Animá Lifeways & Herbal School

Greetings friends, on a lovely stormy day.  It seems a quickly moving front is passing through, clearing some already today but having thoroughly stirred the canyon with its introductory winds.  So hard did they blow, that the comforter would stay on the bed even tucked in, and I was impelled indoors for the first night since last it began warming up last March.  I sleep so much more soundly, relaxed by the sound of the river’s currents of course, but less believably rocked into slumber by even the hardest blowing winds, comforted and assured by the physicality of earthen breath no matter how intently it disarranges the building materials on the porch or inadvertently discomforts the canyon’s branch-hugging birds.

The photo above shows one small section of wall a next to where I sit and type, to the left of me as I face the widows and the river with my little desk.  You will note the natural balance affected by this combination of Oberon Zell Gaia statue and Lauren Raine Gaia mask, and an unsmiling pic of an imprisoned Geronimo with an unloaded photographer’s Springfield carbine prop.  And in the center, a “Marble Man” made Earth globe representing the world that Geronimo in his understandably unpleasant way sought to protect.

Today I am trying to finish a column for a newspaper I write for, edit both Kiva and Loba’s wonderful new pieces on the topic of “Balance” for the Winter issue of SageWoman magazine, and nail a gutter back up that we need to channel water into our rain barrels.  Yesterday was quite different, a rush of student work and emails in the morning, another painful foray to the sliding-scale dentist for us po’ folk, and then too muddle headed to do meaningful writing.  Using elder and Vitamin D to bolster our immunity to the flu we’ve been fending off, I tried to just relax and watch a dvd movie but was drawn instead… to drawing!

I had been wanting to find time for over a year, to create a portrait logo with plant illustrations for our ever more empowered Animá student Angie, for use as a banner on her inspiring blog about earthy mothering and the need for mothers to nourish and tend themselves: Authentic Mama.  The smaller the actual drawing, the harder it is to make a portrait actually look and feel like the person portrayed, so I started with a 5” design that Kiva can now reduce by half for its intended purpose.  You as well as herbalist Angie get to see it here first, posed holding her sweet children Ella and Wyatt, looking the archetypal healthy mom but lately self-defined as so much more.  Below her either side or enlarged illustrations of sensuous Trillium, one of her three main plant allies.  I drew the other two as well, noble Nettles and resilient Rosemary, to appear at each end of the upcoming logo/banner.  Instead of being placed against a blue field, Kiva will use an evocative plant photograph background.

It seems I could not stop there, even though there were no more immediate art commissions awaiting my hand.  It was not so much diversion from the aching jaw as self-soothing and self-healing through the ministration of pencil and pen, and what proved an irresistible desire to surprise, honor and hopefully please our latest confirmed TWH Conference volunteer.  In this unrequested pencil portrait, we see Tonya (Tony, or “T”) with her magical, plant loving daughter, a masterful herbalist and her budding protégé.  T has had extensive experience organizing events as well as running her Blazing Star Herbal School, making her perfect to serve as the Assistant Director of our Traditions in Western Herbalism Conference, possibly helping with every aspect of promotion and organization before and during this exciting 2010 conference.  T, we sure hope you feel welcomed, appreciated and acknowledged!

To others of you who have inquired about commissioning art for yourselves, I will take your orders (for a donation or trade) so long as you understand that it takes awhile with all the deserving students and vital publishing venues.  It is a gift to me to be able to shift into the wordless artist state, creating visions of beauty and balance as I witness the results, at the rate that I only wish I could manifest our healing vision in the larger, needing world.

I close with an invite for you to read Part 3 of the Pitfalls on the Path series, below (the previous 2 parts can be found in this blogs Archives at right, under “Teachings & Practice”), highlighting a not always comforting awareness that is nonetheless as crucial to our empowerment as any pleasant or positive inspiration.  To the degree we can, we will use this blog to provide you with some of both, to better equip and empower the right action that serves not just us but the whole.

Wishing you purpose and wonder,
-Wolf

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PITFALLS
On the Animá Path of Self Growth, Self Realization, Service & Purpose

by Jesse Wolf Hardin
www.animacenter.org
Part 3

Anyone on a path of self growth, self realization and purpose needs to be conscious of and honest about the distractions and comforting rationalizations, the over simplified ethnic romanticism, the imported and sanitized traditions, the non demanding relativism and easy ways out, and the get-enlightened-quick schemes that substitute for the real thing.  The following is the third in a series describing these dangerous or limiting Pitfalls on the path of personal growth and purpose, misconceptions and maladies that can hinder our understanding, development and manifestation.  Please feel to share these with friends, guaranteed to disrupt the pat thinking of New Age, spiritual and conservative audiences alike:

• The Myth that Feelings Can’t Be Trusted
Most of us have been taught that feelings are irrational, unpredictable and potentially dangerous.  For this reason, women have historically been dismissed as too emotional, prone to hysteria.  Intuition has been written off, and instinct labeled as the unconscious knee-jerk, self preservation responses of the primitive and mindless.  In actuality, we evolved to be the most conscious feelers of the planetary whole, the emotion of love is the most positive and powerful motivating force, and a healthy relationship with any aspect of the world requires an emotional component and language as much as a mental understanding.

