Animá Lifeways & Herbal School

Many of you have been waiting for the release of this special course for a long time.  Wait no longer!  Registrations are now being accepted, just click on the link at the bottom of this post.  We will be announcing approximately 1 new or revised course per week for awhile, including the upcoming first course in the Anima Healing Arts herbal series.  Thank you for forwarding these announcements, to folks you think could most benefit from the various subjects. -Kiva Rose

Announcing the Anima Correspondence Course

EMPTYING OUR BURDEN BASKET:
Unburdening, Evaluating & Then Choosing The Burdens We Bear

with Jesse Wolf Hardin

Suggested Length: 3 Days to 2 Weeks

Included: Assigned readings, exploratory questions, step by step instructions, and assignments for implementation

The Burden Basket is a metaphor for the load that we carry on our shoulders, including not only unpleasant obligations, restrictive schedules and plans, but also the commitments and responsibilities we are proud or pleased to bear.  The worries and fears we’re attached to.  The weight of what we think we know.  The illusions and preconceptions that limit our understanding.  The dogma and certainty, comfort and assurance.  The career that we are bound to.  The family and other people we’re promised to, and the ways in which we are expected to be with them.

Most of our lives we may choose to just keep adding to our Basket, never taking time to do a comprehensive inventory, to see what has grown or otherwise changed since we first put it in there, to assess what is still real and relevant to us and see which continues to align with our needs and priorities  as well as what doesn’t.  The result of such endless accumulation is often a feeling of being over-promised and overwhelmed, beholding to old promises and intentions rather than responsive to current needs, principles, mission and purpose.

You are sure to benefit from the Burden Basket process and course:

• If your daily activities seem increasingly unrelated to your needs, desires and aims
• If you are spending an every larger portion of your days worrying about what you “have” to do instead of what calls to you
• If your preoccupation is with the problems of the past or fears of the future rather than the challenges, lessons and rewards of the present
• If you feel that you owe a debt to somebody or something, rather than feeling a desire to give back
• If you think of much of what you have promised as obligations, instead of as commitments
• If some of your commitments were made mostly to meet the expectations or demands of others
• If your main reason for sticking with any unhealthful activities, patterns or relationships is that you’d feel guilty if you didn’t
• If you have come to resent any of the ways that you give to loved ones and the world
• If current relationships are based on who you once were, instead of on who you are now
• If your relationships, behaviors and missions have evolved, without reappraising and reframing them
• If your vocation doesn’t serve your purpose, or weaken your spirit
• If you mainly cling to the place where you live out of habit, convenience, desperation or familial expectation rather than because it somehow serves and nurtures you
• If you feel stressed over things you no longer truly care about
• If you are unclear on the order of your priorities
• If you are unclear what is amendable, as well as what is irrevocable
• If you mistakenly imagine that it is “out of your hands,” that others have control and you have no options
• If you are willing (not necessarily “ready”!) to undertake a fresh and radically honest look at your life and how you live it, and initiate the major shifts that will be called for

Your course includes deep self exploratory questions, along with assignments that include not only every step of the actual Burden Basket emptying but also the instigation and framework for making the crucial changes in our lives.  More than a rite of passage, it involves a complete stripping down and reassessing, prompting a thorough remaking of our ways and beings, relationships and promises.

It is only with our baskets scarily empty, that we can see clearly what matters most.  It’s then – clear headed, unmanipulated, unmonitored and unburdened – that we can best decide which weighty ways of being, means of income, behavioral habits and systems of perception, long term efforts and worthy pledges to willingly and happily put back into our basket.  It’s then that we are best able to make conscious choices as to what to reincorporate and recommit to, which people to bring back into our promissory fold, and in what ways we insist on relating to them or being treated by them from now on.
Done well, there will not be nearly as many items in the Basket as before, with the unreal, illusory, outdated, unhealthy or no longer relevant left out.  And even if perchance the total weighs as much, you will then be able to shoulder it again with satisfaction as well as determination on your face.

