S02E15 The Sacred Medicine of Story and Sailing with Clarinda Tivoli

[The Decolonizing Medicine Podcast S02E15.  Original release date August 11, 2022.]
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Jamee Pineda  
Mabuhay! Welcome to the second season of The Decolonizing Medicine Podcast. We release episodes every full moon so roughly once a month. This episode we are going to be interviewing Clarinda Tivoli.  Clarinda is the founder of #thematriarchalbusiness and course educator of the new Decolonizing Business unit at MBU, Clarinda Tivoli is a child of Oceania - an iTaukei and Samoan woman and mother, born in Tāmaki Makaurau, Aotearoa, now living in the occupied Kingdom of Hawaii.
 
Moved by the liveliness of Pasifika indigenous revival, Clarinda grows and evolves her personal business model and teachings from cultural wisdom about health, abundance and sustainability. Returning to the values and practices of many indigenous cultures in regards to land, economics, society and politics, Clarinda works actively to separate capitalism and colonialism from business, and has faith that this is being done in the growing, thriving collective movement to decolonize business.
 

f you are new to this podcast, my name is Jamee Pineda.  I use he/him pronouns and I am a queer, nonbinary trans person and My ancestors are Tagalog and Chinoy.  I am also a practitioner of hilot and Chinese medicine.  I practice in person at Fruit Camp in Baltimore, MD as well as virtually.  Now let’s get on with our show. 

Clarinda nice of you to join us today. I am so excited to talk with you. So for folks who don't know, I've worked with Clarinda in the past, through Matriarchal Business, and I'm so inspired by her work, and I'm so excited that she's here to talk with us today. One of the things that really inspired me to reach out to her is because in Hilot, which is traditional Filipino medicine, one of the ways that we think about health is financial health, and, you know, pre capitalism, this would have been the health of our resources, our relationship to abundance. And this is so much a part of what Clarinda does for work, but also just so much a part of how she navigates the world. So I just wanted to talk with her and share some of her views with everyone. So how are you feeling today?

Clarinda Tivoli  
I'm good. I'm good. Thanks, Jamee. I'm really, yeah, quite honored to be invited to speak on your podcast. This is exciting.

Jamee Pineda  
So my first question for you is, well, you're not a healthcare practitioner. But your work often attracts folks who do healing work. So what is it like working with healers on their businesses? I'm one of those people. I also know that the other folks who were in my cohort, we're also among that group of people. So I'm curious about that.

Clarinda Tivoli
That is such a good question. Um, I feel like there's a few different layers to that. I, I'm curious, I have my theories about that, but you're a healthcare practitioner, and you were drawn to the work. So what do you think that is? Because I, there have been healthcare practitioners have always been attracted to the work, whether in you know, there's been this kind of more recent iteration of my work over the past maybe three to four years, which has been very much consciously intentionally rooted in indigenous matriarchal kinds of frameworks and in within decolonizing frameworks. And, you know, there have certainly been healthcare practitioners attracted to the work in In this iteration, but it's always been that way. So for those listening who aren't familiar with my work in my previous, I'll say my past life career of sorts, you know, being a speaker trainer and working with platform sales speakers. I was also then still attracting a lot of healthcare practitioners. And I can't I don't know that I can necessarily answer exactly why that is. I have a theory. But what, what do you think that is? Because you are one of those people.

Jamee Pineda  
So I heard about your work through my buddy, Julz, who heard about your work, from just being local to Hawaii. 

Clarinda Tivoli  
Yeah. Right. 

Jamee Pineda  
And, oh, my dog is dreaming right now. She's making dreams sounds in the background, yeah. Who knows what she's chasing. So I was attracted to your work because for me, doing healing work is so much of a calling around healing wounds from colonization for myself and for my community, wounds from patriarchy, wounds from, you know, capitalism and all these other kinds of -isms that are all interconnected. So it was important for me to figure out how to run a practice, within the context of living in a capitalist society in a way that didn't harm me too, and didn't harm the people that I was wanting to reach out to. And it's more than just do no harm, right? Like that. It's like, yeah, we want to do more than that. We want to actually have abundance for ourselves, have ease, have joy. And so that was very apparent in in the values that your your content was projecting. Because I had followed you for a little bit on on social media before I reached out to you to set up a consultation, and eventually join one of the cohorts. So for Yeah, like, for me, it was like, I have to have those values integrated into every part of my practice. Every part of my practice has a potential to be medicine to myself, and therefore also medicine to my community. So for me, it was very intentional. And also I'm like, I don't really, I don't really like partnering with a lot of white folks. Because it's it's really, it's, it takes a lot of energy to just work with good intentions and nice people. It's like, those are all nice things, but I'm not looking for nice.