• The Mistaken Notion That Only Feelings Count
It can be just as much of a handicap imagining that feelings are the only credible measure of a situation, or that disembodied thought is without anchors in the emotional being, our experiences and sensations.  The mind can lie and distract, but also reveal and connect.  The heart is always honest, but without the mind its honest responses may be based on misunderstandings.

•  Imagining Or Inflating Prowess
There is often a tendency to exaggerate our natural abilities or our knowledge to date, in order to help justify the time our calling takes away from other obligation, to rationalize our disaffection from “normal” lifestyles and expected ways of being, or to qualify the healing work we already do for others.  When underestimating ourselves, we set our goals too low, fail to take as many chances or follow through on as many opportunities… but by overestimating, we can fail to do the necessary preparation, study and practice first, overextend and disappoint.

•  Overestimating Or Misconstruing Intuition
Intuition is a deep knowing that comes from our connection to the Anima, a sensing of the truth and motivation behind appearances, the recognition of the unseen, the inner, the all.   Some are born evidencing more intuition than others, but everyone can work to develop this important healing sense.  The danger comes from confusing our overriding hopes, the expectations that come with repeat experiences, or our ability to sometimes cue into body language, with genuine native intuition… and thereby missing out on important clues or surprising variations.

• The Myth That “It’s All Good”
There are few expressions more counterproductive than “It’s all good,” used to rationalize any situation.  The desire of the heartful person to see good in all people and things can lead to a failure to see all sides, discern unreality and expose harmful situations.  Nothing is all good, just as nothing is all bad.  The practitioner stresses what is good and right, while staying aware of problems and inconsistencies, seeking the whole picture.

…to be continued

(To further deepen your study and practice we recommend enrolling in the various Animá 8 Week Courses described on the website, especially the introductory “Orientation, Principles & Pitfalls”)

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Autumn is truly wonderful here, as usual, with the first bit of ice on the surface of the outdoor barrels showing, every afternoon warm and sunny with a quality of light that exists no other time of the year.  Catching the shifting colors with our camera offers another reason to take time off from writing for you all and switching to crawling through the willows and playing in the falling leaves.  The clear skies have been perfect for Rhiannon’s latest obsession, a fascination with astronomy and hunger to be out each night pondering the mysteries and patterns evoked by the stars’ and planet’s brilliant light.  We want to buy her a used telescope when we can locate a good one, as apparently there is a huge difference in image quality.  “Kid’s” models have never been that useful for her, as anything she is interested in she approaches at an adult level, in both her depth of understanding and care she gives things.  Kiva, Loba and I all grew up without feeling any need to call these celestial bodies anything but “pretty stars,” but Rhiannon’s desire is not only to sense her place on the continent and the earth, but Gaia’s place in the expanding universe.

Enjoying Arborea’s newest song as I write this, a haunting aboreal remake of the classic “This Little Life of Mine,” soon to be released for sale on an Odetta tribute album.  Readers have been asking for us to write more about our discoveries in the best eclectic music, which I promise we will soon as we can make the time available.  I have been consumed with correspondence course and conference promo, including spending a ridiculous amount of hours putting together what I hope will be a helpful and comprehensive outline for Darcey, Rosalee and anyone else helping by contacting potential conference presenters.  The new conference brochures and flyers are done, and Darcey thankfully already distributed a number of them at the recent Plant Savers gathering in Tucson.  Kiva and I are steadily catching up with our patient students, and it’s even possible we will be able to do some work on new course lessons and books before December.

It’s been sweet, how many letters and comments have come in about my Furry Buddhas post.  Much appreciated!  Please though, I implore you all to focus on the fact that these cat-taught lessons are meant to awaken, enliven, inform and inspire our own lives, to motivate us to make changes to be more like them and thus more our true creature selves… to reside in the intensity of present time, play with and delight in our food, to not let people’s opinions affect us and  (as Resolute wrote to me) “let ourselves outside.”  Our animal companions, like our children, are not surrogates or proxies living life wholly in our stead, enjoying what we think we have no time to enjoy, having the adventures we might decline to have.  No, they are coparticipants in a life that we too are called to vitally engage, experience, co-create and manifest.

-Wolf

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PITFALLS
On the Animá Path of Self Growth, Self Realization, Service & Purpose

by Jesse Wolf Hardin
www.animacenter.org
Part 2

Anyone on a path of self growth, self realization and purpose distractions and comforting rationalizations, the over simplified ethnic romanticism, the imported and sanitized traditions, the non demanding relativism and easy ways out, and the get-enlightened-quick schemes that substitute for the real thing.  The following is the second in a series describing these dangerous or limiting Pitfalls on the path of personal growth and purpose, misconceptions and maladies that can hinder our understanding, development and manifestation.  Please feel to share these with friends, guaranteed to disrupt the pat thinking of New Age, spiritual and conservative audiences alike:

•   Healing As Self Sacrifice
The Animá Tradition does not require a life of either isolation or privation, only periodic times away from the social and consensual reality, and a periodic fast from habit and ease.  The practitioner may find that her entire constructed reality collapses around her, as part of her transformation and rebecoming.  But there is nothing she needs to surrender except her illusions.  We are defined not by what is given up, but by the gifts that we open to accept, and those that we naturally and purposefully give.

