2019 Weekend Schedule

Thanks everyone for your patience. We finally have a tentative weekend schedule up!

Please keep in mind that there may still be last-minute changes as we iron out kinks. Make sure to pick up a final schedule the morning of the conference when you check in at Registration. We look forward to seeing you! You can also check out more information about our fabulous teachers here!

And remember to visit the Vendor Fair and BIPOC Healing Space, both open all day.

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SATURDAY NOVEMBER 23:

9:00-10:00 - REGISTRATION / Stamm West (Marketplace)

10:00-10:45 - ORIENTATION / OPENING CEREMONY / Flanagan Chapel

11:00-12:30 - SESSION 1
Workshop 1 / Aisha Edwards / Somatic Empowerment: Micro Interventions for Micro Aggressions (BIPOC Only) / Flanagan Chapel
In this workshop, participants will learn to use simple somatic kinesthetics to address the daily trauma of nuanced racism and socialized oppression. This group experiential exercise will involve participants re-sculpting and reorganizing daily experiences of marginalization to restore agency and self efficacy.
Workshop 2 / Jeevan Singh, Allie Dyer / Decolonizing Menstruation (BIPOC Only) / Smith Hall
Jeevan, and Allie will lead a brief overview of the herstory of injustice wrought on black and brown bodies that menstruate and why it is critical to provide and support healing spaces for the generational trauma wrought on our bodies. We will then lead and share some powerful plant allies and medicine to call into beginning the practice of healing for this realm.
Workshop 3 / Keath Silva / A Visit With the Wise Elder / Council Chamber
In community we will drink the medicine of the elder tree and taste the wisdom of the ages. Through sound, breath, movement, meditation and plant medicine, we have an opportunity to connect with the Elder tree and receive their counsel, magic and healing. All who care to are invited to share their experience with the group and celebrate in song. Bring a journal, a pen and a vessel for tea.
Workshop 4 / Phelicia Magnusson / Cultivating Consent: What does it feel like to embody allyship? / Gregg Pavilion
This workshop is an embodied exploration of allyship with plants, the body and the way we cultivate space and craft responsibility as healers. In a facilitated journey with a flower essence of your choosing we will practice asking consent of plants & tuning into the wisdom of the body to hear & feel our “yes” and our “no”. The second part of this class is an open dialogue about plants and practices that can assist us in holding compassionate space and boundaries for ourselves and our clients. This space is an intentional exploration of clients as teachers and the commitment of a relationship with plants & land that moves beyond a language of consumption. This space is open to healers, practitioners, artists, plant people and folks who work with others towards healing. Please bring an open mind and a pen and notebook.

12:30-1:45 - LUNCH (Open seating in Trail Room)

1:45-3:00 - Workshop / Batul True Heart, Melissa Reyes / Los Flores y Los Aires / Flanagan Chapel
Join Curanderismo practitioners, herbalists, and medicine makers, Batul True Heart of Maaso Medicina and Melissa Reyes of Remedios Birth and Healing, as they share about ancestral traditions. Learn about the 13 Aires, or winds, of Curanderismo and how to move stuck emotional energies like jealousy, anger, sadness, and shame. Explore the connection that particular flowers have with these energies and practice using water, plants, song, and prayer in your own personal ceremonies.

