Mars Attar and the Attar family.

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♪ - Hello, I'm John Cleese.

Have you ever met a shaman or a spirit healer?

Well, if not, you're about to, because in this very special program, an Eskimo shaman from Greenland will be meeting for the first time a Mayan spirit healer right here in our Global Spirit studio.

It's a meeting of two wisdom traditions who have more in common than you might think, starting with what we all have in common: mother Earth.

So it's time to settle back and take a slow, deep breath as we join our trusted guide and host, Phil Cousineau, on this uniquely indigenous episode of Global Spirit, the first "internal travel" series.

[percussive music] - Over the years, I've come to realize that compared with those of us who grew up in the western industrialized world, indigenous peoples have a profoundly different relationship to nature, to the Earth, and to the realm of the spirit.

For Native peoples everywhere, life is a gift that must be respected and honored.

♪ [Man vocalizing] Angaangaq is a shaman, healer, storyteller, and carrier of the Qilaut, or wind drum.

Angaangaq is an Eskimo-Kalaallit from Greenland, born into a family of traditional healers in the far north.

He received his shamanic training from his grandmother, who prepared him to venture out and to alert the world about the melting of what his people call "the big ice" of Greenland, which holds enough freshwater to raise the world's oceans by 23 feet.

One of the most respected and well-traveled of Eskimo elders, Angaangaq is a shaman, a healer, and a carrier of the ancient wisdom and knowledge that has sustained his people for thousands of years.

- [chanting] - [humming] - Flordemayo is a curandera espiritu, a Mayan spirit healer, who was recognized at an early age to have the gift of sight, a gift which allows her to see into the world of spirits, animals, and plants.

- [humming] - Flordemayo uses her spirit world connections in her healing work, and as a member of the International Council of 13 Indigenous Grandmothers, Flordemayo travels the world to raise awareness of the sacred nature of all life and to call attention to the unfolding devastation of the planet.

And now we invite you to witness Flordemayo, the Mayan spirit healer, meeting for the first time Angaangaq, the Eskimo shaman.

Welcome to Global Spirit: the Shaman, the Spirit Healer and the Earth.

I'm wondering if we could honor both of your wonderful traditions by beginning with a blessing or a chant of some kind.

Flordemayo, could you, please?

- I first would like to honor Uncle and thank our beloved Creator.

Mother God, creator of the Heavens and the Earth, thank you for the beauty of the moment.

Thank you for the beauty of the light of peace that you're bringing upon this place.

Thank you, spirit grandmothers of the four directions, spirit of our ancestors, infinite mystery of the cosmos.

Thank you for bringing us together.

And this is for you, Grandfather.

Thank you.

And thank you so much to you.

- Thank you, Flordemayo.

- Thank you.

- What an incredible privilege to hold something from a Grandmother.

I come from the top of the world.

Any medicine you give me-- the medicine of the Earth does not grow in my land.

But what grows in my land is the heart.

So it would be a great honor if you allowed me to chant you in melting the ice in the heart of man... - Thank you.

- And welcome you to my presence and to my world.

- Thank you.

[slow drumbeat] - [chanting] [vocalizing] [melodic vocalizing] [drum beat] - This is medicine from the stars.

Other than being a human, physical human, I'm also a child from the stars.

[instruments chiming] [instruments clink] Thank you.

Phil: Thank you both.

That was quite beautiful and haunting, if I may say so.

Uncle, I've been very struck by one of the lines--images-- that you use in your work, that, "we must learn how to melt the ice in our own hearts."

- Yes.

- What do you mean by that?

Why is it so necessary for us to do this strong spiritual work, to melt the ice in our hearts?

- One day, I'd like you to meet my mother.

You will just love her.

She's really a special person.

She told us that it's very easy to melt the ice in the ground.

All you need to do is to touch the surface of the ice at 40 below fahrenheit.

Within a minute, you will see the imprint of your hand.

With that chemistry, you know-- it's simple science reaction of the heat of the palm and the cold of the ice.

And then she said, "the hardest ice to be melted is the one in the heart of man."

She told us--she said, "only by melting the ice in the heart of man, "man will have a chance to change and begin using his knowledge wisely."

