c e r e m o n i o u s :
we are an earth-based healing arts studio using practices of
reiki and intuitive wellness counsel, nutritional herbalism, stone medicine,
and space cleansing and clearing to promote creative and energetic life enhancements
while prioritizing body health and awareness.
Just for today...
do not anger
do not be grievous
express your thanks
be diligent in your work
be kind to others.
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--the five admonitions of Mikao Usui, the founder of Usui Tibetan Reiki Treatment Method for Improvement of Body and Mind
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Reiki is sensational.
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It can feel like warmth, like cool, like tingling, like throbbing, like nothing. Reiki enlivens and balances the spirit, physical form, ether/aura, emotions and mental energies. As Reiki can cause no harm, it is gentle enough for pregnant women and strong enough to combat viral illness. A wildly good addition to the much needed adaptogenic therapies of the day, Reiki is gaining in popularity for its abilities to calm the mind, cleanse the body, manifest intention, and regulate emotions.
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Brass tacks?
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"A research study at Hartford Hospital in Hartford, Connecticut, indicates that Reiki improved patient sleep by 86%, reduced pain by 78%, reduced nausea by 80%, and reduced anxiety during pregnancy by 94%." [Hartford Hospital, Integrative Medicine, Outcomes, December 1999-December 2000]
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That is sensational.
Coupled with a Reiki treatment to maximize the energetic/therapeutic potential or conducted on its own, our Intuitive Wellness Counseling sessions may take on many forms. Have you been feeling anxious? Are you having trouble sleeping? Do you feel unmoored? Are you constipated? Has your knee been bothering you? Are you having trouble concentrating? Are you looking to create an Earth-based ceremonial practice?
No matter the intention for the counsel needed, you will receive a private one-on-one support session with Autumn which will explore your current physical, mental, emotional and energetic pathways and practices. We believe in holistic living so we may delve into topics relating to your sleep patterns, your office space, your diet and your destiny. Autumn may measure your leg lengths, have you toss coins to pull wisdom from the I Ching, or show you how to stretch your Piriformis. She may discover your water intake is low for your form or that your chronic sacral pain is an energetic block. We may unearth insight about your hair loss or realize that you are sitting at your computer incorrectly. There could be an easy adjustment to repair your adult acne. You may need to add more living plants to your living room and position an amethyst near your pillow. Your nasal congestion could be alleviated through the essential oil of Eucalyptus. We can help you slow down enough to take the time to look within and honor your body.
A formidable path of action will come into being which will promote a healthful diet, proper body mechanics and movement instructions, lifestyle rearrangements (be they additions or eliminations), and energetic awakenings. Autumn may encourage you to get a series of colonics, buy an herbal tonic for your liver, read a recommended book, take up breathwork, let go of dairy, or receive Reiki. Relying on the healing she has done over the past 18 years through nutritional herbalism, neuromuscular massage therapy, Reiki, stone medicine and the promotion of ritual, Autumn--with your help, understanding and cooperation--will co-create a path unique to you centered on where you are on your journey today.
"The room I live in has windows on all four sides. When wind rises I close them; as soon as the wind has died down I open them again... When it is too light I draw the curtain to adjust the brightness inside. When it gets too dark I roll the curtain up again to let the light in from outside. On the inside I calm my mind; on the outside I calm my eyes. Mind and eyes must both be completely at peace. If either light or darkness prevails, there are too many thoughts, too many desires. How could I ever calm myself inside and out?"
--A Taoist practitioner from Livia Kohn's The Taoist Experience
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Have you ever walked into a room and immediately felt relaxed? Have you ever walked into a room and immediately felt bristled?
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All space holds, modifies and transfers energy. Many times, that energy needs to be de-amplified, simplified or charged.
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Using models of influence from interior lifestyles such as Taoist Feng Shui and wabi sabi alongside mineral magic and energetic wellness, we work alongside artist and sculptor JR Larson to offer a practice of handmade adjustment to the spaces that embody you at home, work and play. This may entail rearrangement, elimination/donation, and sometimes addition -- mainly of plants, earthenware and vessels for storage. [All of our space clearing sessions include space cleansing as well.]
