Ceremonial Medicine Making

What goes into the jar? Light from stars our ancestors knew. Flowers our grandparents grew. Smoke from rosemary plants we tended all year. And we seal it all with song. Plants contain the memory of millions of years of life on Earth. And if we listen closely, our bodies instinctively know how to learn from them. Ceremony is a cross-cultural human technology that produces rhythms in our lives that are the opposite of the linear, fast-paced culture of urgency that causes harm to our human and non-human kin. By embodying life-supporting rhythms, we will explore ways to create new ceremonial lineages of herbal medicine by learning directly from plants themselves, while making room to honor the painful emotions that can accompany loss of tradition. While we will have room for important discussion, this class will largely be hands-on, allowing space to be in practice making medicine together that is infused with care and deep listening to our mountain ecosystem. When we show up in our dignity as human animals, this collaborative approach to herbalism can offer the relational medicine our world needs.