•  Defining Ourselves By Results
We may not always get the results desired, but that doesn’t mean we’re not necessarily good healers or activists. Healing depends on many varied factors, not least being the motivation, attitude and actions of the individual. And ultimately, no one escapes debility and death. Likewise, every success at protecting wilderness or society is conditional at best.  All any practitioner can do is give our all, to the best of our knowledge and ability, and then step back to allow the earth’s and client’s necessary natural healing processes.

•  The Problem With Being Too Easy
As teachers, facilitators and care-givers, many of us are understandably emotionally invested in those we give our time to, and yet we cannot allow ourselves to handicap our healing abilities by softening or withholding painful but important information. We need to make our recommendations even if the individual finds them difficult, discomforting or distasteful. And they cannot deal with their condition until they face it honestly.  Practitioners are characteristically compassionate, so we have to make an effort to balance that with discernment, clarity, decision, and even insistence.

•  The Dangers Of Permeability
The Animá Practitioner is also naturally empathic, meaning she is more adept than most at experiencing what her patients’ are going through, emotionally as well as physically and “spiritually.”  This is a crucial diagnostic aid, and can increase our motivation by deepening our sense of connection and drawing attention to what we share in common.  The danger lies in becoming too permeable and absorbent, taking on the symptoms or absorbing the distress of the patient.  The tribal shaman/healer who sometimes “sucked out” the diseases of the patient, also made it a point to retch or otherwise purge themselves afterwards. In a related way, we open up to the person’s feelings and condition, but strive not to take their distress, depression or fatigue home with us.

…to be continued

(To further deepen your study and practice we recommend enrolling in the various Animá 8 Week Courses described on the website, especially the introductory “Orientation, Principles & Pitfalls”)

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The Furry Buddha:
What Cats Are Really Trying to Teach Us

By Jesse Wolf Hardin

(Animá Lifeways & Herbal School)

It’s high time I came out and admitted it: the most important teachers in my life have been decidedly non-human.  Much of who I am and most of what I’ve authored grew out of the experiences and lessons of nature.  I’ve been instructed by the rootedness of plants and the parable of a fallen baby swallow, armed and empowered by my growing connection to the land, humbled by a sometimes flooding river, and transformed as well as informed by the poignant examples of our fellow creatures.

Not all of my numerous critter mentors, however, have exactly been what you’d call “wild.”  Pumpkin-Sigh was a particularly fine teacher and role model for me, a veritable furry buddha, a fuzzy feline soothsayer if dressed in a rather ordinary orange-tabby coat.  He was the last of a long line of backwoods canyon cats, his every need tended and every insight recorded by the man-who-writes.  Like those venerable masters who preceded him, Pumpkin-Sigh brought forth a special joy we’d do well to emulate, and an ageless wisdom that we too can share.  His instructions for a satisfying and honorable life were simple, imparted through evocative wordless example.  I’ve been privileged to translate, as follows:

1) Focus on the present moment, or else it might get away.

2) Live as if there’s no such thing as the future, because in a sense there really isn’t.

3) You know full well who you are.  If you find you can’t relate to the names that some people call you, simply ignore them!

4) Pretense is a disease of the masses, tool of the controllers and strategy of the weak.  Who the heck cares what most humans think?  Be your true self at all costs.

5) You’re a cool cat, so refuse to be pigeonholed.

6) Be wary and suspect, without sacrificing your cuddliness.

7) Freedom is more important than even sex or food.  Fight to keep anyone from ever sticking you in a box.

8] Pester whoever is in authority until you’re allowed to go outside.

9) Insist on what is most real.  You darn well know the difference between genuine water-born fish and so-called “fish-flavored”!

10) Believe in what you can see and taste, and not what people seem to try so hard to tell you.

11) You’re capable of learning from your mistakes and moving on.  If you happen to have swallowed any hair-ball lies, simply hack and spit ‘em back out.

12) You are a wild-willed creature, perhaps a companion but never anyone’s pet.

13) Getting dragged to a behavior modifying school, doesn’t mean you have to behave.

14) Though you don’t need to be mean spirited about it, a degree of disdain is natural… and to be expected of any individual with discernment, taste, and even the most elemental standards for our coinhabitants on this planet.

15) Never waste your waste products on a perfumed litter box, when they can be put to better use making a political statement or avenging some perceived indignity.

16) Self defense is an act of self respect.

17) Never fake affection.

18) Indulge in the nourishing comforts of life, whether that means treating yourself to a bowl of warmed milk on a chilly day, or taking a break from all your worthy activities to catnap in the sun.

19) On the other hand, doing the unplanned or the scarily unfamiliar can be a real character builder, and greatly enrich your experience of life.  Risk discomfort for the sake of adventure.

20) If you have something significant to express, by all means sing it out.  Otherwise, you will experience and learn more if you walk silent and keep quiet.

21) Purr to indicate you’re happy with your meal.

22) Always play with your food!

23) Balance out all the good eating by running up and down trees.

24) Chew on a few flowers like afterthoughts, and then enjoy gazing at the rest until you’re cross-eyed.

25) Explore the ordinary, as though it were infinitely fascinating — because it is!

26) Life is precious, finite and fleeting, so don’t let a single butterfly go by unnoticed.

27) Maintain self awareness and pride, even when acting as silly as you feel.

28) And whenever not busy making a statement, playing with your food, running up and down trees or exploring fields of wildflowers… curl up tail-to-nose with a loved one and sleep.

