Magnus and The Cleavers:

Inspiring Resistance To The Machine We Reside In

by Jesse Wolf Hardin

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Let me preface by pointing out that no one is more likely to sneer at popular culture in general, from plastic boobed Barbie dolls to the latest Avengers movie blockbuster.  Entertainment for entertainment’s sake, quite frankly, bores the hell out of me… futuristic machine-filled drivel worst of all.  The closest I get to SciFi is rare super clever magical realism or post-apocalyptic books and films such as “Brazil”.  And while I see value in both revolution and self defense, I find no enjoyment in the gratuitous violence that is at the core of so much media including Magnus The Robot Fighter.  But Magnus is different.  He somehow managed to whack the heck out of all kinds of malicious bots without ever hurting another living thing, and always to protect life against the threats posed by our unliving machinations.  As a young boy, I eschewed Casper The Friendly Ghost and Superman in favor of the first of these Gold Key classics on the indomitable robot fighter, at what was then 12 cents per issue.  I was a barefoot backyard adventurer crawling deep into a hidden alcove within the landscape shrubbery in order to peruse the latest Magnus tale without distraction or interruption.. and I still find something to be recommended in them.

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Check it out: Magnus lives in a future time when machines have have developed to the point of doing all the heavy work formerly done by humans.  Distant planets are mined for minerals, while much of Earth is dotted with giant metropolis where even the weather is controlled.  The inhabitants are generally disinterested in Magnus’ warnings that human kind is getting weaker, softer and easier to manipulate as a result, being satisfied to focus on the latest technological amusements and distractions.  An exception is a group of Magnus-inspired pre-teens calling themselves “The Outsiders”, ostensibly named because they prefer adventures outdoors to sedate activities inside, but they are clearly outsiders to their own parents and kind as well, due to their unwillingness to remain passive, and how very differently they view the world.

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Magnus was specially prepared for his unique role as a champion of both the foolish and unfit citizens, and of the “old ways” that he believes could be humanity’s single best chance.  Every issue, he is called to put a halt to the destructive acts of robots either set into motion by accident or directed by some demented person on the sidelines.  In doing so, he often draws on the powers of the earth, the forces of nature, or the spiritual and magical assistance of Native Americans both still living and long deceased.

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Magnus was trained since childhood in both awareness skills and a secretive martial art, a technique that somehow allows him to karate chop through the metal necks of heady robots without breaking every bone in his hands.  It’s a good thing, since he is forever finding himself fighting alone, one of the only ones who has a clue and is determined at great risk to do something about a threat or injustice.  We see him again and again, surrounded on all sides by an unfeeling enemy, trying to hem him in and incapacitate him as he wildly but deliberately strikes in one direction and then another.

I could relate.  Nearly a decade before I had any fuzz on my face to consider shaving, I was already feeling besieged myself. At home in the early 1960s, I was surrounded by miles and miles of suburban cookie-cutter tract homes, inundated with the sounds of lawn mowers giving bristly haircuts to the poor bluegrass lawns no different than the crewcuts that parents usually made their kids wear.  And surrounded by people pretending to be happy in order to get along, copying each other in desperate attempts to conform, robotically going through their days on automatic pilot, taking orders from higher-ups, repeating the same polite phrases to one another whether they meant it or not.

I sensed that underneath the pallid skin of television’s “Leave It To Beaver” Cleaver Family was something other than flesh and blood, something coldly manufactured with pre-programed abilities and limitations, prescribed limits and penalties.

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If the kid they called the “Beaver” ever pulled what we now think of as a Fight Club plot device and blew up his own home, amongst the smoldering ruins of the supposed “American Dream” I was sure they’d find a prostrated June and Ward, wires and diodes observable through a host of ugly wounds, their acrylic hair curled into umber afros by the intense heat of flaming formica counters and poly playthings.

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Unlike the “Beav”, I’d had enough of the sameness and lameness, the habituation and automation, I was ready for training, ready to fight for what’s real and natural and right!

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But like Magnus, I also felt as if I were in a confrontation with soulless machinery, in a battle with the larger machine that we civilized people reside and function within.  Thus, when Magnus struck out at robots large and small, it was in my young mind’s eye a swipe against the television and its lies, the public school system that felt more like an automated factory to me, the real estate developers gobbling up the last wild places and replacing them with endless streets and strip malls, the lawyers and legislators that are its cogs and wheels, the government robots that repeat the same hollow tape-loop rhetoric over and over again until one day their batteries give out and slur and stall, a swipe at the faceless corporate-body robot that controls it all.

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Long before I became a social and ecoactivist, first coined the word “rewilding” or moved onto this wild riparian sanctuary that has for over three decades been my home, I found inspiration in the decisive things that this muscled hero in goofy orange spandex would do, and found support in my being an “Outsider” too…

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Anima Nature Awareness & Herbal School

www.AnimaCenter.org

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Plant Healer Summer 2012 Issue

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Here’s Your Sneak Peak at The
Summer Issue of
PLANT HEALER
The Magazine Different
Available for Download June 4th

Excitement abounds!  We are just this week completing production of the 7th edition of Plant Healer Magazine, the nearly 300 page long Summer issue available for download on the 4th of June.

As always, Plant Healer will bring to you a broad range of articles, photography and art covering every aspect of herbal practice and the diverse culture of folk herbalism, this time including:
•A half dozen plant profiles, case study, therapeutics and herbal actions by our awesome Plant Healer writers
•A new “Herbalism on the American Frontier” Department, beginning with an introduction to Traveling Medicine Show sellers by Sean Donahue
•Essential Plant identification with 7Song… plus a lengthy interview with Bevin Clare, revealing the thoughts and spirit of this tree-hugging vice president of the AHG as never before!
•An excellent introduction to Bioregional Herbalism by Lisa Ferguson, and important piece on plant conservation by United Plant Savers director Susan Leopold
•Herbs of the curandera, Susun Weed on Sweet and Bland, Greek Herbal Medicine by Matt Wood, and Phyllis Light’s Four Elements system
•23 full page art posters, herbalist humor, and Kristine Brown and Jane Valencia’s articles for kids
plus
•A full color photo spread of herbalist tattoo art, Aviva Romm on the use of cannabis in pregnancy, and the Virgin of Guadalupe as a powerful historic icon for rebels and misfits as well as for all herbalists and healers!

Now we ‘spect you know where the “different” comes from, in our motto “The Magazine Different”

To whet your appetites, a complete table of contents follows.  To subscribe in time for the Summer issue, please go to the:
Plant Healer Magazine Website

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Time Keepers by Thea Summer Deer

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PLANT HEALER
Vol.II #III – Summer 2012 Issue Contents:

Cover Art: The Summer Garden (photoshop composite)
Art Poster: The Door To Our Purpose by JWH
Art Poster: Folk Herbalism Defined – “Airmid” by Joanna Powell Colbert
Art Poster: Earth Provides The Medicine – “Traditional Healer” by David Gluckstein & JWH
The Healing Journey: What Herbalists Really Want by Jesse Wolf Hardin

Magnolia Mexicana

Poster: Herbal Rebel Family – Paul Bergner and Tania with their New Baby
Happy & Full of Happiness!: A Review of The 2011 TWHC by Katja Swift
Art Poster: “Time Keepers” by Thea Summer Deer
Mountain Medicine: Four Elements by Phyllis Light

Conception by Thea Summer Deer

Art Poster: Czech Flower Girl – 1906 Postcard
Wise Woman Ways: Sweet & Bland: Part II by Susun Weed
Poster: Traditional Herbalist Wisdom Part I – If They Can’t Take a Yoik by JWH
Differentiating Herbal Actions & Properties by Jim McDonald
Art Poster: “The Green Man II” by JWH

Gaia by Holly Sierra

Detecting False Heat by Rosalee de la Forêt
Herbalist Humor Poster: “Feelin’ Awful Pitta” by JWH
Case Study: Herbal Therapeutics for Post-Surgery ACL Recovery by Kiva Rose Hardin
Art Poster: Unfolding Spiral by JWH
Walking The Spiral by Jesse Wolf Hardin
Art Poster: Growth Is A Spiral Process by JWH

Mullein Harves Girl by Sandra Crowell

Mullein by Robin Rose Bennett
Burdock by Henriette Kress
Ocotillo by Darcey Blue French

Ocotillo photo by Darcey Blue

Coffee by Charles “Doc” Garcia
Art Poster: Mullein Harvesting Woman by Sandra Crowell
Learning To Identify Plants – Part I by 7Song
Art Poster: 1880s Peruna Herbal Tonic Advertisement
Medicine Oils and Salves by Christa Sinadinos
Traveling Medicine Shows of Rural America and Early Regulation of Medicine by Sean Donahue
Basic Principles of Greek Herbal Medicine: The Four Qualities & The Four Degrees by Matthew Wood

La Virgen de Guadalupe by Kiva Rose Hardin
Los Remidios de la Guadalupe by Kiva Rose
La Curandera de Auza by Dr. Javier Alvare Caperochipi
Art Poster: “La Nuestra de la Yerbas” by JWH
Art Poster:    “Doña Rosa” by JWH
Art Poster: “Curandera” by Ochichi

Tattoo Bloom: Skin Art for Herbalists by Jesse Wolf Hardin
Art Poster: “Conception” by Thea Summer Deer
Cannabis in Pregnancy by Aviva Romm
Art Humor Poster: Unhelpful Herbalist Language #1 by JWH
Refreshing Mint (for kids) by Kristine Brown
Hawthorn’s Generous & Protective Heart (for kids) by Jane Valencia
Paloma & Wings (for kids) by Jane Valencia
Wildcrafting Cattails by Wendy Butter Petty

Bitternut Fruit

Edible Bitternut by Samuel Thayer
Art Poster: “Gaia” by Holly Sierra
Piles of Greens (food recipes) by Loba
Art Poster: Cultivating A Culture of Healing by JWH
Growing Adaptogens: Gotu Kola and Jiaogulan by Juliet Blankespoor
Art Poster: The Green Scare by Anon
Sacred Groves: Activism & The Conservation of Plants by Susan Leopold
Herbal Humor Poster: 12 Steppe Program by JWH
Plant Healer Interview: Bevin Clare
Bioregional Herbalism: Ecological Relationship & Place-Based Practice by Lisa Ferguson
Healing Animals Heals Us & The Earth by Cat Lane

Photo copyright Henriette Kress http://www.henriettesherbal.com/index.html

Self Care, Part II: Decadence by Katja Swift
Magical Realism: Medicine Bear Review #1 by Charles “Doc” Garcia
A Jewell of a Story: Medicine Bear Review #II by Virginia Adi
The Medicine Bear (fiction for herbalists) Part III by Jesse Wolf Hardin
Art Poster: Ringtail Woman by Rebekah Klitzke
The Medicine Trail: Wild Rambles, Tales & Wanderings by Kiva Rose Hardin
Art Poster: “Keeping An Eye On Folk Herbalism” – 1915 Postcard

The deadline for article submissions for the Fall issue is July 1st.  And August 1st is the deadline to advertise in either the Fall issue or the upcoming 2012 Plant Healer Annual book.  Write for more information.

Thank you for RePosting and Forwarding this Announcement.

Love, Kiva ‘Ringtail” Rose

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Kiva Ringtail Rose by Jesse Wolf Hardin

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On-Site Helpers continue to be a blessing, the rotating volunteers gained through the great WWOOF program for organic farm work-exchange.  Helper Rachel has been not only assisting with oven making, cooking and wood gathering, but also making the place safer by meticulously raking up the thick mat of dead grass around the buildings. Every day, helper Greg has been swinging a pick and prying with a rock bar, in order to complete the ditches needed for laying the water sprinkler pipe.  Hopes are that he will still be here when project ramrod Dan’l mounts and tests the sprinklers.  Already I have seen a vision of over 20 of them pumping a steady spray, covering the buildings and immediate surroundings in protective overlapping arcs that could ensure we still have a home should a fire come through, a resident center from which to reach out with healing ministrations again.  We especially look forward to sharing photos of them the first time they are tested, and to the satisfaction felt by those of you who donated to last year’s emergency fire fund.  The clouds will often be scarce during the most dangerous months of May through July, but thanks to the efforts of Dan’l and our helpers, we can make like rain!