Through the process of this course, you will no longer do anything out of unconscious habit or unhealthy custom.  And you will no longer feel controlled or a victim of past pledges and circumstance.  You will for a period or periods step aside from all usual habits and ways – then re-enter the larger world you will help create – bearing responsibility but not obligation, carrying forward in your treasured basket what will then be your most welcome burdens.

Click Here to Register:

Correspondence Course Application

————-Thank you————-

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Another Celebration of The Gifting Cycle

by Jesse Wolf Hardin

Every moment is a gift, of course, and yet there is also very little time that goes by here at the Sanctuary that there is not the active gathering, creating and wrapping of presents of one kind or another.  Seldom are they mailed out to meet the obligations of a birthday or holiday, but to acknowledge good deeds, give thanks for assistance, to stimulate the receiver’s self knowledge, to express our affection and love.  It may be a hand painted card by Loba, sentiment and gratitude committed to paper with pastel water colors.  A thank you card by Rhiannon, drawn in her own inimitable way.  A recipe to someone in need of more flavor in their life.  A tool for someone with much to do.  A book of ours that some intent learner tells us they can’t afford.  A bag of woodstove baked granola, or hand me down clothes.

It was only a few days ago that I thought to photograph Rhiannon presenting to her little friend from town, Cassandra, with some lovely shirts and dresses… and if the lighting had been good enough, I would have included them here.  Then I came home with several boxes of hand picked gifts sent to us by our apprentice Resolute, providing another chance to illustrate my thoughts on gifting, and the vital gifting cycle.

By giving, and allowing ourselves to be given to, we are part of an ancient, primal Gifting Cycle… as crucial as the exchange of gases as we and plants share breaths, as the symbiotic give and take of every creature and its connected habitat.  Kiva is giving to her students and readers all day long, via her work on this donated Apple laptop, and so how natural it seems that they often send her packages of medicinal herbs and roots, dark chocolate and handmade crafts.  Or this stoneware Bear Fetish container, the first thing we pulled out when we opened the initial box from Resolute.

What fun, to sit everyone among the spread out bounty, including baskets for food and herbs, a wooden cased calligraphy set for Loba, and an extensive collection of prepared microscope slides (with such amazing micro panoramas as cicada legs and fractal fly eyes).  And to know that every item had great consideration put into its selection, by someone one of those many incredible women and men who care not only about our shared mission but about us personally as well.

I too was honored, with a carved pipe that will help embellish the walls of our enchanted work space.  While you can’t tell from the photo, it is in the shape of a bearded Viking with a look of intense determination, a flattering mirror of my not necessarily attractive trait of needing to always press through, to do, make better, and accomplish.

Not all our gifts this week have been material, can be worn, used or hung.  Others have been in the form of words expressing appreciation for a health consultation of Kiva’s that has dramatically improved their condition, for a timely bit of lifeways counsel or long submerged lines in a book of mine that rose to the surface of their consciousness just in time to solve a quandary or to inspire clear action.  So many ears will never make out the song of life we at Anima help disseminate, making it a touching gift to us every time what we teach proves to be a gift to the person making use of a skill or insight.

-Wolf

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I’m listening to Mari Boine as I write this, a Sami (once called Laplander) woman of incredible virtuosity.  Her powerful voice, singing mainly in her native language, evokes the glowing tipis of the haunting ice-laden north, the mystical landscapes of northern Sweden, Norway, Finland and Russia where these nomadic reindeer herders struggle to hold onto their sacred land-based traditions and connection to nature.  It is thus the chill of departing Winter that I hear now, though she is lately as apt to be performing with traditional African musicians of the far South, and her tribal shamanic sound and contemporary rhythms are a frequent soundtrack to our Anima canyon soundtrack as well.  One of the few songs she sings in English, “Big Medicine,” speaks of the power of the healers and creators of our world, a power lying to one degree or another in us all, a song that I wish all healers, herbalists, shamanic practitioners and lovers of the old ways could hear.  (The image of Mari below, is by Carina Musk Anderson.  I suggest starting with her album “In the Hand of The Night”, and then if you like it, getting them all!)

