Seeds of Our Ancestors:
Ancestral Somatic Herbal Allyship
About our program
a 9 month somatic herbal educational program for people of color who are actively seeking to reconnect with nature and the wisdom of their ancestors as a way to support healing for themselves and their communities and to align with the healing power of the plants
The allyship is a foundational program that centers
AfroIndigenous folk wisdom and spiritual technologies and recognizes the àse, the essential life force,
of the plants as a sacred and necessary component of both their medicine and their sovereignty while offering beginning herbalists tools that can help support them as they step into their role as self, family and/or community healer
Enroll
Enrollment is now closed. If you are interested in the next round, subscribe to our newsletter!
This program is for you if:
-
you are a self-identified person of color
-
you understand that plants are our relatives, and therefore our ancestors
-
you believe in the sovereignty of our non-human kin
-
you are looking to support healing for yourself and your community
-
you want to learn about and center the folk medicine practices of the African diaspora
-
you want to protect native plants from over consumption
-
you want to get down with the wild+weedy local plants
-
you believe in slow medicine
-
you would rather know 40 uses for one plant than one use for 40 different plants
-
you are interested in folk medicine
-
you understand traditional ecological knowledge (tek) is a science in its own right
-
you believe granny/auntie/abuela knowledge is invaluable
-
you value the wisdom of our ancestors
-
you are seeking a complement to your other healing practices
-
if you want to explore how to heal the trauma you carry in your body
-
you want to begin to learn how to move through discomfort with plant allies
this program is not:
-
clinical
-
a replacement for medical knowledge
-
for non-BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, Person of Color)
-
an apprenticeship
Why Allyship?
Why allyship?
We have chosen to continue to call our program an allyship to reflect the relationship of reciprocity that is inherent and indeed integral to working with plants.
Just as plants can be our allies in healing and growth, we can be theirs, too.
What does it mean to be trauma-conscious?
At its most basic, it reflects an awareness that experiences of trauma may be present within our circle.
Many of the BIPOC who attend our programs come from lineages who have experienced violence connected to land and we acknowledge that we may be carrying the generational trauma of that violence.
Like us, the land and our plant kin hold similar memories of trauma within them.
While working with plants, we believe creating a sacred container that acknowledges the historical, physical and emotional impact of that trauma is deeply important to the healing process for all of us, both human and non-human.
What is ancestral somatics?
Somatics is a broad term being widely used to describe many different modalities.
In the context of this program, we are speaking to somatics as a way to connect to our bodies, our senses, and to listen to what is so as not to overwhelm our nervous system with all the thoughts and memories that arise when we focus on what was or what could be.
To begin to move through feelings of discomfort when nervous system activation occurs.
We work with this technology to align with the innate wisdom of the intuition of our gut, as well as our thinking mind and feeling heart, to attune to our natural surroundings; to the land and the spirits of the land.
Our approach is offered via the frame work of ceremony and ritual, which is a lot more mundane than it sounds. It’s the magic of washing floors, listening to your breath or witnessing leaves rustle in a gentle breeze.
It is a remembering and a reclamation of the tools and techniques of our animist ancestors.
"To free ourselves, we must feed ourselves."
-Fannie Lou Hamer
Course Details
Classes will be conducted live via zoom one weekend a month from the end of April through December and include but are not limited to:
• community building via talking circles
• meditations with native or naturalized plant allies
• plant identification
• building a materia medica (collection of plant profiles)
• body systems and subtle (spiritual) anatomy
• folk method of medicine making
• spiritual/magical medicine making
• discussions of AfroIndigenous spiritual and magical practices
• ancestral medicine shares
• into to somatic experiencing
• soil health basics
• beginning gardening for containers and small plots
• AfroIndigenous planting/growing technologies (prayers, songs, shrines, offerings)
Dates
We will generally meet the third weekend of each month from April to December on both Saturday and Sunday, 10 am-2:30 pm eastern.
Check our enrollment page for the complete list of dates
Costs
The full cost of the 9 month program is $900 with two sliding scale options of $750 and $600 available on a limited basis.
We are working to secure funds for scholarships with hope to have 5 full scholarships funded by the beginning of the program.
Payment plans will also be available and average $70-100 a month for the duration of the program.
If covid regulations permit, we are hoping to host an in-person weekend gathering near the end of summer/beginning of fall