Pumpkin-Sigh died of old age over a decade ago.  He was not replaced with another cat, much as my family and I love and even sometimes crave another feline in our lives.  This is in part because of the no-pet covenants that are part of the sanctuary being designated a wildlife and botanical refuge, with the beautiful lizards and ground pecking birds clearly relieved.  But mostly, it is because he was irreplaceable.

May you all find in your animal companions not just love but but a connection to the natural world in all its wonder and with all its faithful instruction… and through the natural world, the nature of your own truths.

———www.animacenter.org——–

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PITFALLS
On the Animá Path of Self Growth, Self Realization, Service & Purpose

by Jesse Wolf Hardin
www.animacenter.org
Part 1

Breaking free – of both prevailing conventions and our own imagined limitations or well guarded illusions – can be like walking barefoot in the dark.  We continue moving ahead, but likely without consensus and often without company, and with neither a light nor a map… straining our other long dormant senses for any indication of priority and direction, stepping ever so carefully with our sensitive and vulnerable bared soles (souls).  Yet, worse than any unseen pitfalls in the dark are those promoted and sold to us in the bright of day – the glitzy distractions and comforting rationalizations, the over simplified ethnic romanticism, the imported and sanitized traditions, the non demanding relativism and easy ways out, and the get-enlightened-quick schemes that substitute for the real thing.  This is the first in what will be a series describing these dangerous or limiting Pitfalls on the path of personal growth and purpose, misconceptions and maladies that can hinder our understanding, development and manifestation.  Please feel to share these with friends, guaranteed to disrupt the pat thinking of New Age, spiritual and conservative audiences alike:

•  The Myth Of Unworthiness & Powerlessness
It is all too common for us to imagine that we are somehow unworthy of our calling and work, that we have insufficient age or resources, come from too pedestrian a personal background, have too little formal education or no money to pay for official certification… when in fact those who are called almost always come equipped with what is needed most: awareness of being drawn to a special service, an affinity with plants and the healing arts, a natural sensitivity and penchant for empathy, the fact of or potential for unordinary intuition… as well as a growing intolerance of the superficial and meaningless, and an increasing distrust of institutional, interventionist medicine. It is also easy to imagine that we are unqualified to help others, if we have evident health problems of our own that we cannot solve. But again, health is not the complete absence of pain or discomfort, and our illnesses can provide us with necessary healing skills such as experience, insight and patience.

•  Undervaluing Our Work
It is a mistake to think you have to be ready for a full-time job as a healer, activist, teacher etc. in order to assume your Animá practitioner identity and role. Not all of our efforts are paid, and some of them go unnoticed or uncredited. The practitioner does her work not just through healing consultations but through everything she does, on call and actively engaged even when standing in line at the grocery store, doing her magic even in the anonymity of crowds. Some will make it their sole focus and source of income, others will practice without any announcement, and with no expectation of ever being compensated or acknowledged. All will begin by helping to heal (make whole) themselves and their families, then by impacting the lives of everyone they meet.

•  Obsession With Certification
In a culture where people are nearly always defined by their status, possessions and the letters after their names, it’s easy to fall into the trap of thinking that we are only qualified as healers inasmuch as we are formally trained, fully certified and validated by the recognized experts in a field. Yet the Animá Practitioner recognizes no outside authority and knows that real wisdom comes from hands on experience and practiced knowledge. No piece of paper or public affirmation can make her more effectual, or better qualified for her work. Every day, she has earned the credibility of another day’s experience… and in every way, she is always giving her best.

…to be continued

(To further deepen your study and practice we recommend enrolling in the various Animá 8 Week Courses described on the website, especially the introductory “Orientation, Principles & Pitfalls”)

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Intro: The following is the latest contribution by our astute student and sole Apprentice, a beautifully written tale of her continuing empowerment, with the sharing itself an act of courage for this long secretive owl woman.

The Lesson of the Bees
From Fear to Awareness, Respect & Wonder

By Resolute Michaels

“Fear can excite new ways of dealing with danger.  In addition, it can be the means for exposing imaginary threats, casting light on their true roots, and thereby on their solution.  In these ways fear can be both our teacher, and an agent of our healing.”
-Jesse Wolf Hardin

When did it start?  Was it when I stepped on an unfortunate bee who was blissfully gathering nectar as I bounded in my three year old exuberance toward our kiddie pool?  Or on the rare foray our family took into the groomed parks?  Perhaps while studying about the Africanized bees, my fear growing with each report of their aggressive behavior and expanding territory?  And who knows why my growing terror of all of life centered on the bees, yet by adulthood, my phobia had taken on mythic proportions.  Family and friends alike knew the pain of my clutching hands as well as my shrill shriek whenever any unlucky bee or wasp ventured into my vicinity, these others rushing to rescue me from the imagined danger into which I had locked myself.  As the years went by, I was more and more bound to screened-in areas, even though those did not even feel safe.

“The empowered feel fear – the disempowered, terror.” -JWH

Fear.  The one emotion I thought I understood, during the time I fled my body in an effort to cope, only to later learn that it was terror that I felt.  By the time I reached the Canyon for the first time, I had made an uneasy truce with the bees, pushing away my terror and forcing myself to move through my life by sheer grit.  Rather, what I needed, I would learn, was to become deeply sensate and sensitive to the world around me.