Clarinda Tivoli  
Yep. Yeah. I hear it. Yeah, not looking for nice, and you're not just looking to do no harm.  I really hear that. Okay. Thank you for that. Yeah, that's kind of Yeah, you're you're answering the question. I think. It's not for me, it's for me, it's theory, I mean, I don't know, I don't know that I necessarily asked that question of it. You know, that's the very, I just, I think that's such a beautiful question. Because, yeah,

Clarinda Tivoli  
you You're right. There are a lot of healthcare practitioners who come to the work. It's attractive, it has always been attractive to hear this. Okay. So my theory is...Well, I think one of them is at Well, I think it's very much in line with what you've said, even before the work was more intentionally, you know, this kind of decolonizing framework. It was always about healing through story, you know, story was such a big part of it, it was about you know, becoming, even though it was about you know "platform sales speaking", the way that I talked about it, which made it so unique in a very scripted, orchestrated, do this sales script, and that will bring X amount of your convert this amount that here's the formula and, you know, the work that I brought up was kind of this breath of fresh air in the industry was, you know, you don't need any of that and you can actually be yourself and You can actually stand up and tell your story and, you know, use your voice in your unique way you do not need a script. Um, yeah, get up and tell your story and that in, in and of itself is such a healing process to do for yourself. So even to prepare for that, to be ready to share a message, to be able to "market yourself" or market a product or a business or concept or whatever, whatever it is that you're wanting to move people on with.  There needs to be some elements of, of healing  or of evolution, whether they're conscious about it or not, you know?I've often had folks over the years become, I'm not sure blocked is the word, stuck in this, they would think they would see the path forward and go, Okay, I just need to do this, I just need to craft, you know, unpack my story, follow Clarinda's process, answer these questions, everything will come out, and then I can kind of put it in this kind of order and present it to people. And then all kinds of hidden, unconscious obstacles, internal conflicts would arise. And all of a sudden, they're either completely stopping what they're doing, or they're pivoting or, you know, so it was always -  the work was always transformational. It was always a healing journey of some kind, whether people were prepared, or whether I advertised it is that, you know, that kind of transformation happens regardless. So and then, you know, and then even more so in recent years. So I, I think healers are more I don't know, maybe perhaps more equipped to take on that process, are have an awareness of their own healing journey and what is required to be able to be vulnerable to be emotionally available and intelligent and aware. Yeah, it's, it's quite a skill to be able to, to to tell your story to be vulnerable and to heal in public. So So I think there's that element. I think the other element the other part of my theory, is that I have I have healers in my lineage and I do believe that there is a strong resonance there. I think you know, my my mum's mum's mum my granny Mala was a Samoan taulasea, a Samoan healer. And that's the one in my immediate kind of family that I'm knowledgeable of, but I know that it is in the bloodlines, and certainly in the hands and, you know, continues my mum and my Nana, and even as girls me and my sisters were good with our hands. We're good with - we can you know, one of the things you take for granted, but you know, realize meeting other people Oh, not everybody is intuitive with their hands. What's with that? But yeah, we you know, as a family like we can, you know, we can easily tend to feet, calves, you know, get out knots, you know? I think yeah, there's definitely healing in the blood. And I know for me at least increasingly so I'm becoming aware that the work that I'm doing is my own healing out loud as I say, you know, my own healing in public my own. I say this a lot now that's why I'm so passionate about the work now is because it's me advocating for a younger me who was victim to a very abusive, I was gonna say unethical, but it's, it's, it's more than that. It's been, you know, intentionally, harmful, violent business, practice and business norms. That is, you know, it's normalized. been privy to nonconsensual sales and marketing practice and just just normalized...