Anima Sanctuary On-Site Helpers, left to right: Hanna, Rachel, Fritz & Greg (with visiting, computer-bound herbalist 7Song)

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Other projects being worked on simultaneously are an outdoor, open-walled kitchen that will feature a porcelain sink, antique gas stove and wood stove from Trail Boss.  An amazing Dan’l-designed composting latrine with a hut that slides on wheels from one composting bin to the next.   And cold frames made of cinder blocks and salvaged windows, that may soon be getting filled with dirt and planted… our first ever critter-proof growing environ.  As I write this, talented helper Hanna is assisting with sewing projects, while her sweetheart Fritz cuts wood for the latrine framing, and Loba bakes pie and bread.  Loba has loved preparing meals for the guests, as well as teaching them what she knows, and soon she will be able to bake in the Indian style horno mud oven that Fritz and crew have very nearly finished.  In the next week or so, I will try to make time to post pictures and some of the tale of its construction, with notes about how these wonderful natural ovens work.

Anima Outdoor Kitchen construction, left to right: Fritz, Trail Boss, Dan'l (on roof) & Hanna

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Fritz is a strapping tall, red-bearded, Viking-lookin’ fellow with a friendly, booming voice, who has put a remarkable amount of energy into every project that he works on.  Knowledgeable about many things, he’s also been great at instructing our other helpers and apportioning tasks, seeing that things flow and progress on the days that Dan’l can’t be here.  His glad-hearted assistance will be immediately missed, when the canyon says goodbye next weekend to him, and the helpful Hanna and Rachel.  Thank you all, from all of us, from the sanctuary itself, and from me personally.  I wish you deep blessings and wild adventures to follow!

Hanna and Fritz sometimes take jobs at the circus when not working and clowning at Anima.

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Without both our On-Site Helpers and Outreach Helpers, there would be no way to get the essential projects done and still do the amount of teaching, writing and organizing we do.  They make possible the amount of focus we give students, books, magazine and conference, and in this way helping not only the land but also the Anima efforts to give to this world.

Anyone interested in volunteering for 30 days or more, is welcome to click on, download and fill out our: On-Site Helper Application

There is much I need to write today, from awaiting emails and my Plant Healer column, to a fun debunking, paradigm-bashing article for a Canadian firearms journal, pulling the veil of myth out from in front of another famous but power abusing lawman of the Old West.  The new band we hired for the Traditions In Western Herbalism Conference needs a contract, and the Plant Healer articles we’ve accepted need editing and placement.  My novel The Medicine Bear needs a back cover and website description… but before all that, I felt a need to share the latest goings-on with our extended family and community of purpose.  Hence, this blog post.

Much good is happening, and as always, that good involves you.

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Introduction: I discovered the following writings of mine while sorting through my unfinished projects folder, along with dozens of incomplete essays, seeds of ideas, unpublished novels and outlines for projected books.  It’s bit sad to realize there are insufficient hours in a lifetime to bring these all to fruition, including this piece that I intended to expand into a book re-envisioning and re-orienting our entire approach to education.  While I can see much I’d like to add to or revise, the following brief work from 1988 perhaps remains in and of itself a useful wake up call to new/ancient ways of seeing, learning and passing on to others healthy earth-centered values and skills.  If you know any parents or teachers, please pass it on to them…

Natural Education:
Awareness & Reconnection Skills for Parents & Teachers

By Jesse Wolf Hardin

Anima School & Sanctuary

“Human history becomes more and more a race between education and catastrophe.”
—H.G. Wells

“Convince me that you have a seed there, and I am prepared to expect wonders.”
—Henry David Thoreau

The time has come for what I call Natural Education, the
initiating of every age group into a new/ancient way of perceiving and
thereby acting on the world. With so many species banished into
extinction each and every day, with hundreds of state and federal laws
passed every month to further restrict the freedoms of a mostly urban
human population due to double again in less than forty years, what I am
calling for is no less than the complete re-creation of human values,
perception, and society, and the entire educational system that
partially creates and fully sustains it.  We must challenge every
institution and assumption perpetuating the suicidal lemming-march of
the status quo.

Given the momentum of our distracted consumer society, and the
commiserate, entrenched ideology of school as “job training”
(preparation for conformity, consumption, and production), the task
falls largely on a few progressive teachers, the directors of
alternative schools, the facilitators of bold new Earth-centered
programs, and the intrepid practitioners of home schooling. In every
case, much of the onus lies with the parents and other significant
adults in the students’ circle of trust.

If you want to evaluate any existing or proposed text, class, program,
or curriculum, ask yourselves the following: Does it contribute
substantially to the students’ understanding of their true selves, the
full actualization and flowering of their authentic beings? Does it help
them to be quiet or expressive, thoughtful or sensual, subjective or
empathetic? Does it instill and encourage values that affirm freedom
with responsibility, compassion along with the ability to firmly say
“no”? Does it focus on some narrow dimension of humanity, or draw
parallels and connections to the land, lifeforms, and the anima/lifeforce/spirit? Does it
contribute to serendipity and play? Does it evoke a sense of the
sanctity of life, of the magic and joy of miraculous existence? Does it
teach them to feel, both the agony and ecstasy of one’s participation in
destiny?

Or, does it more likely, impress systems for memorization and
measurement, classification and definition, analysis and manipulation,
concepts without experience, the bloodless history of the victors,
material consumption and vicarious pleasures, sobriety and conformity?
Schools traditionally offer up a menu of facts with out personalizing
anecdotes, empirically explaining away the sources of wonder and awe,
replacing compassion and subjective identification with the “other” with
emotionless objectification, force feeding disconnected information in
ways that actually deadens the students’ inherent awareness of their
feelings, their immediate surroundings, and the still-wild world
existing outside the classroom, beneath the asphalt and concrete, and
the spreading city limits.

“A society that could heal the dismembered world would recognize the
inherent value of each person and of the plant, animal, and elemental
life that makes up tthe earth’s living body; it would offer real
protection, encourage free expression…. it’s underlying metaphor would
be mystery, the sense of wonder at all that is beyond us and around us,
at the forces that sustain our lives and the intricate complexity and
beauty of their dance.”
—Starhawk

We can change our distracted and destructive culture by actively interacting with teachers in
our schools, by infecting and subverting existing curriculums,
coming together to form legal clan and community schools, and by
customizing officially required subjects of home-school programs to draw
the necessary connections to self, Nature, and the historical
context they were born to participate in.

Under the auspices of whatever course or program, Natural Teaching
remains dedicated to instilling the following essential qualities and skills:
1) Awareness, Listening and Focus
2) Wonder and Awe
3) Authenticity and Personal Expression
4) Reconnection to body, others, other species, and the living Earth
5) Sense of Place
6) Ways of Seeing
7) The Art of Listening
Empathy and Compassion
9) Freedom With Responsibility
10) Integrity and Devotion

The Natural teacher demonstrates reverence and enthusiasm, a
willingness to share their pain, and a penchant for celebration. They
invite student participation, provoke reaction, inspire contemplation,
and stress the importance of inquiry over answers. Their vocabulary has
no choice but to evolve to match the age and attitudes of the students,
making use of symbols drawn from the culture each group is most familiar
with. They can reach people of all ages, academics and rural
libertarians by speaking the language of each, and tapping the almost
universal yearning for a more vital, realized existence.
The values of the Natural were often the values of our various
tribal, primal ancestors— values common to the first hundred thousand
years or more of human existence that can serve our return to
right-living and balance today. Some of these follow, along with values
that could only be learned by first inheriting and then destroying
paradise, priorities developed through mistake and travail.
At this time in human existence, what subjects matter (mater, mother) ?
The only relevant course may be “Nature.” “The Nature of Geography”—  a
lesson in ecosystems, watersheds, the personalities of desert and
mountain, filled with subjective stories about sense of place, exposing
the unreality of shifting political borders with a look at the unbroken
continents of this planet as seen from space— the geography of home.
Science becomes the “Science of Nature,” a study in the molecular,
chemical, evolutionary, interconnectedness of all life and so-called
non-life. Spinning and weaving, preparing food, dancing, mask-making,
and reading for reconnection. Campfire stories. Music that brings them
closer to nature, in resonance with their own musical natures. and
Mathematics? Math becomes the Play of Numbers, demonstrating how
quantities interact, and an opportunity to bring up the importance of
qualitative as well as quantitative measurement.

Then there are the fundamentals of natural teaching: Avoid the
linear and hierarchical appearance of straight rows, and sit in circles,
where students can interact with each other as well as the teacher. Take
the lessons outside whenever possible. Focus attention, usually with a
deep sharing. Use and elicit personal, emotional, experiential
anecdotes, such as how something made you feel, instead of just relaying
facts or events. Always refer back to the current moment, drawing a
connection between any subject and the students’ reality here in present
time. Ask questions instead of imposing information. Encourage instinct
and intuition, knowing that all important learning is a re-membering
(recalling, and reconnecting the parts). Impress the response-ability
(ability to respond) inherent in every idea, in what one does as well as
doesn’t do. Treat each and every moment as a decisive one.  Work towards students sharing
responsibility for the direction of the studies. Allow the interests and
enthusiasm of the students determine what gets explored, being ready to
set aside even the most important lesson to capitalize on the attention
given to a bird landing on the windowsill, on a personal problem that
arises, or a news event of great import. Surrender the schedule, staying
on a subject until interest subsides or something important comes up.
Let them see, touch, experience the things discussed as often as
possible, and get them to do as well as think. Demonstrate the relevancy
of an idea or process, then encourage the students to act it out. Make
use of art and song and role playing as well as words to fully express
your subject. Avoid dogma, but don’t be afraid to encourage students to
define what sacred means to them. Remember that every person, plant,
animal and place is a set of messages, and that our primary assignment
is to listen, and to teach how to listen. Remember to be grateful, and
make opportunities for the sincere expression of thanks. Share your
emotions as well as observations. Remember that many of the most
important lessons are best imparted through play.

For the youngest of my students I’ve developed a game of “Gaia,” in
which each child identifies with an organ of the Earth body and explains
how essential it is to the health of the whole; a game of role-playing
endangered species, and speaking for them in council; a game of ecstatic
evolution, where the kids act out the slow transformation of life forms
from single cell beings to fish, birds and land animals; one where they
identify the sometimes subtle differences between the natural and the
artificial; a game where they identify and describe the intrinsic value
of every element of Nature, regardless of any aesthetic or practical
purpose we might find for it; one where they determine what is special
about each and every element of Nature; and one where they learn to
express and celebrate the beauty and originality found in even the
plainest rock held in the hand, or the most mundane vista.

The fate of humanity, and of most higher lifeforms, will one day rest
in the hands of the children of today, adults of the future, dependent
on us for the heightened awareness and Earth-centered values that will
see them there.

