Earth – A Time to Tend the land our body

Tai Guey Relatives,

🙏 Community Gratitude

Deepest gratitude to all who volunteered to land tend, purify, and serve this July! Your presence and prayers strengthen the roots of our Calm-Unity. Seneko Kakona to each of you! Many Blessings and may abundance of health and wellness be returned unto you for your great service! 

We’re excited to share that our new tipi now stands atop the sacred dance area, a tradition that will happen after each Guateke. The tipi was lovingly raised by Jesse, our family Salvador and Chantel. This beautiful addition brings renewed spirit to the Land, offering shelter and sanctity for future ceremonies and gatherings.

🌿 Not yet a member? We warmly invite you to join our growing circle. For just $10 a month or $99 a year, your support helps us care for this sacred land—a place we’re honored to share with you and your loved ones.

Become a member today and ask us how you can spend time here, walk the trails, tend the fires, and feel the spirit of the land for yourself.

Seneko Kakona (Abundant Blessings) 🌱

We greet this late summer season with prayers for your heart, your healing, and your belonging. As the energy of Earth & Yokahu ripens, we are reminded that this is a time to digest not only food, but experience — to integrate the lessons, relationships, and energies that have arrived in our lives. In the old ways, this is when we stir the pot of our lives and take a good look at what’s truly feeding us.

The sickness of our times is doubt — in self and in others.
But the medicine is trust. Trust built not on illusion, but through daily practice. Through truth-speaking. Through tending to our word like it is a sacred fire.

If there was ever a time to build meaningful connections — not surface-level ties, but deep kinships with people and the more-than-human world — it is now. Let the trees, the stones, the winged ones, and the four-leggeds hear your prayers. Let your relations witness you in your becoming.

We ask you now:

• What heavy stone are you still carrying in your heart?
• What story is no longer yours to repeat?
• Which shadows or projections are asking to be healed in the community?

This is a sacred season to tend your inner garden.
What seeds have taken root that you didn’t mean to plant?
What fruits are ripening and ready to be harvested?

In the way of our people, everything is relationship.

From the firewood we gather, to the water we pray with, to the stories we share — we are part of a great ecosystem. Even your shirt, your meal, your medicine is the result of many unseen hands. You are not alone. You were never meant to walk this world disconnected.

1. Make it a point to make unreasonable requests.

2. Honor yourself by doing only what your heart says yes to.

What might you ask for if you knew your voice would be honored?
What might shift in your family, your community, your operations & board meetings, your ceremony?

This is the work of Earth Yokahu Season:

• 🌱 To return to ourselves
• 🌿 To root deeper in our word
• 🌉 To build bridges — between you and you, between you and others, between you and the Land

🌾 This is the month to try.
To forgive yourself.
To build one trustworthy relationship.
To speak one truth.
To sit beneath a tree and remember who you are.

✨ Will you walk this way with us? ✨

📅 Upcoming August Gatherings

🔥 August 2nd – 3rd: Nature Quest Volunteer Weekend I

Saturday | 9:00 AM – Sunday | 5:00 PM
Join us in preparing the Land for Nature Quest, a time of sacred labor, prayerful presence, and Calm-Unity.

🫶 August 9: Roots & Radiance: A One-Day Children’s Nature Retreat

Ages 7–12 | Saturday | 9:00 AM–7:30 PM
A nature-based retreat to reconnect children with Atabeyra (Mother Earth), their bodies, and their inner light. Includes nature walks, mindfulness, yoga, storytelling, art, nourishing meals, and songs by the fire. Deadline to register by 8/2/2025.
📧 Register Here
Parents are welcome to stay or return for closing campfire & s’mores!

🔥 August 9th – 10th: Nature Quest Volunteer Weekend II

Saturday | 9:00 AM – Sunday | 5:00 PM
Happening alongside the children’s retreat, this second weekend of Nature Quest continues our collective effort to prepare for the fast.

🔥August 14th – 17th: Nature Quest Fast Ceremony

Our annual four-day prayer and fasting ceremony. A time of deep listening, vision, and reconnection with self, spirit, and land. 2 spots are still available email: events@tainowoods.com 

🍂 Looking Ahead – September Gathering

September 20th: Fall Equinox Prayer & Purification Lodge

Saturday | 9:00 AM – 8:00 PM
Guided by Taíno elder Behike Miguel Sague, we gather for a day of sacred movement, prayer, and ceremony to honor Yoka Hu’s descent and the seasonal shift toward introspection. The day includes traditional dances, purification lodge, and shared offerings of food and prayer.

Ceremony Highlights:

• 🌾 Sacred dances (Cibucan Dance, Boa Constrictor Dance, Anointing of Men)
• 🔥 Purification Lodge
• 🥘 Community Potluck

🎟️ Pre-registration and donation required to attend.
👕 Please wear ceremonial naguas and bring either sacred foods offerings if you feel called.
📩 Visit tainowoods.com for full details and to register.

🌀 Would you share this letter with someone you love?

Forward it to one friend, one neighbor, one family member encourage them to become a member. That one action may be the spark someone needs. It’s how we grow — not through algorithms, but through kinship and care. Community is good for our mental wellness. So Thank you for walking with us🙏🏽.

If you’re new here and received this from a friend, welcome to the Tribe!!!🙌🏾
You can join our newsletter list here scroll all the way down. You will receive a text once a month. 

Until we meet again, walk gently.
Keep your word like a sacred bundle.
And know we are praying with you.

With all relations,
Taíno Woods Sanctuary
Home of fire, song, and rooted community