- Wonderful.

Flordemayo, you don't have much ice in Nicaragua, but is the metaphor still true?

- Absolutely.

The Mayan nation comes from the Yucatan all the way down into Nicaragua.

So I have Mayan blood.

- Mm-hmm.

- And it is told in our prophecy that the spirit of the feminine is coming in with her gentleness.

- Mm-hmm.

- She's coming in with her--embracing humanity.

Indirectly, to me, she is one who is melting that place where we lack freedom.

When we are not from the heart, we're not free.

- No, we're not.

It's so interesting.

You know, we have an old, old song back home.

Nobody knows who wrote it.

Nobody knows where it comes from, but everybody recognizes it.

It says that one day, I, as a man, will take the hand of the woman and bring her to the side of me to become equal so I, as a man, can arrive at my rightful destiny, whatever that destiny is.

When that time comes, that's when that feminine world-- I don't know if I told you, but I come from a matriarchal society, where grandmothers decide, and then they give the instructions to the man, and the man councils to how to carry that decision of the woman, of the grandmothers.

So I grew up under that auspice of that powerful woman, all grandmothers deciding what will be, and then the men counseling about it, how to carry the decision through to real life.

- While reading about your respective stories, I discovered something fascinating that you share in common, despite the great distance between your cultures, you coming from Nicaragua, you coming from Greenland.

And that is, you were both originally recognized as having a gift of the soul, a gift of healing, from a council of women, which I find quite remarkable.

Could you please begin there and tell us about the origin of your name and how you were first recognized as a curandera espiritu?

- Flordemayo is a plant that's used for women's medicine.

My mother was a midwife, and she used the Flordemayo for lactation after the mother had her baby, and also, it is used to shrink the womb.

This is the medicinal properties of the plant.

My mother said that when I was born that I had shown physical signs that I was going to continue with the medicine, our inherited medicine, women's medicine.

And so she knew from the time that I was little that I would come, you know, with el don, the gift, the gift, that I would have the gift and that I would have it throughout my life.

- How about yourself, uncle Angaangaq?

Do you recall the story behind your name and when you were first recognized as having something special?

- Hmm.

I was born in 1947.

That makes me a pretty old man now.

The-- when I was born-- I was born the day after an enormous blizzard, where my mother and father was traveling by sled-- the dog team-- the length of the big island of Qeqertarsuaq, the biggest island off the coast of Greenland.

But at that time, also, my grandmother sent a telegram to my father and all his brothers that, "if you want to see your father alive, you better come home now."

By then, the ice is already built, and nothing could travel.

So it took him seven months to travel back to his village.

So I was seven months when I met my grandmother, and immediately, she declared that Angaangaq got it, whatever it is that Angaangaq has, and this time of year-- this is the time where the new messenger, messenger of the new year, comes and lands in our land, and the one who sees it first and announce it to grandmother at the feast on march 21st, the new year's celebration, we receive a gift.

I was the one who saw it.

That was 55 years ago, this time of year.

And I grew up knowing that I got something, whatever it is that I got, that nobody talked about it, what it is that he has, myself-- when somebody walks-- we walk into the house to the presence of my grandmother, she will always say, "oh, Angaangaq got it."

And I will look around.

If I have some sand or snow around my feet, I will wipe them off so I can look like everyone else.

So I grew up under that.

- Thank you for that marvelous story, Uncle.

Now we're going to move into some special film footage that was taken of you in Greenland last year, the sacred Fire Ceremony.

Could you kindly narrate it for us?

- Oh, I would love to.

♪ This is the story of the Big Ice.

There was cold spell, and out of that was born the Big Ice.

And she grew and grew and grew, so we moved with the Big Ice.

And when she started retreating, we went back to where we started.

And when we came home, there was no trees standing.

Now the Big Ice has retreated, and the climate has become warmer.

Now the trees are standing again for the first time in 20,000 years because of the climate change.

[peaceful spiritual music] ♪ Here are the grandmothers who cut trees for the first time in 20,000 years.

Grandmothers are responsible for the firewood.

So here they are coming back from the mountains.

