What the land receives
On coming home, planting something real, and the practice that begins here
๐ NEW MOON | MAY 2026
The New Moon rises Saturday in Taurus โ the sign of the earth itself, of what is rooted, what is slow, what endures. A moon for planting. For tending what matters.
I am writing this from my home state of Maine.
There is something that happens when I come back here. The body remembers before the mind does โ the particular quality of the light off the water, the smell of the spruce, the way the land holds you differently than any other place. Maine is one of those potent places where the practice goes deepest, where I feel most connected to what I am actually doing and why.
This is where our next group practice 40 Days of Fearless Heart begins. On this New Moon, we plant the seed of a 40-day Durga mantra practice together. It feels right that it starts here, with this kind of gravity underneath it.
My mentor Sherri Mitchell โ Weh'na Ha'mu Kwasset of the Penobscot Nation โ spoke something recently that I keep returning to: "The most powerful force we have ever experienced as human beings living this life here is the life force. The life force that has not been able to be restrained, that has not been able to be stopped, that has continued despite obstacle across all time."
She named what is being asked of us in this moment: to reconnect to that force. To put our feet on the soil every single day. To come into contact with the natural living world. Because what is working against the emergence of a new way of being is intent on one thing above all else โ separating us from it.
Practice doesn't happen in an empty space. It never did.
When we chant, we are adding our sound to a field that carries its own history, its own wounds, its own medicines. The healing we do in our bodies is not separate from the healing the land is asking for.
This is why 60% of every 40 Days of Fearless Heart registration goes directly to Sherri's Land Peace Foundation, dedicated to the protection of Indigenous land, water, and the Indigenous way of life. Yesterday, from the first registrations that came in, I made an opening donation of $1,800. Everyone who has already signed up is part of that offering.
Nฤda Brahma. The universe is sound. The Durga mantra we will chant for forty days has been used for centuries to clear fear and anger from the mind โ not by suppressing them, but by reminding us of what we are made of beneath those states. Something invincible. Something luminous. Something that fear moves through but cannot inhabit. This is what Sherri is pointing to as well โ the life force, unstoppable across all time, asking the same thing the mantra asks: remember.
Sacred sound works beneath thought, at the level of vibration, gradually shifting the baseline from which you meet your life โ your work, your relationships, your ordinary days. Forty days is a genuine threshold. Patient medicine. Taurus medicine, in its way.
If you are joining us โ welcome. We begin Friday.
If you've been considering it and haven't yet stepped through the door โ this New Moon is the invitation. You can learn more and enroll by donation at stephchee.com/40-days-fearless-heart.
๐ฑ THIS NEW MOON ASKS
Where are you being asked to reconnect โ to the land, to your practice, to the life force that has never stopped moving through you?
What are you ready to tend โ not perfectly, but faithfully?
I'll be chanting from Maine tomorrow. Wherever you are, I hope you'll plant something too.
With you in the dark,
Stephanie Chee Barea
Sacred Sound Teacher | Mantra Practitioner | Spiritual Guide
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