Unplated: An interview with Marika Hamahata Sato Clymer
On energetic ecology, the body, and an expansive connection with food
This conversation is part of the Unplated series, a collection of interviews with folks whose work intersects with food, but who work outside culinary spheres. My hope is that these conversations not only spark your curiosity, but help you think about how what you eat is connected to the world well beyond your plate.
Marika Hamahata Sato Clymer (she/her) is a mother, traditional healer, and musician who lives in Occupied Duwamish Territory. She is the founder of Energetic Ecology Northwest.
I have long been a fan of Marika's work, and the questions she raises that ask us to consider where our healing lineages come from and how or whether we are respecting their histories in our work. She has been an inspiration to me in my work, and my ongoing learning (and unlearning) associated with trying to create food and healing worlds that are cooperative rather than appropriative.
Here, Marika tells me about her work with energetic and plant medicines, Energetic Ecology, and the role of food and farming in her work as a healer.
JS: First of all, can you tell me a little bit about your work? How did you come to focus on energetic medicine?
MHSC: I am a steward of energetic medicine and plant medicines. The energetic medicines I work with come primarily from ancestral homelands and the homelands of my birth and continued cohabitation (various territories of Coast Salish tribes of the PNW Coast, including but not limited to the: Duwamish, Tulalip, Snohomish, Snoqualmie, Lummi, Samish, Makah, and Yakama peoples). These medicines I work with come from elemental spirits, land spirits, animals, plants, and my ancestral lineages of Indigenous Ainu, Japanese, Ukrainian, German, and French. I have also worked with plants for physical and spiritual healing & relationship for about 7 years, primarily through farming and wildcrafting, but am now currently studying with the Evolutionary School of Herbalism.
My journey with energetic healing began nearly 10 years ago when I was first “certified” in Westernized Usui Reiki, and has continued throughout the past decade as a personal practice that has expanded out to serving my community in whatever ways are needed and appropriate. The journey began as an attempt to reclaim and carve out space for my intuitive gifts within a very Westernized, colonized space of Reiki, but has continued to demand of me a deepening of relationships with my own ancestors and the land to restore what I know to be my ancestors’ medicines. Their relationship with the land, as well as the human and non-human ancestors of this land I am on, has significantly shaped my work as a community healer.
JS: I love the idea, and phrasing, of Energetic Ecology. How does an ecological framework help deepen or expand our understanding of our bodies and ourselves?
MHSC: Cosmology is the word we use to describe a culture or community’s origin stories about how the Universe began, but we can also define oral histories of the land as cosmologies, as often these stories are about the intimate relationships between Spirit and its many forms, and the peoples (plant, animal, etc.) that are animated through it. Cosmologies are the ideological and philosophical heart of a peoples, it is how they view the world and their place within it, and is often reflective of their current embodied relationships with the land. In this way, Energetic Ecology is an energetic cosmology, or framework, through which we can understand the human body as a reflection, or expression of the greater whole.
Through the lens of Energetic Ecology, the expectations and boundaries of what is considered a Western “model of health” begin to dissolve, because this framework creates space for us to meet our bodies where we are. We do not tell a desert to be more like a coral reef; we measure the health of the desert based on what it means for a desert to be vital, “in balance”, or in harmony with itself. We can apply this understanding to our own bodies, and through careful observation discover what it means for our own body to be in harmony with itself, the expression of vitality, and so on, without seeking to impose the Western model of health upon it. I find this very common in the field of energy work, there is a lot of entrenched conditioning that reinforces the Western model of “health” in non-allopathic healing methods.
The frameworks for Energetic Ecology were adapted from traditional Japanese folk animism, and so I feel it has a lot to teach those of us who have been raised in Western culture about consent practice with our own bodies. We see the body not as a physical object or material extension of ourselves, but rather as a community of spirits - elemental, land, and otherwise. It creates a deepening of our sense of responsibility, obligation, and stewardship to the land through our body, through the dissolution of toxic individuality. If we are the land, then we are microcosms of its ecosystems. When we seek to allow for the greatest amount of agency amongst the organisms that contribute to our ecosystem, we heal through the cooperative relationship of those parts.