The Canyon provided just such an opportunity.  I was necessarily walking out into the world.  And it was in the Canyon that I was stung for the first time since childhood, surprised that the anticipated death did not follow.  Curiously exploring the sensation and learning to accept gentle care in the healing process.

“When we deny our fear, it owns us.  When we embrace our fear, we own it.  When we own our fear, is when it becomes a tool for transformation.” -JWH

On a subsequent visit to the Canyon, I was downriver, practicing embracing my fear.  I was keeping distance from the fields of bee flower, standing tall on their stalks, alive with the incredibly sweet hum of honeybees and the kaleidoscope of butterfly color, when I felt inexorably drawn to the scene, and soon found myself in the midst of the shoulder high purple, the butterflies, the bees, the song!  To my delight, the bees, intent on their gathering, didn’t seem to mind my presence.  In fact, they judiciously ignored me! During my slow amble between the flowers, accompanying the bees and the butterflies who were also honoring the vibrant life of the flowers, a magical transformation took place, that of terror shifting into respect, and a new understanding of fear.

“There are things to be afraid of.  But we should fear our trepidation most of all.” - JWH

I have carried the magic of that experience with me as I have allowed the Anima to fully encircle and then fill me.  So, when this past summer, I was floating down the river, again supported in some of the deepest caring I have ever known, how delightful to hear the bee song so close!  I opened my eyes to the glory of Yellow BeeSweet and in that moment, learned the lesson that the bees had been singing to me.  There is danger and pain in life, and that is enhanced when I am unaware and hapless, yet when I open my awareness to the world, there is incredible sweetness – the yellow of the honeybees as warming as the honey they make and of which I partake.  And as I walked back to the lodge along the shimmering cliffs, it was as if I was seeing the Canyon for the first time, as it seemed to whisper its secrets to me.

I have blossomed as a flower, calling the bees into my heart and center, and I have developed an affinity with them, the lessons they share and the connection to the greater Earth and Anima.  I look back over the summer, and recall wildcrafting BeeSweet, moving from bush to bush with the bees traveling with me.  I sought them out in my yard for conversation and for thanksgiving.  I shared a salmon meal with the yellow jackets, providing them their own portion beside me that they truly politely consumed as we sat together in the grass.

“Courage is born of willingness to feel, and matures to the degree that we learn to act on those feelings.” -JWH

It is Fall as I write this, and the cold nights have sent the bees in search of their winter shelter.  I feel in myself a harvest of deep feelings and a world of wonder. Rather than being released as from an indoor prison, yet still imprisoned in all my fears, I am instead outside, wistfully noting the absence of my little teachers, and discerning subtle changes in the seasons I have missed for so long.   Now I have a life rich in experience throughout the Fall and Winter, and I will welcome the promise of Spring, hearing again the bees sing, and embracing the lesson of the bees always.

(share and post freely—www.animacenter.org)

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Introducing the Music of

Arborea   &   R.I.S.E.
the Awesome Groups performing at the Sept, 2010
Traditions in Western Herbalism Conference

We are ever-so-excited to be featuring Arborea & R.I.S.E. at the first annual TWHC in Fall of 2010, promising two nights of deeply inspirited entertainment and heart-welling celebration.

With their commitment we’re now sure to have the ideal soundtrack for this amazing first-time event, music that evokes the wonder as well as healing capacities of nature, and stirs the wild hearts of the awakened human audience.  Their selection and invite, however, followed dozens of hours researching and considering every possible genre of music and known group.  We went through not only our own literally thousands of digital albums representing styles from around the world, but also volumes of Google searches, and nearly every page of offerings on CD Baby, iTunes and Amazon.com.  All of us here in the canyon are way into music, and thanks to my years of performing we know a vast pool of intensely competent artists from an oud player and ashiko drummers to unrepentent rockers and rapt reggae rastas, including some eco-troubadors we would love to host in the future like Alice DiMicele and that soulful baritoned advocate of wilderness Walkin’ Jim Stoltz.  I wanted to get in touch with songstress Jenny Bird whom I enjoyed playing with years ago, or to find a way to reach the semi hermetic flamenco master Carlos Lomas and his dancing partner Joya.  Rock would lift conference goers out of their seats, Fado could evoke the depth of passion that lovers of nature and practitioners of healing feel, the full on mix of the pain of loss and the nearly unbearable ecstasy of connection and purpose.  Native American flutes could summon the feel of New Mexico, true Land of Enchantment, and the ancient energies that seep through the living land then and now, Hispanic guitar would describe without words a community of land based seekers, and the Celtic pipes could raise the pitch on each listeners heeding of their personal calling.

The first need was for acoustic music, a presentation of meaning and soul that can be driving and danceable as well as sensitive or relaxed, in keeping with the vibe of the event as well as resonant with the energies of the Ghost Ranch and the high desert mountains it lies nestled in.  The second was for styles that bring to mind and heart traditions – of music and cultures just as of ways of healing – while demonstrating and inspiring in others personalized expression, melding, re-forming, adding to and breathing new life into textures of time and sound.  The third need was for music that either lyrically references and reverences or instrumentally suggests the natural world, green beings or the processes of helping and healing.  Fourth and last, was for musicians who would be as thrilled to be performing for this special audience, here in this special place, as we are thrilled to have and hear them!  And with both of 2010’s groups, all four needs have been magnificently filled.   We hereby welcome not just performers, but new extended TWHC and Animá family, sharing heart and the larger cause and vision.