The Big Ice there, that used to be about ten kilometers wide and one mile tall.

Imagine that one mile tall in 1960.

But now it's just 900 feet tall.

I'm walking to the big wall of the ice, like my ancestors have done for countless generations.

To be in front of this Big Ice and touch upon that ice in recognition of the creator... I am a speck on the face of the Earth in the front of the Big Ice.

This is the path of the river which goes through the Big Ice.

I'm carrying a remnant of the Big Ice.

This is the heart, which is crystal clear ice, millions of years old.

I'm making fire around it to signify the melting of the Big Ice.

- [chanting] ♪ - I come from a shamanic family.

I ask for permission to burn my regalia, because my Uncle says, "something has to die before something else can live."

I have to burn my shaman clothes so I can come to the next level of being a great shaman.

I want to thank all those who have come from around the world to partake in the ceremony of the coming home of the sacred fire.

[heavy drumbeat] [chanting] I invited elders from all over the world, people who understand what it means for the Earth, the melting of the Big Ice.

And the people who showed up are shamans from Siberia, from Nepal, from Japan, from New Zealand, from Amazonia, from Africa, from Europe.

So the Europeans and North Americans came, so they saw firsthand themselves the impact they're doing on the melting of the Big Ice.

[chanting] [all singing in foreign language] Jane Goodall, she had made the promise that she will come, and she came, and she flew literally from Tanzania to Greenland, nonstop.

[all singing in foreign language] [heavy drumbeat] for the first time in 20,000 years, a fire was born out of mother Earth on the land which is called "the top of the world," Greenland.

After 40 years of work, I brought home the sacred fire, fulfilled the prophecy, so I can make the Fire and Ice ceremony.

Because the way we live in Los Angeles, in Rio de Janeiro, in Tokyo, in London, for every tree we cut in Amazonia, I want you to know that we are the first ones to feel the changes of Earth in Greenland.

[water rushing] I come from the greatest land on Earth.

Did you know that?

The land of the Eskimo is the biggest land on Earth.

It's about 16 million square kilometers.

That's 10 million square miles, 13 times going from the east to the west.

A big 747 plane will fly nine hours from the top to the bottom of the land of the Eskimos.

- One of the most challenging things I've heard you say is that the greatest distance that someone can travel is the distance between their mind and their heart.

How far is that?

- My father, bless his soul, he sent all of us to see the world.

He had Tuberculosis.

He could not travel.

So the moment we were able to, he sent us to the world.

He said, "come home and tell me what you have seen."

So we traveled, all of us.

So we decided to give him a map, an atlas of the world, a map of the world.

And there we decided to write-- to make lines in eight different colors for where we had been, because that's what he asked us to do.

So we did that.

Somebody said, "father, what do you think?"

And this is the profound moment where you know exactly what happened.

He looked to all of us.

We had all become silent, including the kids.

And he says, "you know, son, so you think it's the greatest distance from here"-- and he pointed to the sky... And he said, "no, this is not the greatest distance."

He says, "the greatest distance in existence of man "is not from here to there "nor from there to here.

"Nay, the greatest distance is from his mind to his heart.

"unless he conquers the distance, "he can never learn to soar like an eagle and realize his own immensity within."

That very moment is an awakening of everyone in that house, that little house, and I've been carrying that ever since.

- Flordemayo, we'd like to talk about healing now.

I've read something quite beautiful, quite poetic that you've said in the past about how you prepare for a healing ceremony.

You said, "whenever I need to go "into a spiritual place for seeing, "I say a prayer.

"with the prayer comes the permission "to see into things.

I never look without permission."

How is this related to the healing process, which you've also described as a sacred dance?

- We are sacred beings.

And with that in mind, for myself, I don't feel that, as a seer, that I could look into someone's sacred space, because that is so-- so sacred to them.

And so I asked, and I say, you know, "if you're here, may I look in your sacred space?"

[speaking Spanish] Permiso.

Permiso.

Con permiso, sí.

When somebody comes in for a consultation, right after I ask permission to look into their sacred space, all it takes is just a couple of split seconds for me to close my eyes.

What I see is images of light.

Then I can look with the Light Eye at the person.

