at the Evergreen State Organic Farmhouse, Sunday, 4/29

sponsored  by M.A.S.H. (Medics Assisting Students in Health) at Evergreen

Plants and the Twilight Realms 1-3:30 pm
Something flashes just at the edge of your vision and disappears into the woods.Faint music drifts through the air on a night when the air is thick with the scent of Apple blossoms.Many cultures have stories of other worlds – faerie realms separated from our own world by a thin veil. Of people
disappearing into worlds of wonder and peril – and those who come back to tell the tale coming back transformed. And in many of those stories and traditions, plants guard the entrance to those worlds.
In this workshop, you will meet plants traditionally associated with the border between this world and the realms of magic, and look at the ways the folklore about these plants relates to their medicine and their ecology. You will spend time with Hawthorn, Datura, Black Cohosh, Ghost Pipe, and Wood Betony, coming to know each plant in a new way.

Wild Healing, Wild Ecstasy: Plants for Reclaiming Authentic Sexuality
5-7:30 pm

Guilt, shame, fear, and pain abound in our culture, separating us from the core of who we are. This is especially prevalent and damaging in relation to sex and sexuality. Plants are our biological ancestors and relations and possess an intelligence of their own — one that is not filtered through the myths and lies and complexes our culture has built around sex. In this workshop we’ll explore how plants can help us heal some of the pain we carry around sex and reclaim our own authentic sexuality.

Price:
FREE to TESC students with ID
$5 for one workshop, or $8 for both for community members.

Bardic Brews has just posted a free recording of a talk I gave on “Talking with the Plants” –

http://www.bardicbrews.net/2012/03/talking-with-the-plants/

Go on over and have a listen . . .  and if you like what you here and want to delve deeper, there are still spaces available in my “Talking With the Plants” Course that runs from April 15 – September 15 –

http://www.medicineandmagic.com/?page_id=36

An Introduction to Traditional Western Herbal Energetics with Sean Donahue,

May 12-13 2012

Pacific Rim College — Victoria, BC

In most traditions of medicine around the world, practitioners are guided by systems of energetics – ways of describing and classifying patterns of disease and properties of plants that provide a basis for knowing which plant is appropriate for which condition. These systems are rooted in observation and the sensory experience. Many westerners look to Ayurveda and Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) to learn about energetics – and these rich traditions provide amazing insights about human bodies and the plants and foods that can help them heal. But there is also a western system of energetics – blending European traditions rooted in Egyptian and Greek medicine with the experiences and discoveries of 18th and 19th century North American herbalists. This workshop offers a basic introduction to Traditional Western Herbalism. You will learn about the origins of this system of energetics, its emphasis on respecting and supporting the “vital force” that helps the body maintain health, and ways of identifying and correcting imbalances based on polarities of heat and cold, dampness and dryness, and tension and laxity. In the process you will try several herbs yourself and learn to recognize the ways they shift energetic patterns in your body. By the end of the weekend, you will have learned the basic concepts of a system that can help you understand what’s happening in someone’s body and choose the right herbs to support the body’s own healing processes.

Course Instructor:

Sean Donahue is an herbalist, poet, and activist committed to healing and transformation through connection with the living Earth. As an herbalist, Sean works primarily with the wild plants of the forests and fields of New England. He views the plants as teachers, helping the body, mind, and spirit learn to correct imbalances that stand in the way of health. Sean works to connect people with their own wild nature and with the life of the world around them. He believes that personal, community, and cultural healing are all deeply intertwined with the healing of our planet.

Course Dates:

NEW Date!

Saturday and Sunday, May 12-13, 2012, 9:00am-5:00pm

Course Tuition:

Regular – $300 (Early Bird – $285, until April 30)

Students* – $275 (Early Bird – $250, until April 30)

*PRC diploma students will receive 1 academic credit for this workshop.