JS: I recently interviewed Sophie Strand, and our conversation of ecology turned to microbes and mycorrhiza. How does the microbiome, and/or fungal networks, connect to your work?
MHSC: Truthfully, I am currently holding space for my deeply challenged relationship with the mycelial kingdom - mushrooms. I spent 2 years as an agricultural mycologist in the Northwest, and was immune-compromised at the time, which resulted in me developing a serious chronic illness caused by exposure to mushroom spores. I would be so sick after coming home from work, I could barely cook dinner for my son, and would spend the rest of the evening in bed with flu-like symptoms. My distaste of mushroom farming is actually what pushed me to quit farming altogether.
But I do feel that it was that sincere level of discomfort with the process of mushroom farming, as well as physical discomfort in my own body, that pushed me to pursue healing work full-time (opposed to a side gig). So while I am grateful to mushrooms for that, our relationship is complex and holds multiple realities - some strained, some in the process of healing, some intact.
However, in the context of my healing work, I do sometimes call upon the mycelial network and share its medicines, as it is a timekeeper and memorykeeper. We primarily collaborate on ancestral recovery & reclamation in the context of bones and soil, and for deathwork.
JS: In our messages setting up the interview, you noted that you actually have an extensive background in food-related work, having spent 7 years farming, as well as focusing on sustainability and food systems with your Environmental Studies degree.
How do these experiences shape your understanding of energetics, or otherwise influence the work you do today?
MHSC: My work in sustainability and agriculture are no different from the work I do in energetics. There is a fluid continuity between the balancing of ecosystems internal and external, working with the bodies of people and that of the land, other than perhaps the tactile labor. Since I have developed as a healing practitioner alongside my career in agriculture (as I started them the same year), “the work” of tending to fields has always felt like an extension of my internal work, as a practice in personal energy cultivation, intuition, listening, tending. While I have worked on many kinds of organic farms, my personal goal with farming was always the same: help restore balance to the ecosystem so that it does not need human intervention, so that the land is naturally abundant and supportive of its inhabitants. From an Energetic Ecology perspective, (and from the perspective of many alternative healing methods), our bodies already carry the innate wisdom and brilliance needed for vitality (which looks different for every body), but perhaps can be supported in re-awakening the innate intelligence that promotes vitality over dis-ease, disembodiment, dyrsregulation.
JS: I want to move on to discuss food and energetics directly: What can we learn about our food through an ecological energetic framework, and about our relationship with food in this context? What insights does this offer that we might otherwise not find?
MHSC: This is a beautiful question, but being that an ecological energetic framework is no more than an extension of my cultural animist beliefs, I am not sure that what I have to share would be any different than what a traditional healer from any intact or indigenous lineage would tell you.
I suppose what might be helpful is explaining how and why I work with food in my healing practice. While food isn’t something you would typically associate with a “Reiki healer”, food is actually a big part of my work.
Food in energetic healing work helps integrate and ground our healing work into the body. Over the past 10 or so years that I have been doing healing work, I have sought to cultivate and tend to the four elements in my practice. This means that on energetic, emotional, and physical levels I seek to cultivate a balance between Earth, Water, Fire, and Air. The act of cooking - preparing food and herbal teas for my clients, is an embodied practice that expresses all of the elements, in a way that can be integrated and physically grounded into the body.
When I see clients and we participate in a healing ceremony, I always prepare herbal teas (for before & after), as well as a nourishing meal prepared with their health and needed healing work in mind. I find that in healing ceremony, the tangible integration into the body can be the hardest to achieve, but good quality food prepared in ritual is a medicine like no other.
You can reach Marika at hello@energeticecologynw.com www.energeticecologynw.com
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