Our Bodhi Project is now housed in SSoMA

Our Bodhi Project has moved to new organizational home - the Social Medicinal Apothecary. As part of SSoMA, Bodhi continues to support individuals and organizations to build capacities for leading integrated and relational approaches to intersectional justice in institutions, organizations, and movements. Bodhi continues to offer coaching, consulting and educational programs based on the Bodhi frame within the wider scope of SSoMA’s spiritual-political-ecological work.

What is the Spiritual-Social Medicinal Apothecary?

SSoMA brings together artists, healers and knowledge-keepers of relationship to face planetary heartbreak and breakdown with love, grief, wonder, and commitment. We study how to hospice the modern ways of knowing, being and relating that are harming life as we know, and how we heal our relation with life-force to deepen our capacities for healthy and just-relating. 

Medicinal

SSoMA’s apothecary takes a medicinal approach to our current climate, nature and relational emergency. 

We view medicine expansively as the sacred arts of healing, and medicinal as that which brings physical, spiritual and social balance in the living world. We draw from ancient and contemporary definitions of holistic medicine that center the unchanging principles of relationship and living and dying well together, to be able to tend to the deepest and most complex violences created by the modern/colonial project. We work and play especially with earth and ecological knowledges, spiritual-social wisdom traditions, embodied social philosophy, and queerness and other relational ways of knowing.

Unfortunately, these spiritual-social medicinal knowledges are devalued, negated and denied in our dominant modern/colonial systems. These knowledges have been, and are still being eradicated by destroying the rituals, practices and people who carry them. SSoMA valorizes these knowledge tenders and their lives by supporting them in different ways: 

• hosting knowledge-sharing and restful spaces and retreats

• offering community conversations,consultation and advocacy specific that bridge spiritual and social approaches towards decolonization  

• studying, researching and valorizing of spiritual-social-ecological knowledge and practice 

• organizing education for spiritual-social practitioners (in-person and online)

• maintaining a flow fund to support artists, healers and knowledge-holders to rest and source their work

• weaving and braiding people and efforts that are embodying spiritual-social knowledge-tending and ways of being

• embodying principles of spiritual-social activism 

Spiritual-social 

The Spiritual-Social Medicinal Apothecary (SSoMA) is a home for spiritual-social inquiry into the wisdoms of thriving life. 

At SSoMA, we know that our only chance of surviving or becoming good nutrients for future generations is through uplifting, supporting and protecting both the human and non-human knowledges and practices for living in balance and reciprocity - and the lives of those who tend them. 

In this moment of grave planetary imbalance, we cultivate holistic antidotes to the divisive forces that deny these knowledges and tear spirit, society, the earth and vital relationships apart. SSoMA creates, elevates, protects and brings interconnected relationships into form within these pivotal transitional times. 

We seek to serve the collective health of all living beings, promoting social relations that embody and encourage the flow of spirit - that which gives life breath. We queer, or work with life-giving alternatives to the dominating and destructive systems that separate us from our life force. This requires centering ways of knowing and relating are rooted in spiritual and social realms.

Apothecary

SSoMA adopts the word apothecary’s ancient meaning of both the healing practitioner and a place where medicines are made, protected and shared.

Traditional apothecaries work with plants, herbs, minerals and other medicinal elements. SSoMA collaborates with those who alchemize these ingredients, and focuses on making connections that help us see patterns, diagnose and respond to the complex imbalances and injuries of modern/colonial life.   

SSoMA came into being in November 2021, initiated by Sonali Sangeeta Balajee, who identifies as a queer woman of color. Our core team works with a guiding circle of wisdom-keepers. We are grateful to Jubilee Gift and their network of activators who provided the initial support to bring SSoMA into form. 

The apothecary hosts a number of rooms, or labs, that bring the spiritual-social medicines of our times to life through different lenses. Each room centers different practices that open space for potentiality, collective guidance and revelation to unfold. 

SSoMA rooms

The Center of Sacred Inquiry is a home for ancient knowledges and knowledge-tenders and wisdom-keepers, SSoMA’s guiding Wisdom Circle, and researchers carrying out sacred spiritual-social inquiries. Current medicinal inquiries include vital grief practices for our time and deepening yin-based approaches to organizing.

The Queer Imagination and Liberation Lab (QUILL) studies the medicinal qualities of expansive queerness from spiritual-social-ecological perspectives. It organizes educational and research-based activities that support the development of creative practice in the spiritual-poetic arts.  

The Youth Collective centers young people’s experiences, priorities and needs in spiritual-social activism. It supports youth-oriented inquiries into spiritual-social approaches to collective well-being in a time of social and environmental disruption. 

The Ecological Knowledge Room is dedicated to developing knowledges and resources to support land-based and land-back movements. It explores themes such as soil protection and guardianship, valorizing and securing sustainable funding for medicinal farming, and engaging with plant medicines in organizing for liberation. 

The SSoMA Flow Fund Lab receives and redirects financial and other material sources to knowledge-holders, artists and healers working with spiritual-social practices. It specifically funds arts and artistic-research residencies and projects, and advocates to valorize the importance of gifting healers and wisdom-tenders at the intersection of spiritual and social practice.

The Sacred Benefactor Circle is a shared space for those who are providing financial and other support who want to deepen their learning about the apothecary’s work with SSoMA’s wisdom-tenders. It also offers reflective and educational space for those who are interested in exploring the role of sacred philanthropy both personally and in their public lives.

Partnering with and supporting SSoMA

We work with other spiritual-social thinkers, artists, healers, knowledge-keepers and wisdom-tenders, queer and decolonial researchers, ecologists, activists and benefactors. Current partners include Avena Botanicals and Hummingbird Conservation, Nurses for Planetary Health, Seeding Justice, Soul of Movement/Movement of Soul, and queer decolonial arts/ecology/healing/research collectives. If you’d like to collaborate with SSoMA, write to us at admin@ssomamedicines.org.

SSoMA needs financial and in-kind support. If you’d like to make a financial donation by check or bank wire, please email ETINA, our fiscal sponsor, at mark@etina.org. To donate in-kind support, get in touch with us directly at admin@ssomamedicines.org.

Fiscal sponsorship

SSoMA is in affiliation with ETINA, a registered public charity which provides non-profit status and is exempt from U.S. federal income tax under Section 501(c)(3) of the Internal Revenue Code. Donations are fully tax-deductible.

Contact us

Get in touch with us at admin@ssomamedicines.org