The physical body just kind of disappears, and there's light.

And all I am is just looking at it.

I'm able to see this color, and it translates in my mind into what it is that's going on with the person.

Pero ¿usted también tiene la espalda delicada?

Nomás aquí como un riñón, no sé qué... - and so I'm able to do a diagnosis of what I'm seeing, be it physical, mental, spiritual.

The curandera espiritu is a person that sees, that works directly with spirits.

La lavanda se pone una gotita en la mano.

Y solo son unas gotitas.

I will give the person some lavender oil, and I find that the lavender really kind of breaks down the thick energy, and it makes it a little better to do the healing.

And then the second application, which is using the grandmother plant, it touches the body on a cellular level, and it helps the body to remember, so at that moment, the person themselves start feeling a movement, start seeing, or maybe even receiving, hearing, something changing in them.

Usted también, Luz, ha estado trabajando, ¿verdad?

Luz: Sí.

Imagínese.

Wow.

Eh... ¿Ha tenido usted, experiencias, Luz, con... digamos, con ángeles y, digamos, seres así última...?

Luz: Sí.

Sí.

¿Verdad?

- [speaking spanish] Eso es cuando me puso la... - [speaking spanish] me puse la lavanda Flordemayo: Ajá.

Comencé a ver... Quise ver a alguien.

Como que estaba viendo a alguien pero Quería como saber como... como... qué... quién era o algo así.

Pero como que se oscureció nomás.

No pude saber qué.

Y enseguida de eso, pues, también... también comencé a sentir como cuando me puse la... esta, ¿la última?

El aceitito.

Sí.

Ah... Como mu... Como muchos triángulos.

Uno tras de otro y otro tras de otro.

Y como que la gente juntó los triángulos.

Sí, lo... La experiencia que he sentido es como que he querido seguir viendo más a mi gente.

Quiero ayudarla más.

Pero siempre me siento así como detenida.

Los triángulos es una bendición.

Porque es el principio de la enseñanza de la geometría sagrada.

Entonces, también, es el símbolo de la diosa.

Y es el principio de la forma que se forma de luz cuando está pasando... algo se está... el proceso de la curación.

Sí, y esos triángulos se forman y cambian.

Y es así la transformación de cuando el cuerpo está enfermo y cuando el cuerpo se está curando.

What is I see in this dance of light, okay-- what I see is the relationship between the person that is wanting the healing and the cosmos.

And so I always say that it is between you and your beloved, whatever it is that the person loves, whatever it is that's in her heart that she feels that is God.

So it's a beautiful, beautiful dance of energy, and it's just this beautiful light that enters the body, and it leaves the body.

It's just this beautifulness about it.

Yeah.

- Mm-hmm.

So you have a vision.

You have access to the spirit realm, orbs of light, as you describe it.

How is it that you move to the next step and actually ask for or be open to guidance from these spirits, and do women have different access to the spirit world than men do?

- You know, that's only something that is in the human mind, that you make this difference between male and female.

We're not--we're beings, okay?

This is who we are.

We're beings, and that's kind of, like, a mind thing to make that difference.

But in the spirit world, it seems to me, and it's only experience in my heart, you know, that I feel that we're androgynous beings.

We have a combination of both, and we exist as both.

♪ I've been through the nontraditional, the traditional, and so it's just a personal dialogue between myself and my beloved.

And so that is what I practice.

It's a universal prayer.

It's a universal love.

It's a universal intent of healing.

I feel this just enormous love in my heart to God.

Ever since I was a kid, I had this longing and this desire to know God, and I've been able to experience it in so many different ways.

[unintelligible Spanish] It is so beautiful and so divine.

As humans, we see it as a good experience or a negative experience.

I always try to meet things in the middle and say, "it's perfect," because if it's something positive, I'm learning from it.

If it's something not so positive, I'm learning from it.

So I stay in the middle, and for me, everything is really perfect, because I am just so in love with the great mystery.

♪ - You know, I have a very similar-- I learned, since I was small, that I would say a prayer, so I say a prayer, and I asked many, many times, "what kind of prayer should I say?"

