Holy Rage Retreat: Camas Flower Meaning, Sacred Rage & Emotional Release

Archetype Studies, Empowerment, Flowers, Retreats, Self Discovery, Wellness

The birth of this holy rage retreat was inspired by the camas flower, which might surprise you. Have you even heard of the camas flower? I didn’t until this…

“These are my divorce papers, the envelope I got them in.”

She laid them down with words she wrote herself, and we all wept with her as she burned them in the fire.

I had no idea.

Two days before, I felt this strong calling. Some seasons need destruction.

I’d been sitting with the medicine of the Camas Wildflower, preparing for my next Blooming Caverns women’s retreat, but something in me felt like Celebration wasn’t what this medicine of this flower had been telling me.

Hi, Lovely. My name is Lumalia Armstrong, and I’m a somatic wellness practitioner, women’s retreat curator, photographer, artist, mama, author, and flower archetype researcher/experience curator.

I’m on a mission to cultivate experiences with nature, flowers, and archetypes that allow more humans to navigate the beauty of life, including its highs, lows, heaviness, and lightness, with a theme of radical celebration that embraces the full spectrum of human existence, with bliss as our birthright.

I have a gift for curating safe and powerful spaces where humans can gather, express themselves, be seen, witnessed, and remember their own magic.

I am also an author and researcher who loves exploring human experiences and our interrelationships with all that is, including, especially, flowers.

You can find my first memoir, sharing my life’s story of healing from multiple autoimmune diseases and chronic illnesses, here: Blooming Upside Down, where, yes, a flower is on the cover, very much on purpose. (I won’t spoil it as the juicy reason is in the introduction!)

When I was in the prep for this next retreat, destruction and rage were specifically called in. But what is a rage retreat? Why is this so important? Keep reading to hear how rage, colonization, a flower, and women gathering are all wildly connected.

And how I hope you too will see why you should join a women’s retreat with I hope me as your guide.

What Is a Rage Retreat?

Rage retreats, and rage ritual retreats are sacred containers that allow the boiling emotion of anger to have a safe outlet for release.

Often, anger that goes unexpressed can become rage that explodes in frequently harmful and destructive ways. Most of us are usually taught that anger and rage are bad, therefore to be avoided, suppressed, and shut down instantly.

But a Rage Ritual Retreat presses against the colonization oppression of emotions and our animal expressions that are our most magnetic abilities that Western societies, cultures, and religions have demonized to create superiority, oppression, submission, and separation of cultures. (More on that topic in How to Feel Your Feelings). A rage ritual then asks what if your anger was holy?

Anger has had a bad rep.

Most people fear expressing their anger because they are afraid they’ll lose themselves or control in their expression, and maybe you have in the past or been a recipient of anger expressed harmfully. Which we do not want more of in our world, FOR SURE.

But what if anger wasn’t the problem?

What if we don’t have safe enough containers for rage to be expressed, practices taught, or an understanding of what anger really is?

Anger is a sensational experience of your autonomy being crossed, feeling unable to feel safe because of what you’re experiencing, or something you feel is being wronged against you.

Yet what we do with our anger evokes a lot of (often harmful) experiences for people.

But what if we had space for expressing our anger in a way that did not harm ourselves or others?

Often, the biggest issue with anger is that we bottle it up because it’s not always “safe” to express when we feel it. We’ve been told it’s bad and there for “we are bad” for having anger.

But you are NOT BAD for experiencing a sensation in your body.

You are not bad for not knowing to express your anger safely.

But it is time we take responsibility to understand our emotions and give them safe containers for expression.

This is why I answered the call to create Holy Rage Retreat, which is now a regular part of my House of Bliss monthly ceremonies.

But how I landed on needing to have a rage ceremony may actually surprise you, because it started with studying the Camas wildflower.

The Archetype Medicine of the Camas Flower

(In love with the photographs? You can see more photos of the Camas flowers, purchase and see more of these photographs here.)

You see, the camas wildflower is actually a cultivated plant. She has been cultivated by different indigenous tribes throughout thousands of years in the Pacific Northwest. But with the introduction of colonization and European farming practices, the sacred life force of this culture’s main food, I’m talking 50% of their diet, was destroyed.

Thankfully, there are still a few rare camas fields in preservation around the Pacific Northwest, and I had planned to take a small group of women to these to learn from their medicine.

But as I sat meditating, I listened to the wisdom of the Camas as I explored different fields, and I felt this reminder.

She was cultivated by fire.

