Hey Everyone! This great SoCal event is offering discounted tickets for the last couple of days before the event.

Come play with us! Show us your fantastic plant skillz. Learn from our amazing teachers, play in the wild mountains of Topanga Canyon Saturday, May 25th and be a part of our tribe. It’s past time we did this.

Our first "Roots of Healing Festival" Saturday, May 25 will be held at the beautiful Cross Bull Ranch. We’re excited to be partnered with our amazing host, Lisa Cianci who tends to a truly magical oak-forested land in Topanga Canyon.

Their site offers an immersive experience in nature: native plant corridors, an ephemeral meandering stream, a young food forest amphitheatre, keyhole garden beds and even a chicken tractor! There will be nearby offsite parking along a paved road and access around the ranch is primarily dirt road.

Cost:

$45.00 (discounted for the last week from $75.00!) non-refundable day pass

FREE-Nightshade afterparty from 7-10pm

Food

Meal tickets for a delicious, catered meal are available for purchase. However, in the spirit of community, we strongly encourage everyone to share in the potluck we're hoping to create. Bring food for yourself and food to share, picnic style. Also, water will be limited, so please bring enough to stay hydrated for the day.

Class Descriptions and Schedule

9:00 – 9:20am

Opening Ceremony

9:30 – 11:00am

Courageous Plants

Five Plants in my Medicine Bag

Wild & Wise Herbs for the Garden

11:10am – 12:40pm

Engaging Complexity

Making Herbal Salves

Herbal Apothecary

12:40 – 2:10pm

Lunch + Marketplace

2:15 – 3:45pm

Simple Digestive Solutions

Igniting the Revolution Within

3:55 – 5:30pm

Community Circle

5:40 – 6:00pm

Closing Ceremony

7:00-10:00pm

Nightshade Afterparty

Class Descriptions

Herbal Apothecary: Making Plant Medicines

Julie James

A foundational concept in taking charge of our own health care is being able to make our own herbal medicines. It can be easier than you think, it’s extraordinarily fun, if you like to mess around in the kitchen, and it’s quite empowering. And when you are in control of the ingredients, sourcing and perhaps even growing them with care and deliberation, you know the quality of the finished product. Finally, making your own medicines imbues them with the love and healing intention that no laboratory can provide. This will be an overview of the most common medicine making techniques, with some demonstration and lots of sampling–a tasty, smelly, sticky, fun workshop!

ENGAGING COMPLEXITY: Creating an Inclusive Herbal Practice

Alexis J. Chapman

Whether you are an herbalist with a thriving private practice or provide simple remedies to your friends and families, creating space for those you serve to be able to express the full scope of their complexity can profoundly affect your ability to support another’s healing journey as well as your own. In Engaging Complexity we’ll learn about becoming compassionately curious, supporting client-centered storytelling, identifying your own boundaries, and remaining accountable throughout.

IGNITING THE REVOLUTION WITHIN: A Sex Positive Approach to Healing

Pati Garcia

Attendees will learn feminist health; we’ll begin demystify the “G-Spot”, pleasure anatomy, be introduced to Orgasmic Yoga and self-exam as tools to heal. We will cover self-care from a natural perspective with home remedies. Also we will cover the health care alternatives such as midwifery care for your pap smears and other gynecological needs as well as an introduction to the benefits of the Shodhini Institute Radical Women’s Health training.

MAKING HERBAL SALVES Marcia Coppess

Salves are some of the oldest and most accessible of our plant medicines. Once you master the simple technique, there's no limit to the ways you can expand your use of herbs to heal at the skin level. In this class we'll look at the wide range of uses for herb-oil-wax combinations. We'll cover the basics of oil infusions, waxes, additives and, of course, the herbs you might choose for you creations. You'll leave the class with a freshly made salve and guideline on formulating your own salves, ointments and balms.

SIMPLE DIGESTIVE SOLUTIONS: A Look at Bitter, Aromatic, + Demulcent Herbs

Shana Lipner

There are many simple changes you can make to your diet to get the most out of the food you eat. You should be empowered and energized by your culinary selections, not bloated, gassy and tired. Join us for this informative class to explore bitters, aromatic and demulcent herbs that can change the quality of your digestive system function so you have more energy, clearer cognition, stronger immune system and more! This is an interactive class so we will be tasting herbs in numerous mediums: teas, tincture and vinegars!