And my grandmother and my mother, after my grandmother passed away, would say, "why don't you ask the man who made us, the Creator?"

The answer will come.

And the answer will not come as a big sound: "it's okay.

You can do it now."

It doesn't come like that.

So I asked that prayer, in that prayer, to be used as a tool, and then I accept the responsibility of working with that individual person who will come.

I run into people who are absolutely void of trust to themselves.

And of course, when you don't have trust, then you can never trust others.

So I have to work with them to make them to understand that if you trust yourself, then you can really trust me as well.

And when I work with that, asking the great one to use me as his tool, to work with that person and see what's in there, in that person, see in that spirit, see all the ills, or we call them defilement, they carry, it's really fascinating work.

I just--i'm so blessed with my work.

I tell the world where I go that I love my work.

I just love my work.

It gives me an incredible chance to be who I am with the Creator.

- Uncle, I've been really struck with the way you describe how one profound and traditional way to close this gap in us between mind and heart is through ceremony, not just ritual but through ceremony, the return of ceremony, and one of your prime ceremonies is that of the sacred fire.

- Where I come from, the sun disappears.

The sun fails to come up in the winter, and everything is white because of the cold and the ice and snow.

But still people will find single strand of grass flying on the Earth, collect them one by one, make a ball of it, and make a fire.

The reason why we make fires at the crack of dawn, they say that when the sun goes down, we can no longer behold each other's beauty.

Thus, we make the fire.

[heavy drumbeat] Then the physical fire will begin to die, and soon after, we can behold each other's beauty from the light of the sun.

I think it is so incredibly beautiful that the creator, the great one, the man who made us, has taught us to be able to behold each other's beauty at all times.

And they say that we are worth beholding in our beauty.

I am worth this incredible creation to be part of.

[heavy drumbeat] This is the heartbeat.

Only the man who made us holds the handle.

And every time he touches upon the rim, he hears the heartbeat of mankind.

And the stronger the heartbeat, the healthier mankind is.

So my prayer is that you and I, we will have a good, strong heartbeat so we can be healthy.

And since this is your heartbeat, every time you talk to your heart, she will always speak back.

So now it's a matter for you and I to learn to listen to our heart.

[heavy drumbeat] - Tremendous, tremendous stuff.

You know, throughout human history, elders have told us that it's important to reach this wisdom.

It's important to reach the spirit world.

But it takes a tremendous amount of energy to do this.

Now, I know, Flordemayo, you've spent a lot of time with plants, and you believe there's an energy in the plants.

Can you describe your relationship, your use of plants with the spirit world?

Yes.

- I'm going to share with you-- I have here a beautiful plant.

And she is so beautiful that she has her-- her own little-- little blanket.

And it's the blanket of the Virgin of the Guadalupe.

She's the matron of Mexico, but, of course, you know, throughout the Americas, we love her.

This is corn.

- Mm-hmm.

- Where I come from, the Mayan people, their first name was mai, which meant "corn."

We are children of the corn.

There is something about the corn and the prophecy right now.

As the children of the corn and as the children of the honey, okay, we are going through a transition from being rigid beings into fluid beings.

Okay, we're talking about humanity changing their ways.

This is blue corn, Hopi corn, because I live in New Mexico.

This ear of corn has enough seeds to feed a community-- one ear of corn.

The beautiful thing about the corn is that she's-- she's both.

She's male and female.

She has the seeds, and she has the pollen.

So when we take the time to acknowledge the spirit of the plant, when we share with our friends and humanity that the seeds are alive and they are like little children and we need to take care of them-- and this is one of the things that the world is neglecting to do.

And we, as women, we have a responsibility to feed the generations to come.

We are the seed carriers.

We carry seeds for many generations, both male and female.

But in Central America, it is the women that save the seeds.

We are the seed savers.

And so it's our responsibility, and we take a lot of time to make sure that the seeds are saved.

- Uncle, as powerful as plants are to Flordemayo, animals and animal energy seems to be a profound source of wisdom and access to the spirit world for you.

Can you describe to us your relationship with animals, your communication with them?

- You know, I'm a hunter.

Nothing grows in my land like in yours.