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Reiki, dried herb smoke, meditation, earth, mantras, pendulums, stones and sound. Earth-based ceremonies have long incorporated these tools into their ritual practice of cleansing and clearing of space, person, animal or object.
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A common modern misconception about space cleansing is that it is only used to counter negative events: death, fights, loss of work, heartbreak. While space cleansing in preparation or in response to those events is abundantly successful, the times before or after major positive energetic shifts should also be celebrated with ceremonial cleansing. Weddings, births, new jobs and new pets drastically adjust the energy systems not only within a space but also the persons inhabiting it. Vintage and thrift lovers often bring objects into their homes and sacred spaces that are imbued with the energies held over from previous owners. Perceptible shifts of energies can occur if these objects have not been properly cleansed or charged. Digital doers need space cleansing too from the amount of electromagnetic fields and radio frequency radiation that computers emit. Cacti and crystals work well in this arena.
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All of our space cleansing exchanges require pre-ceremony consultations to discuss intent (bring more clients to your business, welcome a new family member or release the loss of a financial support), implementation (type of tools that will be used in case of smoke allergy, need for discretion, cultural preference), and future steps where we encourage you to build your own cleansing practice with tools we teach and provide you.
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New and full moons are a fruitful time for this practice; Moon Times are not.
"Nature is never finished." --Robert Smithson, Cultural Confinement in Art Forum, 1972.
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Earthworks. Land Art. eARTh. Environmental Art. These are all names for the same movement that started in 1968 as a response to the activism of the age, specifically the environmental and women's liberation movements. Encompassing a belief that modern art was over-commercialized, the work of Land Artists became grounded in more ways than one. Gleaning from the simplicity of minimalism, Land Art examined how humans occupy their space and relate to objects of art.
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With that said, we recognize that the "space" on which Land Artists often produced their projects was indeed stolen indigenous land. Land, ownership and appropriation are concepts that we at ceremonious are perpetually learning more about in order to practice our medicine with gracious intent and without hurt. We currently live on Lenape/Canarsie land. Find out whose land you live on here: https://native-land.ca/
It is in this style that ceremonious works alongside artist and sculptor JR Larson to offer sculpture sales, commissions and/or artist recommendations for earth-based sculpture with a spiritual slant to include in the home, garden or anywhere you (or we) intuit a need for a (re)connection with the Earth. This offering works particularly well as an addition to the space clearing and cleansing practices.
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w h o w e a r e :
we are living on munsee lenape / canarsie land
autumn tarleton
A major reason for the megacrisis in human health throughout the world today is the fact that modern urban lifestyles and industrial technology have isolated and alienated humanity from the powers of nature and the cosmos, the context in which human life has evolved in harmony for millions of years. A basic tenet of the holistic organic view of humanity, nature, and the cosmos is that whatever benefits the whole also benefits all its constituent parts...
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...When humanity pollutes the air with toxic smog and fills the sky with microwaves, artificial electromagnetic fields, and other abnormal energies, and when we poison the soil and waters with toxic chemicals and foul wastes, we also distort the energies, poison the fluids, and pollute the tissues of our own internal worlds. Humanity simply cannot have it both ways: we cannot derange and denature the macrocosm of our living environment without deranging and destroying the microcosm of life within ourselves.
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--Excerpt from The Shambhala Guide to Traditional Chinese Medicine by Daniel Reid
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With great deference to the above passage, I proclaim with an open heart and the grandest of intentions to be a devoted Lady of the Canyon. I believe with a fierce and starry vehemence that we've got to get ourselves back to the Garden. Easier said than done living in New York City, but I know that there are so many attainable energies available to us if we can only find the time, the teacher, the Way.
