I will be performing and teaching at this year’s Firefly Gathering. Below are descriptions of my classes:

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. 

Song and Dance Plants!

On this interactive plant walk, we will lovingly touch, taste and smell plants, savoring sensations as pathways to our own embodied expression. How does spicebush feel in your mouth and what sounds does it inspire? What dance emerges when you spot a coralroot orchid amidst the leaf litter? By reframing creativity as a tool to communicate with other species, we not only help heal cultural wounding around expression, but also foster meaningful relationships with plants that can help restore us as a vital keystone species within a healing ecosystem. We are social mammals. Let our songs and dances be acts of remembering! 

Wailing for Healing

This circle will offer supportive space to use vocal expression to metabolize grief, send prayers, care for ancestors and clear blockages to our most authentic expression.  On a personal level, un-grieved grief can lead to overwhelm that prevents ease and clarity in our lives. And on a collective level, it can create stagnation in our ability to create positive change. While we will spend the bulk of our time vocalizing, we will also explore song traditions for grief like keening and also be in conversation about how we can integrate healing vocal expression into our own communities. What obstacles prevent your community from having healthy grief culture? What grief support do you wish you had regular access to in non-transactional containers? We will also be in conversation about how to tune into the capacities of our nervous systems and how to care for ourselves after outpourings of grief. 

Music Gardening: Music and Skills Edition

Music Gardening is an emergent system to help groups of people sing together without the need for shared repertoire. Rooted in my two decades of studying and embodying animistic music traditions, this particular circle will focus on how music weaves into processes to support healthy communities within healthy ecosystems. We will look to traditional music styles like ancient herding songs that wordlessly communicate with animals and examine how restoring these practices can help us be better stewards and collaborators. We will also explore how we can further integrate song culture into the skills we practice at Firefly to deepen our relationship with what we make at the gathering. Whether your voice is croaky or crystalline, on pitch or not, we can all contribute to building healthy song culture. Let’s be in practice together listening to our bodies and the greater body of the Earth for how music can help restore us as a keystone species that supports all life on Earth.

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. 

Music Gardening: Music and Skills Edition

Music Gardening is an emergent system to help groups of people sing together without the need for shared repertoire. Rooted in my two decades of studying and embodying animistic music traditions, this particular circle will focus on how music weaves into processes to support healthy communities within healthy ecosystems. We will look to traditional music styles like ancient herding songs that wordlessly communicate with animals and examine how restoring these practices can help us be better stewards and collaborators. We will also explore how we can further integrate song culture into the skills we practice at Florida Earthskills to deepen our relationship with what we make at the gathering. The Earth delights in all our expression!