For Friday Night, Sept 17th:
R.I.S.E.
(formerly Rising Appalachia)

Leah and Chloe are the heart of R.I.S.E., sisters with individual ideas and unique expressions of a shared gift, in agreement about employing music as a vehicle of awakeness, personal growth, social and environmental action, building community and celebrating tribe.  Their rhythmically propelled performance has the intent and energy of an Ani DiFranco show, though instead melding tweaked rustic Americana with global sensibility and world beat grooves.  Incredible and incredibly potent vocals stir more than soothe, while delighting and rewarding the fortunate audience.  As so often with our favorite new acoustic tracks, the lyrics are underpinned with minor-key banjo, played by Leah more like the old South actually feels than the ways we’re used to hearing that instrument used in traditional mountain music.  And the fiddle, the instrument that closest mimics the sound of the human voice in all its range of emotion, milked for all its worth by the intense Chloe.  Crowd pleasing acoustic rocker RISE songs include their “All Fence & No Doors” and the infectious Miles Davis tinged “Castle to the Barracks,” but they also turn all too often redundant covers of classics like Bill Wither’s “Ain’t No Sunshine” into distinctly RISE arrangements, with an almost North African hand-drum back beat and their trademark tingle-producing harmonies.

Unlike many bands, they have a cause, a reason beyond making incredibly enjoyable music.  You will find it in the lyrics of some of their cuts, and unabashedly in their between-songs insightful banter.  It is their cause to inspire people to waken to their gifts and destinies, to become empowered in the face of an in some ways repressive political and economic system, to reach those born to care with the motivation to act on their sentiments, to stand up for whatever it is that person believes.  And what R.I.S.E. would seem to believe in is an equality of spirit, in balance with a diversity of form and expression.  Justice for women, for the dispossessed and unheard, for tribal peoples, for wildlife as well as those green growing beings threatened by insensitive development.  They have chosen a path of working with grassroots organizations and activist groups, performing for less income than they would get elsewhere at women-centered and herbal and healing focused events, including the much loved S.E. Women’s Herbal Conference.  In their live performances it becomes impossible to sit motionless, our hopes and spirits lifted, answering the music’s call for us to rise.

Get their music.  Go to their shows.  Hear and enjoy!

For more information about R.I.S.E., please go to:
www.myspace.com/risingappalachia
To download their songs or order their CDs, we recommend CD Baby:
www.cdbaby.com/artist/risingappalachia and ALSO:
www.cdbaby.com/artist/RISErisingappalachia

—————–

For Saturday Night, Sept 16th:
Arborea

Arborea is a very much in love couple, Shanti and Buck.  They are, as we know through their original music, in love not just with each other but with an archaic sense, with dark art and light hearts that carry the stories of mountains and glens, human history and natural history intertwined, destinies inseparable, individual callings waiting to to heard and responded to.  If there were a soundtrack for the Appalachian country healer bending to gather her wild herbs, or the Ozark Granny-Woman handing out healing tinctures with hard to hear and much needed advice, this would be it, with a natural nod to the heaviness of life and purpose that somehow helps carry us forward to the healing and wholeness, to the impossible to resist lift of birds and bliss.  And if it is the classical and Americana dreamtime instrumentation that captures our attention, that paints the landscape for our every wakened feeling, it is Shanti’s siren vocals that tell the story we are called to such an enchanted place to hear.  Trading off on guitar and banjo, they each do their mated part to enchant us with modal moods, ebbing and lifting in organically structured cycles of composition dynamics, a conscious provocative intercoursing of feet-moving tempo and then relaxed pace, rhythmic heartbeat accentuated by the precious moment of silence, of depth and height, from the dream of a white victorian dress in a shadowed grove, to the truth of bared shoulders bent to touch the fertile soil in new day’s light.  If there is a haunting in the artisan efforts of this many times blessed pair, it is only the necessary application of aural fairy dust, the bewildering/bewilding of the too oft distracted human mind, the musical inspiration for each person’s reenchantment.

It can be read in their very name, Arborea, the green energy of this Traditions in Western Herbalism Conference, oak wise and sprout hopeful, reaching out with leaf dressed limbs while rooting securely to the truth of the earth and willingly taking in its nutrients.  It is a tune-built green arbor beneath which we ache and laugh, help and heal, where we stretch and grow into a self that is somehow more vital, intentional, responsive… and thus real.  We trust to follow their trail of seeds, to a vine and tendril draped portal not unlike Alice’s fabled rabbit hole opening up for the adventurous listener, enticing us into the always personal experience of a more natural and authentic, nature-informed and sensory filled, wholly attended and vitally realized life.

We highly suggest you check out Arborea’s enchanting recordings, you won’t be disappointed. For more information about Arborea, please go to:
www.myspace.com/arborea2
To download their songs or to order a CD, we recommend CD Baby:
www.cdbaby.com/artist/arborea

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Note: Musicians make very little income from their work, and we encourage you to support them with direct sales as well as spreading the word about their efforts to your contacts and friends.  Thank you… and enjoy!