I don't want to say relationship building because it's not even that it's just interactions in business that are that are very cold and transactional and you know, it's this business is personal. And you know, some very real trauma that I've, you know, experienced in, in, in business being stolen from and having very racist and sexist and elitist attacks and power dynamics not in my favor. Yeah, in business, so I'm so so now I'm really advocating for for little me, you know, in a big way. And it just so happens that a lot of folks are behind that, you know? They also want to protect little me, and the little thems to, you know? And the ends a little, you know, our, our future, our next generations of Yeah, of folks in business, so. Yeah, multilayered? That's such a great question. I, nobody has asked me that. 

Jamee Pineda  
I was so surprised that no one's asked you that, because 

Clarinda Tivoli  
Yeah, no

Jamee Pineda  
Everyone in my cohort was some kind of healing practitioner. And then I remember we did a showcase back in December 2020, December 2020, or something like that?

Clarinda Tivoli  
I think so

Jamee Pineda  
And almost everyone, there was also a healer, 

Clarinda Tivoli  
Right? 

Jamee Pineda  
And, yeah, it's fascinating. I've been in other business groups, that are also anti capitalist, and have more of an analysis around social justice and things like that. And they have healers in their group, but then they also have a lot of other professions represented, like people who do some kind of manufacturing or other kinds of services. And it just was, so it was just like, so clear to me that you're attracting a certain type of calling. 

Clarinda Tivoli  
Yeah. 

Jamee Pineda  
To your work. 

Clarinda Tivoli  
Yeah. Because I don't, I don't speak specifically to healers, at least I don't think that I do. 

Jamee Pineda  
Exactly. Yeah. 

Clarinda Tivoli  
And I and I really feel like no, this is work that applies to you know, and I've worked with a lot of it's not, it's not that I've only worked with healers, but it's just majority. So I have worked with a lot of different folks in, you know, different services and selling different products. But yeah, it's just seems to be so focused. And I think it's one of those things that is read in between the lines, it's a resonance thing, it's a thing that speaks - I used to talk about, I don't talk about it much anymore, but about audience science and the kind of biology of the things the things unspoken and how we connect with each other without, you know, the, the major part of us that is communicates, like over 90% of our communication is nonverbal, you know, or not in the words that we're using to communicate. So all of those other things are saying like, I'm a healer, you're a healer, we get it. Like there's a there's an alignment there. Yeah. Anyway, super interesting.

Jamee Pineda  
Very, very interesting. So I want to circle back to you mentioned some of the healing work that you have done for yourself and how that has influenced your business work? Do you want to expand on that a little bit? And maybe share some of it? 

Clarinda Tivoli  
Um...

Jamee Pineda  
You don't have to, by the way, if you don't want to. 

Clarinda Tivoli  
Yeah, like, we definitely do not have time. For the whole I mean, like, I have my journal here, we could go through some interesting...no, like, yeah, the work is definitely me advocating for, for little me. And sometimes. I feel like sometimes it's difficult for me to discern how much of my personal healing journey I share, you know, in relation to the work, because so much of it is relevant. And I think that that's because in talking about decolonizing business, obviously, when it's not just about business, you add decolonizing to that, and that's an entire revolution of models of life and systems and the whole way that we operate so that means me talking about how that affects me personally, in with the intersectional identities that I have as an indigenous person, as someone who has been displaced from lands, have you know experienced erasure of culture and language and all that kind of thing. So, my healing and my growth is relevant to that because it's political. Because unfortunately, it just is. So, yeah, I think that's kind of why lately I'm sharing a ton of sailing videos.

Jamee Pineda  
I was just gonna ask you to bring that up

Clarinda Tivoli  
Yeah

Jamee Pineda  
Let's talk about your sailing.

Clarinda Tivoli  
Yeah, yeah, that's that's definitely a part of it. Because I'm like, How much do this do I really it's kind of a very personal thing that I'm you know, enjoying right now. But it is really friggin liberatory and I've had people tell me too they're like you're sailing videos are the best thing like the thing that I love most on the internet right now. And I think that that's just because people you know, folks right now really enjoy seeing - we're enjoying seeing each other's liberation in whatever iteration or manifestation that's coming in. And that's just a real point of pleasure for me right now. So yeah. 

Jamee Pineda  
Yes, certainly.  I get compersion watching you sail. 

Clarinda Tivoli  
Yay!  I love that!