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All things are always balancing and rebalancing themselves in a constant state of flux. Within Yin is a drop of Yang. Within the city is sanctuary. Within your racing mind is loving awareness. Flexibility is key in life because, inevitably and irrevocably, things will change. Things will undoubtedly become difficult or challenging--it's the ebb and flow of being. If we honor our body by returning to the Land, the oscillations of daily life have the potential to become transformative, tender and cathartic. What we would like to instill, within our earth-based healing arts practice, is the position as partner on this journey with you.
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I am thankful that I found that stack of vinyl at my dad's house when I was 13. I am thankful that my dad told me to meditate and to practice yoga after I was struck with panic attacks. I am thankful that my mom gave so much to put me in dance class after dance class. I am thankful that my grandaddy started my first stone collection in an old yellow Whitman's box. I am thankful for a birth chart reading in Berkeley in 1995. I am thankful to punk rock for teaching me about equality, voting with my dollars and eating foods as close to the Earth as I could get them. I am thankful for finding timely books left out on the stoops in Brooklyn that seem to be predestined for me. I am thankful that yoga led me to herbs which led me to massage which led me to Reiki which led me to you, here.
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Thank you for being here. I know I will learn something about this world from you.
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I attended the University of Florida where I received my Bachelor's in Film Studies (with a Chinese Language, Literature and Religion minor) as well as my Master's in Documentary Filmmaking. I tackled Barthes, Kristeva and Derrida, fell in love with Antonioni and Varda, and floated through The Dream of the Red Chamber. I spent three months studying Mandarin and traveling solo through China in 1997, the year that Hong Kong was handed back to the mainland (I was there for it) and discord was high. My first yoga class was in 2000 at the Integral Yoga Institute in the West Village and it was unforgettable and evolutionary for me. Awaiting that first class I bought a much needed book on Grief from their bookshelf. Yes, Grief with a capital G. Through the School of Natural Healing in Springville, Utah, I became a Nutritional Herbalist in 2001. I then studied Neuromuscular massage at the Southeastern School of Neuromuscular and Massage Therapy. Most recently, working with Kristin Reed of Healing Reiki Brooklyn, I became an Usui Tibetan Reiki Master Teacher. Through almost two decades of continuous autodidactism, I voraciously continue to learn about crystal therapy, Ayurveda, Traditional Chinese medicine, meditation and somatic theory and its ties to trauma. A forever student, I am emboldened and enlivened by learning and dedicate my life to sharing what I love through this work. I live in Brooklyn with my partner JR Larson and our daughter Willow Luna.
jr larson
The driving force behind both my personal and studio pursuits lies in investigating and isolating the fractured discourse with the primal instinct in these modern times. After a brush with death in Kenya, involving the bursting of a gangrenous organ, the impulse of survival consumed me. It was then that I realized how at odds I was and still am with the primal. Why and when had I discarded the importance of these instincts? Having survived this arduous event I am left filled with questions and a yearning to investigate the spaces between moments and the moments within spaces. In this pursuit my intention is to bring the primal instinct to the forefront of thought and space by freezing/isolating and therefore highlighting what I believe to be honest impulse. In doing so, objects, photographs, sculptures and the space we all inhabit become meditation platforms, planes and windows to witness and study the cloaked and subversive sublime. What is the foggy mist that washes over the conciseness of these events? How and why is it now important for me to manifest physically? Like a chalk outline intentionally left in the rain, we wash away the outline of humanity. Or perhaps better put, we sell, deny and forfeit our truths for more easily digestible preconceived and calculated renderings of consumable opinion. Am I therefore positioning myself now with the very intuition of nature? Time will tell as we work to sculpt the spaces in ourselves and in our environments to try and realign with the divine.
Having attended The School of the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, and Mason Gross School of the Arts at Rutgers University, JR Larson continued his studies under the tutelage of Peter Voulkos and Peter Callas, both infamous masters of clay. Well versed in the traditional Japanese firing methods as well as woodworking, sculpture, photography and cinematography, JR Larson has moved beyond his classical training to develop an earth-centric ritualized approach to making and sharing art.
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