For More Information on the Traditions in Western Herbalism Conference go to:

www.traditionsinwesternherbalism.org

-above profiles and intro by Jesse Wolf Hardin

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Intro: Recent changes at the Animá School have resulted in a continuing number of queries about both the 8 week Courses and what are now the year or longer Mentorships.  For all students of the earlier year long courses, your lessons and time frame remains unchanged, the only difference is that your special course is now called a Mentorship due to how much teacher-student time is involved.  For those considering applying of a year long program, please understand that I can take only a very few more Lifeways Mentorship students, and that anyone applying for Kiva’s Medicine Woman Mentorship will have to be put on a lengthy waiting list.  For all prospective students, we recommend beginning their work with us with an 8 week course of their choosing, ideally beginning with the Introduction/Orientation course.  The following revised and expanded descriptions should be helpful, and we thank you in advance for forwarding this information to contacts you think might be interested.  -JWH

Announcing the new Animá Correspondence Courses

—–Animá Lifeways & Herbal Courses & Mentorships—–

We live in an age where were we have largely lost touch with our feelings and needs, our knowing bodies and the natural world we remain rooted in and dependent on… unwell, under-effective and dissatisfied.  Animá teachings encourage and make possible our reconnection to our distanced dreams, awakening us to a very intimate way of engaging the world, to our individual most-meaningful purpose and likely neglected calling.

Student Opportunities

Anyone can study and benefit from Animá teachings through available Personal Counsel, free Animá articles found under the Teachings & Practice and Animá Tradition of Herbalism menus as well as on the Animá Blog and Medicine Woman’s Roots Blog, and of course in the Animá Books & Recordings.  However, for those who want to learn all that they can, and actualize what they learn, we suggest committing to an 8 Week Correspondence Course or Mentorship – Studentships open to all ages and genders, regardless of one’s existing existing experience, practices or beliefs.  The online courses of your choice will make it possible for you to study and practice at home where you live… with personalized guidance and support.

Animá Studentship courses provide not only the clarity and insight – but also the practical information, tools and skills needed for more enlivened, proactive and personally fulfilling lives.  And in the case of the Herbal Tradition courses, the ways and means to also become the most effective and responsive healers and herbalists possible.  Whether Lifeways or Herbal, the intent of these courses is increased wholeness and maximized awareness, response-ability, real world manifestation and utilization.  As a result, the course assignments are considered even more important than the questions and readings, requiring that every new insight be acted on and every new skill and tool applied.

Animá 8 Week Correspondence Courses

Correspondence Courses are topic specific, focused on specific areas of interest such as Deepening Awareness, Sense of Place, Constitutional Diagnostics, Medicine Making etc.  We recommend you register for one at a time, preferably beginning with the self-exploratory Introductory course in each field, then over time taking as many courses as you think you can learn from and use.

Like all Animá opportunities, these are offered on a donations basis, with a $150 to $350 sliding scale donation suggested for each course, either sent at the time of registering or in pledged payments as able.

Courses & Fields

Anyone can take any mix of the courses that they like, and all courses contain the core Animá perspectives and principles, but for the sake of organization we will be listing each of the available courses under one of the following 7 Fields.

• Path of Heart

Path of Heart Courses Completed or in Development include: Developing Self-Knowledge & Self-Confidence; Transforming Fear; Valuing Feelings & Trusting Instincts; Employing Empathy, Nurturing the Self, The Power  & Response-ability to Discern & Making Choices; Exploring & Fashioning Healthy Roles that Fit; Finding & Fulfilling Purpose…

• Shaman’s Path

Shaman’s Path Courses Completed or in Development include: Heightening Awareness; Ultra-Presence; Maximizing Intuition & the Senses; Vision Questing; Animal Totems & Plant Helpers; Learning to Use the Animá  Gifting Bones Runic System; Using the Animá Medicine Wheel…

• Herbal Essentials

Herbal Essentials Courses Completed or in Development include:
From the Ground Up: A Foundational Course in Traditional Western Herbalism; Blossom & Dream Herbal Course for Girls ages 8-16; Animá Principles of Healing; Wildflower Remedies Children’s Herbal Course for Ages 5-10; Grandmother’s Stewpot: Food as Medicine and Healing Through Nutrition; Introduction to Botany for Herbalists

• Herbal Advanced

Herbal Advanced Courses Completed or in Development include: Engaging the Anima: Utilizing Vitalism in Clinical Practice; Walking the Medicine Wheel: A Course in Hands-On Herbal Energetics; Wild Allies: A Weedy Materia Medica; A Grassroots Approach to The Practice and Work of the Village Herbalist

• Nature Connection

Nature Connection Courses Completed or in Development include:
Deepening Sense of Place; Getting Intimate with Your Bioregion & Plant & Animal Life; Understanding Wildness & Diversity; Primal Diet & Gathering Wild Foods; Animal Tracking as an Awareness Exercise; Preserving & Restoring Wild Species & Natural Habitat…

• Life Skills

Life Skills Courses Completed or in Development include:
Presence & Grounding; Making Every Moment Decisive; Healthy Sexuality; the Healing & Nourishing Power of Food; Making Home More Magical & Meaningful;  Empowerment Parenting & Animá Insights for Home Education; Discovering Your Most Meaningful Mission or Heeding a Calling…

• Expression

Expression Courses Completed or in Development include:
Writing Essentials for Budding Authors; Nature Writing Intensive; Art Instruction & Inspiration; The Principles of Rhythm & Giving Voice to the Drum; Protest & Activism…

Course Length & Student/Teacher Exchanges:

Each course is intended to take from 8 to 12 weeks to complete, counting a minimum amount of work on the course assignments.  Once your course work is ready to be handed in, there will be one or two exchanges with your teacher clarifying, affirming, and making suggestions particular to your personal quandaries, needs, abilities and direction.