Earth-Centered Education for the 21st Century

“We must remember the chemical connections between our cells and the
stars, between the beginning and now. We must remember and reactivate
the primal consciousness of oneness between all living things. We must
return to that time, in our genetic memory, in our dreams, when we were
one species born to live together on earth as her magic children.”
—Barbara Mor

Every social and environmental calamity, the entire destructive course
of modern civilization can be traced to a single root condition.
Overpopulation, habitat destruction, clearcuts, oil-tanker spills,
classism, sexism, war—all are symptoms of humanity’s essential dis-ease:
people’s cognitive (imagined) separation from their own essential
natures, separation from the spirits and processes of the natural world.
Given this frighteningly simple fact, is there really anything important
to teach the unfolding generation than the skills and arts of
reconnection? When the obvious cure for societal and planetary malaise
is our reconnection to our physical animal bodies, rather than living
through our minds alone, when it is a matter of reconnecting to the deep
feelings and essence of family and clan, to other cultures and races,
other lifeforms, and finally to the entire continuous body of the living
planet we’re an integral part of?

When we consider that both what we choose to teach and fail to impart,
and the responsibility that places on us, as parents and teachers, it
really sinks home that the coming generations could be the last with any
chance of reversing the anti-Nature direction of destructive
civilization. Just like one tends to weigh more carefully how they spend
their mortal moments when they realize they could be their last, we’re
likely to be more selective about the materials and lessons we share,
and more passionate in their presentation, if we treat each generation
as potentially the last. Approached in this way, we’re more likely to
pass on the life-affirming values that will make the survival of future
generations possible, and the survival of the elements of Nature that we
depend on to sustain and inform us.

Children are born into profound communion and continuity with/in the
world around them, immersed in sight and sensation, awash in the
intensity of the present moment, free of the weight of the past and
fears for the future. A young child’s experience of self extends beyond
the envelope of skin and into the objects it holds, the foods in its
mouth, and the earth and grass it crawls across. The concept of “others”
is impressed on them later, the early sensation of an organic oneness
surviving into adulthood like a repressed memory, or as some dimly
recalled dream.

Exposure to adult models, and to T.V. and school, leads to a gradual,
consensual “forgetting.” Year after year the child becomes increasingly
disassociated, thoughts from feelings, sentiment from action. The
experience of “self” is narrowed until housed entirely in the mind,
imaged somewhere inside the brain. The very process of becoming a
“civilized” human involves perceptual divorce, an imagined separation
between “self” and body, self and others, self and Nature.
Children before a certain age, like all the rest of living creation,
operate according to their original nature. This is why I say every
animal is an avatar, every child born a Buddha. The best students are
often the youngest, the ones who have forgotten the least, those still
obsessed with sensation, trying to put the whole world in their mouths
and know it that way. So much more difficult to get the teen to sit on
the ground outside, the adult to set aside its programming to hug a
tree. A child still takes the world personally, as if everything that
happens in the universe relates to them— as indeed it does. They take
the celebration of diverse life very personally. They also take
personally any abridgment of that joy, or the destruction of those other
lifeforms. It may be that the terminally ill remember what they knew as
kids, the simple truth that raw, unmanipulated life is good— that
anything that dilutes, debases, or destroys life is bad. How simple, and
how fundamental.

With teen and adult students, a pertinent education involves actively
suspending habit and disbelief, while with children we need only
encourage their native tendencies, their proclivity for wonder and awe,
and help direct their intense and naturally intimate reaching out to
connect.  We need to help the children with the skills and priorities
they’ll need to deal with the damaged world of their coming adulthood,
and then we need to teach the adults to experience the universe as
children again. When I first started doing this work I would engage kids
in role-playing endangered species, acting out the behavior of wolves
and wood ants, having them speak for the needs of eagles and trees. With
adults I’d explain the fine points of ecological ethics, give them the
facts on environmental destruction and the means for restoration and
redress. In time I figured out that the kids role play their empathy
with Nature with no help from us, and at a young age are interested in
hearing the whole story. Adults, particularly academics and bureaucrats
in uniforms, already have most of the facts, but don’t allow themselves
to empathize— which is why I usually get them to take off their ties,
get on the ground, and make like fish or squirming salmon! (C’mon, guys,
you can do it! Feel! Feel!)

Getting someone out to an ocean or forest is a start, but exposure to
the nature alone can’t guarantee any increased sensitivity. I’ve known
kids who have grown up in small towns adjacent to wilderness areas, who
grew up approaching Nature as a warehouse for them to loot, who see
animals as subservient and trees as commodities. Cowboys whose chosen
work has put them on horseback in the most beautiful country in the
West, will still toss their garbage on the ground when brought up to
honor only the works of “man.” Whether a young child’s innate reverence
lasts into adulthood or is replaced by cynicism and contempt for the
natural world will depend on how they’re taught to see. Not with the
eyes so much, as with the entire being, opening up to the spirit
animating all life from the heron in the wildlands marsh, to the
planter-bound flower. To the average preschooler with an inquisitive
mind and dancing, exploring hands, the world appears a magic place. From
the rainbow colors of a dew-jeweled spider web to the way that puppy
knows when you’re talking about him, they find everything simply
amazing, inexplicable, and primarily delightful. One of our tasks as
parents and teachers is to nourish their native way of “seeing,” to
direct their attention without diminishing their experience of the
miraculous.

Teaching How To Listen

“The teachers are everywhere. What is wanted is a learner.”
—Wendell Berry

It’s said that “a finger pointing at the moon is not the moon”. The
word “water” never quenched anyone’s thirst, and no description of light
and color could adequately convey the experience of sight to the
congenitally blind. At its worst, language results in a wash of constant
internal dialogue. thinking with words automatically places one outside
the moment, inevitably commenting in past tense on what just happened
and thereby missing the full contextual, sensual experience of the
present.  And worse yet, the sentences that fill up the center-stage of
our consciousness for most of our waking and dreaming hours project us
far into past events or future scenarios. All my adult years I’ve been
working on recovering from the split focus I developed watching T.V. as
I ate, barely tasting the food. The disassociation was exacerbated in
school, fed facts with no reference to my immediate life, with no
connections drawn between the different topics or the various courses of
study— millions of words, with little rhythm.

Ideally, the pointing finger of language draws attention to the deepest
experiencing/knowing of the moon, then withdraws to allow for the
profundity of silence. As music has demonstrated from angst-ridden
rappers back to African Griots and Celtic Bards, words are most powerful
when sequenced rhythmically. The students are easiest to reach when we
make the sentences and sentiments dance, varying the volume and tempo,
stressing the conclusions in a crescendo, then teasing the attention
back from the distracted with a refrain, a repeating phrase,— a play of
words.

The rhythms of speech are partly the result of natural breathing
patterns, slower during reflection, speeded-up by building excitement,
and for each breathing-out of words, we need to inhale in silence. A
drawing without empty spaces would amount to a page of solid black, ink
or lead. The identity of any line on the paper is shaped by the white
space around it. In drumming circles, the power of the patterns depend
on the empty spaces between the beats. Without these intervals of
silence, all one would hear would be a solid wall of noise.
And just as students listen and absorb meaning better when the language
finds its rhythm, they can better ponder and absorb each full concept
with a comparable period of silence after. The youngest children tend to
mainly think in symbols rather than in sentences— and pictures are
always O.K. It’s the omnipresent dialogue, internal as well as audible,
that must be regularly set aside in favor of sensation and
contemplation, inhalation and inspiration. In favor of full-body
listening.

For short periods of time, one can create silence with an unexpected
noise or outburst, with a surprising observation, by setting up a
situation of unnerving uncertainty, or drawing their attention to strong
physical stimuli (a cold wind, something soft to touch). For “silence
work”, the younger the students, the smaller the group needs to be. Try
keeping them in the usual circle formation, but face them outwards. And
follow each quieting with an opportunity for its appropriate
punctuation: expression.

Responsibility Within The Web: Awareness Work

“It was the sort of idea that might easily decondition the more
unsettled minds among the higher casts—make them lose their faith in
happiness as the Sovereign Good and take to believing, instead, that the
goal was somewhere beyond, somewhere outside the present human sphere;
that the purpose of life was not the maintenance of well being, but some
intensification of consciousness.”
—-Aldous Huxley

Contemporary institutional education not only ignores but works against
awareness. I’m not talking about higher awareness of energy patterns or
being conscious of Spirit, but that elemental quality of awakeness, the
awareness of one’s immediate environment. Abstract texts have students
reading about insect classifications, and missing the flight of the
butterflies just outside the window. Schedules further reduce one’s
need, and thus ability to take in their situation and make independent
decisions, or make a sudden change in course. I’ve camped with
university graduates lacking all the skills and traits necessary for
survival in the natural world. More significant than their inability to
identify and gather wild foods, weave fibers, or even get a fire going
with a match— was their complete lack of awareness of their
surroundings. Residents of their minds, they neither saw or could react
to the presence of trees too close to their selected fire pit, had no
concept of fouling their own water source, and were likely to step on a
snake if there long enough.

Awareness training involves always bringing the subject, and in this
way the students’ attention, back to themselves, to the present, and to
the reality of the immediate situation. Draw from those things
physically around you as metaphors for whatever concepts you are trying
to impart, such as “…death cycling back into life, like this garden”
or “…like the sun, touching your faces right now.”  No matter how
distant or historic the lesson, it can always be made real for the
students by asking them to imagine and share with you how it may have
affected them and the world they live in. One of the most important
questions for any age student is, “How does that make you feel?”
Awareness can be tested by asking: How many different sounds can you
distinguish right now? How do you think what you said made that person
feel? I know you’re indoors, but who can point in the direction the sun
will go down? What color shirt did your last instructor wear?” I worry
about a spectrum of students adept at equations but oblivious to
everything around them. Whenever I leave this canyon to visit friends I
can’t sleep because every passing car seems to be coming to see me,
every siren means I should run, and I jump every time I hear the
refrigerator clang on. I worry about friends who no longer hear their
fridge going on and off, and wonder if they hear the wind moving through
the pruned and shaped trees of their yards. We are becoming a people who
experience our precious mortalities vicariously, living our lives wholly
in a conceptual world, an unreal world of our own making.
We’ve got to bring them back, at least the young, back to their selves,
back to the Earth, back home where they’re needed— where they can be
themselves.

Sense Of Place

We know that the entire globe is an extension of us, but we are
centered on a certain continent, on a particular watershed, and at the
exact spot where our bodies touch the ground. I often begin a circle by
having everyone focus on the feelings of connectedness and energy
transfer that goes on between the feet and the ground, or sitting, how
it feels to be physically bound to the living planet. How that feels, is
what we really mean by “sense of place”, sensing our connection,
developing loyalty to the actual physical substance of that place, and
drawing our strength from there. Ever so slowly, we can take them from
there into larger concentric circles, into a larger sense of place.
Beginning with their yard, their favorite tree, their secret hideaway,
and then maybe a big enough “sense” to encompass a secluded trout stream
or a faraway vacation beach where strange creatures perform impossible
ballets. If possible, the progression should never be presented in a
single day, time taken for the most thorough and intimate familiarizing,
coming to know and be able to speak for the needs and design, the
personalities of one’s always unique, hopefully expanding identification
with place.

There are two complimentary approaches. In one, we keep calling the
students’ attention back to the actual place where we’re teaching them,
and in the other, we call on them to develop irrevocable bonds with one
or more ”special places” they’ve come to love and learn from. One of
these special places could be adopted by the group or class, with them
learning the requirements of the land and its lifeforms. The place can
be undeveloped wildness in need of sponsorship and defense, a ravaged
area requiring restoration, or an overgrown urban oasis re-wilding on
its own accord. determined to supply the setting for our exploration of
life.

Initial Reconnection

“If you want the kernel you must break the shell. And therefore if you
want to discover nature’s nakedness you must destroy its symbols, and
the farther you get in the nearer you come to its essence. When you come
to the One that gathers all things up into itself, there you must stay.”
—Meister Eckhart

The older the students, the more crucial the reconnection phase,
beginning with the body. Our work for the Earth or for others is at its
best when we exist fully within our bodies, healing them as necessary.
For adults with racing minds, I suggest swims, mantras that derail
dialogue, arduous hikes that exhaust the part of the self that thinks,
swimming, bathing, singing or drumming, and overcoming their resistance
to touching themselves, rubbing their own sore necks, stroking their own
hair just because it feels good. And for students of any age, I help
them feel the world through their bodies. Beginning…with the sensation
of their own heart beating.