During this long Winter, along with the entire population dealing with the continuing economic downturn, we suffered deep personal tragedy, vehicle breakdowns, and a crazy stalker woman who has still not ceased her efforts to inflict pain, adding a sense of struggle to the period of short days and (for us) to0 little sun. And yet even in the hardest moments, there were has been great satisfaction, reaching and effecting the lives of more students and readers than ever, a deepening alliance with our closest allies and supporters, new ways of tightening the message and making every taught truth practically applicable.   The family has been well, everyone continuing to learn and deepen, Rhainnon’s constantly impressive development into a being of wisdom, compassion and power.   It is she who ensures we embrace the cold along with the warming rays, take joy in the rare snow drifts and the chance for sledding and Calvin and Hobbes snowmen.  Indeed, the Winter is never without its growth, for us in our personal stretching over and through the season’s challenges… but also for the green world rising up through even cold and snow.

Snow in Georgia and Florida, we heard on the satellite fed radio.  Here though, it is Spring already whether their is more of the wonderful white stuff or not, and after the December through January remission of certain species we now mark each day by an eruption of “firsts” again: the first nettle babies, already 7 or more inches tall.  The first buds on the wild elderberry bushes, the first willow buds, and now Kiva’s sighting of the first bee of the Spring, with childlike excitement on her own Sami-shaped face.  The days are appreciably longer as you hopefully all have been feeling, and even in more icy climes there must be a similar enchanted dusting of promise swirling about in the air, a sense of green energy building and readying to recover every snow or rain fed hill and yard.

The river here remains low, leading us to hope that the snows might be melting slower than these hot days would seem to indicate, slowly soaking into what has been a perennially thirsty ground.  We cannot get the Jeep all the way in, however, with the sixth of our seven crossings remaining unpassable by vehicle.  The river bottom there is a billowing pillow of sand, loose and wet down to a depth of 3 feet or more.  I sink to my thighs when walking across at that spot, not for entertainment or personal test, but to pull out a heavy winch line and attach it to well rooted willows in order to extricate what was meant to be an unstoppable School and Sanctuary vehicle.  Fortunately it is a only a short and dry walk from there, up over the ridge by the Gifting Lodge with whatever supplies we drive in that far.

The school, our blogs and websites have been as shifting as those river sands, though firming up into something ever more focused, organized and effective.  Amid all the conference work, course work and book writing, have been long conversations brainstorming ways of reaching and equipping more people with the skills most needed in these trying times.  You may be noticing a steady, subtle but instrumental developments in site and blog organization and language, as we incorporate what had been separate expressions of homesteading/conservation/rewilding on the one hand, and the self-growth/shamanic/spiritual on the other.  The next post after this will be Kiva’s detailed explanation and description of this evolution, including a change in her blog name and the unveiling of our healing arts and clinic component.  Curious yet?

For now though, I invite you to check out the announcement below, of our latest Anima course offering, and the first in what will be a long series of Nature Awareness courses.  If you have been looking for ways to connect to your home area, or to find the place that might feed your spirit and purpose best, this new course may be for you.  Next up are Kiva’s herbal course, a heightened Awareness course, and the promised course walking you through the extensive Burden Basket process.  Thank you in advance for doing what you can to share this announcement with others.

Love,

Wolf and Family

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Please post and forward: NEW ANIMA NATURE AWARENESS COURSE!

At last, an Anima course for deeper connection to self and place, through deepening awareness of the natural world we are a part of – skills for connecting to wherever we are, as well as tools for finding that special home that may be calling to us.

Nature Awareness:
Sense of Place and The Search For Home
with Jesse Wolf Hardin

You are invited to consider registering for – and encouraged to tell your friends about – our latest Anima Correspondence Course: 8 weeks of in-depth study, assignments and real-life practice.  The first in our Nature Awareness series, this demanding and fulfilling course helps to further develop our sense of place, expanding all so called levels of awareness through an intensified experiencing of the natural world… no matter where we live.

Increased sense of place and the package of skills provided, are as invaluable for folks in the city as they are for rural homesteaders, and can prove instrumental for teachers, activists, outdoor guides and wilderness educators.  Healers and urban foragers among you will practice delving into, bonding with and preserving the places where you gather your herbs and wild foods.

