Blog
Feeling Grief + Dreaming Another World
Grieving is an innate part of being human. It is as natural as springs that seep upward in heavy rains. As a species, we have always made space for grieving. In song and silence, chants and wails. Grieving not only had a space in a healthy and functioning existence, it created space. To be…
Become a Shaman of Your Life
For a long time I equated shamanism with esoteric antiquity. Something practiced in the far past, or only pertinent to those who were born and raised in an indigenous culture. As an anthropology student in college, I was trained to see shamanism as an isolated practice of healing, one that was far more rooted…
How to Undertake a Shamanic Journey
Shamanic journeying is a kind of meditation, combined with focused intention, to enter an expanded state of consciousness. In journeying, a Shamanic practitioner enters a kind of “trance state.” If you have ever had one of those moments of being lost in thought, like following the fading lines of a beach trail onto the…
Your Life is a Poem
We think of our lives like a timeline but, really, they are poems just waiting to be experienced. Poetry has always fascinated me. Like moonshine spirits, poetry holds an essence that is both distilled and incandescently free. It belongs to no one but itself, and it captivates you totally. In poetry the true magic…
Cycles of Healing
Healing is about communing with the cycles. Like the circles of sun and tide and horizon, our lives are intimately guided, nudged and nurtured by cycles. Winter, spring, summer and fall. The dry season, the monsoon. The cycle of seed, flower, fruit. The wheel of constellations through the night sky. Maiden, mother, crone. In…
What’s in my Medicine Bag?
Whenever I travel I always pack a medicine pouch. Over time this has evolved. From bandaids and salves to flower essences, stones and talismans. As the years flow by my very definition of medicine changes, grows, and transforms. From the sturdy resiliency of the western medical breastplate, to the more ineffable healing of the…
Clear Quartz Initiation
True medicine is wild, abundant and free. This truth, plucked from the stone medicine soliloquy I released several weeks ago, pretty much sums up the bedrock of everything I believe. It explains why I make medicine, why I write, why I teach. Because I’m passionate about helping people to remember that medicine isn’t something…
Stone Medicine, Grounded
For me, it began with the plants. By which I mean that it was the plants who first helped me to see that the world is alive with medicine. It started slowly, with noticing how blackberry blossoms can dust a hillside like snow. With seeing the dandelions sprout between the pavement, the plantain flourish…
