“Native scholar Greg Cajete has written that in indigenous ways of knowing, we understand a thing only when we understand it with all four aspects of our being: mind, body, emotion, and spirit.”

Robin Wall Kimmerer, from Braiding Sweetgrass

Balance is essential to being our whole selves. Without it, one aspect weighs heavily, and we find ourselves lacking an essential component of who we are.

“I came to understand quite sharply when I began my training as a scientist that science privileges only one, possibly two, of those ways of knowing: mind and body. As a young person wanting to know everything about plants, I did not question this. But it is a whole human being who finds the beautiful path.”

Robin Wall Kimmerer, from Braiding Sweetgrass

Robin Wall Kimmerer’s great teaching reminds us of the sacredness of balance with all of our relations: not only our ancestors who are human, but also the sun, the ocean, the breeze, the vegetation, those who arrived long before us, those who teach us if we listen.

The north, south, east, and west are important in bringing balance to all aspects of ourselves, if we listen.

The truth is everywhere present.