The tribes would burn down the land after harvesting the largest bulbs, bury them in an earthen fire, and save the bulbs for food throughout the winter, or bake their fructose-released sugars into bread. They were exchanged as wedding gifts or even as trades.

This plant’s history wasn’t just one of medicine; it was a celebration in itself…of course, she called to me. This has been the story of my life as well.

Celebration by fire.

Destruction has a bad rap.

(more on that in my memoir Blooming Upside Down)

But often it’s necessary for life.

Camas Flower Meaning

The Camas flower symbolizes destruction as a means to grow strong. Resilience isn’t created by doing more but by letting go of what is preventing your growth. Camas flowers also symbolize connection and celebration in their use of human history.

When working with the Camas, the Camas kept showing me that when we are burned down by fire, we grow stronger. And sometimes it takes that utter destruction of what was known to come back into the truth of who we’re meant to be, who we can keep growing into.

(In love with the photographs? You can see more photos of the Camas flowers, purchase and see more of these photographs here.)

History of Camas Flower

For thousands of years, the Camas Lily Flower (also known as Camassia Quamash) was cultivated by the indigenous peoples of the Pacific Northwest in North America. It wasn’t until colonizers arrived and took over their lands, introducing European farming methods, that most of these fields died off. Camas flowers and their bulbs were harvested in early summer months by tribes, then baked into breads and preserved for use throughout the winter.

Often, they were exchanged as wedding gifts or even used in trade. They were a very valuable item, as they made up 50% of the diets of some people groups.

When harvesting these flowers, tribes would harvest the larger bulbs, then leave the smaller ones to winterize and grow larger. Often, large fields were burned in a controlled burn to prevent other plant life from growing in these camas fields.

They were so dense and thick in certain areas that when Lewis and Clark explored these areas, they wrote in their journals that the fields looked like water.

However, most of the fields and practices of the camas flowers are now stories of forgotten First Peoples’ groups. However, you can still find conservation areas of camas flowers throughout the Pacific Northwest.

(In love with the photographs? You can see more photos of the Camas flowers, purchase and see more of these photographs here.)

As I was sitting with the Camas flower for my archetype studies and creating my next women’s retreat I knew I had to change plans. Every feild I entered did not feel like these flowers wanted women to be here. No it felt like we needed to activate the rage of this history and our own.

So I scrapped ALL my plans and threw out announcements to lead a Holy Rage ceremony. No event page, one email, and a beautiful group of femmes gathered with me at a secert location out here in the Pacific Northwest.

Rage and anger are often misunderstood emotions that can be experienced poorly. But what if we created safe containers for them? Rituals for their expressions?

Places to be witnessed, known without needing the whole story.

My Experience Leading the Holy Rage Retreat

I found a special location for our Holy Rage retreat out near the Columbia River Gorge. I wanted water to be supporting us as we stepped into the fire burning under the surface.

Here in the retreat, we sat in the wisdom of our bodies.

We stepped into deep expression, in deep witnessing of each other, and let the grief and rage meld together as the earth held us and the fire burned what needs sacred release from our holy temples, our bodies.

We danced, we raged, and we burned away what is no longer ours.

In the middle, I offered anyone who wanted a witness the opportunity to use my camera. One woman asked me. So she dove into her own expressions of her rage.

The gift in my work is that we don’t always have the story to release, we let the body express itself, speak its language, which isn’t always in words or forms our minds know.

The following photos are from the woman who agreed to allow me to share their photos from their experiences.

At the time, I too had been in a deep season with my life, where I needed to burn down pieces of my programming that said I needed to please to stay in relationships, that I needed to suffer to be with a man, that said I needed to be quiet and hold my needs in.

So I, too, let them rage, let them out.

Together we all released.

Together we healed.

Together, we followed the wisdom of the Camas Flower.

Below is a video of her sharing about Blooming Caverns after she got home.

Why Holy Rage Work Matters for Women Today

Remembering we are not on these journeys alone, we’re not separate from our environments, and in fact, nature is always reflecting a deeper archetype of our experiences that we are barely beginning to understand.

And this is the play and experiences we offer inside Celebrate Again, as well as the medicine we experience in my women’s retreats, Blooming Caverns, and my group program, House of Bliss.

Will you step into the fullness of yourself? Give them a voice, a shape, and hold in sacred witnessing, celebration, and honoring outside of tiny screens, outside of one’s close friends, but deep in community?

Ready to learn more about feeling your feelings in the way I talk about them check out this article.

Or step into one of my experiences where practice always helps

If you want to be held in a gentle container to begin to feel your emotions, consider trying my pay-what-you-can Somatic Movement (feeling movement) meditation class replay.