Like we block out the sounds of screeching tires in the night and other
audible reminders of our mortality, many of us learn not to hear the
pounding in our ears, the vital rushing of blood through our veins. But
there it s, whenever we quiet our distracted minds enough to listen, the
rhythmic evidence of life, in synch with the pulse of the living Earth.
Next, I might draw the students’ attention to their breathing, the feel
of muscles that must continually pump fresh air in and exhausted air
back out, the sensation of the wind rushing in and out through our
welcoming nostrils. I may have them close their eyes, shutting down the
main process through which people gather most of their sensory
information. Taking in deep, slow breaths together, the individual’s
consciousness opens up to encompass everything around it, primed for
subtle input.

With children, I might isolate each of their senses in turn, letting
them explore a meadow and some purposefully planted objects with nothing
but their sense of smell, or coming to know them through touch alone. I
think about Helen Keller, and how the curtailment of audio and visual
input resulted in a heightening of every other faculty, as the students
smell aromas like never before, and trace the hills and valleys of a
rock with eager, informed fingers. When the moment is just right, they
may access their untapped instincts as well, as those means of
body-seeing we sometimes call “extrasensory perception”. Fully in-body,
with all the physical senses engaged, one exists at their optimal state,
more receptive than ever, and better prepared to act.
It’s through our resulting acts that we experience and develop our
connection to others, extend the borders around our “self” to include
not only our parents and siblings, but friends, and then the nice old
woman who tells stories as she sweeps the sidewalk, then the unnamed
victims of distant tragedies, and potentially the overpopulating masses
of every race. Once connecting to other people, ready to experience
their deep ecological and psycho-spiritual relationship to other species
as well.

Connecting to Other Lifeforms

“A world in which every place is wilderness — this ecotopian vision
seems remote from the environmental politics of our day, mystical,
atavistic, even threatening. And yet the human race was born into such a
world. It was our home for uncounted millennia. It is still the world of
dwindling primal people. It is where we learned the values of community,
art, creativity, curiosity. That we should be more comfortable now with
the artificial industrial landscape of modern times, with its
imperatives of competition, exploitation, and selfish consumption,
suggests how successful civilization has been in demonizing Nature.”
—Christoph Manes

The natural world is our original context. We evolved in a physical and
then conscious interdependency with the rest of life. Our intuition was
honed in the primeval jungles, and our dreams are still made up of the
images and symbols we brought with us when we first stepped out into the
open. There really is such a thing as a “natural self”, formed over the
course of hundreds of thousands of years in close association with the
expressions and processes of Nature, with the diverse nation of plants,
the “birds and the beasts”. The entire living world is a set of
messages, instructions, and examples. All of life is trying its best to
communicate with us. Children are quick to notice the signals, but can
benefit from interpretation. Teens and adults tend to need help with
both recognition and significance.  All can be
helped to recognize the traits they share with other lifeforms, and the
way animal spirits or “totems” influence or symbolize influences on how
they respond to the world.

Reconnecting With Gaia

We can visualize our broadening sense of identification as a set of
spreading concentric rings like those made in water when we toss a
pebble in. In this way, the outermost circle of our being stretches to
take in the whole of the planet, the entirety of our greater Earth-body.
Oddly enough, we do this by moving slower, not faster; looking closer,
not further. Moving slow enough to see the “miracle in a grain of sand”.
To show students the “bigger picture”, start them on the giving ground,
their faces pressed down to the grass for the bugs’ eye view. Once
they’re more familiar with the magic of the microcosm, they can better
access the streams and meadows, better take in the grand vistas.
“Gaia” was the Greek name for the Earth as living being, daughter of
Chaos. The scientists Lynn Marguellis
and James Lovelock seized on the metaphor to illustrate their premise
that the Earth functions as a living entity, a body of self-regulating
systems dependent on the balanced interaction of all its constituent
parts, the atmosphere its breath, the cleansing forests its lungs. They
called this notion the “Gaia Hypothesis,” as if the truths honored by
virtually every primal culture, by our ancestors of nearly every race,
and by all children before the age of their disenchantment— as if the
truth of an inspirited planet, sacred, indivisible and directed were
merely theory, the invention or conclusion of modern minds! Before the
advent of technology, before toxic agribusiness and skyscrapers, these
were the truths we held “self-evident”:

Conclusion

We are not secular pilots of a dead Spaceship-Earth, nor have we been
sentenced by God to a trial period on a disrupted Eden. We are blessed
participants in the dance of embodied spirit. Singers. Dreamers. Praise
givers.  Natural Education inspires and invokes awareness,
reconnection and response. It offers everyone, the teachers and
parents as much as the kids, an opportunity for a Rite-of-Passage.

In Natural Education, we plant our seeds in earth and heart,
regardless of the chances of fruit. The immediate result, as I’ve
witnessed again and again, is the glad unfolding of the miraculous.
Nature-informed Education is, above all, life-affirming. It explores diversity
rather than imposing conformity. It offers the tools for global healing and the
individual skills to survive.  Natural Education is called upon to
affirm, at the deepest levels, the singular joy of being alive, while imparting the information and tools to live our lives and purpose fully and effectively.

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Traditions In Western Herbalism Conference
2012 Class Descriptions!

New descriptions of our 2012 TWHC Classes posted here on the conference website.

We ask our many awesome teachers to go out of their way to provide you with unique, seldom or never-before presented classes that are “unscripted, deeper and more extensive, more personal, challenging, powerful and applicable” than ever before… and they came through with flying colors! I appreciate you reposting and forwarding.

For more information or to register, click on the:
Traditions In Western Herbalism Website

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7SONG

Plant Walk
On this walk we will look at the diversity of local plants and discuss their botanical details, clinical uses, ways to prepare and use them as medicine, current and historical uses and the occasional story. This will be a time to appreciate and learn about the local flora from an herbalist’s and naturalist’s perspective.

The Herbalist Street Medic
Street medicine generally refers to the various forms of medicine offered at protests and demonstrations, generally by people ‘on the ground’ rather than in hospitals and offices. In these ‘street’ situations, herbalists can offer a valuable service. This includes helping with conditions  ranging from being in a constant stressful situation( i.e., anxiety and insomnia), as well as injuries, gastrointestinal disturbances, and exacerbations of pre-existing conditions.

Patient Compliance and other Clinical Skills.
This is a clinical class on the herbalist’s consultation with a focus on helping patient compliance with taking the uncommon, odd, and often quite un-tasty medicinal preparations that we dispense. We will discuss affordability, accessibility, labeling, instructions, and devices that may help with compliance. We will also focus on other valuable clinical skills such as intake, body language, and non-herbal recommendations.

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PAUL BERGNER

How to Sit With a Plant
In the grasping utilitarian model of herbalism, we want to know what the plants are “good for.” In a vitalist model we want to know the plant on its own terms just for the sake of love and connectedness. Uses or powers of the plant may be revealed, and will be for most, but for the herbalist, what is learned by not using a plant may be more valuable than any medicinal use. Love and connectedness themselves may be more important to the healer than one more item for the materia medica. We will practice methods of clearing and stilling the grasping self, of perception in the “middle world,” and attunement to a plant on every level.

How to Sit With a Patient
Awareness skills for the herbalist. Awareness skills in a clinical setting go both ways; we are being present and aware of the patient, and also aware of ourselves and our own process. We will discuss and practice both sets of skills, including patient factors such as posture, clothing, complexion, vital tone, energy level, voice quality, and methods for identifying and processing our own reactions to the clinical experience.

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DARCEY BLUE

Trees of the Southwest: Tree Walk, Folklore, and Clinical Uses
In this interactive tree walk we will visit, experience with our five senses (taste, smell, touch, sight, and sound), and discuss the clinical applications, folklore and medicine of species of trees growing in southwestern North America. In addition to experiencing the tree medicines through our senses, the walk includes discussion of proper harvesting/wildcrafting technique for trees in sensitive environments, appropriate preparations for each tree and plant part, and specific clinical indications and applications for each tree. We will also discuss the folkloric knowledge of these trees and stories associated with these teachers to deepen our understanding of trees as wisdom keepers and allies beyond the medicinal applications.

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HOWIE BROUNSTEIN

Herbal Neurology: Seizure Disorders
Many herbalist shy away from working with this often frightening and debilitating problem. We will discuss both acute anti-seizure formulas and long term tonic protocols for overall reduction of seizure frequency and drug side effects. Herbal protocols, lifestyle changes, supplements, identifying triggers, and working safely with neurologists will be richly illustrated using case studies from my clinic.

Safety and Drop Dosage Botanicals (with Kristi Reese)
Drop dosage or low dosage botanicals are becoming popular with many herbalists these days. Although these medicinals can be extremely effective, the difference between poison and medicine is dosage. This class is about safely harvesting, processing, storing, and dispensing these herbs. This class is not about the specific uses of these herbs.

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A raven cruises over Mormon Lake, our new TWHC site.

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LARKEN BUNCE

Understanding Herb-Drug Interactions: Drugs in Herbal Territory, Not the Other Way Around
As practitioners, we are constantly assuaging the fears of clients and physicians regarding the potential for the herbs we recommend to interact with the drugs people are prescribed. The assumption is that if there is any impact on the activity of a drug, then the herb should be discontinued. The plants are considered the interlopers; herbalists and herbs are the problem. I’ll explain the different types of interactions that can occur; how we can and cannot predict those interactions; and how we can take advantage of these interactions to benefit clients. We’ll explore the CYP450 enzyme family responsible for metabolizing both medicinal plant constituents and drug molecules to understand why they’re often central to this conversation. Finally, we’ll look at resources for researching potential interactions between particular drugs and herbs and how to assess the actual clinical significance of the information. My goal is for people to leave feeling they can engage more confidently in conversations with clients, physicians and anyone who’ll listen about the challenges and benefits of herb-drug interactions. Ultimately, we can best support expanded use of herbal medicine in our over-medicated society when we can critically assess and address this overblown, yet still relevant, concern.

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BEVIN CLARE

Teaching the Teacher: Training the Herbal Clinician
Cultivating the herbal practitioner goes far beyond supplying students with the necessary information to practice. The role of a practitioner is vast:  as a catalyst for change within the client, as the integrator of a variety of clinical, medical, sensory and human information in order to nudge health states, as a partner in finding wellness and balance within the ecosystem and community, and as an expert in the use of medicinal plants and foods. Learn about a model for training clinical herbalists and the components of the training and their individual use and significance. The class will be designed for both the student looking to seek the an education as a clinician, and the teacher looking to better teach their students.

Making a (Financial) Living as an Herbalist (While Being True to Yourself and the Plants)
Learn about how one can make a living as an herbalist while staying true to the values which guide them. Our trade as herbalists is a valid one with tremendous personal and global rewards, yet it can be difficult to navigate the mainstream, financial system and make ends meet at times. Find out about ways herbalists are thriving in this modern world and specific suggestions for ways you can follow your path and cultivate financial stability, all in a good way.

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SEAN DONAHUE

Healing Through the Veil: Entheogens and Trauma
Psychedelic or entheogenic plants and drugs are powerful tools for opening gateways to other realities.  Used wisely, they can be powerful tools for insight and conscious transformation.Used recklessly, they can open someone to deeply traumatic experiences.    Sean shares his own experiences and perspectives on herbal first aid for people having frightening and overwhelming psychedelic experiences, finding and addressing the existing wounds these experiences reveal, and the potential of entheogenic plants to both educe and heal emotional trauma.