Course Registration:

To register, please phone toll-free 1-866-890-6082 or email the Registrar at admin@pacif icrimcollege.ca. Full payment is due at time of registration to confirm placement in the course. Payment can be made via MasterCard or Visa, debit, cash and cheque.

Withdrawal Policy:

For course withdrawals submitted in writing or in person 30 days or more before the start of the course, registrants will receive a full tuition refund less a $40 non-refundable registration fee. For course withdrawals submitted in writing or in person more than 14 days but less than 30 days before the start of the course, registrants will receive a 50% tuition refund. Without exception, no refunds will be given for course withdrawals less than 14 days before the start of the course.

Happy New Year everyone!

I wanted to let you know about a few new offerings:

• The “Herbal Asthma Strategies” recordings are available now at http://www.bardicbrews.net!

• On February 11, I will be teaching in Boston about herbal and nutritional strategies for addressing depression, and on February 18, I will be teaching in Barrington, NH about herbal and nutritional strategies for addressing asthma.

• From April-September, I will be teaching a new online course — “Talking with the Plants.”Pay by January 31 and get a 50% disc Margi Flint’sount!

• I’m happy and proud that my work will be included in the next issue of Plant Healer Magazine.

• I’m also excited that I will be teaching at the Third Annual Traditions in Western Herbalism Conference in Coconino, AZ,  September 13-16.

• I am deeply honored to be teaching in Margi Flint’s Herbal Immersion program this summer.

Watch in the weeks to come for the resurrection of my blog –
http://greenmanramblings.blogspot.com/,  and for announcements about workshops in Michigan, Wisconsin, British Columbia, and California!

I am happy to announce that in the next few days, BardicBrews.net will be releasing “Herbal Strategies for Asthma” — a series of recordings where I share my insights about working with asthma, accompanied by a mini-e-book summarizing my approach.   Watch this site for details!

And for those wanting to explore asthma in more depth, I will be offering a day long workshop at Lichenwood Herbals in Barrington, NH on February 18.  Details are available at http://lichenwood.com/workshops.html

October 27, Turner, Maine

All night words and images have been streaming in from New York and Oakland, people taking the streets to express their grief and rage as a young Veteran hangs on to life precariously in a California hospital, having survived two tours of duty in Iraq only to have his skull cracked open by a tear gas canister fired by police in the streets of his own country.

And here I am sitting at my computer in the basement of a house in rural Maine, trying to finish the revisions of my overdue article for Plant Healer about herbs for reclaiming the sense of self.

Beside me is my altar to the Dark Mother — Datura blossoms and Birch Polypores, a wand made from a Thornapple and a Coyote bone, a jar of the tears I cried the night that Troy Davis was executed, Apples, and a black candle burning.   The air in the room is heavy with the scent of Copal.

Parts of me are crying out “what are you doing?!”, demanding to know why I am not somewhere else, washing out eyes burning with teargas, bandaging wounds from batons and rubber bullets.

But I am not somewhere else.   I am here.

Here in a place where the news of the world reaches me.   But so do the cries of the Coyotes.

Here in the days when we move toward darkness and the old year begins to die.  The last days before the time my ancestors spoke of as the time outside of time.   When the plants send their consciousness down into their roots to dream.

And a part of me is in the underworld dreaming with them.  And a part of me is in the heavens listening to the events below, recognizing the pleasure and pain as notes in the same movement of the same symphony.   And a part of me is in my body, in this rocking chair, typing these words.

And the urgency of this moment, the possibility that everything could turn on a dime, the seismic shaking of the world around me is real.

But so is the solidity of the bedrock beneath my feet.

And so is the slow work of singing to the roots and seeds that they might sleep soundly and gather strength for the time when they will begin growing through the cracks now forming.

And so is the work of paying attention to the medicine called forth to heal each wounded place in my body and in my heart — because its from this medicine that we distill the essence of the medicine to heal all worlds.

There is no more or less.

There is only the work before us.

This is not somewhere else but here.