

Ross Tayler: I always like to close with the same question, and I feel like in some ways you might have answered it already with your mantra, but maybe there's something else you can add. The question is, what is one simple way someone could connect with the sacred today?

Tara Stonemother: I will refer to what I just said about following the sparks of yes, and then also simply sitting quietly and going inside yourself, just bringing your awareness inside to your heart or to any other inner aspect of your body, to check in for one moment. Where am I? Who am I? Why am I here? Where am I going? What's happening in here? Just for a second, and do it as many times as you want.

Ross Tayler: I appreciate the simplicity of that, and it's also profound. I can feel that as well. So Tara, thank you so much for making the time for this conversation. I think we both got lost at different moments in it, which is a good sign. I appreciate your wisdom, your perspective, your voice, the way you work. In terms of where people can find you, I'll make sure that all the links are in the show notes. I'm really grateful for the opportunity to have this conversation with you.

Tara Stonemother: This was incredibly wonderful, just to sit in connection with you and all of the people who are connecting with us in this moment. I will say, I don't think we got lost. I don't think we can ever be really lost in that sense. I think we were just feeling into so many different dimensions that, as our brain was going along, we just clocked it off. But yeah, thank you so much for the opportunity to be with you during this time and to have you spread that out into the world.

Ross Tayler: You're very welcome. My pleasure.

Ross Tayler: Thank you for joining us on Sacred Sundays. I hope something in today's offering spoke to your spirit, stirred something true, or simply gave you a moment to breathe. If this conversation resonated, please subscribe, rate, or share. It truly helps this work reach the people who are meant to find it. Until next time, may your day be slow and sacred.