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DOUG ELLIOTT

Ginseng, Golden Apples, Wise Women, Old Farts,, and the Rainbow Fish
Traditional herbal practitioners and Appalachian mountaineers offer unique perspectives on healing traditions, gender issues, roots and herbs, and wild apples, as well as insights into sustainable harvesting of ginseng and other medicinal plants, mycorrhizal fungal associations, tickling trout, etc. Elliott recounts one particularly noteworthy visit with Ray Hicks, an extraordinary elderly mountain wildcrafter, who tells traditional stories from “across the waters” about Jack, the archetypical naïve, but resourceful, Euro-Appalachian trickster figure. “Then after listening all morning to his plant lore and ancient tales, I stop along the way home to collect wild apples, herbs, and mushrooms; I find myself living out the kind of mythic adventure that I had just heard in Ray’s stories.” This gives insight into how every day, especially when we set out hunting for herbs, we are indeed on a quest –like they say in the ancient tales–“seeking our fortunes. ”
Poetry by William Butler Yeats and Ovid’s tales of Diana, Aphrodite, and Atalanta bring home revelations about the mythic qualities in all our lives.

Sense of Place Trail Hike
This is an opportunity to stretch out and roam along one of the most interesting trails in the area.  We’ll be checking out the herbs, for sure, but it will be faster-paced than the average herb walk. We’ll be taking in the bigger picture as well, the mountains, the forest, birds, and mammals–their tracks and signs.

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ROSALEE DE LAS FORÊT

Starting a Community Supported Herbal Clinic, From the Ground Up
In the past year Rosalee has worked within her small rural community to set up an herbal clinic open to all people in need of care. In this class she will share her own challenges and successes and explore a broader range of topics to help those on their own journey of setting up a free or sliding scale herbal clinic in their own communities. Discussion will revolve around; How do we provide care sustainably? Do herbalists deserve to be paid for giving health care? Challenges of getting funded. Setting up a herbal apothecary. Benefits of bioregional herbs. Forming a community around herbalism. Working within special populations. Organization and record keeping. Business structures pros and cons. Scope of practice and referrals. Visions of a new health care model.

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LISA GANORA

Wolf Chemistry: How to Smell and Taste Herbal Constituents
As herbalists we learn to develop our senses of smell and taste to understand and judge the identity, potency, and quality of living plants, dried herbs, and herbal preparations. This way of understanding the messages and information carried by scent and flavor molecules in plants is a skill that all animals possess, as we easily see when we observe the focus and attention of a ground-sniffing companion animal on their daily rounds or at the food bowl. Science calls it “organoleptics” … using the senses to detect and evaluate the presence, concentration, and quality of constituents in foods and herbs. In many cases, we can train our senses to be just as helpful – or even more so – than expensive analytical equipment. Our wild relatives, including Wolf and Bear, are honored as traditional experts in organoleptics – understanding the food, medicine, or poison of a plant through deep sensory perception and instinct developed by constant practice and the necessity of life in the wild. Join us in this active journey where we will re-connect with these ancient skills to reawaken and train our senses for better understanding the constituents and quality of our healing herbs. Learn how to use the Scratch, Snort, Savor, and Spit method of phytochemical analysis with sample herbs and living plants from our conference environment.

Beyond Tinctures & Oils: Extracting Herbs with Honey
In Western herbalism, we commonly use alcohol (tinctures, fluid extracts), water (infusions, decoctions), and vegetable oils (oils, salves) to extract the healing constituents from herbs. While these are all excellent ways to concentrate and preserve herbal medicines, there is another traditional fluid that we often overlook – honey. A 10,000-year-old cave painting in Spain depicts women collecting honey; in Hindu tradition, honey is considered to be one of the five elixirs of immortality; in Islamic tradition, alcohol is general forbidden and village herbalists often use honey as a substitute solvent, and for its revered healing powers. The use of honey is also described in old Chinese texts. Honey is a very unique solvent with virtually magical powers to extract and preserve constituents from many of our favorite plants. The sugars in honey, along with numerous antioxidant compounds, have remarkable preservative abilities. Liquid honey, still perfumed with the aroma of essential oils, has been found in Egyptian tombs more than 3,000 years old. Honey collects numerous constituents from herbs and will take on the rich colors of various pigments, such as with Elderberry Honey. Learn how to make a traditional honey extraction and how to use herbal honey as a topical healer for burns and wounds; as an ingredient in elixirs and syrups; or for fermenting medicinal meads. Find out how to substitute herbal honeys for alcohol or glycerin tinctures. See how the constituents from a water extract can be coaxed into honey for preservation. We’ll also talk about the special ingredients of honey and see what we can learn from the many scientific studies that are being published lately about Manuka honey. Honey, the golden gift, is far more powerful than we might expect when we think of it as ‘just another sweetener.’  Class will include demonstrations.

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CHARLES GARCIA

Chronic Pain: A Hispanic Perspective
The use of native and Hispanic herbs are a given in this topic. But not so widely known are the use of colors, fragrance, hygiene, food and light in Hispanic pain control. These are not New Age theories. Rather they are the observations of a healer and a chronic pain sufferer whose family has used these techniques for over a century. This is not a topic for those who romanticize suffering to any degree. Chronic and severe pain is debilitating and must be eliminated or controlled for anyone wishing to live a productive life.

Death & Dying: Coping for the Herbalist/Caregiver
Not every herbalist sees or treats terminally ill clients. Some do. A few of us get more than our fair share of dying clients, friends, and family. A sense of professional may help for a time. But what happens when you’ve experience too much loss, professionally or personally? Do you turn to religion, philosophy, herbs, friendships, drink, drugs, sex? Perhaps in your life as a healer you must become a caregiver to a family member or a close friend? Do you treat them differently? Do you offer different options? Expect to hear ideas for coping, failures at coping, questions on ethics, questions of spirituality, rituals, and how we perceive death. Audience interaction is expected.

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CASCADE ANDERSON GELLER

Musculoskeletal Health with Wild Plants and Other Natural Remedies – (Advanced class)
In my practice, problematic conditions affecting the musculoskeletal system are all too common.  Inflammation due to injury, overuse, improper use, malnourishment, heredity, and other issues causes great suffering and impairment.  This class will focus on evaluating through the lens of the practicing herbalist, including the broad and highly specific views, that may aid healing or management of conditions as well as complementing other treatments such as physical therapy, manipulation, massage, energy, or allopathic.   The natural remedies and techniques to be discussed have been effective for conditions such as: fractures, sprains, strains, bruising, arthritic and other degenerative disorders, chronic pain, etc.  Emphasis will also be placed on prevention.  Herbal information will focus on a mix of native and non-native plants growing in many types of terrain:  Alnus, Althea, Arnica, Asarum, Encelia, Gaultheria, Hypericum, Larrea, Populus, Rumex, Salix, Sassafras, Symphytum, Taraxacum, Urtica, Valeriana and others.  Class discussion and demonstrations will include topics such as cold versus hot applications, useful first aid techniques, topical and oral formulations, case management strategies, etc.

Giving Voice:  Creating Social and Political Change with Special Emphasis on Topics of Interest to Herbalists
Cascade will share her experiences as an organizer around political issues relating to food, water , land, and especially herbs and herbalism.  The touchstone piece relating to herbs and herbalists pivots on regulation and standardization of aspects such as education, practice, and products.  This class will shed light on different camps of current thinking and action that affects herbalists, especially in regards to those involved with existing trade groups and associations.  Notable issues will include:  how herbalism in the U.S. is moving closer to harmonizing with global trade law and policy, animal research and it’s relationship to herbalism, and other topics.  The discussion may help participants understand why issues become divisive but how that energy can be redirected toward healing.  The class will help lay a foundation of understanding about how to get the voices of people and organizations heard even when not empowered by wealth or position.  Running a successful campaign takes thoughtful organizing and information but there are things that anyone can do.  This session will feature some tried and true methods to effect change using existing laws and institutions.  Participants can learn concrete ways to:  shed light when there is little, know what questions to ask and how to ask them, decide what to ask for, know how to initiate a public process and how to make good use of it, decide how to evaluate an organization, be engaged in decision-making of organizations, effectively serve on boards or committees, make a public records request, read between the lines, engage the press and other media.  Most of the amenities and rights we enjoy in the United States, and other countries, including public parks, schools, libraries, roads, bridges, voting rights, labor laws, municipally controlled drinking water, waste water treatment, land use and pollution regulations, etc., etc., exists only due to effective organizers in the present and past.  This class is dedicated to them.

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KIVA ROSE & JESSE WOLF HARDIN

Coming Home: Bioregional Herbalism & Sense of Place
Healing begins at home, growing from the same rich soils we spring from. The lives of these plant medicines are inextricably intertwined with ours: blooming uninvited outside the front door and at the wild edges of asphalt parking lots, growing from the terra cotta pots on our kitchen windowsills and rooting in well-tended community gardens. The allure of exotic herbs from far away countries has blinded some of us to the sources of healing closest to home, often hardy and plentiful plants in energetic relationship with the land that houses, feeds, affects and influences us.  Traditional healers of many cultures have long told stories of being intuitively drawn to the very species that can help us most, often growing in close proximity without our having realized its potential.  And once we have identified and built a relationship with our fellow locals/natives, we will come to understand the plants’ needs as well as our own, recognize when their kind is doing well and when they are being overharvested or otherwise suffering decline.  Bioregionalism is deep familiarity – and reciprocal relationship – with the watersheds and ecosystems where we choose to live, the wondrous “weeds” that coinhabit our cities and the rural and wildlands that surround them. In this class, we will describe the benefits of a biorgegional herbal focus on our lives and the ways that it increases the effectiveness of our herbal practices.  We’ll provide tools for exploring and deepening sense of place, the essential sense of belonging that literally grounds us and our work in the real, living, present world.  Be prepared to further awaken not only your senses, but a mythopoetic quest as well… to be as extensions of the land and conscious agents of its mission of healing and wholeness.

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PHYLLIS HOGAN

The San Francisco Peaks: Sacred Mountain of the West
For countless centuries the Navajo and Hopi people have respectfully gathered healing plants on the San Francisco Peaks (S.F.P.) in northern Arizona. This tradition is an indispensable part of their elaborate and intriguing healing systems. Navajo and Hopi regard the importance of where you gather plants as significant as what you gather, and the ritual of collecting includes making offerings and recognizing value in all living things. Of the over 800 vascular plant species documented for S.F.P. area, 237 species have medicinal or ceremonial significance. In my presentation I will share with you the five most utilized medicinal species found in the Ponderosa Pine vegetation zone. I will also take a look at the rare and endemic species growing at the Alpine Tundra vegetation zone and ceremonial species living in the Spruce –Fir and Mixed Conifer vegetation zones. We will also consider the differences between how and in what ways different cultures view and use nature.

A Peek Inside My Medicine Bag.
Betony (Pediclaurs parryi) Yerba Manzo (Anemopsis californica) Hamula (Brickelia spp.) Elephant-tree (Bursera microphylla) Desert Lavender (Hyptis emoryi)
Having lived my whole life in Arizona, I have had the opportunity to become close and personal with many herbs from the Sonoran desert to the riparian wetlands and up into the high lands of the mountains. Each environment has many offerings and blessings in a variety of medicine plants that speak to us nestled in and among the ancestral landscape. Some of my favorite medicine plants range from the delicate fernlike betony (Pediclaurs parryi) that hides in among the pine needle duff up in the Ponderosa pine forests of the mountains to the sculpted trunk of the aromatic elephant tree (Bursera microphylla) in the Sonoran desert. Or, the scrubby bushes of the bitter hamula (Brickellia spp.) that grows on the mesas and in the dry canyons to the thick green leaved riparian yerba mansa (Anemopsis californica). Another shrub that sings to my heart is the drought resistant desert lavender (Hyptis emoryi) whose sweet scent calls us in the spring enticing us to come and partake of the beauty as it offers up it’s medicine to us. These plants speak a language to humans by sharing their gifts to heal our imbalances and bring us once again back to harmony with ourselves and with the earth. Join me in as I open my medicine bag and share with you some of the important plants that have assisted me on my life path.