COURAGEOUS PLANTS Siri Baldeep

We love herbs! They are rich with healing potential, so much so that we have turned to medicinal plants again and again throughout history to help us achieve optimum health. Throughout this class, we will explore the courageous plants that have been met time and time again while on the journey towards vibrant health. We will learn about herbs that inspire within us a deep sense of courage. These are plants that enhance our endurance, help us to manage stress and bring clarity and focus to our thoughts and goals. We will explore what it means to have the courage to heal- with the help of herbs- through a discussion of materia medica, therapeutics, physiology and intuitive energetics.

FIVE LOCAL HERBS IN MY MEDICINE BAG Rebecca Altman

An exploration of five Southern Californian plants that I use often in my practice: Chapparal, Sweet Everlasting, Ocotillo, Desert Lavender and White Sage. This class will include ethnobotanical history, case histories, and personal experiences with the plants as a whole. Food uses will be included if they are relevant. As all of these plants are wild, we will be discussing land stewarding, the importance of looking after ‘our’ areas, and how to harvest sustainably.

WILD & WISE HERBS FOR THE GARDEN Kathleen Sanchez

We’ll begin with an overview of the roles herbs play in garden ecosystems. There will be a focus on medicinal varieties that grow effortlessly in our local climate. Specific Southwestern, Mexican, Mediterranean, and Californian herbs will be discussed. Walk away with a better understanding of how to sustain a healthy garden environment by growing specific herbs. This workshop focuses on gardening with herbs, however medicinal and historical uses will also be presented.

Speaker Bios

JULIE JAMES (Long Beach)

Julie James is an herbalist, and director of Green Wisdom Herbal Studies, providing herbal education opportunities for people all over Southern California. After over 2 decades of formal study, apprenticeship, consulting and teaching, she now focuses on expanding understanding of traditional Western herbalism, deep plant love, medicine-making, wellness and holistic nutrition.

Visit her and check out the calendar of upcoming classes and events at Green Wisdom Herbal Studies: www.meetup.com/Green-Wisdom-Herbal-Studies, or on Facebook: www.facebook.com/GreenWisdomHerbalStudies

MARCIA COPPESS (Pasadena)

Growing up camping and hiking the West with my family, I never felt more alive than when wandering in the shade of the redwoods or splashing in a stream. I'm that girl who signed up for anatomy, physiology, and nutrition in college because they were fun, not because they were required for my journalism degree. I freelanced for 15 years as a health and medical writer for national magazines and research facilities. Now I've found my home with a blend of Western herbalism that balances science and folk tradition. I study herbalism voraciously, maintain a medicinal herb garden, wildcraft along the West Coast, and joyfully make plant medicine and body care products in Pasadena for my business, HomeBody Botanicals.

REBECCA ALTMAN (Los Angeles)

I am a Scottish girl who lives in the wilds of Los Angeles, where I spend my time cooking up a storm, painting, running this little business, and getting very messy most of the time. I work as a herbalist, wildcrafting herbs, brewing potions, seeing clients, and bossing people around. My training came in many forms- from wandering around in the woods as a child and listening to what the plants told me; to stumbling into a little herb shop during a nadir in life, and meeting a little old herb man who insisted I work there and study with him; to Chinese medical school; to India to study with Ayurvedic herbalists; to doing a mentorship with Kiva Rose (wild woman and bioregional herb wizard extraordinaire). I am not a doctor, I won’t diagnose things or treat disease. I’m a herbalist: I help bring your body back into balance, help to manage things like stress or immune system issues or sleep disorders or mood disorders or hormonal issues. I match people to plants. http://shop.kingsroadapothecary.com

KATHLEEN SANCHEZ (Whittier)

Kathleen is a Master Gardener based out of Whittier, California.

Her mission is to empower people of all ages through education to reclaim their health, wellness, and local environment by growing their own food, supporting local food sources and by nurturing nature.

