The Khmer Collective

Earlier this month, Paulina performed a Somatic Renewal followed up with the Winding River Massage on me. During the somatic session, she assisted me through conversation and a guided meditation which allowed for me to process my “stuck” emotions that we discovered through bodily sensations. After I released what felt like twenty tons of emotional baggage from my womb that I didn’t know I was carrying, she said ever so gently “those mother wounds are very real.” I cried a lot. Quite cathartic. And then she fed me a hearty lunch after. The girl is gifted.

I highly recommend, if you ever find yourself in Houston, to find time to book a session with Paulina. If not, find a Khmer practitioner or healer who specializes in Somatic therapy. It’s very necessary.

When I meet our people and I notice how they’re really tapped into their gifts, there is always a bit of sacred wisdom that they carry.

What if we all had the ability to tap into our ancestral roots? What would you find? Do you think somewhere in your family lineage there may have been someone who came before you that practiced the same thing? That someway, somehow despite feeling disconnected, you are still living out their forgotten traditions?

They don’t always know the answers to these questions but I can’t help but think about how their ancestors must be living through them.

“Do you believe that the healing work that you do has any correlation to your ancestral roots?”

“I can’t help but to speak on the topic that it seems all of us in the Khmer-American diaspora feel- not quite Khmer and not quite American. As I grew up I felt like I was missing pieces that made me truly Khmer. I think my heart fixated on that for longer than I should have- growing a seed of grief that lasted decades.

However there were still traditions around me that really shaped me…”

“…koh-kchol (coin scraping) when anyone got sick, seeing my great grandma with her betel and dark teeth, all the ways that grannies and aunties cooked together on the floor, eating family style on the kathael when everyone came over, some auntie always had an herbal tea recommendation for any sickness…

there was an openness to living naturally, and