You could call this course foundational, in that the natural world and the specific places where we live form the very foundation of our lives.  Place serves as not only the location for our cities and the spot on the planet where we’re reading this, as the soil of our gardens and larger source of all sustenance, the wilderness we sojourn to and the wildness we seek to reclaim in ourselves, the milieu of our choices and the venue for our acts… but also as a lifelong influence on who we are, on the character and characteristics that we develop as we’re growing up, and which principles and purposes we are drawn to as seeking adults.  It affords us an education not only about itself and where we are, but lessons revealing and empowering our own natures as well.

In the practice of Anima, we increase awareness and understanding of our selves, others and the larger context, in the process of deliberately deepening our awareness of the natural world and our place within it.  Stimulating exploratory questions and real-life assignments are designed to:
• Awaken wonderfully affirming memories of our early connection to the natural world
• Awaken us to the still costly internal wounds caused by any loss of that connection, the destruction of childhood haunts, any later distancing between us and enchanted nature, and the know damaging of wild nature in general
• Define “bioregion” and assign an intimate, hands-on exploration and inventorying of the places and regions, wildlife and weather, medicinal herbs and edible plants, natural and human histories of the places where we live
• Providing tools for our reconnection with the natural world
• Helping us to feel at home wherever we are now, furthering meaningful relationship with our neighborhood yards and watershed, nearby parks and closest wild environs
• Helping us to develop criteria for finding the particular region that might serve us and our purposes best, assisting us in our search for home
• Instigating us to give back to place and nature, through substantial if seemingly personal ways – from husbandry, conservation and restoration to education and activism on its behalf

If you choose to complete this course, you will likely come away with the inspiration and initial skills for greater awareness of and appreciation for the places where we live and work, a sense of where they may belong or be most empowered and at home, and nature awareness perspective and habits that can foster greater awareness of every other kind.

To Register, Click on and Download the

Correspondence Course Application

or go to the

Correspondence Course Web Page

———

(Thank you for posting and spreading this.  The next Anima courses due for release are one on Increasing Awareness, a second one will be Kiva’s essential first Herbal Course for healers, and a third will be the in-depth Burden Basket process of emptying and then taking responsibility for all that we bear in our lives.)

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Greetings good and wild folk, on a lovely sunny February day.  While the east coast gets covered in deep snow drifts, we are already seeing the first buds on the current bushes and the cottonwoods and willows are soon to follow.  Nettle are again springing up in the snow soaked canyon bottom, bringing a fresh swath of green color and energy to the sheltered areas beneath the trees.  Within a very short time we will be witnessing golden clouds of juniper pollen, and be seeking Kiva’s herbal soaks for itchy eyes.  The river level remains low, only knee deep most places, but it also lacks the silver gray sheen that would indicate snowmelt from the upper watershed.  We can only get the raised Jeep as far as the 6th of our 7 crossings on the way to the property, but that doesn’t leave far to walk with mail and supplies.  Shortly, however, we can expect the level to rise again as the upper country thaws out, with the over 10 feet of snowpack churning downstream at uncrossable depths and water speed.  For that reason we did laundry in town, and are storing up on fuel and those groceries not harvested from the canyon itself.

Near the nettles patch is a batch of invasive horehound, a lovely plant that nonetheless tends to outcompete our native varieties.  You can read an article I wrote on the gut-wrenching considerations of when to intercede and when to allow introduced species free rein.  As in all Anima teachings, the conclusion is that we need a combination of sensitivity and responsibility, along with a willingness to accept that we have a decided if not always so deliberate impact on our co-created world.  To read this piece, please turn to it here by clicking on its page on Kiva’s Medicine Woman Blog.