Including her initial and continued education as a master gardener she has also completed 48 hours of urban ecosystem agriculture instruction.

Kathleen has been studying plant life for over 10 years and specializes in creating resilient edible designs that rejuvenate our living and natural spaces.

To learn more about Kathleen and her work visit: http://pathwaytothegarden.blogspot.com/

CHARLES GARCIA (Modesto)

I was born in 1954 in the north central valley of California. My mother, Martha Navarro Garcia was a curandera/partera who learned much of her wisdom from her father and the wise Indian women of Temecula California in her youth. The majority of my herbal knowledge comes from her. This training began when I was four years old and has never stopped. Until recently I’ve spent most of my adult life in the San Francisco metropolitan area where I started the California School of Traditional Hispanic Herbalism in 1998. Like my mother and her father before her I do not charge the sick or those in need. No one is ever turned away. Teaching, lecturing, and writing allows me to do this. I have three adult daughters, Jennifer Nicole, Sarah Alexis, and Catherine Alejandra. Each of them dabble in herbalism in their free time. I have worked as a teacher of the deaf, a newspaper columnist, in law enforcement and high risk security, as an aide in the Head Start Program, and as a child farm worker. My first novel went online in 2010 and I’m presently working on a sequel as well as a manuscript of poetry. When I can I love camping in the high Sierra with friends.

SHANA LIPNER GROVER (San Diego)

Shana Lipner Grover is a Clinical Herbalist and Health Educator, who has been working with plant medicine and nutrition for 15 years. She has written on, and teaches numerous classes about, herbal medicine and nutrition with Healing Hands School of Holistic Health, An Optimal You clinic, and elsewhere in San Diego and Orange County. She has taught throughout the western US at herb festivals, medical clinics, the Ecology Center and for Columbines School of Botanical Study in Eugene Oregon, of which she is a graduate. She completed four herbal apprenticeship study programs throughout the west, including Michael Moores’ Southwest School of Botanical Medicine. Shana loves going for hikes and studying ecology as well as offering plant walks, teaching about local, native and medicinal plants. She has a clinical practice in North County San Diego with a focus on empowering people and their health through nutrition, lifestyle, and herbal medicine.

PATI GARCIA (Los Angeles)

Pati Garcia is a full-spectrum doula, a student midwife and initiator of the Shodhini Institute; a self-help based research collective focused on sexual health liberation. As a queer gender variant latin@, Pati seeks to bridge the gap between body autonomy and allopathic & traditional healing modalities so that an individual’s dignity and self-knowing is kept intact.

Shodhini Institute began training people in April of 2011 and has 51 trained Shodhinis as of November, 2012. We aim to build a foundation of radical feminist health akin to the 70′s feminist health movement in order to embody empowerment and provide sound advocacy and support. To learn more about Pati and her work visit: www.ChulaDoula.com

ALEXIS J. CHAPMAN (Long Beach)

Alexis is the herbologist and medicine-maker at Worts + Cunning Apothecary. She lives in a traveling urban homestead, creating mischief wherever she can, serving lots of tea, and dancing in communities ripe for revolution. As an ecstatic herbologist she acts as a facilitator between the many kingdoms of plant, mineral, people, and creature, co-creating sustainable systems of health and wellbeing. She currently lives in Long Beach, CA with her midwife-extraordinaire love, K. Heron, and their mystical lurcher pup, Basil. Learn more about ecstatic herbology and the Apothecary’s fully enchanted remedies, classes, and books at wortsandcunning.wordpress.com.

SIRI BALDEEP KAUR (Los Angeles)

Siri Baldeep Kaur holds a certificate in the arts and sciences of herbal medicine from the California School of Herbal Studies. She has recently completed her advanced clinical herbal training with the President of the American Herbalist Guild, K.P. Khalsa. She believes that all people can awaken to their utmost potential for vibrant health by incorporating the therapeutic and spiritual element of herbs into their lives. She supplies her clients with high quality herbal products that she personally formulates. She is in the process of building her clinical herbal practice in Los Angeles, CA where she can also be found teaching yoga and meditation. For more information, please visit: www.angelic-herbs.blogspot.com

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Roots of Healing Southern California Herb Fest May 25th!!