Sacred Plant Walk
Phyllis Hogan has spent her life plant-walking Arizona from the Sonoran Desert to the San Francisco Peaks.  She has worked with all of the native tribes of this area and has a vast knowledge of the ethnobotany and traditions tied to this sacred land.  Her walk focusing on the plants growing around Mormon Lake is sure to be not only an educational experience but also a sacred journey back to ancestral time.

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Phyllis Light, Jim McDonald & Rosemary Gladstar

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PHYLLIS LIGHT

Folk Herbalism and Science
Folk herbal traditions rely on observation and experience based on tradition. In addition, traditional knowledge may have secret methods of communicating information such as truths that are revealed by God, land-spirits, or intuition. Tradition links present practices with past ones. Science is concerned solely with truths that are revealed by man through measurement. It is based on observation, theory, predictions and experimentation. We’ll also discuss such questions as: How old does a tradition have to be to be a tradition? What is the nature of statistical evidence? Who funds herbal scientific studies? What about that isolated phytochemical constituent anyway?  Join Phyllis for an exploration of where folk herbal traditions and medical science intersect and how you can use both in your practice.

The Four Elements: Constitutions
In Southern Folk Medicine, constitutions are based on four elements and four tastes. This class will explore the four elements, fire, earth, air, and water, and the characteristics and personalities associated with each. Are you an airhead? How much fire is fueling your drives? Can you hold your water? Is earth holding you down? Understanding constitutions offers a very practical and traditional avenue of  assessment for the practitioner. And besides, it’s also really fun to find out more about yourself.

The Taste of Herbs
Come taste, savor and guess the name of the herbs. This class will explore a proving of three different simple decoctions based on their taste. Together we’ll discover what that taste has to say about the medicinal properties of the plant and how the plant can be used. This is a hands-on, or rather, tongue-on, experiential class. You’ll be surprised how much information a simple taste can reveal.

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KATHLEEN MAIER

Descriptions will be posted soon….

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JIM MCDONALD

Energetics and Aphrodisiacs
“Aphrodisiac” is a highly problematic term, predominantly because of the popular but mistaken belief that they can stoke interest in those who aren’t.  In addition to considering what “aphrodisiacs” ~don’t~ do, we’ll explore the things they can.  Looking at lists of plants deemed “aphrodisiacs”, we see everything from strong, druglike herbs (yohimbe) to culinary spices (ginger) to adaptogens (ashwangandha) and antispasmodics (kava).  What gives?  Well, just like all other aspects of herbcraft, one person’s turn on can put another person out… in other words, energetics apply here as well.  We’ll look at what indications make certain herbs appropriate to certain people, and give you some ideas to ponder with your partner(s).

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TANIA NEUBAUER

Tales from the Frontlines: Herbal Case Studies in Primary Care in a Nicaraguan Public Hospital
The innovative nonprofit Natural Doctors International operates a naturopathic medical clinic in collaboration with the public health system of Nicaragua. For 15 months, I attended every conceivable malady in collaboration with Nicaraguan doctors and nurses in an extremely successful and popular program that continues to this day. Because the clinic is on an island, with very limited access to high-tech interventions, I was able to use herbs, nutrition and bodywork to treat cases that might be considered emergency room referrals in the US. We will review cases that illustrate important warning signs in primary care that the herbalists may confront. We will discuss the keys to the clinic’s success. We will also learn about Central American herbalism and conceptions of health and disease.

Where the Rubber Meets the Road: Successful Models for Community Health Clinics in Natural Medicine
Many have dreamed of starting community clinics using natural medicine. What are the elements that allow such a clinic to be sustainable over the long term? We will review a number of successful models both in North America and internationally. Conferences are often a lost opportunity, where like-minded people of diverse bioregions are all in the same room, perhaps for the only time they ever will be. There will be space for participants to discuss clinics, organizations, and models they have been a part of, and why they have or have not worked, so that all will be able to exchange with each other.

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KRISTI REESE

Herbs for the Massage Practice
This class will introduce the massage therapist or body worker to the art of incorporating of herbs in their practice. We will thoroughly discuss a variety of herbs used externally as herbal oils, and internally as teas and extracts. The class will include such herbal therapies as muscle relaxants, analgesics, anti-inflammatories, tranquilizers, demulcents, and emollients. We will cover the herbal treatments for common complaints occurring in your practice such as muscles strains, sprains, tendinitis, whiplash, nerve traumas, pain, muscular and nervous headaches, general musculo-skeletal injuries, and more.

Safety and Drop Dosage Botanicals (with Howie Brounstein)
Drop dosage or low dosage botanicals are becoming popular with many herbalists these days. Although these medicinals can be extremely effective, the difference between poison and medicine is dosage. This class is about safely harvesting, processing, storing, and dispensing these herbs. This class is not about the specific uses of these herbs.

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The pond at Mormon Lake lodge

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AVIVA ROMM

Ecology and Activism in Women’s Health and the Role of Botanicals
“By comparing the earth to a woman: opulent and attractive but, in equal measures, temperamental and violent, the male scientific community justified its will for domination over them.”
“Nature to be raped, nature to be discovered, nature to be organized, nature to be controlled and nature to be exploited: these were the great ambitions of Francis Bacon and Rene Descartes, the    fathers of modern science.”   Carolyn Merchant. The Death of Nature: Women, Ecology and the Scientific Revolution.
There is no coincidence that the top money making surgical procedures in the US are obstetric and gynecologic. Women (and our uteruses and ovaries!) have, for centuries, been subject to     propaganda and campaigns. Anti-nature and anti-woman attitudes are intimately connected. The healing of the environment and the healing of women’s health can be connected by a    reclamation of women’s healing arts and a rejection of unnecessary medical treatments aimed at women. this class will approach women’s herbal medicine as a radical, activist, and eco-feminist act. We will focus on botanical methods of treatment for key women’s health concerns including uterine fibroids, endometriosis, PMS, depression, and menopause, for which women are medically mistreated.

Roots Midwifery: Radical Pregnancy, Birthing, and Postpartum Botanical Care
Amnesty International has declared birth in the United States an infringement of human rights! The cesarean section is now between 30 and 40% and still escalating. natural birthing women are an endangered species. supporting natural birth is therefore a radical act. herbal medicines and an approach that respects nature and innate physiology are essential tools for the birth activist, helping women to move through pregnancy, birth, and the postpartum in health and without unnecessary and often dangerous medical intervention. this class will introduce you to innate pregnancy and birth,  and will provide you with a midwife’s basket of practical and herbal tools to preserve and protect natural human birth.

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CHRISTA SINADINOS

Detailed description to be posted soon….

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KATJA SWIFT

Treating Chronic Illness
For a cold or the flu, you can send your client off with your favorite remedies and your job is done. But when you have a client with a chronic illness, your work is more complicated. The constitution of the client becomes a more important part of your herb choice, and the herbs are only part of the story. Chronic illness demands changes in diet and lifestyle, even in the way the client moves through their day. This class will focus on creating a whole protocol for clients with chronic illness, with specific information about how to choose the herbs, how to succeed with dietary recommendations, and how to get your client moving/exercising in appropriate ways for their level of health.

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NICOLE TELKES

Weedcrafting: Redefining Wildcrafting for The Next Generation of Wild Foragers
Many people studying herbalism are drawn to the “roamance” and allure of wandering into wildlands and gathering medicinal plants to make their very special and unique medicinal preparations.  The reality is that the wild cannot sustain all of us, even herbalists without some serious altering of our habits as wildcrafters.  Many of us have the dream of having a bit of land to roam, and a small herb farm, or the like.  The reality again is that most of us are financially tied to surviving in cities and that there is not enough land for everyone to have their 30 acres.  How do we make peace as herbalists with the draw to be in the wild and connect with our wild plants, and be sustainable and conscious in our practices of collecting.  How do we really know if our impact is helpful or harmful?  As many of us relearn our wild plant medicines, and teach others how to find them and connect with nature, we become stewards and must also protect wild plants.  Weedcrafting is a redefinition of WIldcrafting.  Weedcrafting is the harvesting of plant material from wild and waste spaces that helps support the native ecosystem and promotes diversity.  Weedcrafting a type of wild gardening that looks at the ecology of a place as well as the species of interest and takes into account that the earth cannot sustain unconscious foraging in our wildlands. Weedcrafting is about not only tuning into the wild in yourself, but also looking past our cities at the wildness and weediness making medicinal offerings to us in the most unlikely of places

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MATTHEW WOOD

Greek Medicine for the Modern Herbalist

The Greek system of medicine and herbalism is locked up ancient concepts but it is actually a very insightful system that can help us to understand the properties of herbs today.  Many of our ‘herbal actions’ are the tail end of Greek concepts.  The basic energetics are hot and cold, damp and dry but these are not measurements of temperature and humidity.  They are categories of action: hot remedies are opening, thinning, warming (from the center outward), and burning, while damp remedies are lubricating, nourishing or thickening, softening or emollient, and laxative.  The sixteen categories of action tell us how hot, cold, damp, and dry work to regulate the organism and how herbs and food heal the imbalances.  They deepen our us of the tissue state model of energetics.  The Greek system also includes foods so that cooking was a part of medicine.

Specificity in Herbal Medicine

Folk medicine is based largely on direct experience (instead of theory), specific indications (symptoms and conditions obvious to the senses instead of complex diagnostic categories made by machines), and (usually) the doctrine of signatures.  Dr. John M. Scudder (1829-93) took the first two of these elements and fashioned them into a system of medicine which offers the most exact possible usage and knowledge of herbal properties.  Many of his specific indications came directly from the Indian people or the pioneers who learned from them.  Thus, Specific Medicine (as he called the system) preserved many basic remedies and the indications upon which they were used by the common and indigenous people.  This system supplements and makes more exact the tissue state model of energetics and other methods used by the physiomedicalists.

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BENJAMIN ZAPPIN

Oh, to Touch, Taste, and Feel

….and think really hard about comparative approaches to application of botanically related plants.

The aim of this class is to provide participants with a methodology for uniting their senses with information about plants from Chinese Medicine regarding flavor and nature, contemporary understandings of native plants, and botanical systematics in order to deepen our understanding of our local Materia medica. Case examples will probe the Apiaceae and Gentianaceae, genus’ Paeonia and Pedicularis and more. The class will include plant samples to touch, taste, observe, and smell!

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The TWHC site is a short drive south of the Grand Canyon

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CHILDREN’S AND YOUTH’S CLASSES:

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7SONG

A Children’s Plant Walk
This will be a time for kids to meet and have fun with the local plants.

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KRISTINE BROWN

Herbal Sprouts: An Herbalism Class For Kids! (1.5 hrs)
This class offers a special edition of Herbal Roots zine created just for the kids attending the Traditions in Western Herbalism Conference 2012. This class will start with an herb walk to find the plant we are studying, explore the varieties located in the area, examine the growth habit of the varieties that we find. We will then go back to our area and learn all about the herb’s uses in a magical session woven with stories, songs, games, activities, crafts and recipes. By the end of the class, kids will be able to identify the herb, name some uses, have some medicine made that they can take home and use and have a craft plus be familiar with the song to sing to their parents. Ages 5 and up welcome.