3:15-4:45 - SESSION 2
Workshop 1 / Raven Rose / Ancestral Herbalism / Council Chamber
People say that the traditions of our ancestors are fading away and many of them have been lost. In Ancestral Herbalism, we look at ways to restore herbal traditions that have been lost. To do so, we turn to our ancestors of both blood and milk to remember the traditional medicine ways of the past. We will embark on a guided journey with a mint family herb and share our discoveries. Learn how to establish and maintain connections with the healers of your lineage and how to learn directly from the plants themselves.
Workshop 2 / Shelagh Brown / Plant Allies for Resilience and Resistance (for Black & Brown people only) / Flanagan Chapel
This workshop focuses on plants crucial in liberation work, the plants that support our nervous, cardiovascular, immune and other systems as we do work with the intention of creating a planet that is safe, healthy and just for all life. There are numerous plant allies that are crucial in guiding us through trauma, grief, loss, displacement, and all pathologies lived due to colonization, white supremacy, capitalism and all systems of oppression. This is not a clinical class, it is more centered on how one who is already doing revolutionary, liberation or any type of service work in our communities can use the plants around us to help us thrive through it all, not just simply survive. What are the plants that keep us grounded and provide us with that stamina to work through our own trauma while also taking on and navigating everyone else's? What are their stories, and what are the plant stories of our ancestors who survived so much, and are the reason we exist today? This class is an ethnobotanical exploration of practices of Black and brown folks, and centering the most marginalized among us, queer, trans, disabled, chronically ill, neurodivergent, fat, undocumented, religious minorities, poor and working class. We will create a space where people feel supported and protected, that is interactive, where we can go deep with the plants and really tap into the innate resilience that lies within us all, through our ancestors, with guidance of plants and other allies.
Workshop 3 / Kristy Bredin / Seaweeds for Health and Healing / Gregg Pavilion
Seaweeds have traditionally been important plants for food and healing among coastal people throughout the world and are a rich source of diverse nutrients uncommonly available in land plants. Learn about the health and healing abilities of our local sea plants and ways to integrate them into your diet. This class will center around cooking demos while providing an overview of: • types of seaweed • healing properties • micronutrients • iodine and thyroid health • recipes • external uses of seaweeds • pollution issues • reputable seaweed sources • and more! Open Discussion / Keath Silva & Heath / Plant Based Support Circle for White Allies and Accomplices / Smith Hall
This is a plant supported compassionate small group session for white allies and accomplices to decompress, share and be heard around issues arising for you at the conference. This is a brave, compassionate space of connection in which we support one another and work together to dismantle systems of oppression. Singing, plant medicine, hot rocks and meditation will be involved. Bring snacks for yourself and/or to share. Space is limited to a small group. Sign up in advance at Keath’s table is required.

5:00-6:30 - SESSION 3
Workshop 1 / Andrea Thompson / Plant Medicine for Reproductive Health and Sovereignty / Gregg Pavilion
We live in a time where our reproductive health is lacking, our rights are being diminished, and it still feels like a radical act to openly discuss menses and menstrual cycle symptoms. How can we use plant allies to take back our own health and find ways around a broken medical system that undervalues our words and ignores our bodies’ inherent wisdom? In this class we’ll talk about the basic ways in which we can clean up our menstrual cycles
Workshop 2 / Brunem Warsaw / Herbal First Aid / Council Chamber
Learn herbal approaches to common first aid situations, and feel empowered to remedy everything from burns and cuts to sprains and poison oak exposure. We’ll discuss how to decide whether a more holistic or conventional first aid response is appropriate. Whether you're interested in first aid for your own self-care, your family, or your community in general, this is a practical and fun way to learn about herbal medicine. Workshop 3 / Ash Canty / Decolonizing & Dismantling White Western Herbalism / Smith Hall - CANCELED
Decolonizing and Dismantling white western herbalism through ancestral remembering and somatics.
Open Discussion / Ridhi D’Cruz, Janice Lee / Healing Justice: Rooting Into Our Collective Liberation / Flanagan Chapel
A reflective & conversational space for guided group meditation, discussion, and radical imaginings.

7:30PM-10PM - DANCE PARTY!

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SUNDAY NOVEMBER 24:

9:30-10:00 - REGISTRATION / Stamm West (Marketplace)

10:00-11:30 - SESSION 1
Workshop 1 / Fern Tallos / Accessing Strength / Council Chamber
An inclusive Perspective of Wellness: In this class we will explore tools for building resilience using plant allies for support in the journey to balance. Utilizing a lens of harm reduction and a social-model of care, we will explore how inclusive frameworks that consider oppression have the potential to create more meaningful opportunities for healing.
Workshop 2 / Aisha Edwards / Somatic Defense: Body Boundary Practices for Radical Self Care and Wellness / Smith Hall
In this workshop, participants will learn visualization and interoception skills to enhance the felt sense of their body boundary, a first defense for wellness. This is an experiential exercise that will involve partnered movement and somatic mindfulness.
Workshop 3 / Phelicia Magnusson / Plant Allies for Inner Radiance (BIPOC Only) / Gregg Pavilion
This class is a ritual invitation to celebrate how you embody your radiance. We will do this by engaging our personal myths through writing, meeting plants that support us in rooting into our sense of wonder, and by crafting a ritual that is an affirmation of the wisdom within us. This class will center on flower essences, floral baths and energetic dosing. This class is an exploration of tools that invite us to make space, hold space and grant ourselves the permission to exist as all that we are.
Open Discussion / Adrianna Locke, Touk Keo, Souther Salazar / Group Debriefing & Processing / Flanagan Chapel