So every food I have to consume had to be crawling, swimming, walking, or flying.

That's all I have.

This is the first time I have ever shown one of my medicines as an Angaangaq.

Angaangaq is what you, in english, know as a shaman.

This is the caribou, tuttu.

It represents plenty, because caribou will lose the antlers every season, and they will grow back, so thus, it represents plenty for us, like the mai is plenty for you.

So the animal-- as a hunter, I have never in my life hunted to kill.

I am now 63 years years old.

I can say that with clear conscience in my heart that I have never in my life hunted to kill.

I've only hunted to eat.

Very big difference.

So when you speak to the animal-- it's really fascinating to speak to the animals.

And then the animals themselves will talk amongst each other, and then they will walk away, all of them, except for one.

That's the beauty of being a hunter.

[chanting] The old ones tells us that my relationship to the seal is the most important one, which is my main food.

[chanting] So you call them so they can come and meet you, and you can get to know each other.

Then they are at ease with me, and when I call, it is now time for ceremony.

One of them will be ready.

One will be ready, and that's the one I will take.

And the seal, of course, realizing the greatest honor in his life is to be caught.

So that's the relationship of mother nature and man.

[chanting] The same thing goes for the whales, for the orcas, for the musk ox, for the ptarmigans, for the wolves.

It goes for everything.

The animals' responsibility is to sustain you and me, in my part of the world, 'cause that's the only thing we can eat.

So when you talk to them, they themselves will decide which one, not me, and that's the difference.

So that's the beauty of the mai and the beauty of the animal.

When you look at them, it's just like one and the same.

- Wonderful.

Throughout human history, peoples have turned to elders and visionaries to help deeper appreciate or understand the current state of the world.

How do you see where we are now, and what is it that indigenous peoples like yourselves can teach us?

Flordemayo?

- We sometimes don't understand the cycles.

Everything has a cycle.

We humans have our cycle.

The plants have a cycle.

The Sun has a cycle, the Moon, the stars.

The Earth has its cycle.

We're told that the Earth is going through a gestation period right now.

And when we go through gestation, we're going to rebirth.

We're going to bring something forth that is new.

Prophecy is not something that is way out there somewhere in the future.

Prophecy is happening right now.

With your sacred fire, this is part of the prophecy.

This is part of that cycle.

Prophecy also tells us that it is the spirit of the feminine that will bring us forth into the new light, into the new millennia, into the new count of going into the year zero of the calendar.

And so all of it is happening right now.

So everything is in constant motion.

So for us, in Central America, we've been aware of this.

We understand the cycle.

- Uncle, is this a similar understanding to your description of human beings going through the seasons of life?

- Absolutely.

The way we know the calendar is coming to an end: the old ones will tell you.

And when you ask them, "what do you mean, the way we know the calendar is coming to an end?"

And the answer will come by: "as you know, we have spring, summer, fall, and winter now, and they will be no more."

And when you listen to the teachings of my people, they say, "something has to die before something else can live."

I said, "wow."

I said, "something else has to die before something else"-- "something has to die before something else can live."

So the old world, the way you and i, we have known it, is coming to an end.

It does not matter anymore what causes it and why it happened and so on.

My father would say, "it does not matter anymore.

The snow has melted anyway."

So that means that all the reasons don't matter.

It's happening now anyway, so... So the way we know the calendar is coming to an end, in its place, when you ask them what will be, they will say, "nobody knows that."

But something else will be born out of that.

And lo and behold, today we don't have spring, summer, fall, and winter.

It just fails to materialize itself.

This particular winter in my country of Greenland, we did not have snow for more than three months in the entire country.

- Wow.

- These rivers never stopped running.

- Mm-hmm.

- So I said, "wow, isn't that interesting that-- the way we know the calendar is coming to an end?"

What, in its place, will be?

Nobody knows yet, but what will happen definitely, the way we know things will die.

- Absolutely, because humanity spends a lot of time in the mind, and the mind is very analytical.

And the reality is that none of that exists in the heart.

If we live within the realm of the heart, we could learn to love ourselves better, not to love ourselves because we have a doctoral degree.