Journaling and the Art of Herbalism for Teens (2-3 hours)
This class will show you how to create your own herbal journal to record your journey with herbs. We’ll talk about why it’s important to keep notes of your herbal experiences, how to sketch plants and more basics of journaling. Bring a blank journal with you (the Canson Multi-Media Paper Pad 7 x 10″/60 sheets is a great size) to decorate and begin your journaling journey. By the end of class your cover should be decorated to reflect your personal style and and an entry or two will be begin to fill your pages. A limited number of journals will be available for purchase but to assure you have a journal, please try to bring your own. Ages 13 and up welcome.

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JANE VALENCIA

Wild Child Learning: An Herbal Class for Kids

(Inspired by the children’s herbal fantasy book by Monica Furlong)

How many of us have wished we could be like Wise Child, mentored by the herbalist and wisewoman healer, Juniper, in the arts that lead one to become a “doran” — one who senses the pattern at the heart of all things, and who is dedicated to loving and protecting it?  In this class we’ll adventure in a Wise Child “curriculum”, in which our immersive experience of the herbs includes poem-making, music, storytelling, secret languages (the language of plants as well as secrets hidden in scientific names), musing on  the nature of healing, nature awareness games, and even math (by way of nature’s patterns) and astronomy!
Come prepared for surprises and fun!

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KATJA SWIFT

Bones and Muscles for Kids

What are growing pains? What happens to your body when you wear high-heeled shoes? How can you best develop your muscles for sports? Why should you sit up straight, and what’s straight anyway? How can you speed recovery from a broken bone or a twisted ankle? This class will cover everything you need to know to have strong muscles and bones – from herbs that will help you grow strong and tall to simple exercises that will protect you from back pain when you get old like your parents. Be ready to learn, move, and play games!

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GINGER WEBB

Plant Families for Young People
Using commonly known fruits, vegetables, herbs, grains, nuts and seeds, we will explore the world of plant families. For any new student of herbalism, these botanical categories create an entryway into the patterns inherent in the plant kingdom, helping awaken the intuition and experiential understanding of plant energetics. We will touch on lots of different plant families, and spend extra time exploring the Rose Family, the Mint Family, and the Mallow Family.

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Thanks again for reposting!  -Kiva

Kiva with a few of our teachers and friends at 2011 TWHC

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2012 Traditions In Western Herbalism Posters

FREE COPIES TO PLEASE DISTRIBUTE

We received a second shipment of the smaller (8×11) 2012 TWHC Posters, and would appreciate your help posting them in prominent places in yours and other nearby herbal and health related stores, offices, clinics and schools.  Just drop us a note or leave a comment here with your address and how many copies you need.

If you have a color printer, you can also save us postage by printing out and photocopying this file:

TWHC2012 Poster Download

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In addition, if you have a website or digital newsletter, it would be great if you could add a TWHC graphic for folks to see.  You can download a 72dpi version of the TWHC graphic by double clicking on:

TWHC2012 Graphic72DPI

For information on the conference, to subscribe to the free newsletter or to register, go to:

www.TraditionsInWesternHerbalism.org

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Thank you so much for helping!

-Kiva Rose

(Please RePost)

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The above art poster is one of hundreds of illustrations found in the current Spring issue of

PLANT HEALER MAGAZINE

While we feature modern, edgy, and even satirical art in our quarterly for folk herbalists and plant enthusiasts, we also have a soft spot for the old timey and purely sentimental.  Thus our inclusion of plant-hearted art taken from postcards from the period of 1870-1930.  Hope you enjoy them too!  To subscribe, submit articles or advertise, please go to:

PlantHealerMagazine.com

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Spring is a wonderful time! Of course I want to be outside when it’s like this, but the pollen has been very much getting to me and my family. A scarf over my face helps a lot though. Horses, horses! My little six year old friend was kind to ask her friend Malena (who was teaching her how to ride horses) if I could come learn too! She said Yes, I was very happy. Now every sunday I go and learn how to ride Magic. (Malena’s beautiful horse.)  She’s a really great teacher!  I’m learning both western riding and english riding. In some ways I like english riding better cause you’re able to communicate with the horse better, and you hardly use the reins except to hold on. I really love horses a lot and have since I was very young, but this is the first time I’ve gotten to interact with them so much. Horses are such wonderful animals, I’m learning to do barrels while trotting western, and also learning how to stand up while doing english, I am so enjoying myself!  I’m learning both loping and trotting The amazing thing though, is that  the moment I begin to get scared, cause of how fast I’m going on Magic, or he’s picking up more speed, he begins to get frightened too. He jerks his head at the reins, sometimes he even increases speed which just scares me more, until Malena has to stop him for me. If I stay calm and measured then so does Magic. Malena told me that he can feel if my scared or upset and I lose control when I am frightened like that. When I’m calm he stays at a fast but smooth pace. It’s amazing feeling the difference, how the least twinge of fear can effect a horse.

It’s interesting cause last year I went with my Mamas to check out the new conference sight. I got to go trail riding, However the horse I was riding decided she didn’t like the lead horse she was paired up with. He was a little bossy, but she most certainly wasn’t  going to follow him. So she turned around and ran back to the pasture and wouldn’t go anywhere until they’d gotten a different lead horse. However as I said it’s interesting looking back and seeing the things I could have done different as I know more about horses now. For one thing I panicked when she sped up and squeezed my leg on her sides which made her go faster. I’ve learned a lot about horses in 12 days. Taking care of the horse is fun too. If you learn to ride a horse, you need to learn to take care of it too. Even if that means cleaning up it’s dung and and sweeping out the stable. These things are just as important as the fun stuff is,  like brushing the horse down and such.  Body brush, Dandy brush, Curry comb, Face sponge, Stalk sponge, Hoof pick, and  Hoof oil. Lot’s of things you need to take care of your horse.

It is amazing what a human and a horse can do, if they communicate with each other right.

Lately, I’ve been getting up early, It’s good to get into the habit of getting up early when you are young, or getting up late, can turn into a lifelong habit you can’t get rid of. It’s good to get up late sometimes, for instance, your sick, or you went to bed late the night before. I’ve been trying to get to bed at 8:30 and wake up at 6:30, the result in getting up early is a chain reaction all through out the day. It also means I have more time for learning new things in the morning even if that thing happens to be math, I may not like math now, but it could be very useful for the future. I also get my stuff done faster, if want to do my chores slow that’s fine but the consequence for this is a shorter alone time. However if I feel like going fast on my chores, and getting them done quickly, then I have the consequence of having a long alone time.

We’ve written a schedule for our day in the week, like on Tuesday we’ll do this and on Wednesday we’ll do this. We decided that on every Thursday I would cook something. This idea has been great fun, this week I made a tomato soup with onions and meat. This has been very fun. My treehouse was made in mind of the little girl who would soon play and sleep in it. However it was not made in mind of the tall girl I’m becoming, we had no idea I was to be SO tall! I’m already 4 feet 11” and that doesn’t exactly fit well in my small treehouse. So unfortunately I have to stop sleeping in it. My papa had the great idea of turning the porch into a bedroom for me. (and I have to remember it’s not cause he’s sweet it’s because he loves me so much. ☺ I am very excited about it. As a result of me not sleeping in my treehouse anymore I have much more room for my dolls and toys and such. It looks very nice in there! Also our very much appreciated worker Alex worked on my treehouse quite a bit. She did a great job! Before I leave you all, I would like to tell you all about the book I’m writing. I’m writing a fictional book involving otters, foxes, and beavers and other such animals. It is called The Adventures of Vilu Daskar, it is turning out very nicely. It could be a few more years before it is done but is rolling up the hill quite nicely. I will be very happy to share it with everyone once it is done. Goodbye!

Have a glorious spring!

Rhiannon

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Edward Abbey:
My Time With The Contrary Truthsayer

by Jesse Wolf Hardin

All italicized quotes by Ed Abbey
(gleaned from his essays, journals, and personal correspondence with this author and others)

We here at Anima get tons of letters and comments if we post a blog on the exemplary natures of house cats, or run virtually anything written by our incurably cute and temporarily young daughter Rhiannon.  What we do not get comments on are posts describing dire ecological realities or the fundamental inherent destructiveness of our generally cherished civilization, the dangers of imaging that a candidate from one political party will be any less odious and pernicious than those from the other party, our cultural illusions and common hypocrisies, or the inescapability of personal responsibility.  Not a single person, in fact, responded to my most recent post… revealingly on the importance of responsiveness.  We understand that some topics are more pleasant to ponder than others, but continue to produce a far reaching range and hopefully balance of subjects, perspectives and moods.

“I would prefer to write about everything; what else is there? But one must be selective.”

The rule for the successful “marketing” of ideas is to identify a specific audience and narrow one’s subject matter, useful advice that I – by my very nature – tend to ignore.  “Blogging on every conceivable topic” our Anima Blog header reads, and it is thus that we post on a medicinal herb one issue, and the obstreperous author and gadfly Edward Abbey in another.  One can help to heal the body, the other may prove an antidote to the gleeful sleepwalking, suffocating illusions and restrictively polite nice-isms that make possible our toleration of injustices and indignities we might best find intolerable.

“May your trails be crooked, winding, lonesome, dangerous, leading to the most amazing view.”

In one case, the path of wordage has passed through a brightly flowering meadow while in the next it has dipped into the shadows, and only through all its twists and turns can we hope to recognize the many great and sometimes untidy and discomforting truths.

“It’s the writer’s job to speak the truth – especially unpopular truth.  Especially truth that offends the powerful, the rich, the well-established, the traditional, the mythic”.

It was precisely this approach and attitude that first drew me to him, as much as his demonstrative love for the same Southwestern bioregions I’ve so long made my home.  I’d read all his books, from Fire On The Mountain – the story of a White Sands rancher’s stand to protect his land from seizure by the U.S. Air Force – to what was back then his most recent,  the rollicking novel The Monkeywrench Gang, before initiating what would many short but sweet exchanges of correspondence.  Short, I say, because it was plain postcards that he most often mailed out, a few pithy or poignant lines printed on their backs in what was this Luddite’s equivalent of today’s Twitter. I was only mildly insulted, that some of the lines he wrote me had already appeared, or would soon appear, in his essays and books.

“Wolf, don’t let the bastards get you down.”

Ed Abbey said he wrote to encourage his friends and confound his enemies.  But even more than that, he seemed to me to write because it was his nature to do so, and because being a crafty, opinionated and controversial wordsmith brought him both the attention and the isolation that he craved… nipping any superficial relationship “in the bud” as he liked to say, pissing off the powers that be as well as alienating the literary establishment, winning the affections of twenty something year-old female backpackers and the respect of tree-hugging iconoclasts.  He was flattered by the dossier the FBI once compiled on him, and by his fictional Monkeywrench Gang inspiring the formation of a real-life eco-radical tribe, Earth First!, while unmoved by the praise and critiques of what he thought of as university do-nothings, fiction groupies, disembodied intellectuals and the effete cultural elite.  His very effective means for filtering the wild seeds from the civil chaff, was a candid and profoundly liberating political incorrectness.

Step 2 will be shooting a TV that isn't already broke....

“You (Wolf), are a poet, an artist, and a man… and good at all three.”

Even this bit of praise that he sent me proved problematic, as I had to omit the part about “man” in his quote to avoid being mercilessly and ceaselessly ridiculed but the strong and equally opinionated activist women that I worked with.  Women, however, that had all read and been inspired by his classic Canyon Solitaire.  What Abbey did most masterfully, was to communicate the total awesomeness of the natural world, free of the saccharine literary pretentiousness, saccharine sentimentality, liberal guilt and suffering whiny-ness all too prevalent in the “nature writing” genre, and to kick his readers minds into gear with fearsome passion, objectionable opinion and unpredictable perspective.  This resulted in a vociferous fan base of woods romping misfits, and also no small number of critics, detractors and outright antagonists.

“Beware of the man who has no enemies.”