Jamee Pineda  
I'm nowhere near the Pacific Ocean right now. Which makes me sad. I love the Pacific Ocean. But yeah, like, I think there's something like ancestral, at least for me that like tugs to be like, oh, yeah, we are of the water of this specific water. 

Clarinda Tivoli  
Yes. 

Jamee Pineda  
Even though I have no idea how to sail. It still-

Clarinda Tivoli  
Yep.

Jamee Pineda  
There's some there's like an element of it. That calls.

Clarinda Tivoli  
Yeah, yeah. Yeah. No, and it's so weird. It's not something that necessarily called, like the, the art the actual doing the practice of sailing was not something that ever called to me. But it was the ocean that did before I actually got into any sailing. Um, yeah, it's kind of weird. How it, how it came about. It was one of those circumstances where it was the ancestors brought it to me. I was not looking for sailing, there was just a certain opportunity that kind of popped up and I was like, Well, okay, why not, I'll learn? And I did. And now it's just a whole lifestyle. Yeah, but it's just I don't even put into words. What it is to me. Um,

Jamee Pineda  
you might not be able to. I mean-

Clarinda Tivoli  
yeah! 

Jamee Pineda  
There is something about just from the outside witnessing a Pacific Islander, a brown woman, go out in the ocean and just have pleasure. Yeah, don't do it for anybody but yourself.

Clarinda Tivoli  
Yeah. Yeah. And, um, something that that sticks out to me when I'm out there as well. What you know, usually I'm just out there and and I'm just in my zone. And then every now and then I get kind of woken up to the fact that holy shit, like I'm taking up space out here. Where, when I look around, the only other people who are taking space out here are people who have access to it, which are white folks. Um, so yeah, that always kind of interrupts my, my joy my zone out there when I realized how political it is just me being out there. How liberatory I guess it is to be out there. Where I sail, one of the places that I sail that I have easy access to, is called Puʻuloa which is known as Pearl Harbor. Which is both beautiful and horrid because of its history. Very, very polluted. Water, you can't, you know, they there's always signs everywhere about fishing and not eating the shellfish or anything like that. I think it's the USS Arizona that's in there that leaks like several gallons of fuel a day, and will do so for something like 500 years or something, it's just not going to stop. So. And from what I understand, Puʻuloa, that area, we used to be the breadbasket for Hawaiians. And yeah, now you just cannot fish. But a bunch of white people can sail. You know? A bunch of white folks can enjoy the waters can enjoy this access. The marina I sail at is called Rainbow Bay Marina. So they're enjoying the beautiful view of the rainbows and the mountains. And you go out there and yeah, and almost every time I'm the only one who looks like me out there. So yeah, what kind of began, it's just like, pure pleasure is also you know, every now and then I wake up to, like, I'm out there, I'm in the zone. And then, you know, some fighter jets go up overhead, or, you know, I look around and there's just, you know, a bunch of very, you know, privileged, you know, a boat full of, you know, very privileged, young folks who are blasting hip hop, you know, motorboating across the water and their friends on jetski have on that water skis and screaming and, you know, over waters where there are dead bodies under us, you know? It's interesting, you know, it's interesting, finding pleasure and joy in a space like that. Yeah, I'm still navigating that one, you know, like, every time I'm out there, it's every time I capsize which in the small boats, so I sell a lot of different boats. Some of like one person, little lasers or toppers or el toros, little one person sailboats where they're very, you know, they're super fun, because you do capsize a lot, you know, you fall in the water, and then you flip the boat over, you get back in. But every time I fall on the water, I just, I'm a very, I'm very sensitive to those things, knowing the history of the place and knowing, you know, the bodies in the water, and I feel it. Every time I'm in the water, or there's a particular place in the harbor where I cross over that I just, honestly, my boat starts to just make noises and places it doesn't usually, you know, and I just I just I sense things. Anyway, and so, yeah.

Jamee Pineda  
It literally sounds like you're, you're sailing between worlds that you're navigating a lot of liminal space.

Clarinda Tivoli  
Yes. Yeah, that's it. Yeah, so still, you know, still navigating that one. But it's not it's not something that I want to block out in any way. You know, I don't want to be out there like, No, I'm just going to enjoy myself. No, I think that's that's the deeper the deeper work, right? To be conscious of all of that, and to still find liberation-

Jamee Pineda  
Yeah

Clarinda Tivoli  
with knowledge of all of that, you know, I don't know, I'm still figuring that one out.

