The Oneida Fire Ceremony (As taught by Russell FourEagles in his book: the Making of a Healer. Published in 2014 by Quest books, Wheaton)

This ceremony is a forgiveness ceremony. It involves writing down your prayers and burning the paper so that your prayers ascend to the Creator, LoveIsness, God ,Mother Goddess, or whatever you happen to call your Higher Power to help you forgive yourself.It is about forgiving yourself, others, situations, and other things that have hurt you in your life.He shares his traditional understanding that the Creator installed a heart box under our sternum with the instruction that :‘…  it will be the place for people to store their traumas and heavy emotions for a few days, until they are ready to give them to me.”

What’s needed: All you need is a piece of paper, a pen , a small square of red paper or cloth and purple string and some natural tobacco or another sacred plant for the offering. You also need to prepare a small fire.

Here we go: You prepare a space to sit down with an open heart, focused, available for prayerfulness and a sense of gratefulness for the moment. There are three parts for the writing:

• First you ask for help to forgive yourself for what you had no control over,
• Second you write to invite forgiveness to what you had some control over but didn’t do as vest as you could have
• Third you forgive people, events and situations which hurt or harmed you.

You write till you feel done, don’t read it again, just wrap it into red cloth, add the prayer tobacco and close with the purple string ,make 4 knots. Give your bundle to the fire.

After that , do four rounds of this beautiful breathing cycle :‘Stand with both feet on the ground and inhale deeply through your nose. Visualise the negative energy (of all the painful memories) going down your body, out your feet, and into the ground. Then exhale through your mouth and visualise positive energy, (love and light and warmth and nourishment and forgiveness) coming up from the Earth ,through your feet and into the rest of your being. Upon inhaling you send your negative energies to the Earth mother ; upon your exhale ,she replaces the negative energy with new, positive energy. (because that’s what she does all the time).’It can be done in any position, lying down, standing or sitting.

It somehow feels very different to a Qi Kung or Yoga exercises, stay with it, until you get used to it. I imagine myself being like a little pump or something, pumping breath down and getting refilled by natural forces filling the created vacuum. I also use my hand movement to guide me, pushing palms down in front while breathing out, rising hands palms up while letting the in breath happen. I also hold my left nostril closed while breathing in as it makes my in breath longer. I also recommend to start the breathing circle with a Qi Lung warm up: start shaking your body gently, the movement coming from the relaxed hip region, travelling down into legs, connecting to feet , making a reassuring deepening connection through the soles of the feet, deep relaxed breathing let the shaking travel up into your upper body, chest including arms and hands, include the head and jaw let it hang, allow sounds with the out breath.  Let that movement subside slowly and start swinging your arms , let the hands tap your body wherever they land. move up and down your upper body, again let it subside slowly. Than start the above explained Oneida Breathing cycle. Do it at least 4 times. You can include the 4 directions, facing to each one starting from the east.

The Fire ceremony is an ongoing process,’ think of as many negative things as you can to release, because the more you can let go of, the more you strengthen your energy field, which is your protection.’And don’t be afraid to thank the Creator in advance for answering your prayer.Don’t be surprised if, after a short while after the fire ceremony you notice yourself feeling weepy, angry, sad, elated, happy or any number of other emotions. As you peel the layers off old memories that you had hidden from yourself they will start to float up.’You can start journaling to further help the process.

We happened to hear Russell speak on you tube. After we bought his book we did the Fire Ceremony with friends and broke out in a little dance after we burned our bundles. This happened a few more times . A lot of things got released and family healing took place on deep levels. Since then we have shared this amazing gift with most of our friends, families and clients in our Mana Soulfood Urban Sanctuary. If you need to do your first ceremony with one of us don’t hesitate to contact us. We provide the bundles.