Rhiannon is patiently awaiting watching a bit of vintage Johnny Cash with me, one of her gothic Americana favorites believe it or not.  And after a long day of school, homestead tasks and strenuous play she certainly deserves any perceived treat.  I close with hugs and thanks from us all…

-Wolf

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The below video will give you a small but vivid taste of what you can look forward to if you plan on attending this September’s upcoming Traditions in Western Herbalism Conference. It includes a look at our outstanding selection of teachers, a glimpse of the beautiful site in the high desert of New Mexico and even a chance to hear the earthy and intriguing music of our two of our featured bands, R.I.S.E. (formerly Rising Appalachia) & Arborea. So take a moment to sit back, relax and enjoy a brief but magical journey into the enchantment yet to come…

This amazing video was brainstormed and created by TWHC Sponsorship Director, Animá Medicine Woman Mentorship student and practicing herbalist, Rosalee de la Forét, and we’re so grateful for her hard work, astute insights and infectious enthusiasm.. thank you, Rosalee!

If you’re excited about the conference and the opportunities it presents, whether you’re able to attend this year or not, please take the time to forward or share this clip whenever and wherever appropriate! You can send them to this post, or directly to the youtube link:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FXNR7_k-vNo

Let me take a moment to emphasize here that the conference is an international one and not necessarily specific to to the American West or Southwest, there’s something for everyone here. Registrants from as far away as Canada, the UK, Alaska, Hawaii and possibly even Central America will be in attendance!

Thanks so much to all of the generous individuals and organizations that have helped spread the word and increase awareness of the Traditions in Western Herbalism Conference, your assistance and generosity makes all of the difference and means so much to us personally, thank you!

~Kiva Rose

Note: if you’re an email subscriber and have a hard time seeing this from your inbox, just click on the title of this post to be taken to the actual blog site and you can watch from there. Or use this link to go directly to youtube to watch:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FXNR7_k-vNo

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Introduction: The following is a recounting of the work being done by an Animá lifeways student, enrolled in what is admittedly a grueling Mentorship process. Before progressing with who she wants to be and become, it felt crucial that she first re-explore herself, plumb her needs and vision fully, and let go of whatever no longer serves. The Animá Burden Basket Ceremony is intended for exactly that, not a mere ritual but an actual emptying of even the most vital things in our lives, positive and negative, followed by a conscious re-collection and reintegration of what best serves our authentic selves, feeds our passions and furthers our purpose. If you are interested, we can post a Burden Basket essay here… and in the next couple month an entire 8 week Burden Basket course will be available. Jenna is brave in her changes, and in sharing them here… and I feel certain would appreciate your support and comments here. -JWH

My Burden Basket Ceremony
by Jenna
Animá Shaman Path Student

With my husband recently deceased and my four children grown, married and looking for their own life adventures that bring them happiness, it is my time too to engage in a search — for a way to live my life that expresses my natural rhythms and talents and brings me joy! This quest has led me, in part, to the Animá Center and its Shaman Path, drawn to the Center by the important work being done there and the beauty of the magnificent Gila.

I began my first Burden Basket ceremony at the request of my mentor, Wolf Hardin, who gave me some ceremony materials to read. “Sure!” I thought. “I can do that.” The emptying of a burden basket sounded like fun and I enjoy ritual, so I set aside one whole week-end from Friday night to Monday morning to complete it. But, I discovered the ceremony to be far from fun for the first 48 hours! I kept very still in the beginning, ate little, drank tea, slept, and dreamed a lot. I waited quietly for stuff to come up, and up it came! More than I expected.

I cried a lot during my Burden Basket ceremony and eventually laughed some, too, and emerged more fully aware of the direction I want my life to go as well as what I want to take with me on the journey and what I want to leave behind.

Things I took out, and am leaving out of my basket:

