Healing and spirituality often intertwine with profound personal experiences, shaping unique practices and philosophies. For Jaguar Womban, her near-death experience became a catalyst for exploring life, spirituality, and the art of healing. From the transformative practice of WombSteaming to blending ancestral traditions with modern methodologies like yoga and plant medicine, her journey offers a rich tapestry of insights. Dive into this conversation to discover how life’s darkest moments can inspire light-filled paths of connection, creativity, and change.
How did your Near Death Experience (NDE) influence your approach to healing and spirituality?
I actually call it my Death Experience… at the time I was completing the thesis for my MA degree in Poetry from Cal State LA. I was in the process of writing a poetry book on the story of a woman on a mystical journey to cross a border into freedom, through a dessert land. On her pilgrimage, she dies of dehydration (an unfulfilled longing for water) and experiences a transfiguration moment, where she transforms (or remains) as a liminal figure haunting the borderland.
In many ways, I feel that I became my own poetic pilgrimage and embodied this archetypal heroine’s Journey in living through the Car Accident Experience. On the physical realm, I was hit by a car driven by a woman who passed out at the wheel due to a blood sugar issue and crashed into oncoming car and then me (while on foot), then continued driving through the glass front of a restaurant to finally pin another woman to the wall. This impact dislodged my body and sent me flying; when the paramedics found me I was “clinically dead”.
From my personal perspective, I remember the sensation of existing in a realm above/beside/below/around this 3D Density and then becoming aware of looking down over this body that is having this interview with you and hearing the words: THIS IS THE BODY OF LA VONNE NATASHA CAESAR GO IN COMPLETE THE WORK. This was not as literal as an actual conversation…but it is my dominant memory, and I remember next the resistance and repetition of the command and further resistance and repetition of the command (3x) and then the sudden sensation of the head of the body pulling me down/in like a magnet and sucking me into the body and shifting the perspective to looking up through human eyes at the ceiling and room of a hospital.
At other points on my own journey now as a woman in the body…I have referred to this moment as a “Catalyst” that conjured/created/shifted me into my “Spiritual path”, but the life experiences I have had now, and the way I have processed them, has now led me to see it all as the path, and maybe experiencing what from here we call “death” is still foundational to viewing life that way.
I think we all have an Origin Story. It is often what feels like our darkest moment, that through the alchemy of time is transmuted and transformed into our Medicine.
Can you explain the practice of WombSteaming and its significance in connecting to our inner wisdom?
The practice of WombSteam is a method of working with a recipe of herbs and salts to allow the essential oils that are their Plant Medicine, to enter the body through our most absorbent tissues, those of the uterine floor. The main components of the practice involve the physical position of the body and the material of the bowl itself, plus the accurate alchemy of Herbs and salt. I have found in my personal life, that a sustained rhythm of this practice has supported me in grounding into both my connection to my body and my physical experience, and also in the connection to my creativity, synchronicities, sensuality, and all that we associate with our inner Womb Wisdom.
What inspired you to create The WOMBNation, and what impact do you hope it has on its members?
In addition to sharing practical ways to incorporate this practice in your life, the WOMBNation membership offers a New Moon WombSteam Ceremony when we come together cyclically to share and collectively WombSteam every New Moon via zoom.
As with any practice, there are a series of physical actions that we go through with our body, then there is the energetic experience of what a commitment to a sustained rhythm of repetition of these actions can achieve in our body, mind and spirit. A WombSteam practice is this way. In yoga, for example, you will learn a series of movements of “asanas” but it is the sustained daily practice (dinacharya) that will transform your body and awaken within you what a Course in Miracles calls the “shift in perspective”… that is the miracle itself! A WombSteam practice is this way.
In the book, The Magic of Believing” Claude Bristol says: “Repetition is the rhythm of all progress, The cadence of the Universe” The purpose of WOMBNation is to facilitate a sustained rhythmic commitment to the WombSteam practice, created with the intention of supporting Womb Carriers to connect and create change within our individual bodies, our personal lives and within the totality of the Quantum Womb Field.
How do you integrate Shamanism, Yoga, and Plant Medicine into your healing sessions?
I was raised in a very conservative religion, by parents who are also scholars, researchers and academics (both with PhDs). So I see their influence in what I call my chapter of “collecting certificates”! I definitely went through a period of studying in all the Yoga Alliance Certified, energetic and other programs and courses.
I am now at a point where I feel that “everything is everything”. And part of what I love and the reason why this practice has stuck with me is that you do not have to suspend your disbelief in order for it to impact your physical body and consciousness. Self described cynics are my favorite clients, and often those who are the most shaken by the sensations awakened. We are living in a time when truth and authenticity are the commodities that have become most scarce and therefore valued/cherished. In that sense this practice is a fact. And that’s real news!
How have your ancestral traditions shaped your personal healing journey and the work you do with others?
My father was born in a river on an Amerindian reservation in Guyana and this is an ancestral lineage passed down to me from midwife grandmothers of my own bloodline. Following my car accident experience, I returned to a remembrance and commitment to this practice that was already alive within my consciousness from my first Moon (menstruation). In this specific time of personal crisis, it returned again to guide me in restoring my mental and physical health.
– We know that we are alive on a cellular level inside our Mothers when our Mothers are inside our Grandmothers.
– We know that our Grandmothers and greater Grandmothers have died and decomposed in Mother Earth.
– We know that Mother Earth has sprouted Raspberry Leaf and Lavender from within her womb
and that these plants have medicine that we can sip as tea or bathe in or even smell to feel shifts in our mind and mood.
– This practice is a way to open up a direct dialogue with our own grandmothers
who are alive and carrying us healing medicine (even now!) through the plants and flowers.
– That is WombSteam practice. It is beautiful and it belongs to us all as Daughters of Earth.
In what ways does living in Oaxaca influence your healing practices and the teachings you share globally?
I am a Caribbean woman, but the place that I spent the longest portion of my childhood is Mexico. I grew up here and it is where my heart is: it is the land where I began my own blood cycle and it is where I want to leave my body to rest when I die again. I love Mexico. She helps me heal and she helps me to heal.