We could be patient with ourselves and honor ourselves as who we are and the gifts that we're born with, because we have multiple gifts as humans.

It just doesn't stop with-- with the intellect.

Love is very powerful.

And if we bring--and this is part of the prophecy.

If we start bringing this love into our everyday life and practice it, we could coexist as better humans, because it starts here.

It starts with us.

It starts us loving ourselves first.

Then we could love our mate.

We could love our children unconditionally.

Only unconditional exists here.

We could honor everything that is around us: the heavens and the Earth and in the four directions.

We spend a lot of time intellectualizing our own reality on a daily basis, when all you need is right here.

You could be the intellectual.

You could do all of that, but go back to the heart.

You know, this is what it's called, being out of balance, okay?

This is why we're having so many things that are happening to us, because we're not taking the time to bring things into balance.

- Can I just-- I brought with me-- this is one of my medicines.

[sniffs] it's called--in English, you call it sweetgrass.

This is--in my language, we describe it as the only grass who speaks the language of the creator, because she shines the light of the sun.

That's how you know that she's sweetgrass.

She says when you find your balance and you braid them just like the beautiful, beautiful braid grandmother carries here-- look at them-- when you braid body, mind, and spirit together, then your mind will become flexible, and it's willing and capable of accepting about other things, how others believe.

The same thing goes for the spirit.

The spirit becomes flexible and willing to accept what comes around.

When all that happens, the body itself will become agile.

That means you can do-- move around and exercise and be agile.

But the most exciting part of it is, or as my grandmother told us, that you and I will become unbreakable.

And when you... [grunts] [coughing] When you do that, you become unbreakable.

- That's right.

- And that's the intention of becoming whole.

- You know, the Earth is speaking to us, but we're not listening.

The air is speaking to us, but we're not listening, because we made the conscious choice of closing our hearts.

Whenever this happened, I don't know, but right now, we don't have the time to lose.

We have to get-- we have to get on it, and we have to be aggressive.

We have to become warriors of our own survival here, and we just don't have the time.

- So what should our relationship with the natural world be?

What is the proper connection for human beings with nature?

- The proper connection is that we have to be good listeners and remember what our ancestors said to us, okay?

We need to go back to the old ways, and as we go back and retrieve the knowledge of the old ways, we bring it forth, and then we bring ourselves into balance.

It's our responsibility as humans, when we do destruction, that we also help in this destruction, whether it was direct or indirect.

Now that it's there, we got to correct it.

We got to make it right.

It's our responsibility to make it right and get back into that balance and live in balance with nature.

[humming] We're taught in Central America that when you enter a place where the trees are that you must meet the guardian of the entrance... This is food for the grandfather tree.

That we may walk here in good way and for the permission of the spirit of the land.

- In my tradition, we will go and touch, because when you stand before that creation and you touch it, you're touching the history of the world.

♪ The way my people describe it is that this one was born to show the gratitude to the creator and grow as tall as she can so at the top, she will blossom, and her beauty, or thank-you, would be the blossom itself.

- Here the spirit of the trees is very alive.

Everything that's alive is the same to me.

It'll take a different form, but to me, everything that's alive has its energy.

In the language, we divide it and say, "oh, it's the spirit of this.

It's the spirit of that."

But actually, what it is is vibration.

♪ When you walk like that, you understand that there is no other way to live other than to be in harmony with all that is here.

- It's difficult to comprehend that this beautiful tree started from a single seed.

- Mm-hmm.

- And the roots are very big.

That means yours and my roots are very big.

I can feel my ancestors here.

- Absolutely.

- And I can feel your ancestors.

It's a good meeting.

- It's a good meeting.

- Oh, it's a good meeting.

- Thank you.

[both humming] [melodic humming continues] - Well, all those threads of body, mind, and spirit somehow woven together and the sight of ice over fire: perhaps that will remind all of us in Rio, London, Los Angeles, and Tokyo of the heartbeat of mankind from the polar north, remind us before all the glaciers melt away, that is.

In any case, I do hope you're enjoying this series as much as I am, and trust you will join us again soon for another episode of Global Spirit, the first "internal travel" series.

♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ Mars Attar and the Attar family.

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