Jamee Pineda  
It sounds like the differences like using pleasure as a distraction, or using it as a connection to something much deeper, which you know, like, pleasure as distraction is not necessarily a bad thing. 

Clarinda Tivoli  
Right, yes

Jamee Pineda  
but yeah, like I'm just I'm just hearing like your story about this is I'm seeing pleasure being it's like a gateway to a lot of different perceptions. If you want to go there. 

Clarinda Tivoli  
Yeah, yeah. Yeah. It's a rich journey. 

Jamee Pineda  
So I am wondering who you want to this is a little bit of a segue. But each episode we do a community shout out to folks, folks of the global majority aka bipoc to get them some visibility and redistribute resources to and I want to know who you want to shout out. 

Clarinda Tivoli  
Hmmm...Yes. This is this everybody, everybody in each community

Jamee Pineda  
Everybody gets resources!

Clarinda Tivoli  
Everybody, right? That's the ideal. That's what we want. But I, um, I'll go ahead and shout out Timaima Clawson.  Tima is a friend of mine who I met in Fijian language class, na vosa vakaviti classes. And she came, she lives in Utah, she visited me a few weeks ago and got to talking about her work. She's actually going to be participating in the Matriarchal Business University, the decolonizing business unit in the fall, and she has just started a nonprofit in Utah.  She has been very involved in a lot of other nonprofits. This nonprofit that she's beginning that she's being mentored to start she it wasn't necessarily her idea to do it. But everyone's been encouraging her to, to do this. It's a it's a nonprofit, focusing on Pacific Islander women's health in the Utah area.  She shared some really scary stats with me just in general in the States, I think it was that out of, what was it, mortality rates for for pregnant people in the US out of 100 of those 11 are ours, 11 are Pacific Islanders, which was yeah, pretty shocking to me, considering why we're much less, but we're a much smaller amount of the population in the US. So her work caters to pregnant pregnant women, pregnant folks, and just women's health in general, in the Utah region, and she does a lot of on the ground kind of work, education. And she was really it was amazing learning from her about nonprofits in Utah, who. So there's a ton of funding by the state being made available for, quote unquote, Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islander, you know, causes or nonprofits, and that funding was just going to basically anyone who put that term Native Hawaiian or Pacific Islander in their, you know, proposals for funding, whether or not they were actually doing that work was a questionable thing. 

Jamee Pineda  
No!

Clarinda Tivoli  
Yeah, yeah. Hence, she was being mentored, like you need the funding is there it's going to all the wrong places, you need to actually be a recipient of this funding and do the work because you're already doing the work without the funding. And, yeah, and looking after undocumented folks in particular, and that whole fear barrier around, you know, yeah, the medical system and all of that, so, yeah, she's just she's super amazing what she's doing and she's just starting, she has something like 20 followers on IG. So definitely want to prop up Tima.

Jamee Pineda  
What's her IG handle?

Clarinda Tivoli  
Yeah, it's @embrace801, Embrace, E-M-B-R-A-C-E 801. 

Jamee Pineda  
Thank you. 

Clarinda Tivoli  
Yeah. So her nonprofit is looks after Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islanders' women's health. Yeah. So that's Tima. She's Fijian. Yeah, from Bua and Macuata. Yeah. 

Jamee Pineda  
Okay. Yeah.  So you mentioned the Matriarchal Business University. Would you like to plug that really quickly?

Clarinda Tivoli  
No, yeah. So right now I have a, a unit of study, Decolonizing Business. This is an eight week unit under the Matriarchal Business University, which I envision would have many more units through the years as we grow things, but for right now we just have this kind of one-on-one Decolonizing Business unit. It's an eight week long course. Yeah, we've got folks just about to start in about 10 days to start our first week, through the summer, and then we have another fall unit, going August through October. And then we'll likely have some more units come out in 2023. But yeah, any if anyone wants any information about that you can either follow my IG @Clarindatusitala. Or go to the matriarchalbusiness.com. And the best thing to do there is to opt in to the notification email list. And then you'll get all of the updates with enrollment and application windows and all of that.