Ed’s enemies were many and often loud, from humanist social ecologist Murray Bookchin and the editor of Green Anarchist, to indignant feminists and offended Hispanics to corporate developers and East Coast literati.  Some attacks flattered him, others seemed to hurt him more than the crusty author liked to let on.

“Better a cruel truth than a comfortable delusion.”

Abbey was as true a man as I ever met, as truthful and wholly, unapologetically real, but he was also a bundle of contradictions, delightfully testy, exaggerated and obnoxious.  Like the character Hayduke that he created, Ed could be extolling the beauty of unspoiled wildlands while pitching a series of emptied beer cans out the window of his old gray truck.  While he loved to get out into the desert for up to weeks at a time, he did more driving than walking, and seldom camped out of sight of his rig.  While he was the best known celebrant of the purposeful sabotage of the machinery of development and wildlands destruction, from what I heard from him as well as his closest compatriots, he only rarely engaged in such illegal acts himself, and he admitted to me bungling much of the little vandalism that he did entertain.  He was disdainful of authentic Latin culture with what he say as its mix of repressive Catholicism, drug lords and corrupt politicians, yet decried the bland American burbs and “cultureless” Texas with its urban cowboy posturing.  He preached against organized religion and spiritual placation, while also holding that “Nothing could be more reckless than to base one’s moral philosophy on the latest pronouncements of science.” Ed was heavily criticized for his female characterizations in his books and his cavalier objectification of women as sex objects, and yet at the same time he spoke out often and strongly in defense of women’s right to make her own decisions regarding birth control or abortion.  He wrote about the virtues of one’s love for a woman and of fidelity to place, while cheating on each of his five wives and openly announcing that “loyalty to one would be to betray all the others”.  He asserted that people are the rightful top of the food chain, while insisting that he would rather kill a human than a coyote, identifying more with the free and furry than with his suited counterparts.

“It’s time this old wolf got out of his hole a bit.”

The postcards he frequently sent to myself and others over the years, invariably featured a return address of either “Wolf Hole” or “Oracle” Arizona, two authentically rural and totally cool sounding places nearly an hour’s drive north of the matching tacky tract homes that both he and his EF! activist sidekick Dave Foreman had purchased on the SE side of trendy Tucson, faux adobe structures featuring twin microwave ovens that no self respecting backwoodsman author or camo-clad ecoactivist could be blamed for wanting to keep quiet about.  And while Ed once served as a Military Policeman, and advocated strong central control of a militarized border with Mexico to prevent the migration of undocumented aliens years before Presidents Bush and Obama started positioning troops there, he was at the same time a self described “lifelong anarchist.”  He was fired as editor of his college paper after writing that “Man will never be free until the last king is strangled with the entrails of the last priest” and satirically attributing it to Louisa May Alcott.

“Anarchism is not a romantic fable but the hardheaded realization, based on five thousand years of experience, that we cannot entrust the management of our lives to kings, priests, politicians, generals, and county commissioners.”

It was nonetheless an anarchist collective that gave him the greatest grief, at least outside of his tumultuous relationships with women.  In July of 1988, Ed showed up at the EF! Round River Rendezvous atop Arizona’s endangered Mt. Graham.  I was there to assume the teaching of Bill Devall’s deep ecology workshop, and shared the stage with Abbey and others before witnessing him being rudely heckled by the anarchic Alien Nation folks in the audience.  He devotes a chapter of his 1989 novel, Hayduke Lives!, to describing this scene and the remainder of the rendezvous, mentioning me by my stage name of Lone Wolf, and alluding to the bare skinned Tribal Jams concert and ecstatic “amoeba” hugfest that I instigated and from which he reasonably slipped away.  As an aside, the Alien Nation contingent’s camp was found emptied the following morning, having drove off in the middle of the night to escape what they shrilly described as “whip-cracking ecofascist vigilantes”… but that were actually only Green Rage author Christoph Manes, San Diego activist Van C. and myself looking to find and to agitate the retiring David Foreman.  It was a time of active resistance, both against the dominant technoindustrial paradigm of artificiality, conformity and destruction, and against Foreman’s secretive autocratic control of the group he helped found.

“Rebellion transforms slaves into human beings, if only for an hour.”

Foreman and Abbey used to talk about strapping dynamite on their backs once they know they are morally ill, and floating out to the center of Glenn Canyon Dam to liberate the long stagnating Colorado River, but Abbey died in his subdivision.  These days Foreman is a white haired anti-immigrant activist who has smartly avoided all use of the word “explosives” since his arrest and plea bargain.  Ed nonetheless hit the nail on the head, when it comes to the limitations of us housebound writers, and the redeeming value and utter necessity of action.

“Philosophy without action is the ruin of the soul.  Now as always we need heroes and heroines!”

The last time I saw Ed, it was in his house, in a small room he used as his study and den, a place for writing, conversation and cigars, and free from anyone telling us he had to put it out.  He played an album of classical music, while teasing me about the global rock n’ roll of my Deep Ecology Medicine Show act, the elder pouring a glass of whiskey, the younger seated far from his alternative culture of hippies and mountain men, medicine women and pipes filled with a relaxing herb.  Ed ranted about the self indulgence and trivial tangents of modern poets, while admitting he’d tried his hand on writing poetry his self.  We commiserated about the intense feelings of magic and mystery that the wild Gila forest of S.W. New Mexico excites, while regretting we could not use the word “magic” without being lumped with the carefully quaffed, gentle speaking peddlers New Age foolishness.  He remarked about the restraint and boredom inherent in marriage, told me how much he would like to come visit me in my Gila canyon home and bemoaned that probably never would.  He wistfully mentioned the handful of road graders parked unattended just up from their street, set to begin ripping the life out of the desert again come the following Monday, before pouring another drink and settling deeper into chair.  I rode off into the warm Arizona night on my motorcycle, compelled to emphasize in my mind a particularly useful bit of Abbey advice.

“It is not enough to fight for the land; it is even more important to enjoy it. While you can. While it’s still here.”

The art of doing wasn’t just a matter of resistance, I knew, an insight I had only slowly learned to apply.  Along with the resistance and struggle, the activism and wilderness restoration, we needed to also nourish ourselves with wild ideas and wild places, well prepared and fully tasted meals.  We needed, and still need, a balance point somewhere between mournful resignation and desperate reaction, a place alive with both ideas and acts, silence and song.

“One brave deed is worth a hundred books, a thousand theories, a million words.”

That said, Abbey’s words were an action in themselves, accelerants feeding the fires of so many others’ passions and causes.  And when he was asked what he wanted to do with the rest of his life, he cited not the joys of writing so much as those of food and flesh, family and friendship, in all cases most ideally shared far from pavement and in the illumination of the unbowed desert night’s boundless flurry of stars.

“I shall continue… for as long as it gives me pleasure.”

…………

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Deepening Response:
Tips For Acting Response-ably

Excerpted from the now available Spring 2012 Issue of
Plant Healer Magazine

by Jesse Wolf Hardin

A light swirl of snow is blowing through the canyon as I write this intro, barely wetting the soil so far.  Preceded and followed by unseasonably warm days, it is a blessing nonetheless.  There are folks who planned to arrive, but who postponed or canceled in response to what they feared would be a debilitating storm.  Our helper, Fritz, has responded by working on the outdoor kitchen construction even in this blowing white.  Our considered but trained response was to make sure the tools were all put away were they wouldn’t rust, covering the burn barrel to keep its ash dry until we dump it, uncovering the rain barrels in preparation for catching whatever amount of moisture spills from our cabins’ metal roofs.  A longer term response involves improvement of the water cache system, and erosion control where the ground is most susceptible to being stripped.  I sit here and write for you, in response to our desire to reach, share and teach, and to your desire to read, learn, know.  I respond in emails to the things that students and friends write, bus also to what they leave out, avoid or conceal, all with the aim of healing and helping.  Nearly all my actions are deliberate and a result of discernment and choice, with specific intentions and in hopes of particular desired results.

It is discernment, gained through the processes of intuition and critical thinking, that makes optimum action possible… and once we have discerned a danger or opportunity, need or course, it is for us to determine a purposeful and optimal response.

“Knowing is not enough; we must apply. Willing is not enough; we must do.” –Johann von Goethe

Let’s be clear on the definitions from the start.  A reaction is any action elicited by another action, from chemical reactions to our reacting without thinking in an emotionally charged argument.  Many reactions are habitual and unhelpful, others such as instincts are informed by the experiences of our entire species through time and are ever so valuable.  Response can be distinguished from simple reaction, to the exact degree that it is conscious and aware, deliberate and intentional.  We may react to a sudden loud noise inside a nearby building by crouching, covering our ears, or seeking directions from someone in authority, whereas an aware response might be to discern the source of the noise and then find ways to actively assist.

Response is choice made active.  Even when we choose to cease our work and flop into the hammock, this too can be a conscious doing, recognizing our exhaustion or simply aware of and desirous of the scene and sensation.  It is actively answering questions posed to us, but also the active choice to be silent or still.  It is a response, for example, to choose fully take in a new and striking scene with a quiet mind, or to cease talking when you hear a worrisome noise that needs identifying.

The origin of the word “response” is Middle English, drawn from the Latin “responsum” which means “something offered in return.”  Response is therefore a deliberate giving back, whether a verbal response to a question, or a physical response to a situation, facial expression or action.  The key is “deliberate.”  The difference between a reaction and a response is that a response is conscious and intentional.  What we offer in return, may be wows and ahhs of amazement and satisfaction, upon being gifted by the sight of a spectacular sunset.  Or our gratitude, when a botanical perfume we are making comes out just right, an herbal formula appears to work, or a student or client writes us to say how valuable our guidance has been.  Our watering of a garden is an offering, when presented with parched and wilting herbs.  When we are witness to injustice, we do well to offer remedy or resistance in turn.  In the face of love, we rightly respond with love as well.  When presented with a need, problem or illness, we may – in return – respond by offering suggestions or solutions, or help with healing.

“My biggest wish for my daughter is that she practices responsiveness. I never want her to look over her shoulder at her life, and think, ‘What is this? When did this happen?’ I never want her to wake up next to a lover she didn’t choose. I never want her to feel the pain and humiliation of being a passive observer in her own life.” –Jaclyn Leeson

In Anima, I’ve redefined the word “responsibility” as “the ability to respond”, which we all have to one degree or another, “and following through with needed action.”

We have a response-ability to do what we can to take care of and grow ourselves, to halt injustices whenever they are found, to ease the suffering we see, preserve and restore the natural world that we witness being degraded and destroyed.  This does not mean obligation or debt, it means that with awareness of needs and problems comes awareness of our ability-to-respond, and there there is no excuse not to.

This is as true in the practice of herbalism, as it is in every other aspect of our lives.  We are more empowered, less subject and victimized, the more aware we are, and the more wise and proactive our response.  A big part of the work of healing is teaching folks to discern what is going on with their bodies and what conditions or actions may be affecting them, to critically consider the condition and the treatment options, and to optimally respond in ways meant to contribute to their long-term overall wellness.

Tips For Responding:

• Unconsidered reaction shines in the most immediate and dire of emergencies, but usually proves a dull tool next to true response

• A response answers the question that every situation and act poses “What is the best action for me to take in turn?”

• Another way to phrase this: “What is the optimal gift I can give in this situation (in contribution to truth, healing, justice, balance…)?”

• Our responses benefit from self knowledge as well as awareness, intuitive and bodily sensing, discernment, analysis and appraisal

• Reaction to being ruled, will be all that’s left for those failing to respond to the imposition of regulation

• Understanding our issues, biases, angle and perspective is essential to choosing the best response

• Know that every response made elicits further reactions, and respond with future ramifications, consequences and side effects in mind as well as immediate aims

• The effective person is both response-able and responsive

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To read the entire article, subscribe or resubscribe now at: www.PlantHealerMagazine.com

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