Owning my house – Represents comfort, safety, privacy, peace…but, the payment is so high that I have to work 40 hours per week to pay for it, and really can’t enjoy it that much. Also, it is not in the area where I want to live…I want to step off the grid of suburban life. Plan to rent upstairs – mother-in-law – apartment from my kids if they move here, and sub-let it when I want to travel. This will also cut my payment in half, so I might be able to quit job and live on my husband’s Social Security (higher than mine).
Job – Definitely not what I want to be doing in this last half of my life…done with 9/5 life and doing work that does not tap into my passion and deepest creative urges. I do appreciate this job and the time it afforded me to help my husband die. It also gives me time to move into the next phase of my life without too much stress now that I know the processes of proposal writing. But, I am making plans now to leave this job through writing and alternative living arrangements besides home ownership.
Having to live close to my family – I will take this out and look at it with an objective eye. Other than a few people, I really don’t see that much of my other family except at birthday parties…which I am giving up completely. So, the idea that I have to live here is erroneous. I don’t see that much of the others due to our schedules, so I could visit them or they could visit me wherever I live.
Birthday parties – I spend way too much money on these (seems like we have two birthday parties every week-end), and am quitting the practice of giving everyone something monetary this year (I don’t even believe in that kind of consumerism!). I will try to make something of beauty for people, but if I can’t or don’t get the time, I will not feel guilty about it.
My negative feelings about my body – My body will respond to love greater than self-criticism. I do have a lovely body that has supported me through much in these 62 years, and for that I am grateful
Undervaluing Myself– This does not serve me in the least
Being the Selfless Mother – This does not serve either me or my kids. Being a loving mother who listens and offers helpful advice and help when possible and for the highest good for all concerned is acceptable, but I can not direct the course of my kids lives. I need to let them to work through their problems, using their own skills (which they do for the most part quite well…it is just my guilt that makes me think that I should always be jumping in there and trying to make things right for them).
Guilt – Ill serving 100 percent!
Time wasting – This must go…I have too much to accomplish in the next twenty years
Procrastinating – Goes along with time wasting. I am going to work diligently to do the things that I know must be done without waiting until the last minute…that causes undue stress in my life, and it is not good for my health.
Safety in the suburbs – This idea has to go…it is bullshit
Negative Head Talk
Victim Thinking
Eating out a lot
Catholicism/dogma – and the guilt, sinfulness, patriarchal spirituality, Big Cheese in the sky stuff that goes along with it
Being a “People Pleaser”
Aging fears – I’m getting older and into my elder years; that is a given…live it joyfully and gracefully as a Medicine Woman. It is living and loving fully each moment that matters…what lasts in the minds and hearts of others.
Staying indoors too much – Vow to get outside more in the coming years for my happiness and health
Living in my head too much – This has got to go!
Abandonment Issues – Working to shift direction of thinking from external to internal, self-love
D – Oh my…can’t believe D showed up. Let him go!
Resentments/Soap Opera View of Life

Things I put back into and choose to bear in my basket:

Maintain loving relationships – commitment to my children, family, close friends (some establish better boundaries with some), develop a wider circle of relations through volunteer work in the community and with the earth, water, air, animals
Caretaking of an elder friend– Help her granddaughters see through her aging and illness and help her transition into death
Healthy Lifestyle – This is something I want to commit to…exercise, fresh air, eating healthy foods, giving up coffee except one cup in the morning…Yoga and
Embracing Healthy Solitude in my life – I’m a relational person and do need people, but I need a level of solitude as well.
Honoring my natural rhythms – That means creating a certain amount of solitude, creative and relationship time – writing in the mornings, meditation, prayer, exercise, outside time, play and fun, volunteer work.
Moving through grief – I have been grieving the death of my husband and other losses in my life, and not enjoying my life as I normally do
Dream work
Need to find satisfying volunteer work – Satisfying, people centered work that I enjoy and can share with others – and hospital work at All Children’s Hospital…reading to the young children would be nice and something I’ve enjoyed in the past
Books/Reading – Yes and no. Always will keep books in my life, but will let go of using them to fill time.
Movies – Only a few (of the most meaningful and helpful)
Finish Culminating Project/Thesis – And turn it into a book!
Animá Path Mentoring – Love it so far.
Active in the “WomenBecoming” group – Yes, I’ve learned a lot from this group of women over the past six years, and have grown to love them.
The Synchronicity Forum – Still hosting for awhile, but I need to inform the group that I’ve turned it into a Creative Project, so they are off the hook for follow-up questionnaires and exit interviews
Sexuality – I hope to always express my sexuality healthily and with appropriate partners
Another relationship with a man – We’ll see…leaving it in the basket, but it will have to be the absolutely RIGHT relationship for me, and I’m not sure what that looks like at this time…no rush.
Need for Beauty – Yes. But it doesn’t have to be in the form of baubles…it can be the wild, something I’ve created, my lovely children and grandchildren, and acts of inner beauty.
Writing – That is one my joys and part of what I am committed to do
Stewardship of the land – I would like to learn this and take part in it with the folks at the Gila Canyon
Taking care of Casey (my dog) – It’s a contract to the end
Practicing Mindfulness – Have made a commitment to this in all areas of my life
Savoring life – Yes… and living on purpose with passion
Expressing my beliefs about US and Corporate Policies – Continue to send emails and letters to congress and companies like Monsanto to oppose war and other policies that are destroying the earth and peace on this planet
Charitable donations
Volunteering at Pet Pal Rescue
Grandmother Wisdom Sharing – with my own granddaughters and other young and adult women…dream sharing, synchronicity journaling, quilting, initiation and rituals around menses/motherhood/menopause and other transitional times in life
Self-love and Empowered Choice – Yes!
Telling the truth – even when it makes myself and others uncomfortable
Maintaining inner harmony – living with a feeling of well-being
Protecting my sacred space – maintaining healthy boundaries with family and friends
Nurture pleasures in life – swimming, dancing, music, art, quilting, playing
Sharing stories with others – for fun and healing
Forgiveness of self and others for mistakes of the past
Learn to trust my inner instincts and intuitions
Acknowledge my own and others feelings