Curricula:

Each 8 Week Course will include:

• Assigned Readings by your Animá teachers
• Self-Exploratory Questions – for you to consider and then respond to
• Useful Techniques & Practices – for you to try, and then to describe the results of
• Assignments – for testing and manifesting what’s learned, for the student to describe and then report back on… requiring our implementation of lessons and insights, and the finding of ways in your daily life to apply what is learned to further your quest, practice, path or purpose
• Plus one or more in-depth teacher/student exchanges, clarifying, affirming, adding to, and furthering… with sometimes additional personalized assignments

Students progress at their own rate of speed. Once satisfactorily completing your first chosen Course, you are then encouraged to choose and another.

Students wishing for a more demanding and possibly rewarding mutual commitment, can put their name on the waiting list for one of the year or more long Mentorships… or even apply for a potentially long-term Apprenticeship after familiarizing themselves with all that Animá is about.

Currently Available Courses

More will be added regularly, including herbal courses with Kiva Rose.

For complete descriptions of the following, go to the 8 Week Courses Section of the Correspondence Courses Page

• Orientation, Principles & Pitfalls: The Journey Begins
(For all Fields including Herbal.  Recommended for all first-time students.)
• Reaping the Blessings of Ultra-Presence: Grounding & Noticing
• Awakeness & Embodiment: Maximizing The Senses
• The Rewarding Art of Expanding & Deepening Awareness
• The Animá Medicine Wheel: Charting Our Paths, Challenges & Advantages
• Sense of Place & the Search for Home
• Rewilding: Reclaiming Freedom & Self-Reliance

To apply for any of the above courses, click on, download, fill out completely stipulating your first Course choice, then return the
Correspondence Course Application:

New Curricula is being written and expanded as you read this, so please keep checking back here often for the latest additions… and be patient waiting for your favorite subjects to be available.

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Animá Mentorships

Mentorships are intense, highly focused online courses – 12 to 18 months of study and practice with one-on-one online support, counsel and guidance.  Mentorships build on essential elements such as conscious presence, heightened awareness, awakened senses, interconnectedness, nature wisdom, reciprocity, response-ability, healing and wholeness, understanding our needs and gifts, loving ourselves, being honest about our pain, embracing our bliss, and manifesting and fulfilling our most meaningful purpose. In all cases we encourage using our fears as fuel for movement and change.  In a time and culture bent on distraction, abstraction, pretense, denial, avoidance and transcendence, Animá offers practical and perceptual tools for the fullest living of life… engagement and reconnection, creation and response.

Due to the extensive amount of student and teacher exchanges and support, there is a strictly limited number of Mentorships available each year and applicants will often have to be put on a waiting list.

Mentorship Curricula

Mentorships include 12 or more lessons, with each meant to take 1 to 2 months or longer to complete, and with each at least as extensive and in-depth as its counterpart being offered as an 8 Week Correspondence Course.
Each month or longer lesson includes:
• An introduction to the lesson topic/field
• Questions reviewing the previous lesson coursework
• Assigned reading
• Self exploratory questions for you to answer
• Practices and techniques for you to implement and then describe the results of
• Assignments for manifesting and feeding back about: implementation of lessons and insights, finding ways in your daily life to apply what you learn and further your quest, path and purpose
• Two or more in depth exchanges including teacher clarifications, comments and suggestions, and further personalized assignments

There are 3 Different Mentorship Programs:
• An Animá Medicine Woman Mentorship… with Kiva Rose
• An Animá Shaman Path Mentorship… with Jesse Wolf Hardin
• An Animá Lifeways Mentorship… with Jesse Wolf Hardin

For full descriptions of each, including the lesson curricula, please go the Mentorship Section of the Correspondence Courses Page on the website.

To Apply for a Medicine Woman Mentorship and be put on the waiting list, Click on, download, completely fill out and then return the
Mentorship Application Form

www.animacenter.org

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We hope you enjoy and benefit from my article on Time, below.  It’s “timely” given how incredibly busy we have been of late, rushing to create the finest sites and blogs possible in time for the deadline to get the conference website up.  The TWHC site was necessary before sending out Sponsor invites for conference sponsorships, which have to start going out very soon.  Everything needs to be finalized before printing the main brochures in December, but already we are preparing advance trifolds hopefully in time for Darcey to distribute them at the United Plant Savers Conference in Tucson Oct. 17th.  While it might be nice to do everything when we feel like it or “have time,” that’s not the way the real world, a real conference or Lifeways and Herbal School work.  We are nonetheless thankful to have the sites complete and published, so that the brochure and our students and consultation clients can be the priority.  Even with guests here, we are managing to move ahead with the layout and begin the necessarily in-depth responses to the students and clients we are so honored to be helping.  The quick shift from green leaves to gold makes the passage of time ever so clear, while in this heart-sating calling/practice/mission there is no past or future, beginning or end, just our always changing doing.

Thank you as always, for being a part of that, making time for Animá as we make time for you.

-Wolf

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