Jamee Pineda  
I highly recommend if you're listening to check out Clarinda's content. If you run a business or self employed, I highly, highly recommend it's a super transformative process. And I would say that the curriculum doesn't just end up the curriculum, because Clarinda I've appreciated that you've built a whole community network out of the folks who are either supporting your work or who have been learning from you by being in your cohort. So I'm still engaged in it, even though it's been over a year since I was actually in one of the classes with you. So that's-

Clarinda Tivoli  
Yeah, that's really nice, yeah. 

Jamee Pineda  
Yeah, it's not just you do it, and then you're dropped.

Clarinda Tivoli  
Yeah, that's one of my favorite things. I'm super proud that, yeah, I'm super proud that we've kind of created that environment. And that folks are still coming back for the random discussion that we have or COVID sessions. So it's just nice to know that this, I think that this space is held, even for folks who aren't necessarily around all the time, or super present. Every now and then I get messages like, Thanks, you know, I see the notifications and I'm just super glad there's this space because we need to know that we're not we're really not in as much isolation as we think we actually are all experiencing the same conflicts and battles that did that daily navigation of how we you know, when we're doing our books, and then thinking of, well, how we how we still decolonizing within this current tax formation of my business. So it's a whole thing that we need to it's a it's a practice. Like I said, it doesn't end at the curriculum. It's it's an ongoing practice, so we need to continue to be engaged in it.

Jamee Pineda  
Before I let you go, do you have any words of wisdom or advice that you would like to share with our listeners?

Clarinda Tivoli  
Oh, my gosh, just

Jamee Pineda  
Or even questions honestly

Clarinda Tivoli  
No, nothing. I don't want to add No, no extra like nothing to think about nothing.  Nothing to labor on. So just we all have enough. Like, go and eat some really good foods. Like did you drink some water? Go get a glass of water. You know, have you breathe deeply today? Like if you thought about your breath today? Just yeah, just just do the good things. Feel good. Please look after yourselves. And my goodness, we're losing so many good people. Yeah, just stay safe. Everyone. Look after yourselves. That's it. That's my wisdom today.

Drink some water. Be nice to yourself. 

Yeah, yes. Yes. Be kind to yourselves.

Jamee Pineda  
Alright, thank you so much. Clarinda. I'm so happy that we had we got to have this conversation. I know we don't get to connect one on one all the time because we we live across so many time zones. But yeah, it's been lovely.

Clarinda Tivoli  
Appreciate it. I appreciate you. I appreciate your questions, your line of thought the work that you do, the community work that you do, commitment to your own development and your own healing, just your practice - I'm in admiration. So

Jamee Pineda  
Thank you thank you

The next zine for the five phase series is now complete. It is the earth zine. I'm releasing it today as of the release of this episode of The Decolonizing Medicine Podcast. So that is available for virtual download on my website and my next QTBIPOC Qi Gong course is going to be this fall. I highly suggest signing up for my newsletter so that you can get exact dates and sign up information, again that is also on my website. That's Jamee-pineda-lac.com. And Jamee is spelled J-A-M-E-E. For those of you who come to see me in person for treatments, and for in person services, I wanted to let you all know that I am keeping tabs on what's happening with monkey pox and COVID as far as keeping myself safe and keeping my patients safe. So you'll see some updates around the clinic space. For example, I now have little plastic boxes where people can put their stuff so that I can disinfect around the area a little bit easier. I moved out one of our plushy squishy blue chairs that's covered in fabric so that I can use a wooden chair that's a hard surface that I can more easily disinfect. And there's probably going to be more updates here and there as we learn more about this disease again, be be on my newsletter, check my website regularly for more updates on that.

Maraming salamat for listening to The Decolonizing Medicine Podcast. If you want to support this work via Patreon or to apply to be a guest on the show. Go to JAMEE-PINEDA-LAC.com again Jamee is spelled J A M E E and my last name P I N E D A. Music is by Amber Ojeda, Hedkandi. and Rocky Marciano. Big thanks to  Cuán McCann for audio engineering all of these episodes. And I also wanted to do a quick shout out to Cuán's latest endeavor which is on Instagram and it's @bmorebata B E M O R E B A T A.  He is starting to teach Irish stick fighting. It's really awesome. It's super queer, super trans. So please go check that out. Last but not least, thank you to all our listeners and supporters out there.