12:00-1:30 - SESSION 2
Workshop 1 / Shayne Case / The Eldership of Plants: Healing in Community / Council Chamber
What do plants have to teach us about belonging to ourselves, our communities, and our world? In Western traditional herbalism, the focus is often only on the medicinal constituents of the plant. In this class, using an indigenous point of view, we will explore the plant's relationship to stone and snake; to flood and fauna. This is an experiential class guided by storytelling, meditation, taking sacred medicines, and discussion.
Workshop 2 / Keath Silva / Community Poetry Experience with Tilia, the Linden Tree / Gregg Pavilion
With the support of the sweet and sublime medicine of Tilia, the Linden Tree, who has inspired poets throughout the ages, there is an invitation to be rocked into the zone of poetic expression which blossoms into a community plant poetry celebration. Bring a journal, a pen and a vessel for tea.
Workshop 3 / Dawn Cohoe / Plant Connection & Empowerment for Psychiatric Survivors / Smith Hall
Western health systems are historically rooted in the denial of community knowledge and personal experience, instead favoring a hierarchical, white and patriarchal medical system. A connection to plants, talking to plants, and using their properties to support community members is regularly deemed “insane” by the medical model. However, these practices actively challenge the capitalistic motives of medical and pharmaceutical industries. In this workshop we will explore the potential for healing when we form connections with plants in community and how to support people who have experienced trauma in the mental health system, especially those who have life-altering experiences and have been hospitalized for beliefs that lead to being labeled as psychotic, such as hearing voices.
Workshop 4 / Andrea Thompson / Plant Medicine for Reproductive Health and Sovereignty / Flanagan Chapel
We live in a time where our reproductive health is lacking, our rights are being diminished, and it still feels like a radical act to openly discuss menses and menstrual cycle symptoms. How can we use plant allies to take back our own health and find ways around a broken medical system that undervalues our words and ignores our bodies’ inherent wisdom? In this class we’ll talk about the basic ways in which we can clean up our menstrual cycles.

1:30-3:00 - LUNCH (Open seating in Trail Room)

3:00-4:30 - SESSION 3
Workshop 1 / Raven Rose / Connecting with Plant Spirits / Smith Hall
By connecting with the spirit of a plant we are able to learn directly from the plant about its energetic signature. We are also able to learn the ways a particular plant can be an ally for us in our lives and how those who came before us, may have connected or worked with that plant. We explore different techniques that can be employed to connect with plant spirit allies. These include how to diet with plants, make living flower essences, and self-guided plant journeys. We also explore the relationship of the physical attributes of plants to their emotional and energetic qualities. In class we’ll take a short journey with a plant utilizing some of the tools for plant spirit connection.
Workshop 2 / Brunem Warsaw / Herbal Support for Emotional Intelligence & Relational Work / Gregg Pavilion
Relational work is, arguably, the meaning of life. You will come out of this class knowing more about the political history and meaning of emotional intelligence and relational work, how our nervous systems have been impacted by these histories, which herbs can help us repair and re-pattern, and simple tips that contribute to our ability to heal our relational webs. This class is especially recommended for those who do collective organizing or work in groups.
Workshop 3 / Liz Long / Working with the Earth’s Wisdom of Surrender / Council Chamber
How do we surrender, and why is it so important? How can the earth - listening to the earth, the land, the plants and trees, with our bodies and observing its cycles with our minds and beings — help us in learning how to let go? What is the balance between action and surrender, and how can we trust the earth to show this to us? What resistance do we have to the concept of surrender? / This class will include sharing from healing messages on surrender and letting go channelled from the earth. We will do group meditation with the earth, each individual participant sitting with land, or a tree or plant of their choosing to ask them what they have to teach about surrender. We will also work with flower essences and land essences to support us in our listening and asking. / The last part of the class will include optional small group sharing on what folks received in their meditation, with the intention that when we share our personal stories with each other, our healing is amplified.
Workshop 4 /  3:00-5:00 / Giselle Castano, Naike Swai / Astrology of 2020, Cultivating Collective Resilience (BIPOC Only) / Flanagan Chapel
This is a combination workshop of astrology and plant medicine focused on exploring more in depth the energies of the Cancer-Capricorn polarity in astrology. Many major planetary cycles are ending in Capricorn in 2020 signaling massive structural shifts in power. Do you feel that? There are important instructions for humanity at this time from the cosmos. We will explore these together as we identify good medicine to support us in purging any imbalances in this polarity and specifically how to cultivate Cancerian energy as medicine in these times of upheaval.

5:15-6:15 - CLOSING CEREMONY / Flanagan Chapel

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Conference Tips: Bring a writing utensil and notebook for notes. We also recommend bringing a reusable water bottle and to keep yourself replenished throughout the day. There will also be a communal alter! Please bring offerings for the land and help set intentions as a community.