I understand more fully since my Burden Basket ceremony how parts of my current lifestyle are in direct opposition to the harmonic lifestyle I alluded to in the beginning of this post, so those things had to be taken out of the basket… for instance, continuing to work merely for the cash.

I completed the ceremony as thoroughly as the time span would allow, but I now know that I could have devoted a much longer period of time to the process. I was just getting into the swing of it after two and a half days. Besides, I had waited so long to even look inside my basket that it had become laden with many things that no longer served my life. Now that I’ve experienced the Burden Basket ceremony, I know that it will never be done “once and for all.” It is a living part of me that is changing as I change and choose what I want to keep and what I want to discard in my life.

I have been thinking a lot about the process and trying to stay with the integrity of what I decided. The funny thing is that the birthday parties are currently the main issue…I really didn’t know how to tell my close, extended family that enough is enough. I’m not a “shopper” by nature, and we all have enough junk to last us a lifetime. So, I came up with a plan (right before the next b-day was to come up that week-end – as you can see, I have a LARGE extended family) to let everyone know that I will donate money to the birthday person’s favorite charity in their name (when and if that is feasible for me). That way, I get to make charitable donations to the organizations that need it and honor the person whose birthday it is. Luckily, my niece, whose birthday was the first birthday that came up after my decision, deferred to my judgment about where to donate. I got to choose Partners in Health – one of my Burden Basket choices to donate to for relief in Haiti – and give her something for her birthday in way that is in line with my own beliefs. I call that a win/win situation!

Thanks for sharing with me.

-Jenna

(To enroll in an Animá Lifeways or Herbal Correspondence Course, go to the Courses page of the website at www.animacenter.org)

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Please Download, Print & Share
THE NEW COLOR POSTERS

for the

TRADITIONS IN WESTERN HERBALISM CONFERENCE

Your help is kindly requested, sharing the new trifold brochures for the conference, and making time to put up some of the matching posters.  TWHC CoDirector Jesse Wolf Hardin spent nearly 20 hours designing and creating them, with his logo framed by a selection of his and my medicinal plant portraits.  The background earth-tones are from his photo of volcanic cliff-rock near the Animá Sanctuary, but was picked for its ability to evoke the earthen pastel tones of the beautiful hills surrounding the Ghost Ranch conference site.

Write us to request whatever number of brochures you can put to good use, ideally handed to herbal and health related business owners who may want to participate by sponsoring, vending or practicing there, or left in small piles in herbal stores that will agree to keep them out.  We can send you the files if you would like to print them off yourself, though you would need to know how to print on both sides.

The color posters come in 2 sizes, large 11×17 ones that we hope you can get store owners and health practitioners to commit to keep up in their windows or on their counter fronts from now until the event next September.  We will be selling these as art posters at the event, but will also be happy to give a signed copy as a gift to you along with however many copies for you to post in your region or on your travels.  The smaller version is 8.5X11, and is available either by writing us, or by downloading and then printing the linked poster file.

