Echoes in Our Heartbeats: Remembering the Way Home
Friday, October 26, 2018 ~ 9:30am – 5pm
We live in frightening times — climate change and mass extinctions are accelerating. The worst elements of the dying civilization that created this ecological devastation are becoming exacerbated with devastating effects on all of us. Especially on the most vulnerable and marginalized communities.
The logic of the culture that shaped these crises cannot guide us out of them. How do we who have only known life in this culture find alternative ways forward without appropriating the understandings, rituals, and traditions of colonized people?
Listening with and to our bodies, we can all access memories of our pre-capitalist and pre-colonial ancestors that are echoed in our heartbeats. We can feel the shift in sensation and emotion that comes when we are in the presence of our other-than-human animal and plant kindred, guiding us to new possibilities of embodiment.
In this day long workshop, we will:
• Explore the ways in which shifting our experience of embodiment shifts our patterns of thought.
• Discuss ways in which connection with ancestors, plants, animals, and land can shift our experience of embodiment.
• Engage in a practice of following our heartbeats along matrilineal lines to connect with our ancestors.
• Develop awareness of the subtle shifts our bodies experience from minute doses of plant medicines that can help us imagine and step into other ways of being.
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Sean Donahue is an autistic/neurodivergent herbalist, poet, and witch living on the traditional territory of the Yakima Nation in Trout Lake, WA. He works at the crossroads of personal, cultural, and ecological healing. He is the co-founder, with Matthew Wood, of the Portland School of Herbal Wisdom. He is a frequent contributor to Plant Healer and Gods & Radicals. Before discovering plant medicine and witchcraft, and realizing that they were a better fit for someone with a non-linear mind and an inability to make small talk, he was an organizer in the anti-war, human rights, and global economic justice movements and a freelance journalist.
Learn more at: http://www.seandonahueherbalist.com
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This workshop is hosted as collaboration between The Wildwood Path, The Troy House and Mid Maine Yoga. Registration is on a sliding scale between $60-$120 for the day. If you are someone who can afford to pay more than the low end of the scale to attend so others can pay less, you will be taking an action of solidarity and making the event more accessible for people who cannot afford to pay as much. The break even cost for attending this event is $90. If the sliding scale is not accessible to you, please contact us about scholarship options.
Sheepscot General 10 Class Pass
Class passes are valid for both Wednesday evening Yin @ 7pm and Thursday morning Sunrise Flow @ 5:45am.