Two World Harmony – Butterfly Model

Have you ever felt like you’re walking in two worlds?

Perhaps consensus reality, what is presented to us in mainstream news venues and conversations that are embedded in a Culture of Violence, is greatly at odds with your spiritual and personal values –- yet you recognize the need to navigate both worlds with skillfulness and kindness.

Elder Kathy Sanchez’s Two World Harmony-Butterfly Model is intended to support this kind of journey through life. To Tewa people, the image of the butterfly signifies transformation, mobility, vulnerability, and the power to impact the multi-verse because of and despite its delicacy. The model identifies our spirit-rootedness, allowing us the flexibility to access different realms of reality simultaneously as we work in our contemporary programs with a traditional sense of our spheres of influence. When offered as a workshop, participants learn to live respectfully and honor their duality as Indigenous or cultural persons living in the Native/traditional mindset while operating in a Euro-American society. We come to find our inner strengths in different world views.

This workshop is about “life journeying” as seen from a different perspective. As parts are contrasted and managed, a symbolic butterfly emerges, as well as links to living respectfully in our multiplicity of worldview systems, even if they contradict and have the tendency to separate or isolate us from world events, community, loved ones, and one’s own self-perception.

As Elder Kathy says,

Recognition of cultural roots cannot be from the rational mind’s knowledge database only. Knowingness of “who” one is must include the body’s second brain and the spiritual self’s energy connectedness to other realms of the multiverse. We need to acknowledge this collectively and strengthen the lifeways to reclaim, redefine and reaffirm our culturally inclusive collective toward wellness.

Elder Kathy developed the Two Worlds Harmony-Butterfly Model many years ago, and it is at the heart of Tewa Women United’s way of working in the world and addressing environmental, reproductive, and gender justice issues. Kathy’s daughter Corrine has said, “The model continues to serve as the foundational philosophical model for TWU because it discusses our wholeness of being, using identity, language, and spirituality as a strength that leads to our mobility (fluidity) in changing and challenging times.”

Elder Kathy has presented the model in many venues and recently shared it with the American Holistic Nurses Association in their “Conversation Corners Series” (lovingly facilitated by Saya Ana Malinalli X Gutiérrez Sisneros). You can watch the video here:

If you’re interested in having Elder Kathy present the Two World Harmony-Butterfly model to your organization or group, call us at (505) 747-3259  or email info@tewawomenunited.org