Ideal places for posting the large and small posters are herb stores, natural health stores, natural food stores, health practitioner waiting rooms, herbal and healing school foyers, university student union buildings, university medicine and botany building bulletin boards, and culturally conscious cafes.  Please don’t feel like you have to take on a load… if a goodly amount of you could commit to posting even 5 or 10 – and to checking back to make sure they stay up and aren’t covered over – that would be a huge contribution!

That so many people want to involve themselves and help, is essential to making this conference a success and to ensure their will be others in subsequent years.  It is also satisfying in itself, the connection we feel in this alliance of purpose.  Thank you dearly from us both.

Kiva Rose & Jesse Wolf Hardin
TWHC
Kiva(at)TraditionsInWesternHerbalism.org
www.TraditionsInWesternHerbalism.org

DOWNLOAD SMALL TWHC POSTER HERE

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You may have noticed the change in the Animá Blog banner, with the addition of the words “Nature Awareness, Healing & Rewilding Skills,” a line that will be added to the Animá website splash page as well as soon as limited time permits.  This description is meant to further define our work and in particular what is meant by the term “Lifeways.”  Lifeways are not vaporous ideas or lofty philosophy, but a way and means for connecting with the natural world and our own natural selves, tools of empowerment with practical application in the real everyday world.  Herbal and Awareness courses, for example are made up of not just information and exploratory questions but also extensive assignments for immediate useful application.  When we do our Wild Child course, it will be with hands-on techniques for empowering and growing our offspring and students, the ReWilding course a set of steps to becoming indigenous again, restoring the land as well as our natural beings and dreams.  Our earlier name change to “School” made clear our mission to teach, now at the onset it is made obvious that we are offering, and what we are all about.  Nature Awareness covers not only nature reconnection but using the awareness and lessons that the natural world provides, wild foods gathering and paleo diet, self sufficiency, self authority and activism, plant medicines and natural healing methods.  Skills for knowing, being, and especially doing….

This blog began as a means to share with a growing number of the wide-ranging Animá community, and it continues to accomplish that near as we can tell.  But these days it is increasingly serving to affirm, stir up and provide information to a widening swath of people from all walks of life.

We hope you like it.  Some of you have been with me since the initials to this project were “ESP” and my teachings mainly shared through esoteric, activist oriented “Medicine Show” concerts, and it hopefully feels good to have been a part of and reason for the transformation and growth.  Personal thanks to Kiva for facilitating so much of the valuable shifts in organization, language and packaging, making Animá all the more accessible and effective, and to Resolute and our Supporters for doing so much to make each step possible.  And thank you from the bottom of my heart to our students and readers, for being a part of the work and blessings, inperterbable principles and organic changes of this evolving mission and purpose.

Love and Blessings, Wolf & All

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When the familiar and welcome sun came back out, our batteries were so low that the panels surged to 34 amps and freaked out our charge controller.  As of last night we had already stored enough juice to be back up to 80 percent.  While dealing with the natural ebb and flow of electricity here in the canyon, we had no idea that the entire county had been suffering an outage for 4 whole days, with gas stations shut down and only the clinic, courthouse and little grocery store running on generators.  It was a reminder of how fragile even “self sufficient” minded communities are, large or small, that a storm-dropped tower can render it helpless, with houses unlilt, cars parked for lack of fuel.  And it was encouraging, to realize again not only how blessed – but how truly possible – it is to depend on oneself and alternate technologies instead of on a system that makes us dependent.

Today I walk out, wading the thigh deep ice melt river to get to Resolute’s Owl Rover vehicle and on into town for vittles and mail.  For the first 3 years I was here I walked the entire 10 miles to the village, so these days a short walk to a warm car due to washed out crossings seems like nothing but a minor adventure and opportunity to trade hours on the laptop for awakened senses, a gratified heart and chilled feet.  I start by following the rabbit tracks in the snow, bounding as best I can through the entrance to life’s Wonderland.

Whatever your own adventures today, we hope you make sure they serve you as well.

-Wolf

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